Understanding the Levers for Improving Teacher Quality

Great teachers can lead to significant improvements in academic performance and long-term student outcomes and serve as models for their fellow teachers. A student who has a one standard deviation better teacher for one year will have about a 0.25 standard deviation increase in test scores. Therefore, a challenge to policymakers is how to attract talented individuals to teaching, accurately screen for quality at the time of hiring, and incentivise them to stay in the classroom.