Thomas S. Dee is an American economist and the Barnett Family Professor of Education at Stanford University, where he also directs the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities.
In his evaluation of Tennessee's Career Ladder Evaluation System, which rewarded teachers who increased student achievement, together with Benjamin J. Keys, he finds that the test scores in mathematics of students assigned to career-ladder teachers were 3 percentile points higher than otherwise, but that such an assignment had no significant impact on reading scores.
However, the former two effects mainly appear in conjunction with students coming from poor family backgrounds or living in the South, which provides a strong argument for the recruitment of teachers from underrepresented minorities.
In particular, Dee and Jacob find that NCLB improved the math achievements of younger students, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds, but failed to do so with regard to reading, raised school district expenditure, in particular on teacher compensation, and improved the quality of teachers, and resulted in a shift of teaching time towards math and reading as tested subjects.
[15][16][17] The other main area besides education on which Dee has conducted research is youth health, e.g. teenage smoking and drinking, sexual activity, and traffic accidents.
[20] Further research on the impact of macroeconomic conditions on alcohol abuse by Dee finds binge drinking to be strongly countercyclical, even among those who remain employed during the crisis.