February 2009

This paper examines whether educational production in secondary school involves joint production among teachers across subjects. In doing so, it also provides insights into the reliability of value-added modeling. Teacher value-added to reading test scores is estimated for four different teacher types: English, math, science, and social studies. While the initial results indicate that reading output is jointly produced by math and English teachers, post-estimation falsification tests debunk the math-teacher “effects” – that is, there is in fact no evidence of joint production in secondary school. The results offer a mixed review of the value-added methodology, suggesting that it may be useful in some contexts but not others.

To read this paper, please click here.