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Inequality in access to high-quality teachers is an important driver of student socioeconomic achievement gaps. We experimentally evaluate a novel nation-wide low-cost government program aimed at reducing teacher sorting. Specifically, we tested two behavioral strategies designed to motivate teachers to apply to job vacancies in disadvantaged schools. These strategies consisted of an "Altruistic Identity" treatment arm, which primed teachers' altruistic identity by making it more salient, and an "Extrinsic Incentives" arm, which simplified the information and increased the salience of an existing government monetary-incentive scheme rewarding teachers who work in underprivileged institutions. We show that both strategies are successful in triggering teacher candidates to apply to such vacancies, as well as make them more likely to be assigned to a final in-person evaluation in a disadvantaged school. The effect among high-performing teachers is larger, especially in the "Altruistic" arm. Our results imply that low-cost behavioral strategies can enhance the supply and quality of professionals willing to teach in high-need areas.

In this article, we explore whether the evaluation instruments used to recruit teachers in the national teacher hiring process in Peru are good predictors of teacher effectiveness. To this end, we estimate teacher value-added (TVA) measures for public primary school teachers in 2018 and test for their correlation with the results of the 2015 and 2017 national evaluations. Our findings indicate that among the three sub-tests that comprise the first, centralized stage of the process, the curricular and pedagogical knowledge component has the strongest (and significant) correlation with the TVA measure, while the weakest correlation is found with the reading comprehension component. At the second, decentralized stage, we find no significant correlation with our measures of TVA for math, as well as non-robust correlations for the professional experience and classroom observation evaluation instruments. A positive and significant correlation is found between the classroom observation component and TVA for reading. Moreover, we find correlations between our measure of TVA and several teacher characteristics: TVA is higher for female teachers and for those at higher salary levels while it is lower for teachers with temporary contracts (compared to those with permanent positions).

This paper explores rank-ordered teacher candidates' preferences for public schools in Peru by analyzing the 2015 teacher hiring process. Our analysis shows that, in seeking permanent positions in public schools, candidates appear to search closer to where they attended their Teacher Education Program (TEP) and prefer to work in urban areas. Moreover, candidates seem to prefer schools with higher enrollment, basic services and located in wealthier areas. These preferences vary by candidates' attributes. Proximity from their TEP seems to be particularly important for females, while urbanicity is more relevant for candidates with high scores in the national teacher test and older than 35 years old. When controlling for previous workplace location, TEP locations and urbanicity play a less important role in teacher preferences. Understanding which school characteristics teachers value the most can help us design new policies and modify the existing ones to attract teachers to hard-to-staff schools.

This paper contributes to the teacher sorting literature by analyzing equity in the distribution of teachers in three educational systems in Latin America, with different equalization policies, teacher assignment rules, and incentives to work in disadvantaged schools: Chile, Colombia, and Peru. We use unique micro-data at the teacher and school level to describe the distribution of teachers across the three systems. Two main conclusions emerge from our results. First, we find that differences in the sources of funding and teacher salaries legislation can affect the equity in teacher allocation between administrative units. Second, we find substantial teacher sorting across schools (vertical inequities) in the three systems. Overall, the comparison of the three countries confirms that, after controlling for confounding variables, disadvantaged students, particularly those in rural areas, are more likely to attend schools with teachers who are less qualified (temporary and inexperienced) and paid less. One of the most consistent findings in this analysis are the vertical inequities across the three measures in Colombia. In contrast, in Chile, the three measures have an inconsistent and weak relationship with mother's level of schooling and a moderate relationship with the geographic location of the school (rural). While our analyses are descriptive and do not attempt to identify the underlying causes of these patterns, we suggest that these differences are related to the salary structure and hiring policies in the three countries. We discuss some policy alternatives to increase equity, including the introduction of monetary and non-monetary incentives to attract teachers to hard-to-staff schools, improving the working conditions and modifications in the teacher hiring and assignment process.