Raj Chetty: uncertainty

Transcript context

…But it doesn’t help you on second-grade tests? That seems odd. Yeah, in something like discipline, that seems a little bit odd, but take social skills. For example, suppose the kindergarten teacher helps you get a higher test score in kindergarten, but in the process of doing so, she’s also a teacher who is able to manage the classroom effectively and help kids get along with each other. All right? Now, getting along with somebody else is probably quite valuable in the labor market. However, it’s not necessarily going to have a direct payoff in terms of helping you do better on your third-grade test. Now, this is a bit of conjecture — I don’t know whether that’s exactly the mechanism — but what I can tell you is what does seem to persist are these gains in terms of student’s non-cognitive skills. There are subsequent surveys, which in the context of the study we did of 12,000 kids in Tennessee, they assessed these children’s ability to get along with other kids, their ability to sit still, various non-cognitive measures. And you see that, if you were in a better kindergarten classroom, you’re doing better on all of those non-cognitive dimensions even though your academic performance is no longer better. That is suggestive evidence that that’s the type of mechanism that matters here. The teacher mattering after only 10 years of experience, that to me also seems counterintuitive. I would think it normal if teachers needed a few years to learn how to teach. But I almost would think their skills would peak years three through seven, and after that, there’s a bit of burnout, like “Oh, my goodness. These kindergarten kids, I can’t take it anymore,” that somehow, years seven through nine, they’re like the immature teachers.…

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