How do teachers improve? The relative importance of specific and general human capital

摘要

Purpose: To identify the benefits of general teaching experience and specific curriculum familiarity in improving teaching quality of teachers. Summary: The study of human capital that is transferable across organizations is of the opinion that wages reflect the productivity. However this need not have to be true in wage-deferring contracts, differential monopsony power, or efficiency wages that influence differently the performance of individuals. These phenomena can generate the appearance of human capital specificity even when the human capital is general. This study examines new evidence of relative importance of general and task specific human capital by investigating the specific case of productivity improvement for teachers. Using micro-level data the teachers are grade-level assignments are tracked for more than 18 years. This data is used to examine the productivity improvement as they gain general grade-specific experience. This paper is unique in describing two stylized facts. First, is to show that teachers switch grade assignments frequently within a school such that less than 50% remain in the same grade in their first five years. Second, students who have a teacher with more grade-specific experience make larger test score improvements than students having teacher with less grade- specific experience. (25 refs.)