The Effect of Teachers on Measures of Socio-Emotional Skills:

This study extends the traditional test-score value-added model of teacher quality to allow for the possibility that teachers affect a variety of student outcomes through their effects on both students’ cognitive and noncognitive skill. In published work, C. Kirabo Jackson shows that teachers have effects on skills not measured by test scores, but reflected in absences, suspensions, course grades, and on-time grade progression. Teacher effects on these non-test-score outcomes in 9th grade predict effects on high-school completion and predictors of college-going—above and beyond their effects on test scores. Relative to using only test-score measures of teacher quality, including both test-score and non-test-score measures more than doubles the predictable variability of teacher effects on these longer-run outcomes.Jackson examines how teacher effects on these behavior-based measures of soft skills relate to effects on photometric measures of soft skills. He also examines which teacher practices predict these effects and will look at longer-run outcomes such as postsecondary completion and labor market outcomes.

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