@EdWorkingPaper{ai26-1405,
title = "Is Teacher Effectiveness Fully Portable? Evidence from the Random Assignment of Transfer Incentives",
author = "Matthew A. Kraft, John P. Papay, Jessalynn James, Manuel Monti-Nussbaum",
institution = "Annenberg Institute at Brown University",
number = "1405",
year = "2026",
month = "February",
URL = "http://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1405",
abstract = {We examine how performance changes when teachers transfer across very different school contexts. The Talent Transfer Initiative program created a rare natural experiment to study such transfers by randomly assigning low-achieving schools the ability to offer high-performing teachers at higher-achieving schools a $20,000 transfer stipend. Forecast tests show that these high-performing teachers’ prior value added is only moderately predictive of their effectiveness in low-achieving schools. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we estimate that incentivized-transfer teachers’ value added dropped by 0.12 student standard deviations. This decline appears to be driven by lower match quality, negative indirect school effects, and the loss of student-specific human capital.},
}