Working Paper: NBER ID: w30212
Authors: W. Jesse Wood; Ijun Lai; Neil R. Filosa; Scott A. Imberman; Nathan D. Jones; Katharine O. Strunk
Abstract: The success of many students with disabilities (SWDs) depends on access to high-quality general education teachers. Yet, most measures of teacher value-added measures (VAM) fail to distinguish between a teacher’s effectiveness in educating students with and without disabilities. We create two VAM measures: one focusing on teachers’ effectiveness in improving outcomes for SWDs, and one for non-SWDs. We find top-performing teachers for non-SWDs often have relatively lower VAMs for SWDs, and that SWDs sort to teachers with lower scores in both VAMs. Overall, SWD-specific VAMs may be more suitable for identifying which teachers have a history of effectiveness with SWDs and could play a role in ensuring that students are being optimally assigned to these teachers.
Keywords: teacher effectiveness; students with disabilities; value-added measures
JEL Codes: I21; I24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| teacher effectiveness for SWDs (I24) | outcomes for SWDs (I24) |
| teacher effectiveness for nonsWDs (I24) | outcomes for nonsWDs (I12) |
| higher VAMs for SWDs (C87) | better outcomes for SWDs (I24) |
| lower VAMs for SWDs (C87) | less effective teaching (A21) |
| top-performing teachers for nonsWDs (I24) | lower VAMs for SWDs (C87) |
| SWDs assigned to teachers with lower VAMs (I24) | suboptimal teacher assignments (C78) |
| SWD-specific VAMs (C87) | identification of effective teachers for SWDs (I24) |