Education Policy Center Seminar Speaker Series

 Title:

“Premium or penalty? Labor market returns to novice public sector teachers”

Colloquium Presentation by Lucrecia Santibañez, Associate Professor of Teaching, Learning and Culture from the School of Education at Claremont Graduate University 

It is unclear whether public sector teachers are under or overpaid relative to other occupations because we generally lack knowledge on teachers’ outside labor market options or other unobserved attributes related to compensation. We document causal labor market returns to public sector novice teachers in Colombia.  In 2004, Colombia introduced a national, standardized, teacher-screening exam, scores on which determine eligibility for public sector teaching jobs relative to an exogenous cutoff point.  We combine four nationwide administrative data sources in a regression discontinuity approach to document the labor market returns and outside options of recent education college graduates who take the screening test.

Dr. Santibañez has studied how to increase education quality and access of opportunity for low-income populations in the United States and abroad. Her research focuses on school-based management, parent engagement, school leadership, and teacher labor markets. She is developing a new research agenda focusing on English language learners.