‘Does Public School Competition Affect Teacher Quality?’
in Hoxby, C. (ed.), The Economics of School Choice, University of Chicago Press
Investigates whether teacher quality is an important channel through which competition affects student outcomes.
Uses panel data to test the hypothesis that competition should lead to less variance in teacher quality, using a Herfindahl index to measure the level of competition
Key results:
The authors find that less competition does indeed lead to higher within-school variance in teacher quality, but only when competition is measured at the school level, not the district level.
The results imply that a one standard deviation increase in the degree of competition would increase student achievement 5 times more than a one s.d. reduction in class size.
