TEACHER RECRUITMENT, COMPENSATION, AND RETENTION
How should schools incentivize teachers when effort is non-verifiable or non-contractable? This study uses an RCT design to study the effect of subjective incentives (principal-discretionary performance evaluation) and objective incentives (test score-based) relative to no incentives for teachers. Teachers are randomized into one of three contract types to explore the impact of their compensation scheme on their performance as well as students’ test scores and socio-emotional development. While there is no published academic paper for this study yet, there are three papers in progress. The first paper studies the impact of subjective vs. objective incentives. The second paper documents the sorting effect of the varied compensation schemes. Finally, the third paper explores gender discrimination by principals under the different incentive schemes.
About the Data
Timeline & Data Contents
Our study was conducted from October 2017 through June 2019. It covered one performance review cycle conducted from January-December 2018 in which the new teacher contracts were in place. Our data allows us to understand how teachers changed their effort under each incentive scheme, why the incentives affected effort in the way they did, and the resulting effect this had on student outcomes. We draw on data from:
Administrative Data: The administrative data details position, salary, performance review score, attendance, and demographics for all employees. The data was provided by the school system for the period of July 2016 to June 2019. It includes classes and subjects taught for all teachers, and end of term standardized exam scores for all students (linked to teachers). From September through December 2018, we also have data on classroom observations conducted by managers.
Classroom Observation Data: To measure teacher behavior in the classroom, we recorded 6,800 hours of classroom footage and reviewed it using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, CLASS (Pianta et al., 2012), which measures teacher pedagogy across a dozen dimensions.10 11 We also recorded whether teachers conducted any sort of test preparation activity and the language fluency of teachers and students.
Baseline Survey: The baseline survey measured teachers’ preferences over different contracts and beliefs about their performance under each contract. 40% of schools were randomly selected to participate in an in-person baseline survey conducted in October 2017. 2,500 teachers and 119 managers were surveyed.
Endline Survey: The teacher endline survey measured their understanding of the contract they were assigned, time use, and beliefs about their manager’s level of bias in conducting performance evaluations. The manager endline survey measured managers’ beliefs about teacher quality and measured management quality using the World Management Survey school questionnaire. These surveys were conducted online with teachers and managers in spring and summer 2019. 6,080 teachers and 189 managers were surveyed.
Endline Student Testing and Survey: An endline test was conducted with students to measure performance in core subjects and socio-emotional skills after one year of the intervention. The research team conducted the endline test and student survey in January 2019. The test was conducted in Reading (English and Urdu), Math, Science, and Economics. The items were written in partnership with the school system’s curriculum and testing department to ensure appropriateness of question items. Students also completed a survey to measure four areas of socio-emotional development.
Sampling Summary
The study was conducted with a large private school system in Pakistan. A total of 234 schools participated in the study, involving 2,500 teachers and 119 managers.
The student body is from an upper middle-class and upper-class background. Teachers are generally younger and less experienced than their counterparts in the US, though they have similar levels of education. Our sample is mostly female (80%), young (35 years on average), and inexperienced (5 years on average, but a quarter of teachers are in their first year teaching). All teachers have a BA and 68% have some post-BA credential or degree. Salaries are on average $17,000 USD (PPP).
In order to understand the effects of subjective performance pay, we need to understand who the managers are and what role they play in overseeing teachers. Managers here are either a principal in small schools or a vice principal in larger schools. They are tasked with overseeing the overall operations of the school and managing employees, including teachers and other support staff. Like in the US, our managers are generally older (45 years old), less likely to be female (61%), and more experienced (9.6 years) than teachers. Most were previously teachers and transitioned into an administrative role.
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Data Use Notice: The public data has been cleaned to make it accessible to any researcher unfamiliar with the project. As there is no published academic paper associated with this dataset yet, this dataset will be updated when the paper is released.
For most variables, the data is clean and consistent. However, some inconsistencies may remain from measurement or processing errors that cannot be explained from field records at this point. For these remaining cases, it is the user’s responsibility to apply corrections as they see fit.
Released public data is anonymized and doesn’t contain any personally identifiable information to protect the privacy of research subjects. By downloading and using the data, researchers commit to not making any attempts at re-identifying individuals from the microdata. Doing so would dramatically jeopardize the accessibility of this dataset and other datasets in the future, as privacy of research subjects is of paramount importance for ethical and transparent research.
Required Citation: By downloading the data, users also commit to citing the data documentation report using the following citation:
Andrabi and Brown (2022), The Teacher Recruitment, Compensation, and Retention Dataset, 2017-2019, version 11-2022, released November 18th 2022