Article Do Less Effective Teachers Choose Professional Development Does It Matter?

Background: In an ongoing effort to improve teacher quality, most states require continuing education or professional development for their in-service teachers. Studies evaluating the effectiveness of various professional development programs have assumed a normal distribution of quality of teachers participating in the programs. Because participation in many pro-fessional development programs is either targeted or voluntary, this article suggests past evaluations of the effectiveness of professional development may be subject to selection bias and policy recommendations may be premature. Research Design: This article presents an empirical frame-work for evaluating professional development programs where treatment is potentially nonrandom, and explicitly accounts for the teacher’s prior effectiveness in the classroom as a factor that may influence participation in professional development. This article controls for the influence of selec-tion bias on professional development outcomes by generating a matched sample based on propensity scores and then estimating the program’