TY  - JOUR
AB  - 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.
AU  - Kraft, Matthew A.
AU  - Papay, John P.
AU  - James, Jessalynn
AU  - Monti-Nussbaum, Manuel
PY  - 2026
ST  - Is Teacher Effectiveness Fully Portable? Evidence from the Random Assignment of Transfer Incentives
TI  - Is Teacher Effectiveness Fully Portable? Evidence from the Random Assignment of Transfer Incentives
UR  - http://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1405
ER  -