Do homeroom teachers affect students' academic achievement in China's middle schools?

While the effect of teacher quality on students' achievement is widely documented in the literature, relatively little is known about the impact of teachers' non-instructional role. By exploiting the random assignment of students and homeroom teachers to classrooms within the same grade and school, the paper finds that students' test scores for a subject can be improved if the subject is taught by a homeroom teacher. The mechanism analysis suggests that the impact could be driven by the better interaction between homeroom teachers and students.