Teacher Licensure Tests and Student Achievement: Is Teacher Testing An Effective Policy?

March 2005
Dan Goldhaber

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CRPE Working Paper #2005-4

This paper investigates whether or not licensure tests are an effective policy tool for ensuring teacher quality. In order to help states make more informed decisions about the way they license teachers, we examine the relationship between teacher performance on commonly-used licensure tests and growth in student achievement.

To do this, we examine the relationship between teacher test scores and student performance using a unique dataset from North Carolina that links teachers to individual students in grades three through five. Because this unique dataset includes information on teachers’ performance on various licensure exams, we are able to estimate educational production functions that isolate the contribution of teachers to student achievement and assess the strength of the relationship between teacher testing and student achievement gains. These data also allow for the tracking of students and teachers over time, thus permitting the estimation of sophisticated econometric models that avoid certain problems inherent in previous studies employing aggregated datasets. Furthermore, we are able to use the results from statistical models to simulate the extent to which differences in licensure cut-off scores screen out both effective and ineffective teachers.

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