Three essays on personnel economics in public education
Abstract
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This dissertation consists of three chapters on personnel economics in public education. The first chapter creates a simulation framework to examine the efficiency implications of using proportional evaluation systems. We find that proportionality can be imposed with very limited or no efficiency costs compared to global systems. Our results suggest that given other benefits offered by proportional policy, it could be regarded as a viable alternative to the global policy. The second chapter uses regression discontinuity design to examine impacts of the performance ratings under a new and rigorous evaluation system in Tennessee on teacher job satisfaction. The results indicate that the rigorous evaluation system can cause differential job satisfaction between more and less effective teachers. The third chapter uses a reduced-form regression discontinuity approach to isolate and identify the "intention to treat" effect of assigning differentiated evaluation ratings on teachers' professional development choices. I find that the assignment of a higher performance rating alone would not affect how teachers would behave in professional development.
Degree
Ph. D.
Thesis Department
Rights
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