High School Value-Added and Labor Market Outcomes

This paper contributes to the sparse literature on the lasting impact of teacher and school value-added on adult outcomes by estimating value-added scores for high schools and linking these scores to a student-level dataset on college performance. After controlling for detailed student and high school characteristics, one standard deviation increase in high school value-added increases the probability of graduating from college by six percentage points and final GPA by 0.05-0.08 points on a 4.0 scale. Most of the GPA impact occurs in early semesters. There is some evidence that the impact may be largest for male students and Black students.