The Wonkblog asked a number of noted experts in diverse fields to submit graphs that best explained 2012. As education is key to so many issues we face I recommend Raj Chetty’s nomination as the most important submission. I was pleased to summarize the major findings of Chetty et al. (2012) in my post, The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers, last January. Here are a three graphs from Wonkblog. See my post for more findings and charts.
A positive future is found in great teachers.
“and students assigned to such high value-added teachers are more likely to go to college, earn higher incomes, and less likely to be teenage mothers. On average, having such a teacher for one year raises a child’s cumulative lifetime income by $50,000 (equivalent to $9,000 in present value at age 12 with a 5 percent interest rate).”
“The earnings gains from replacing a low value-added (bottom 5 percent) teacher with one of average quality grow as more data are used to estimate value-added. Discounting future earnings gains to present value, the gains are $190,000 with three years of data and eventually surpass $250,000 per class. If future earnings are not discounted, cumulative earnings gains surpass $1.4 million per class.”
Reference
Chetty, Raj; Friedman, John N.; and Jonah E. Rockoff. (2011). The long-term impacts of teachers: Teacher value-added and student outcomes in adulthood. National Bureau of Economic Research. Working Paper 17699. http://www.nber.org/papers/w17699