Samuel Mosley
Ph.D Candidate
Job Market Candidate, 2025-2026
Economics
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Fields: Economics of Education, Applied Microeconomics
Job Market Paper: The Effect of Teacher Quality: A Mobility-Based Approach to Long-Run Student Outcomes in High School Algebra I
Abstract: Geography predicts a large number of outcomes in the United States, including educational attainment and labor force participation. The underlying channells that contribute to this inequality remain unclear. This paper examines whether variation in high school teacher quality explains differences in long-term outcomes. The intentional sorting of families to neighborhoods where the teachers are believed to be of higher quality complicates causal identification. Focusing on 9th grade Algebra I teachers in Texas, I exploit teacher movements across schools to identify between-school variation in teacher quality while controlling for time-varying school and neighborhood effects. I estimate teacher contributions to both cognitive skills, measured by standardized test scores, and non-cognitive skills, proxied by attendance and disciplinary records. Results reveal substantial variation in school-average teacher quality. This allows me to produce unbiased estimates of the effects of attending a school with better instructional quality. A one standard deviation increase in average teacher effectiveness at reducing absences increases college enrollment by 1.2 percentage points and productive engagement in school or work by 1.3 percentage points. Similarly, a one standard deviation increase in teacher effectiveness at improving test scores increases college enrollment by 0.8 percentage points and productive engagement in school or work by 1.0 percentage points. While both cognitive and non-cognitive contributions appear important in the primary specification, only the non-cognitive results prove robust to alternative estimation strategies.