The labor market for new college graduates appears unsteady, which may be good news for schools: More new graduates consider teaching when hiring in other fields slows down. Plus, “care economy” jobs like teaching seem at least somewhat insulated from automation in the age of AI. If interest in teaching picks up, how can teacher-preparation programs help develop and identify strong candidates, and what should hiring managers look for in potential new educators?
In a new CALDER working paper, researchers explore what academic markers like test scores and college grades can—and cannot—tell us about teacher potential. The analysis is correlational, but it sheds light on who becomes a teacher, who tends to stay in the field, and how teachers’ own academic achievement relates to their future effectiveness.
The research team relied on college transcripts and application materials for over 113,000 graduates of three public universities in Washington. Their academic records were linked to state K–12 public school staffing data from 2009–10 through 2021–22. Of those graduates, 3,560 became teachers in the state. For about 800 math and 850 language arts teachers in grades four through eight, prepandemic student test-score growth data from 2009–10 through 2018–19 let the researchers compare teacher effectiveness against teachers’ college records.
Those who expressed interest in teaching on their college applications were more than 20 percentage points more likely to enter the profession than those who did not. In contrast, an applicant’s SAT score had almost no relationship to future entry into the field. College graduates who became teachers were 81 percent female and disproportionately white, and the demographic gaps seem to emerge early. In fact, gender and race largely stopped predicting whether individuals continued into the profession after the completion of student teaching.
Teaching persistence also appears more correlated with early interest than with academic measures. Once in the field, those who expressed interest in teaching on their college applications were less likely to leave the profession in any given year than those who did not. SAT scores showed no relationship to future attrition, nor did overall college GPA predict retention.
To see whether academic records give clues to future effectiveness, the research team used value-added: student growth on state tests compared with that of similar students with different teachers. Among teachers, a one-standard-deviation higher overall GPA was associated with a boost in effectiveness about half as large as the gains teachers typically make during their first year in the classroom. SAT scores did not predict greater effectiveness, suggesting that college grades might capture persistence or conscientiousness in ways that a one-day test can miss. Consistent with previous research, teachers entering the classroom with a master’s degree were no more effective than those without, and some estimates even show a negative correlation between master’s degrees and effectiveness.
The GPA signal largely stems from higher achievement in math-for-teachers courses, though the increased effectiveness later appears in both math and language arts classrooms. Notably, grades in regular math courses taken during college did not predict future effectiveness, although teachers who took at least one math course at or above the 400-level were more effective than those who stuck with 100-level math. It’s possible that the 400-level finding tells us more about who chooses to take advanced math than about what future teachers learn in high-level courses.
The authors caution that grades in courses designed for teachers are often compressed at the top. Grade inflation could undermine GPA cutoffs as a district screening tool, and formalizing cutoffs may push prep programs to further inflate grades in the name of career placement. Plus, without honest grading, potential teachers miss out on developing a key competency in the profession: the ability to use critical feedback to improve practice.
If the weakening labor market for college graduates expands interest in teaching, both teacher-preparation programs and hiring managers will have opportunities to draw from a larger pipeline of potential teachers. Performance in math courses designed for teachers potentially carries valuable information about future effectiveness, and teacher-prep programs can support smart hiring decisions by using grading procedures that distinguish strong candidates. It may be tempting for admissions and hiring officers to use new technology to screen applicants on standardized data points, but a more nuanced process that captures longstanding interest and achievement in rigorously graded teacher-prep coursework could help build a more stable and effective teacher workforce.
SOURCE: Dan Goldhaber, John Krieg, Roddy Theobald, Vivien Chen, Jennifer M. Dechaine, Amy Roth McDuffie, and David Slavit, “Does Better Academic Preparation Predict Teacher Workforce Outcomes?” CALDER Working Paper No. 346-0926 (September 2026).
