The impact of teachers qualification on students’ achievement: evidence from Portugal

Abstract

I use an administrative dataset from Portugal to study the relationship between teacher characteristics and student achievement in Mathematics. In the first step, I use student achievement measured by scores in the 6th grade national exams to estimate teacher value-added, the measure of teacher quality. After having an estimate of the teacher quality, I try to understand what type of characteristics can explain differences in teacher efficiency, in particular, if teachers differ in terms of quality by having an undergraduate degree obtained in a university versus a polytechnic school. I find that teachers differ in terms of quality and that it matters for student achievement. However, these differences in quality are mostly explained by unmeasured characteristics. Taken together the observable credentials such as teacher’s experience, GPA and female gender all have positive effects on teacher quality. When considering the type of degree-granting institution the effects on teacher effectiveness are different depending on the field of study.