Reforming teacher tenure is an idea that appears to be gaining traction with the underlying assumption being that one can infer to a reasonable degree how well a teacher will perform over her career based on estimates of her early-career effectiveness. Here we explore the potential for using value-added models to estimate performance and inform…

This paper constructs a statistical model of learning that suggests a systematic way of measuring the persistence of treatment effects in education. This method is straightforward to implement, allows for comparisons across educational treatments, and can be related to intuitive benchmarks. We demonstrate the methodology using student-teacher…