Occupational Licensing in Us Public Schools: Nationwide Implementation of Teacher Performance Assessment

Abstract

Occupational licensing potentially benefits consumers by training workers but at a cost of reducing supply. We study this trade-off by evaluating the recent controversial roll-out of the educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) that raises the entry requirement of public school teachers -- the largest licensed profession in the US. Leveraging the quasi-experimental setting of different adoption timing by states, we analyze multiple data sources containing a national sample of prospective teachers and students of new teachers. With extensive controls of concurrent policies, we find that the edTPA reduced prospective teachers in undergraduate programs, less-selective and minority-concentrated universities. Testing various specifications and sample criterion, we do not find evidence that the new license standard increased student test scores.

Keywords: Occupational licensing, teacher licensing, teacher supply, edTPA