Faculty Credentialing-Curricular Decoupling

Picture this

A culinary school staffed by professors with doctorate degrees in food science might teach complex chemistry, but a school staffed by working chefs focuses on real-world cooking techniques that help students land restaurant jobs immediately upon graduation.

What the evidence says

Private vocational schools employed a higher proportion of teachers with only secondary school training and fewer teachers with advanced degrees compared to public schools, yet voucher recipients attending these private schools achieved 0.33 to 0.66 standard deviation higher scores on national examinations.

Who was studied

N = 300 secondary schools serving low-income human voucher applicants in Bogotá, Colombia.

How

Cross-sectional institutional input evaluation comparing faculty educational credentials and student academic performance across public and private vocational secondary schools.

What to do

Evaluate educational quality using labor market curricular alignment and student output metrics rather than relying on formal instructor degree levels.

From the source

"When we look at schools that voucher winners attended, we find that winners were more likely to attend schools with a greater proportion of teachers who only have secondary school training and a smaller proportion of teachers with advanced degrees."

Are Educational Vouchers Only Redistributive?

Tags

• teacher quality
• school inputs
• human capital