I wish I could tell you that it was a great talk and they took in all those factors into account. But it wasn’t. They obviously still have a LOT of work to do. And the presenter seriously needs to work on his presentation skills. (Not Raj Chetty– he was great, but he just did set up. It fell apart after that.) Out of all the fantastic talks at that conference, I was really surprised to see this one as the one in the NYTimes.

BTW, the actual point of the paper was showing that class size leads to better outcomes later on. That part was pretty convincing. They followed up the Tennessee Star experiment students, which was a randomized experiment putting kids in different class sizes. They haven’t been out in the labor force long, but it does appear they spent more time in school and have slightly higher salaries. Those findings will probably continue to improve as the cohorts making little money now completely graduate college and start earning money and gaining work experience.

I think the idea that a good kindergarten (KG) teacher will have a positive impact on average lifetime earning for students (on average) seems like obvious common sense to me. A good KG teacher will improve your chances of learning more in school. And in KG if you’re a step ahead then you’ll have higher succees in 1st grade, which will set you up to do better in 2nd grade, etc. Everything is so much easier if you start ahead and this will make your education much more of a success from the start. Better success in school gives you a better quality education. A higher quality education will result in higher lifetime earnings. Of course these are all generalizations applied to a very large population. A crappy experience in KG can be overcome and a great KG year can be wiped out with later difficulties.

Think of it this way: Would you rather have a great KG teacher or a crappy KG teacher? Kinda answers itself. Good teachers obviously have higher value.

Obviously other things matter as much or more for your education success and lifetime earnings. The affluence and education level of the parents, the aptitude of the child, funding for the school, etc will all have a big impact on how well you learn. But as Darwin said, the study controls and factors out those elements. Also note the study findings do say that class size matters a lot and the quality of the class ( how well the other students do) also matters a lot. 20% more average teachers would have the same impact as if everyone was a +20% increase in teacher quality.

The $320k figure is kind of meaningless. I mean what do you do with that number? Give your above average KG teachers a $320k raise? Of course not.
I mean on the other side of that coin, are they saying that a below average teacher costs us $320k?

I don’t disagree that parental influence is paramount, but this study removed that as a variable and showed the incremental benefit above and beyond other factors like home, socioeconomic status, starting IQ, etc.

I hate being that guy attacking studies (I don’t know why but it bothers me) but how could the reasearches possibly know how much parental reading there was at home? Did mom and dad sit down and do math with each kid for the same amount of time?

Darwin, I say tht you are more important than a glorified babysitter – kindergarten teacher… (as grades get higher I wouldn’t say that).