Do you speak my language? The effect of sharing a teacher's native language on student achievement

Abstract

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Language lesson learned—foreign-origin teachers and their effect on students’ language skills

“…Following the teacher value-added literature, I can estimate the gain in student achievement after being taught by a foreign-origin teacher using variation in teacher assignment over time. This strategy adds to previous studies (e.g., Seah 2018Seah , 2021, which have largely relied on the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS) and used variation in teacher assignment across subjects.…”

“…The contradictory effects found by these studies can be explained by the nonrandom assignment of teaching assistants to students. In the study most closely related to this paper, Seah (2021) examines the effect of having a linguistically similar teacher on the academic achievements of secondary school students in the United States. Using data from the NELS, he exploits within-student variation in test scores and the native language of teachers across two subjects.…”