Title: The "Pupil" Factory: Specialization and the Production of Human Capital in Schools

Type Dataset Fryer Jr., Roland G. (2018): The "Pupil" Factory: Specialization and the Production of Human Capital in Schools. Harvard Dataverse. Dataset. https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/7J9EXE

Authors: Fryer Jr., Roland G. (Harvard University) ; Fryer Jr., Roland G. (Harvard University) ;

Links

• Item record in Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab Dataverse
• Digital object URL

Summary

I conducted a randomized field experiment in traditional public elementary schools in Houston, Texas designed to test the potential productivity benefits of teacher specialization. The average impact of encouraging schools to specialize their teachers on student achievement is −0.11 standard deviations per year on a combined index of math and reading test scores. I argue that the results are consistent with a model in which the benefits of specialization driven by sorting teachers into a subset of subjects based on comparative advantage is outweighed by inefficient pedagogy due to having fewer interactions with each student, though other mechanisms are possible.

More information

• DOI: 10.7910/DVN/7J9EXE

Subjects

• Social Sciences

Dates

• Publication date: 2018
• Submitted: June 29, 2018
• Updated: April 03, 2020

Notes

Rights

• info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ CC0 Waiver

Format

electronic resource

Relateditems