Tag Archives: Teacher Training

The Alliance for Excellent Education report: Teacher turnover high in low income schools

24 Jul

Melanie Smollin has an excellent post at Take Part, Five Reasons Why Teacher Turnover Is On The Rise:

With approximately 1.6 million teachers set to retire in the next decade, replenishing America’s teaching force should be a top priority. But filling classrooms with new teachers is only half the battle. Retaining them is equally important.
Numerous studies show that teachers perform best after being in the classroom for at least five years. According to a McKinsey study, 14 percent of American teachers leave after only one year, and 46 percent quit before their fifth year. In countries with the highest results on international tests, teacher turnover rates are much lower—around 3 percent.
This constant cycling in and out of new teachers is a costly phenomena. Students miss being taught by experienced educators, and schools and districts nationwide spend about $2.2 billion per year recruiting and training replacements.
Why are so many new teachers fleeing the profession after so few years in the classroom? Here are the top five reasons teacher turnover is an ongoing challenge:
5. BURNOUT: A recent U.C. Berkeley study of Los Angeles charter schools found unusually high rates of teacher turnover. At the 163 charter schools studied, teacher turnover hovered around 40 percent, compared to 15 percent at traditional public schools.
Since demands on charter school educators are seemingly boundless, including extended hours, researchers theorized, burnout is a viable explanation for the teacher exodus. “We have seen earlier results showing that working conditions are tough and challenging in charter schools,” explained U.C. Berkeley’s Bruce Fuller. “Charter teachers wear many hats and have many duties and are teaching urban kids, challenging urban kids, but we were surprised by the magnitude of this effect.”
4.THREAT OF LAYOFFS: In response to annual budget shortfalls, districts nationwide have sent pink slips to tens of thousands of teachers each spring for the past four years. In 2011, California sent out 30,000….
3. LOW WAGES: U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently said that teachers should earn between $60,000 and $150,000 per year. That’s a far cry from the current national average starting salary for teachers, which is $35,139….
2. TESTING PRESSURE: Since the No Child Left Behind Act was introduced in 2001, standardized test scores in math and reading have become the most important accountability measure used to evaluate schools.
Studies show that pressure to raise student test scores causes teachers to experience more stress and less job satisfaction. Many educators resent narrowing curriculum and stifling creativity in favor of teaching to the test.
On the National Center for Education Information’s “Profile of Teachers in the U.S. 2011,” the majority of comments submitted by survey respondents were “expressions of strong opposition to the current emphasis on student testing.”
As states increasingly rely on standardized test scores to evaluate individual educators, determine teacher pay and make lay-off decisions, testing pressure will only increase.
1. POOR WORKING CONDITIONS: When the Gates foundation polled 40,000 teachers about job satisfaction, the majority agreed that supportive leadership, time for collaboration, access to high quality curriculum and resources, clean and safe buildings, and relevant professional development were even more important than higher salaries.
But working conditions in many public schools remain far from this ideal—especially for beginning teachers, who are most likely to be assigned to the highest-need schools. Despite the added challenges they face, these teachers are often given few resources and little professional support. http://www.takepart.com/article/2011/08/09/five-reasons-teacher-turnover-rise

Since many teachers will be leaving the profession in the next few years, the question is what effect teacher departures have on students and are there traits of teachers who choose to remain in the classroom which should be studied.

Alexandria Neason of Hechinger Report wrote in the Huffington Post article, Half Of Teachers Leave The Job After Five Years. Here’s What To Do About It:

A new report, published by the Alliance in collaboration with the New Teacher Center (NTC), a non-profit that helps schools and policymakers develop training for new educators, found that about 13 percent of the nation’s 3.4 million teachers move schools or leave the profession every year, costing states up to $2 billion. Researchers estimate that over 1 million teachers move in and out of schools annually, and between 40 and 50 percent quit within five years.
A new report, published by the Alliance in collaboration with the New Teacher Center (NTC), a non-profit that helps schools and policymakers develop training for new educators, found that about 13 percent of the nation’s 3.4 million teachers move schools or leave the profession every year, costing states up to $2 billion. Researchers estimate that over 1 million teachers move in and out of schools annually, and between 40 and 50 percent quit within five years.
The high turnover rates are sometimes due to layoffs, “but the primary reason they leave is because they’re dissatisfied,” said Richard Ingersoll, an education professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose research on teacher retention was published in the report. Teachers say they leave because of inadequate administrative support and isolated working conditions, among other things. These losses disproportionately affect high-poverty, urban and rural schools, where teaching staffs often lack experience.
A Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) report found that schools serving low-income, minority students turn over half of their staffs every three years, deepening the divide between poor and wealthy students to the most experienced teachers.
But the new report says poor retention isn’t a commitment problem. It’s a support problem… http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/23/teacher-turnover-rate_n_5614972.html?utm_hp_ref=education&ir=Education#es_share_ended

Here is the press release from The Alliance for Excellent Education:

July 17, 2014
Press Release:
Teacher Attrition Costs United States Up to $2.2 Billion Annually, Says New Alliance Report
Report Includes State-by-State Teacher Attrition Costs, Says Comprehensive Induction Programs Can Improve Teaching Effectiveness and Retain High-Quality Teachers
WASHINGTON, DC – Roughly half a million U.S. teachers either move or leave the profession each year—attrition that costs the United States up to $2.2 billion annually, according to a new report from the Alliance for Excellent Education. This high turnover rate disproportionately affects high-poverty schools and seriously compromises the nation’s capacity to ensure that all students have access to skilled teaching, says On the Path to Equity: Improving the Effectiveness of Beginning Teachers.
“Teacher attrition hits states and school districts in the wallet, but students and teachers pay the real price,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia. “The monetary cost of teacher attrition pales in comparison to the loss of human potential associated with hard-to-staff schools that disproportionately serve low-income students and students of color. In these schools, poor learning climates and low achievement often result in students—and teachers—leaving in droves.”
The report cites the well-established principle that teaching quality is the most powerful school-based factor in student learning—one that outweighs students’ social and economic background in accounting for differences in student learning. It also notes that chronic gaps remain in disadvantaged students’ access to effective teaching—a scenario that unmistakably harms students, but also has an impact on teachers.
Without access to excellent peers, mentors, and opportunities for collaboration and feedback, teachers’ performance in high-poverty schools plateaus after a few years and both morale and work environment suffer. Ultimately, the report notes, these hard-to-staff schools become known as “places to leave, not places in which to stay.” According to the report, high-poverty schools experience a teacher turnover rate of about 20 percent per calendar year—roughly 50 percent higher than the rate in more affluent schools.
To calculate the cost of teacher attrition, the Alliance worked with Richard Ingersoll, professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to the national figure, Ingersoll also provides cost estimates for all fifty states and the District of Columbia that range between roughly $2 million in Delaware, Vermont, and Wyoming and up to $235 million in Texas.
Teachers leave their profession for a variety of reasons, including inadequate administrative support, isolated working conditions, poor student discipline, low salaries, and a lack of collective teacher influence over schoolwide decisions. Turnover is especially high among new teachers, with 40 to 50 percent leaving the profession after five years, according to research cited in the report.
To curb turnover—especially among new teachers—the report recommends a comprehensive induction program comprised of multiple types of support, including high-quality mentoring, common planning times, and ongoing support from school leaders. Teachers who receive such support have higher levels of job satisfaction, rate higher in their classroom teaching practices, and are associated with higher levels of student achievement. Unfortunately, only about half of novice teachers receive mentoring from a teacher in their teaching field or have common planning time with other teachers.
The good news is that multiple initiatives are now under way to develop professional standards for beginning teachers, strengthen preparation, and shape strategies to address the developmental needs of teachers throughout their careers. The report highlights the work of the New Teacher Center (NTC), a national nonprofit organization headquartered in Santa Cruz, California that partners with states, districts, and policymakers and has established a well-designed, evidence-based induction model for beginning teachers that increases teacher retention, improves classroom effectiveness, and advances student learning.
NTC also partners with states and districts to report data on teaching and learning conditions using its Teaching, Empowering, Leading, and Learning (TELL) survey to help states develop policies and practices that connect related factors, such as school leadership, teaching, and learning conditions, and specific educator policies.
On the Path to Equity cautions that policies to improve teaching effectiveness are complex and depend on individual teachers’ abilities as well as the working conditions within schools. It adds that systemic approaches are needed to reverse the inequities in the distribution of teaching talent and to foster school environments that support the kind of ongoing, intensive professional learning that positively impacts student learning. To this end, the report offers five policy recommendations for states and districts:
• Require regular evaluations of teachers using multiple measures.
• Develop systems to encourage high-quality educator development and teaching.
• Require comprehensive induction programs for new teachers.
• Embed analysis and improvement of teaching and learning conditions.
• Support staff selection and professional growth systems that foster collegial collaboration.
“To fundamentally transform education and help students meet the higher performance required by the Common Core State Standards and other college- and career-ready standards, the culture of how teachers are supported must change,” said Wise. “Such a change requires new initiatives and structures to attract, develop, and retain the best teaching talent in high schools serving students with the greatest needs, as well as a system that ensures that new teachers receive comprehensive induction and access to school-based collaborative learning.”
On the Path to Equity includes a state-by-state breakdown detailing the number of teachers leaving the profession, as well as a low and high estimate of teacher attrition costs. It is available at http://www.all4ed.org/reports-factsheets/path-to-equity.
At 1:00 p.m. (EDT) today, the Alliance will hold a video webinar on the report that will feature Mariana Haynes, PhD, Senior Fellow, Alliance for Excellent Education; Terry Holliday, PhD, Commissioner of Education, Kentucky Department of Education; Richard Ingersoll, PhD, Professor of Education and Sociology, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania; and Ellen Moir, Executive Director, New Teacher Center. RSVP to watch the webinar at http://all4ed.org/webinar-event/jul-17-2014/.
###
The Alliance for Excellent Education is a Washington, DC–based national policy and advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring all students, particularly those traditionally underserved, graduate from high school ready for success in college, work, and citizenship. http://www.all4ed.org
Categories: Education and the Economy, Teacher Effectiveness, Teacher Preparation, Teacher Quality, Teachers & Leaders

Every population of kids is different and they arrive at school at various points on the ready to learn continuum. Schools and teachers must be accountable, but there should be various measures of judging teacher effectiveness for a particular population of children. Perhaps, more time and effort should be spent in developing a strong principal corps and giving principals the training and assistance in evaluation and mentoring techniques. Teachers must be compensated fairly for their work. Dave Eggers and NÍnive Clements Calegari have a provocative New York Times article, The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html?_r=0 The Center for American Progress has a report by Frank Adamson and Linda Darling Hammond, Speaking of Salaries: What It Will Take to Get Qualified, Effective Teachers In All Communities http://americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2011/05/20/9638/speaking-of-salaries/

Resources:

No Child Left Behind A Parents Guide

Click to access parentsguide.pdf

MSNBC video: Why Do Good Teachers Leave? http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/46622232/#46622232

Debate: Are Teachers’ Unions the Problem—or the Answer?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/03/18/debate-are-teachers-unions-the-problem-or-the-answer.html

Quiet Riot: Insurgents Take On Teachers’ Unions
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2087980,00.html#ixzz1zgjC7qGS

Can Teachers Unions Do Education Reform?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204124204577151254006748714.htm

Let a New Teacher-Union Debate Begin
http://educationnext.org/let-a-new-teacher-union-debate-begin/#.Ujthycb-osY.email

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART© http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews © http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda © https://drwilda.com/

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Vanderbilt study: ‘No Child Left Behind’ not as bad for teachers as previously thought

11 Jun

Melanie Smollin has an excellent post at Take Part, Five Reasons Why Teacher Turnover Is On The Rise:

With approximately 1.6 million teachers set to retire in the next decade, replenishing America’s teaching force should be a top priority. But filling classrooms with new teachers is only half the battle. Retaining them is equally important.
Numerous studies show that teachers perform best after being in the classroom for at least five years. According to a McKinsey study, 14 percent of American teachers leave after only one year, and 46 percent quit before their fifth year. In countries with the highest results on international tests, teacher turnover rates are much lower—around 3 percent.
This constant cycling in and out of new teachers is a costly phenomena. Students miss being taught by experienced educators, and schools and districts nationwide spend about $2.2 billion per year recruiting and training replacements.
Why are so many new teachers fleeing the profession after so few years in the classroom? Here are the top five reasons teacher turnover is an ongoing challenge:
5. BURNOUT: A recent U.C. Berkeley study of Los Angeles charter schools found unusually high rates of teacher turnover. At the 163 charter schools studied, teacher turnover hovered around 40 percent, compared to 15 percent at traditional public schools…..
4.THREAT OF LAYOFFS: In response to annual budget shortfalls, districts nationwide have sent pink slips to tens of thousands of teachers each spring for the past four years. In 2011, California sent out 30,000….
3. LOW WAGES: U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently said that teachers should earn between $60,000 and $150,000 per year. That’s a far cry from the current national average starting salary for teachers, which is $35,139….
2. TESTING PRESSURE: Since the No Child Left Behind Act was introduced in 2001, standardized test scores in math and reading have become the most important accountability measure used to evaluate schools….
1. POOR WORKING CONDITIONS: When the Gates foundation polled 40,000 teachers about job satisfaction, the majority agreed that supportive leadership, time for collaboration, access to high quality curriculum and resources, clean and safe buildings, and relevant professional development were even more important than higher salaries.
But working conditions in many public schools remain far from this ideal—especially for beginning teachers, who are most likely to be assigned to the highest-need schools. Despite the added challenges they face, these teachers are often given few resources and little professional support.http://www.takepart.com/article/2011/08/09/five-reasons-teacher-turnover-rise

Since many teachers will be leaving the profession in the next few years, the question is what effect teacher departures have on students and are there traits of teachers who choose to remain in the classroom which should be studied.

Holly Yettick reported in the Education Week article, Study Links Teacher ‘Grit’ with Effectiveness, Retention:

In recent years, we’ve heard a lot about gritty students. Now grit researchers are turning their attention to teachers. In a study published in the current issue of the peer-reviewed journal Teachers College Record, University of Pennsylvania researchers Claire Robertson-Kraft and Angela Duckworth found that, for novice teachers in high-poverty school districts, higher levels of “perseverance and passion for long-term goals” (aka “grit”) were associated with higher rates of effectiveness and retention.
“No single factor alone should determine a hiring decision for a teacher,” said Robertson-Kraft, a doctoral candidate in education policy and former 3rd grade teacher. “But the study does suggest that grit is one factor that could be considered among many….”
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2014/03/gritty_teachers.html

According to a study by Jason A. Grissom, Vanderbilt University, Sean Nicholson-Crotty, Indiana University and James R. Harrington of the University of Texas at Dallas, the effect of teacher dissatisfaction with “No Child Left Behind” may have been overrated.

Rebecca Klein reported in the Huffington Post article, Turns Out No Child Left Behind May Have Actually Been Good For Teachers:

When Vanderbilt University professor Jason A. Grissom started exploring how the No Child Left Behind Act has affected teachers, he expected to find that the 2001 Bush-era law made their work harder.
“More testing, higher-stakes testing … a lot of teachers don’t like testing,” Grissom, an assistant professor of public policy and education, told The Huffington Post by phone.
However, after comparing a major teacher survey from the years before No Child Left Behind with more recent versions, Grissom and two fellow researchers found nearly the opposite to be true.
“We don’t find evidence of these big negative impacts that I think we and other people would expect to find,” Grissom said.
The study by Grissom, Sean Nicholson-Crotty of Indiana University, and James R. Harrington of University of Texas at Dallas, was released Tuesday in an American Educational Research Association article titled, “Estimating the Effects of No Child Left Behind on Teachers’ Work Environments and Job Attitudes.” The paper finds that since No Child Left Behind, teachers report feeling more autonomous, more supported by school administrators and have higher levels of job satisfaction. At the same time, teachers are working longer hours and may feel less cooperation with fellow educators.
While prior studies have looked at teachers’ views of the law, “most evidence on the matter has been gathered in limited or non-representative samples,” the researchers write. The National Center for Education Statistics’ Schools and Staffing Survey –- analyzed by Grissom and his colleagues –- is a nationally representative survey of K-12 teachers. The researchers compared the survey’s results from 1993-1994, 1999-2000, 2003-2004, and 2007-2008. They looked at responses to questions about the number of hours worked, autonomy, support, satisfaction and commitment.
No Child Left Behind requires annual statewide achievement tests to gauge whether schools meet performance goals. The paper points out that conventional wisdom generally holds that No Child Left Behind had a negative impact on classrooms. But the researchers found that “while teachers’ hours worked have increased, so have their feelings of classroom control and their perceptions of support from peers, administrators, and parents. Concomitantly, teacher job satisfaction and commitment to the profession appear to have increased over this time period as well….” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/10/teacher-views-no-child-left-behind_n_5475852.html

Citation:

Estimating the Effects of No Child Left Behind on Teachers and Their Work Environment

Published online first in: Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
June 10, 2014

Jason A. Grissom, Vanderbilt University
Sean Nicholson-Crotty, Indiana University
James R. Harrington, University of Texas at Dallas

Abstract

Several recent studies have examined the impacts of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on school operations and student achievement. We complement that work by investigating the law’s impacts on teachers’ perceptions of their work environments and related job attitudes, including satisfaction and commitment to remain in teaching. Using four waves of the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey, which cover the period from 1994 to 2008, we document overall trends in teacher attitudes across this time period and take advantage of differences in the presence and strength of prior state accountability systems and differences in likely impacts on high- and low-poverty schools to isolate NCLB effects. Perhaps surprisingly, we show positive trends in many work environment measures, job satisfaction, and commitment across the time period coinciding with the implementation of NCLB. We find, however, relatively modest evidence of an impact of NCLB accountability itself. There is some evidence that the law has negatively affected perceptions of teacher cooperation but positively affected feelings of classroom control and administrator support. We find little evidence that teacher job satisfaction or commitment has changed in response to NCLB.

Read the full article http://epa.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/05/19/0162373714533817.full.pdf+html?ijkey=w4aN21ldNpa5k&keytype=ref&siteid=spepa

Here is the press release from Vanderbilt:

Study: ‘No Child Left Behind’ is getting a bad rap
by Joan Brasher | Posted on Tuesday, Jun. 10, 2014 — 8:47 AM
The commonly held notion that the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 has eroded teacher job satisfaction and undermined job retention is off the mark, according to new Vanderbilt research. A survey of 140,000 public school teachers yielded surprising results that may change public perception of this controversial reform, according to lead investigator Jason Grissom.
Grissom (Vanderbilt)
“The results of the study just don’t support the idea that No Child Left Behind has made teachers less satisfied with their jobs or less committed to staying in the teaching profession,” said Grissom, assistant professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development. “This may be because, as our findings suggest, NCLB has had some negative impacts on teachers’ work lives, but also some positive ones—which we don’t always think about—to balance them out.”
Overall, the data showed that the implementation of NCLB did not undermine job satisfaction and commitment to the profession. In fact, the percentage of teachers who said they intended to remain in the profession until retirement actually increased by 12 percent.
The results of the study were published online today in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.
Diving into the Data
Grissom analyzed a nationally representative sample of 140,000 regular, full-time public school teachers from four waves of the National Center for Education Statistics’ Schools and Staffing Survey. He measured the impact of NCLB on teachers’ job demands, perceived autonomy, workplace support and job satisfaction. Two of the waves collected data during the 1993-94 and 1999-00 academic years—prior to the NCLB’s implementation in 2002-03—while the other two did so during the 2003-04 and 2007-08 academic years.
Teachers’ Dedication is part of the Equation
Grissom, who partnered with researchers at Indiana University and University of Texas at Dallas to conduct the study, found that while there is some evidence that NCLB’s accountability pressures reduced feelings of cooperation among teachers, its implementation also may have improved their sense of classroom autonomy and administrator support.
“I don’t think you can discount that teachers are resilient,” Grissom explained. “They have come to expect policy change. Most of them got into teaching because they enjoy working with young people and want to make a difference in their lives. While for some teachers the mandates of NCLB were a distraction, the law didn’t fundamentally change that desire and ability to make a difference.”
As NCLB implementation continues to undergo changes and Congress works to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, “our research makes clear that administrators and policymakers can’t rely solely on conventional wisdom to evaluate a policy’s effect on teachers,” Grissom said.
Read the full abstract of this study. http://epa.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/05/19/0162373714533817.full

Follow Jason Grissom on Twitter at @JasonAGrissom.
Contact:
Joan Brasher, (615) 322-NEWS
joan.brasher@vanderbilt.edu

Every population of kids is different and they arrive at school at various points on the ready to learn continuum. Schools and teachers must be accountable, but there should be various measures of judging teacher effectiveness for a particular population of children. Perhaps, more time and effort should be spent in developing a strong principal corps and giving principals the training and assistance in evaluation and mentoring techniques. Teachers must be compensated fairly for their work. Dave Eggers and NÍnive Clements Calegari have a provocative New York Times article, The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html?_r=0 The Center for American Progress has a report by Frank Adamson and Linda Darling Hammond, Speaking of Salaries: What It Will Take to Get Qualified, Effective Teachers In All Communities http://americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2011/05/20/9638/speaking-of-salaries/

Resources:

No Child Left Behind A Parents Guide http://ed.gov/parents/academic/involve/nclbguide/parentsguide.pdf

MSNBC video: Why Do Good Teachers Leave? http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/46622232/#46622232

Debate: Are Teachers’ Unions the Problem—or the Answer? http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/03/18/debate-are-teachers-unions-the-problem-or-the-answer.html

Quiet Riot: Insurgents Take On Teachers’ Unions http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2087980,00.html#ixzz1zgjC7qGS

Can Teachers Unions Do Education Reform? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204124204577151254006748714.htm

Let a New Teacher-Union Debate Begin http://educationnext.org/let-a-new-teacher-union-debate-begin/#.Ujthycb-osY.email

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART© http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews © http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©
https://drwilda.com/

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gallup report: American teachers stressed and it may be affecting students

10 Apr

Melanie Smollin has an excellent post at Take Part, Five Reasons Why Teacher Turnover Is On The Rise:

With approximately 1.6 million teachers set to retire in the next decade, replenishing America’s teaching force should be a top priority. But filling classrooms with new teachers is only half the battle. Retaining them is equally important.
Numerous studies show that teachers perform best after being in the classroom for at least five years. According to a McKinsey study, 14 percent of American teachers leave after only one year, and 46 percent quit before their fifth year. In countries with the highest results on international tests, teacher turnover rates are much lower—around 3 percent.
This constant cycling in and out of new teachers is a costly phenomena. Students miss being taught by experienced educators, and schools and districts nationwide spend about $2.2 billion per year recruiting and training replacements.
Why are so many new teachers fleeing the profession after so few years in the classroom? Here are the top five reasons teacher turnover is an ongoing challenge:
5. BURNOUT: A recent U.C. Berkeley study of Los Angeles charter schools found unusually high rates of teacher turnover. At the 163 charter schools studied, teacher turnover hovered around 40 percent, compared to 15 percent at traditional public schools.
Since demands on charter school educators are seemingly boundless, including extended hours, researchers theorized, burnout is a viable explanation for the teacher exodus. “We have seen earlier results showing that working conditions are tough and challenging in charter schools,” explained U.C. Berkeley’s Bruce Fuller. “Charter teachers wear many hats and have many duties and are teaching urban kids, challenging urban kids, but we were surprised by the magnitude of this effect.”
4.THREAT OF LAYOFFS: In response to annual budget shortfalls, districts nationwide have sent pink slips to tens of thousands of teachers each spring for the past four years. In 2011, California sent out 30,000….
3. LOW WAGES: U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently said that teachers should earn between $60,000 and $150,000 per year. That’s a far cry from the current national average starting salary for teachers, which is $35,139….
2. TESTING PRESSURE: Since the No Child Left Behind Act was introduced in 2001, standardized test scores in math and reading have become the most important accountability measure used to evaluate schools.
Studies show that pressure to raise student test scores causes teachers to experience more stress and less job satisfaction. Many educators resent narrowing curriculum and stifling creativity in favor of teaching to the test.
On the National Center for Education Information’s “Profile of Teachers in the U.S. 2011,” the majority of comments submitted by survey respondents were “expressions of strong opposition to the current emphasis on student testing.”
As states increasingly rely on standardized test scores to evaluate individual educators, determine teacher pay and make lay-off decisions, testing pressure will only increase.
1. POOR WORKING CONDITIONS: When the Gates foundation polled 40,000 teachers about job satisfaction, the majority agreed that supportive leadership, time for collaboration, access to high quality curriculum and resources, clean and safe buildings, and relevant professional development were even more important than higher salaries.
But working conditions in many public schools remain far from this ideal—especially for beginning teachers, who are most likely to be assigned to the highest-need schools. Despite the added challenges they face, these teachers are often given few resources and little professional support. http://www.takepart.com/article/2011/08/09/five-reasons-teacher-turnover-rise

Since many teachers will be leaving the profession in the next few years, the question is what effect teacher departures have on students and are there traits of teachers who choose to remain in the classroom which should be studied.

Rebecca Klein of Huffington Post reported in the article, American Teachers Feel Really Stressed, And It’s Probably Affecting Students:

American teachers feel stressed out and insignificant, and it may be impacting students’ educations.
Gallup’s State Of America’s Schools Report, released Wednesday, says nearly 70 percent of K – 12 teachers surveyed in a 2012 poll do not feel engaged in their work. The study said they are likely to spread their negative attitudes to co-workers and devote minimal discretionary effort to their jobs.
At the same time, nearly half of teachers reported feeling daily stress. When compared to 12 other occupational groups, teachers were least likely to report feeling like their “opinions seem to count” at work. The survey also found, however, that teachers tend to be satisfied with their lives overall.
While Gallup notes that most American workers — and not just teachers — report high levels of disengagement from their jobs, the attitudes of teachers have a direct and tangible impact on the achievement of students.
“The problem is that when teachers are not fully engaged in their work, their students pay the price every day,” says the report. “Disengaged teachers are less likely to bring the energy, insights, and resilience that effective teaching requires to the classroom. They are less likely to build the kind of positive, caring relationships with their students that form the emotional core of the learning process “
The report also surveyed 600,000 students in grades five through 12 on their feelings of hope, engagement and well-being — three factors the report says can affect a student’s success in school. Forty-five percent of these students reported feeling “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” from school, with rates of disengagement increasing by grade level. The report also says teachers have the biggest influence on student engagement levels. For example, students who reported having “at least one teacher who makes me excited about my future” and feeling that their school was “committed to building the strengths of each student” were 30 times more likely to be engaged at school.
The report points to “professionalizing” the occupation of education, as has been done in Finland, to improve the quality and morale of teachers. In Finland, action was taken decades ago to “move teacher preparation from teachers’ colleges into more rigorous university programs, thereby helping professionalize the occupation and making it more attractive to talented, ambitious young people.” Since that time, Finland has boasted top scores on international assessments and been lauded for having the “best education system in the world.”
“More rigorous hiring standards need to be accompanied by improved working conditions, greater autonomy, and professional development opportunities that provide career momentum. Otherwise, U.S. schools will continue to struggle to find enough applicants with the talent to be great teachers,” says the report.
Teachers’ and students’ lack of engagement with school seems to have filtered down to the public’s perception of American education at large. According to a previous Gallup poll cited in the report, just 17 percent of Americans think high school graduates are ready for work, and just 29 percent think they are ready for college. Indeed, on the latest set of international exams produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, American scores remained stagnant and mid-pack compared to foreign peers…. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/09/gallup-education-report_n_5119966.html?utm_hp_ref=education&ir=Education&utm_hp_ref=education

Allie Bidwell further reports in the U.S. News article, Most Teachers Are Not Engaged in Their Jobs, Gallup Finds:

On two points, teachers were the least likely of any profession surveyed on workforce engagement to respond positively: whether they feel their opinions at work count, and whether their supervisor creates an “open and trusting environment.”
“That’s a really big eye-opener,” says Brandon Busteed, executive director of Gallup Education. “So there’s something about the open, trusting environment that isn’t working in schools and that they don’t believe their opinions count. That is definitely weighing down the potential of making them more engaged in their workplace.”
Teacher engagement appears to significantly drop off within the early years of teaching. According to the report, teachers with less than a year on the job are most likely to be engaged, when 35 percent were enthusiastic about and committed to their jobs. The numbers continue to slip to a low of 28 percent for those with between three and five years of teaching experience.
Overall, the fact that so many teachers are not engaged in their jobs was surprising, Busteed says, because teachers generally reported having a better level of well-being than other professions. Aside from reporting higher levels of stress, Busteed says teachers have a “high mission purpose, they laugh more, they smile more” and they have “more positive emotions than most people in their work.” In fact, teachers scored the second highest of 14 professions on the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, just after physicians…. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/04/09/most-teachers-are-not-engaged-in-their-jobs-gallup-finds

Here is the press release from Gallup:

Monday, April 7, 2014
This Week on Gallup.com: The “State of Education” Series
By Art Swift, Gallup Managing Editor

The way we evaluate whether a student receives “a proper education” continues to evolve. While students have more ways to receive an education, especially through online learning, education leaders everywhere are now asking different, more pointed questions about the state of education and how to make it more effective. Namely, is the student’s interest level at school — how “engaged” he or she is — as important, or even more important, than grades and standardized test scores? How accountable should teachers be for their own performance? Currently the U.S. is involved in a debate over “Common Core,” a set of academic standards that students will need to know by the end of a given school year. Are these standards helpful or a hindrance to a student receiving a quality education?

This week, Gallup.com will reveal data and insights that will help answer these questions in “The State of Education” series.

The topics we will be covering in this series include:
• Americans’ views of higher education and whether it needs to change (Monday)
• Americans’ confidence in online institutions (Tuesday)
• Perceptions of the quality of public education in grades K through 12, by state (Wednesday)
• Statewide perceptions of U.S. public schools’ ability to prepare students for success in the workplace (Wednesday)
• How the education level of a parent plays a major role in their child’s education in sub-Saharan Africa (Wednesday)
• Whether teachers in one’s local area are respected or not, by state (Thursday)
• Students’ opinions on how ready for workplace success they are (Friday, in Gallup Business Journal)
• Whether the “Common Core” — requiring U.S. schools to adopt the same curriculum — is effective (Friday)
We look forward to you joining us for “The State of Education.” To get these stories as soon as they publish, sign up for Gallup News alerts.
https://www.gallup.com/registration/default.aspx%20/%20_blank#6

No matter where a teacher is in their career lifecycle, they will be confronting the issues of elimination of teacher tenure and more rigorous teacher evaluation. Increasingly, one component of teacher evaluation will focus on whether students are showing academic achievement gains. The point of contention, which may provoke disagreement between the evaluator and the teacher is how student achievement is measured.
In times of recession, all jobs become more difficult to find and often job seekers do not have the luxury of finding the perfect job. New teachers may find jobs in schools often considered less desirable or schools led by principals who are not considered to be leaders or supporters of their staff. Not all learning occurs during the academic portion of your life’s journey. If one finds that the first job is not the perfect opportunity, then prepare for the time you will find the perfect opportunity. Look for a teacher(s) you admire and who are successful and model what has made them successful. People who are skilled and become expert at their craft or profession will weather whatever change comes along, whether it is an elimination or modification of tenure and changes to the way evaluations are conducted.

Resources:

A Lively Debate Over Teacher Salaries http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/05/a-lively-debate-over-teacher-salaries/

Are Teachers Overpaid? http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/01/02/are-teachers-overpaid/

Some Teachers Skeptical of Merit Pay http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/13/some-teachers-skeptical-of-merit-pay/

Related:

Washington D.C. rolls out merit pay https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/washington-d-c-rolls-out-merit-pay/

Report from The Compensation Technical Working Group: Teacher compensation in Washington https://drwilda.wordpress.com/tag/teacher-recruitment/

Fordham Institute report: Teacher pensions squeezing states https://drwilda.com/2013/06/07/fordham-institute-report-teacher-pensions-squeezing-states/

Landmark California case regarding teacher tenure: Vergara v. California https://drwilda.com/2014/02/01/landmark-california-case-regarding-teacher-tenure-vergara-v-california/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

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Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

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University of Pennsylvania study: True grit of individual teacher linked to effectiveness and retention

11 Mar

Melanie Smollin has an excellent post at Take Part, Five Reasons Why Teacher Turnover Is On The Rise:

With approximately 1.6 million teachers set to retire in the next decade, replenishing America’s teaching force should be a top priority. But filling classrooms with new teachers is only half the battle. Retaining them is equally important.
Numerous studies show that teachers perform best after being in the classroom for at least five years. According to a McKinsey study, 14 percent of American teachers leave after only one year, and 46 percent quit before their fifth year. In countries with the highest results on international tests, teacher turnover rates are much lower—around 3 percent.
This constant cycling in and out of new teachers is a costly phenomena. Students miss being taught by experienced educators, and schools and districts nationwide spend about $2.2 billion per year recruiting and training replacements.
Why are so many new teachers fleeing the profession after so few years in the classroom? Here are the top five reasons teacher turnover is an ongoing challenge:
5. BURNOUT: A recent U.C. Berkeley study of Los Angeles charter schools found unusually high rates of teacher turnover. At the 163 charter schools studied, teacher turnover hovered around 40 percent, compared to 15 percent at traditional public schools.
Since demands on charter school educators are seemingly boundless, including extended hours, researchers theorized, burnout is a viable explanation for the teacher exodus. “We have seen earlier results showing that working conditions are tough and challenging in charter schools,” explained U.C. Berkeley’s Bruce Fuller. “Charter teachers wear many hats and have many duties and are teaching urban kids, challenging urban kids, but we were surprised by the magnitude of this effect.”
4.THREAT OF LAYOFFS: In response to annual budget shortfalls, districts nationwide have sent pink slips to tens of thousands of teachers each spring for the past four years. In 2011, California sent out 30,000….
3. LOW WAGES: U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently said that teachers should earn between $60,000 and $150,000 per year. That’s a far cry from the current national average starting salary for teachers, which is $35,139….
2. TESTING PRESSURE: Since the No Child Left Behind Act was introduced in 2001, standardized test scores in math and reading have become the most important accountability measure used to evaluate schools.
Studies show that pressure to raise student test scores causes teachers to experience more stress and less job satisfaction. Many educators resent narrowing curriculum and stifling creativity in favor of teaching to the test.
On the National Center for Education Information’s “Profile of Teachers in the U.S. 2011,” the majority of comments submitted by survey respondents were “expressions of strong opposition to the current emphasis on student testing.”
As states increasingly rely on standardized test scores to evaluate individual educators, determine teacher pay and make lay-off decisions, testing pressure will only increase.
1. POOR WORKING CONDITIONS: When the Gates foundation polled 40,000 teachers about job satisfaction, the majority agreed that supportive leadership, time for collaboration, access to high quality curriculum and resources, clean and safe buildings, and relevant professional development were even more important than higher salaries.
But working conditions in many public schools remain far from this ideal—especially for beginning teachers, who are most likely to be assigned to the highest-need schools. Despite the added challenges they face, these teachers are often given few resources and little professional support. http://www.takepart.com/article/2011/08/09/five-reasons-teacher-turnover-rise

Since many teachers will be leaving the profession in the next few years, the question is what effect teacher departures have on students and are there traits of teachers who choose to remain in the classroom which should be studied.

Holly Yettick reported in the Education Week article, Study Links Teacher ‘Grit’ with Effectiveness, Retention:

In recent years, we’ve heard a lot about gritty students. Now grit researchers are turning their attention to teachers. In a study published in the current issue of the peer-reviewed journal Teachers College Record, University of Pennsylvania researchers Claire Robertson-Kraft and Angela Duckworth found that, for novice teachers in high-poverty school districts, higher levels of “perseverance and passion for long-term goals” (aka “grit”) were associated with higher rates of effectiveness and retention.
“No single factor alone should determine a hiring decision for a teacher,” said Robertson-Kraft, a doctoral candidate in education policy and former 3rd grade teacher. “But the study does suggest that grit is one factor that could be considered among many.”
This is not the first study of teachers and grit for Duckworth, an associate professor of psychology and MacArthur Fellow who has been credited with coining the term “grit” in 2007. An earlier study, published in the peer-refereed Journal of Positive Psychology in 2009, also found that grittier novice teachers were more effective novice teachers. However, a limitation of that study was that it relied on self reports of grit. (For instance, participants were asked to rate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with such sentences as “Setbacks don’t discourage me.”) A problem with self-reported measures is that people are more likely to agree with socially desirable statements simply because they think they should.
For this more recent study, the authors developed a method in which raters scored 461 novice teachers’ resumes. This method assigns 0 to 6 points based on the extent to which a teacher sticks with an activity over a period of years and also attains “moderate” or “high” levels of success in that activity. For instance, a teacher with no multiyear activities in college would receive a score of 0, which would indicate a shortage of grit. The highest score of 6 might go to a gritty teacher who was a “member of the cross-country team for four years and voted MVP in senior year” and was also “founder and president for two years of the university’s Habitat for Humanity chapter.” The unnamed teacher-training organization that provided the data for the study is now using a version of this rating system as one of multiple tools to help make hiring decisions.
The rating system could be promising, according to Matthew Kraft (no relation to Robertson-Kraft), an assistant professor of education at Brown University. Kraft was not involved with the study…. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2014/03/gritty_teachers.html

Here is the synopsis from Teachers College Record:

True Grit: Trait-Level Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals Predicts Effectiveness and Retention Among Novice Teachers
by Claire Robertson-Kraft & Angela Duckworth — 2014

Background/Context: Surprisingly little progress has been made in linking teacher effectiveness and retention to factors observable at the time of hire. The rigors of teaching, particularly in low-income school districts, suggest the importance of personal qualities that have so far been difficult to measure objectively.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: In this study, we examine the predictive validity of personal qualities not typically collected by school districts during the hiring process. Specifically, we use a psychological framework to explore how biographical data on grit, a disposition toward perseverance and passion for long-term goals, explains variance in novice teachers’ effectiveness and retention.
Research Design: In two prospective, longitudinal samples of novice teachers assigned to schools in low-income districts (N = 154 and N = 307, respectively), raters blind to outcomes followed a 7-point rubric to rate grit from information on college activities and work experience extracted from teachers’ résumés. We used independent-samples, t-tests, and binary logistic regression models to predict teacher effectiveness and retention from these grit ratings as well as from other information (e.g., SAT scores, college GPA, and interview ratings of leadership potential) available at the time of hire.
Conclusions/Recommendations: Grittier teachers outperformed their less gritty colleagues and were less likely to leave their classrooms midyear. Notably, no other variables in our analysis predicted either effectiveness or retention. These findings contribute to a better understanding of what leads some novice teachers to outperform others and remain committed to the profession. In addition to informing policy decisions surrounding teacher recruitment and development, this investigation highlights the potential of a psychological framework to explain why some individuals are more successful than others in meeting the rigorous demands of teaching. http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=17352

What the various studies seem to point out is there is no one remedy which works in all situations and that there must be a menu of education options.

Resources:

A Lively Debate Over Teacher Salaries
http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/05/a-lively-debate-over-teacher-salaries/

Are Teachers Overpaid?
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/01/02/are-teachers-overpaid/

Some Teachers Skeptical of Merit Pay
http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/13/some-teachers-skeptical-of-merit-pay/

Related:

Washington D.C. rolls out merit pay
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/washington-d-c-rolls-out-merit-pay/

Report from The Compensation Technical Working Group: Teacher compensation in Washington https://drwilda.wordpress.com/tag/teacher-recruitment/

Fordham Institute report: Teacher pensions squeezing states
https://drwilda.com/2013/06/07/fordham-institute-report-teacher-pensions-squeezing-states/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©
http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©
http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©
https://drwilda.com/

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New teachers have higher SAT scores than in past years

20 Nov

Moi wrote in Is it true that the dumbest become teachers?

There is a quote attributed to H.L. Mencken:
Those who can — do. Those who can’t — teach.

People often assume that if a person could do anything else, they probably wouldn’t teach. Matthew Di Carlo, senior fellow at the non-profit Albert Shanker Institute, located in Washington, D.C. has an interesting article in the Washington Post.

In Do teachers really come from the ‘bottom third’ of college graduates? Di Carlo writes:

The conventional wisdom among many education commentators is that U.S. public school teachers “come from the bottom third” of their classes. Most recently, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took this talking point a step further, and asserted at a press conference last week that teachers are drawn from the bottom 20 percent of graduates.
All of this is supposed to imply that the U.S. has a serious problem with the “quality” of applicants to the profession.
Despite the ubiquity of the “bottom third” and similar arguments (which are sometimes phrased as massive generalizations, with no reference to actual proportions), it’s unclear how many of those who offer them know what specifically they refer to (e.g., GPA, SAT/ACT, college rank, etc.). This is especially important since so many of these measurable characteristics are not associated with future test-based effectiveness in the classroom, while those that are are only modestly so.
Still, given how often it is used, as well as the fact that it is always useful to understand and examine the characteristics of the teacher labor supply, it’s worth taking a quick look at where the “bottom third” claim comes from and what it might or might not mean.
Most people who put forth this assertion cite one of two sources, both from the McKinsey & Company consulting organization. The first is an influential 2007 report , which simply notes that “we are now recruiting our teachers from the bottom third of high school students going to college.” The authors fail to specify how “bottom third” is defined, or whether their data refer to graduates who planned to teach versus those who actually got a job (the latter method is, of course, far preferable).
The citation for this claim is a 2007 report from the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, which was issued by the National Center on Education and Economy (NCEE). The full report is not freely available online, but it turns out (thanks to the work of California teacher Larry Ferlazzo) that its source is the National Center for Education Statistics’ annual “Condition of Education” (CoE) report (2002 edition).
There don’t seem to be any breakdowns in the cited report that permit one to examine precisely how many teachers come from the “bottom third,” but the CoE does include a few tables on the SAT/ACT scores of teachers who received a bachelor’s degree in 1992-93 and had actually taught by the time 1997 rolled around (and for whom such data were available).
Tne table lists directly the percent of teachers who scored in the top half – 40.9 percent. Using figures in a different table to very roughly ballpark the proportion of 1992-93 graduates-turned-teachers in the bottom quartile (lowest 25 percent), it would be a little under 30 percent.*
Overall, then, 1992-93 graduates who chose teaching were somewhat overrepresented in the bottom of the distribution, and underrepresented in the top. The blanket characterization of these results by McKinsey (via NCEE) – that we are “recruiting our teachers from the bottom third” – seems more than a little misleading.
The second standard source for the “bottom third” claims is more clear and well-documented. It is a subsequent McKinsey report (2010), one which doesn’t rely on questionable interpretations from indirect sources, but rather its own analysis. That report claims, “The U.S. attracts most of its teachers from the bottom two-thirds of college classes, with nearly half coming from the bottom third.”
According to a footnote, these data are “derived from the U.S. Department of Education, NCES, 2001 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Survey.” The appendix to the report confirms that the “top-“ and “bottom” third figures are also based on SAT/ACT scores, specifically those of 1999 graduates whose first job (at least by 2001) was teaching. The breakdown for these graduates is as follows: 23 percent came from the “top third;” 47 percent from the “bottom third;” and 29 percent from the “middle third.” This presents a somewhat more negative picture than the CoE data discussed above.
Why the differences? Because these studies are looking at different groups of teachers. In the CoE data, it’s 1993 graduates who had taught by 1997 (four years later), while the data used in the second McKinsey include 1999 graduates who, in 2001 (two years later), said their first job was (or is) teaching. In other words, each set of results is based on two different cohorts of college graduates, who are also identified in different ways, at different points after graduation….
Neither sample is necessarily representative of the teacher workforce as a whole, or of prior and subsequent cohorts.
Overall, then, the blanket assertion that teachers are coming from the “bottom third” of graduates is, at best, an incomplete picture. It’s certainly true that, when the terciles are defined in terms of SAT/ACT scores, there is consistent evidence that new teachers are disproportionately represented in this group (see here and here for examples from the academic literature).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/do-teachers-really-come-from-the-bottom-third-of-college-graduates/2011/12/07/gIQAg8HPdO_blog.html

There isn’t really a definitive answer.

Joy Resmovits reported at Huffington Post about two studies which indicated the quality of new teachers may be improving.

In Starting Teacher SAT Scores Rise As Educators Face Tougher Evaluations, Resmovits reported:

American teachers may be getting smarter.
Still, scrutiny of their work and cries to overhaul the education system intensify.
The education reform group National Council on Teacher Quality, and Harvard University’s Education Next journal on Wednesday each released a paper about the state of the teaching force. The paper by National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based think tank that has long advocated for rigorous teacher evaluations, provides an overall look at how states are evaluating teachers and using the results. The Education Next paper, authored by the University of Washington’s Dan Goldhaber and Joe Walch, investigated the academic qualifications of new teachers and found that average SAT scores have increased significantly over the last decade.
Taken together, the articles show an evolving workforce that raises questions about the often extreme hand-wringing over teacher quality. “Although teachers in the U.S. are more likely to be drawn from the lower end of the academic achievement distribution than are teachers in selected high-performing countries, the picture is a bit more nuanced than the rhetoric suggests,” Goldhaber and Walch wrote.
Advocates who have supported the evaluations highlighted by National Council on Teacher Quality continue pushing states to take them further — higher SAT scores or otherwise. “The SAT data is an encouraging sign, and we should keep heading in that direction, as it seems to be an indicator of whether a teacher can actually produce gains,” said Eric Lerum, a vice president at StudentsFirst, the Sacramento-based lobbying and advocacy group started by former Washington schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. “But it doesn’t tell us enough — Goldhaber says it’s not conclusive enough that the trend is reversing — and we’re still not taking enough top-shelf talent and getting them into teaching. We need to use the data we do have and take a comprehensive approach toward improving teacher quality….”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/30/teacher-sat-scores_n_4175593.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

Dan Goldhaber and Joe Walch analyzed teacher quality in an article at Education Next.

Goldhaber and Walch wrote in Gains in Teacher Quality:

Conclusions
In summary, although teachers in the U.S. are more likely to be drawn from the lower end of the academic achievement distribution than are teachers in selected high-performing countries, the picture is a bit more nuanced than the rhetoric suggests, and as we illustrate, it has in fact changed over time in an encouraging direction. There was an upward shift in achievement for 2008 college graduates entering the teacher workforce the following school year. In fact, 2008 graduates both with and without STEM majors who entered the teacher workforce had higher average SAT scores than their peers who entered other occupations.
What explains the apparent rise in academic competency among new teachers? As we show, the SAT scores of those seeking and finding employment in a teaching job differ in different years. It is possible that alternative pathways into the teaching profession have become an important source of academic talent for the profession. Unfortunately, we cannot explore this issue in any depth because the way in which teachers were asked about their preparation has varied over time. Regardless, alternative routes are unlikely to be the primary explanation for the changing SAT trends given that, with a few high-profile exceptions like Teach for America, alternative certification programs are not highly selective.
Differences in the labor market context across years may help explain the rise in SAT scores. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average unemployment rate in 2009 was about 9 percent to about 6 and 5 percent in 1994 and 2001, respectively. The high unemployment rate in 2009 may have led more high-scoring graduates to choose to pursue comparatively stable and secure teaching jobs rather than occupations that were viewed as riskier in the economic downturn. By contrast, those graduating in 2000 were entering the labor market during the tech boom, when there was a good deal of competition for the labor of prospective teachers. Regardless of the reason for the changes in academic proficiency that we observe, however, the data are encouraging and may represent the reversal of the long-term trend of declining academic talent entering teaching….
http://educationnext.org/gains-in-teacher-quality/

Kids know good teaching when they see it. Donna Gordon Blankinship of AP wrotein the Seattle Times article, How Do You Find An Effective Teacher? Ask A Kid:

Adults may be a little surprised by some of the preliminary findings of new research on what makes a great teacher.
How do you find the most effective teachers? Ask your kids. That’s one of four main conclusions of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its research partners after the first year of its Measures of Effective Teaching Project.
Preliminary results of the study were posted online Friday; a more complete report is expected in April, according to the foundation….
The first four conclusions of the study are as follows:
-The average student knows effective teaching when he or she experiences it.
-In every grade and every subject, a teacher’s past success in raising student achievement on state tests is one of the strongest predictors of his or her ability to do so again.
-The teachers with the highest value-added scores on state tests, which show improvement by individual students during the time they were in their classroom, are also the teachers who do the best job helping their students understand math concepts or demonstrate reading comprehension through writing.
-Valid feedback does not need to come from test scores alone. Other data can give teachers the information they need to improve, including student opinions of how organized and effective a teacher is….http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2013649952_apusgatesfoundationteachers.html

See, What Works in the Classroom? Ask the Students http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/education/11education.html?emc=eta1

Bottom line, education is a partnership between the student, parent(s) or guardian(s), teacher(s), and school. All parts of the partnership must be involved. Students must arrive at school ready to learn. Parents must provide an environment which supports education and education achievement. Teachers must have strong subject matter knowledge and pedagogic skills. Schools must provide safe environments and discipline. Communities are also part of a successful school system and outcome for community children. Education is a partnership.

Resource:

A Comparative Study of Teacher Preparation and Qualifications in Six Nations
Consortium for Policy Research In Education
By Richard M. Ingersoll, United States With
Ding Gang and Sun Meilu, People’s Republic of China (PRC)
Kwok Chan Lai, Hong Kong
Hidenori Fujita, Japan
Ee-gyeong Kim, Republic of Korea
Steven K. S. Tan and Angela F. L. Wong, Singapore
Pruet Siribanpitak and Siriporn Boonyananta, Thailand

Click to access sixnations_final.pdf

Related:

The attempt to evaluate teacher colleges is getting nasty
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/523/

Could newest teaching strategy be made in Japan?
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/could-newest-teaching-strategy-be-made-in-japan/

New Harvard study about impact of teachers https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/new-harvard-study-about-impact-of-teachers/

Is it true that the dumbest become teachers? https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/is-it-true-that-the-dumbest-become-teachers/

Where Information Leads to Hope © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART© http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews © http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda © https://drwilda.com/

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Mathematica study: Moving top teachers to struggling schools produces gains

10 Nov

Anne Lowrey wrote in the 2012 New York Times article, Big Study Links Good Teachers to Lasting Gain:

WASHINGTON — Elementary- and middle-school teachers who help raise their students’ standardized-test scores seem to have a wide-ranging, lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage-pregnancy rates and greater college matriculation and adult earnings, according to a new study that tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years.
A study found profound effects on students whose teachers helped them raise their test scores.
The paper, by Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia, all economists, examines a larger number of students over a longer period of time with more in-depth data than many earlier studies, allowing for a deeper look at how much the quality of individual teachers matters over the long term.
“That test scores help you get more education, and that more education has an earnings effect — that makes sense to a lot of people,” said Robert H. Meyer, director of the Value-Added Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which studies teacher measurement but was not involved in this study. “This study skips the stages, and shows differences in teachers mean differences in earnings.”
The study, which the economics professors have presented to colleagues in more than a dozen seminars over the past year and plan to submit to a journal, is the largest look yet at the controversial “value-added ratings,” which measure the impact individual teachers have on student test scores. It is likely to influence the roiling national debates about the importance of quality teachers and how best to measure that quality
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/education/big-study-links-good-teachers-to-lasting-gain.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

Citation:

Executive Summary of National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 17699, December 2011
THE LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF TEACHERS: TEACHER VALUE-ADDED AND STUDENT OUTCOMES IN ADULTHOOD
Raj Chetty, Harvard University and NBER
John N. Friedman, Harvard University and NBER
Jonah E. Rockoff, Columbia University and NBER
Executive Summary http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/va_exec_summ.pdf
Manuscript (NBER WP17699)
Presentation Slides http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/va_exec_summ.pdf

Stephen Sawchuk reported in the Education Week article, Moving Top Teachers to Struggling Schools Has Benefits:

The transfer of top elementary teachers to low-achieving schools can help boost students’ performance, but there’s a catch: getting them to agree to move.
A new study, seven years in the making, finds that elementary teachers identified as effective who transferred to low-achieving schools under a bonus-pay program helped their new students learn more, on average, than teachers in a control group did with their students. They also stayed in the schools at least as long as other new hires.
But despite a large financial reward, only 5 percent of eligible teachers made the shift, the report concludes.
“It’s a hard sell, even with $20,000 on the table,” said Steven M. Glazerman, a senior fellow at the Princeton, N.J.-based Mathematica Policy Research, the evaluation firm that conducted the study.
Education advocates have long deplored inequitable access by disadvantaged students to high-quality teaching. The federally financed study suggests there is promise in incentive programs, but highlights the logistical complexities in carrying them out, said Sarah Almy, the director of teacher quality for the Education Trust, a Washington-based group that advocates for poor and minority students.
“I think it’s a reminder of how much we still have to understand about this issue, and that it is challenging,” she said….
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/11/07/12transfer_ep.h33.html?tkn=UZXFuaZcxQp8Rqpt6xTNM9vjM4X54hs%2BsBF%2F&cmp=clp-edweek&intc=es

Here is the press release from Mathematica:

New Study: Teachers with High “Value Added” Can Boost Test Scores in Low-Performing Schools
Known to participants as the Talent Transfer Initiative, this $20,000 financial incentive for high-performing teachers to transfer to low-performing schools had positive impacts on math and reading scores.
Contact: Jennifer de Vallance, (202) 484-4692
WASHINGTON, DC—November 6, 2013. A $20,000 incentive for high-performing teachers to move to low-performing schools has helped raise the math and reading test scores of elementary students by 4 to 10 percentile points, according to a new studyconducted by Mathematica Policy Research and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Although there was no evidence of impacts in middle schools, the combined impact on elementary and middle school grade teams was positive and significant for reading by the second year after the transfer. The average cost of producing these gains in elementary and middle schools is estimated to be $7,000 cheaper than reducing class size to produce a similar effect. In elementary schools, the intervention was $13,000 cheaper per grade than the class-size reduction benchmark.
Many education policy experts have raised concerns that disadvantaged students do not have the same access to highly effective teachers as other students. To address this issue, IES sponsored an evaluation of an intervention known to study participants as the Talent Transfer Initiative (TTI). TTI offered a financial incentive to the teachers with the highest scores year after year on value-added measures (estimates of their ability to raise test scores, after accounting for differences between students) if they would transfer to a low-achieving school in the same district and remain there for at least two years.
About 22 percent of the selected teachers applied for the transfer, and 5 percent (81 teachers) ultimately transferred. These teachers filled 88 percent of the targeted teaching vacancies in low-performing schools. The results of the study include the following:
• TTI increased test scores in elementary schools, but not in middle schools. In classrooms targeted by TTI, impacts on elementary math and reading scores ranged from 10 to 25 percent of a standard deviation, depending on the subject and year. This is equivalent to increases of 4 to 10 percentile points. Impacts on elementary grade teams as a whole were positive in the second year, equal to 8 and 7 percent of a standard deviation in math and reading, respectively—or about 3 percentile points. Although there was no evidence of impacts in middle schools, the combined impact on elementary and middle school grade teams was positive and significant for reading by the second year after the transfer. Different outcomes in elementary versus middle schools could in part reflect differences between districts, which varied considerably in terms of impacts and where they offered TTI (elementary or middle schools).
• Most TTI teachers stayed on the job even after payments ended. TTI had a positive impact on teacher-retention rates during the first two years, while transfer teachers were receiving bonus payments. Ninety-three percent of TTI teachers remained in their positions during that period, versus 70 percent of traditionally hired teachers. Moreover, most (60 percent) of the teachers in the TTI group also continued to teach in the low-performing schools in their third year, after the payments ended.
• Compared with similar interventions, TTI was more cost-effective. The largest impacts were in elementary schools, where the cost savings could be as large as $13,000 per grade at a given school, compared with other interventions that can be equally effective in raising test scores, such as reducing class size. Including middle schools, where achievement impacts were not significant, and assuming that the total impacts persist into a third year, the estimated cost savings exceeded $40,000 per grade.
Steven Glazerman, study director and senior fellow at Mathematica, said, “For TTI to show positive effects, two things had to be true: first, the value-added measure had to contain some meaningful signal about future performance, and second, the teachers’ skills had to transfer to the teachers’ new settings. The fact that some teachers had positive impacts and then stayed beyond their two-year commitment suggests that selective transfer incentives may have lasting effects.”
About the Study: Sponsored by IES, this multisite randomized experiment was used to study the TTI intervention in 10 large, economically diverse school districts across seven states. The districts identified schools with the lowest test scores and singled out grade-subject teams with teaching vacancies. The researchers randomly assigned each team to either a treatment group, where the principals could interview and hire a TTI-transfer candidate eligible for $20,000, or to a control group, where the school principals filled the vacancies however they normally would. Researchers then followed the students and teachers in both the treatment and control groups for two years and compared their outcomes.
View the video, fact sheet, or full report on this study.
About Mathematica: Mathematica Policy Research, a nonpartisan research firm, provides a full range of research and data collection services, including program evaluation and policy research, survey design and data collection, research assessment and interpretation, and program performance/data management, to improve public well-being. Its clients include federal and state governments, foundations, and private-sector and international organizations. The employee-owned company, with offices in Princeton, N.J.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Cambridge, Mass.; Chicago, Ill.; Oakland, Calif.; and Washington, D.C., has conducted some of the most important studies of education, disability, health care, family support, employment, nutrition, and early childhood policies and programs.
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/pdfs/education/tti_high_perform_teachers.pdf

Every child has a right to a good basic education. In order to ensure that every child has a good basic education, there must be a quality teacher in every classroom.

Related:

Studies: For struggling math students, teacher quality matters https://drwilda.com/2013/04/14/studies-for-struggling-math-students-teacher-quality-matters/

The attempt to evaluate teacher colleges is getting nasty https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/523/

Could newest teaching strategy be made in Japan? https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/could-newest-teaching-strategy-be-made-in-japan/

New Harvard study about impact of teachers https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/new-harvard-study-about-impact-of-teachers/

Is it true that the dumbest become teachers? https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/is-it-true-that-the-dumbest-become-teachers/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©
http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©
http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©
https://drwilda.com/

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National Council on Teacher Quality releases first Teacher Prep Review

17 Jun

 

Moi wrote about teacher preparation in The search for quality teachers goes on:

 

Moi received the press release about improving teacher training standards from the Commission on Standards and Performance Reporting which is an outgrowth of he Teacher Education Accreditation Council, or TEAC, and the far larger and older National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, or NCATE now called CAEP. Trip Gabriel has an article in the New York Times,Teachers Colleges Upset By Plans to Grade Them about the coming U.S. News Report on teacher colleges. This project is being underwritten in part by the Carnegie Corporation and Broad Foundation. A test of the proposed project was completed in Illinois. You can go here to get a copy of the report. The National Council on Teacher Quality has information about the project at their site. The National Council on Teacher Quality has released the first Teacher Prep Review.

 

Here is a portion of the summary of Teacher Prep Review:

 

 

NCTQ Teacher Prep Review

 

Effective teachers make a fundamental difference in the lives of our nation’s students. With the right training, talented and motivated teacher candidates can graduate ready to lead a classroom.

Why we’re doing the Teacher Prep Review

There’s widespread public interest in strengthening teacher preparation – but there’s a significant data gap on what’s working We aim to fill this gap, providing information that aspiring teachers and school leaders need to be come strategic consumers and institutions and states need in order to rapidly improve how tomorrow’s teachers are trained.

Our strategy is modeled on Abraham Flexner ’s 1910 review of medical training programs, an effort that launched a new era in the field of medicine, transforming a sub-standard system into the world’s best.

How we’re doing it. NCTQ takes an in-depth look at admissions standards, course requirements,course syllabi, textbooks, capstone projects, student teaching manuals and graduate surveys, among other sources, as blueprints for training teachers. We apply specific and measurable standards that identify the teacher preparation programs most likely to get the best outcomes for their students. To develop these standards, we consulted with international and domestic experts on teacher education, faculty and deans from schools of education, statistical experts and PK-12 leaders. We honed our methodology in ten pilot studies conducted over eight years.

Our goals. Currently, high-caliber teacher training programs go largely unrecognized. The Review will showcase these programs and provide resources that schools of education can use to provide trulyexceptional training. Aspiring teachers will be able to make informed choices about where to attend school to get the best training. Principals and superintendents will know where they should recruit new teachers. State leaders will be able to provide targeted support and hold programs accountable for improvement. Together, we can ensure a healthy teacher pipeline.

There is a lot of support for strengthening teacher prep. To date, 24 state school chiefs, over 100 district superintendents, the Council of the Great City Schools and almost 80 advocacy organizations across 42 states and the District of Columbia have endorsed the Review. The Review is funded by 65 local and national foundations. There’s also growing support for raising the bar on the system from national organizations representing state education chiefs (CCSSO), teachers (both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association) and teacher educators themselves (the new national accreditation body, CAEP).

The first edition of the Review will be published June 18, 2013, in partnership with U.S. News & World Report. What’s next? NCTQ has made a commitment to publish three annual editions of the Review.

There is much that needs to be done before we have a truly excellent system of preparing teachers. We must set a high standard for teacher preparation, shed light on high-performers and give educators the information they need to make the system work for their students. Aspiring teachers and their future students deserve a world-class teacher training system. http://nctq.org/dmsView/NCTQ_Teacher_Prep_Review_background_materials

 

Resources:

 

Contact NCTQ

To contact NCTQ please visit our contact us page. For help reaching an NCTQ expert, you can reach Laura Johnson, our Director of Communications, at 202.393.0020 x117 or email ljohnson@nctq.org.

Questions about the Teacher Prep Review in your area?

Please refer to the map to locate the best contact person for your region.

 
Region 1
Marisa Goldstein
marisa.goldstein@nctq.org
202.393.0020 x115

Region 2
Graham Drake
graham.drake@nctq.org
202.393.0020 x107

Region 3
Amy MacKown
amy.mackown@nctq.org
202.393.0020 x111

Region 4
Katie Moyer
katie.moyer@nctq.org
202.393.0020 x112

Resources

Teacher Prep

District Policy

  • Tr3 Teacher Contract Database: This database houses over 100 school districts’ teacher contracts, school board policies (including school calendars and pay schedules), and state laws, coded so you can easily compare districts. Access information on a single district or create a custom report to compare districts on any of over 300 specific questions, such as the role of seniority in teacher staffing and teacher salaries.

State Policy

  • State Teacher Policy Yearbook: The Yearbook is a 52-volume encyclopedia (51 state reports including the District of Columbia plus a national summary) providing measurement and detailed analysis of the state policies that impact the teaching profession.

 

Amy Hetzner and Becky Vevea of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote in the article, How Best to Educate Future Teachers which is part of a series

 

Alverno College, the small women’s college on Milwaukee’s south side, has been widely cited as a national model for training teachers, thanks to its combination of clinical and classroom experience and use of video and other tools to evaluate whether graduates are meeting the standards for what makes a good teacher…. 

Key elements of an excellent teacher education program: 

  • Strong content knowledge, teaching skills. Future teachers gain a solid grounding in the content to be taught as well as how to teach it.

  • Flexible methods. Emphasis is placed on teaching diverse learners – knowing how to differentiate teaching to reach a broad range of students.

  • Fieldwork. Coursework clearly is connected to fieldwork. The clinical experience, like in medical school, consists of intensive student-teaching, preferably for a semester or entire year, under the supervision of an experienced mentor.

  • Professional mentors. Mentors observe future teachers in the classroom – sometimes videotaping for later analysis – and work with them on everything from lesson-planning and creating assignments to monitoring student progress and grading.

  • Designated “learning schools.” Mentors and school sites for student-teaching are well-chosen. There are close relationships and a sense of joint responsibility among the school sites at which future teachers train, the local district and the teacher-education program.

  • Escalating teaching responsibilities. Future teachers gradually take over a full classroom, first teaching short segments on a single topic with a small group of students, then co-teaching with the mentor before assuming full responsibility for a class.

  • Feedback. Feedback from multiple sources (mentors, professors, peers) is routine.

  • Selective admission standards. Admission to the program is selective; not everyone has the necessary skills or demeanor to be an effective teacher.

 

Sources: National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education; faculty at Columbia University Teachers College, Stanford and Harvard Universities. 

Compiled by Justin Snider of The Hechinger Report

 

These are the elements that have made the graduates of one education school successful.

 

Kids know good teaching when they see it. Donna Gordon Blankinship of AP wrotein the Seattle Times article, How Do You Find An Effective Teacher? Ask A Kid

 

Adults may be a little surprised by some of the preliminary findings of new research on what makes a great teacher.

 

How do you find the most effective teachers? Ask your kids. That’s one of four main conclusions of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its research partners after the first year of its Measures of Effective Teaching Project.

 

Preliminary results of the study were posted online Friday; a more complete report is expected in April, according to the foundation….

 

The first four conclusions of the study are as follows:

 

-The average student knows effective teaching when he or she experiences it.

 

-In every grade and every subject, a teacher’s past success in raising student achievement on state tests is one of the strongest predictors of his or her ability to do so again.

 

-The teachers with the highest value-added scores on state tests, which show improvement by individual students during the time they were in their classroom, are also the teachers who do the best job helping their students understand math concepts or demonstrate reading comprehension through writing.

 

-Valid feedback does not need to come from test scores alone. Other data can give teachers the information they need to improve, including student opinions of how organized and effective a teacher is….

 

See, Students Know Good Teaching When They Get It, Survey Finds

 

Bottom line, education is a partnership between the student, parent(s) or guardian(s), teacher(s), and school. All parts of the partnership must be involved. Students must arrive at school ready to learn. Parents must provide an environment which supports education and education achievement. Teachers must have strong subject matter knowledge and pedagogic skills. Schools must provide safe environments and discipline. Communities are also part of a successful school system and outcome for community children. Education is a partnership.

 

Related:

 

 

The attempt to evaluate teacher colleges is getting nasty https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/523/

 

 

Could newest teaching strategy be made in Japan? https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/could-newest-teaching-strategy-be-made-in-japan/

 

New Harvard study about impact of teachers https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/new-harvard-study-about-impact-of-teachers/

 

Is it true that the dumbest become teachers? https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/is-it-true-that-the-dumbest-become-teachers/

 

Where Information Leads to Hope ©     Dr. Wilda.com

 

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

 

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

 

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                           http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

 

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©                                                http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

 

Dr. Wilda ©                                                                                                       https://drwilda.com/

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Harvard-Smithsonian study: The subject matter knowledge of science teachers is important element of student science learning

5 May

Moi has written about teacher quality in Studies: For struggling math students, teacher quality matters https://drwilda.com/2013/04/14/studies-for-struggling-math-students-teacher-quality-matters/

and New Harvard study about impact of teachers:

The Guide to Teacher Quality lists several key attributes of a quality teacher:

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT TEACHER QUALITY

• Experience is very important. The ability of a new teacher to support student learning

increases greatly during his/her first year of teaching and continues to grow through at least the

first several years of teaching (Clotfelter, Ladd & Vigdor, 2007; Clotfelter, Ladd & Vigdor, 2004;

Hanushek et al., 1998).

• Teacher attrition matters. Districts and schools with relatively high rates of teacher

attrition are likely to have more inexperienced teachers and, as a result, instructional quality

and student learning suffer (Alliance for Quality Teaching, 2008).

• Ability matters. Teachers with higher scores on college admission or licensure tests as well

as those from colleges with more selective admission practices are better able to support student

learning (Gitomer, 2007; Rice, 2003; Wayne and Youngs, 2003; Reichardt, 2001; Ferguson

& Ladd, 1996; Greenwald, Hedges & Laine, 1996).

• Teachers’ subject matter knowledge helps students learn. Students learn when their

teacher knows the subject, particularly in secondary science and mathematics (Floden &

Meniketti, 2006; Rice, 2003; Wayne and Youngs, 2003; Reichardt, 2001).

• Preparation and training in how to teach makes a difference. Knowing how to teach

improves student learning, particularly when a teacher is in his/her first years of teaching (Rice,

2003; Allen, 2003; Boyd, Grossman, Lankford, Loeb & Wyckoff, 2005).

• Teacher diversity may also be important. There is emerging evidence that students learn

better from teachers of similar racial and ethnic background (Dee, 2004; Dee, 2001; Hanushek

et al. 1998).

One of the important attributes is the subject matter knowledge of the teacher. These findings are particularly important in light of the study, The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: TeacherValue-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood by Raj Chetty, Harvard University and NBER , John N. Friedman, Harvard University and NBER, and Jonah E. Rockoff, Columbia University and NBER .

Here is a portion of the executive summary:

Many policy makers advocate increasing the quality of teaching, but there is considerable debate about the best way to measure and improve teacher quality. One method is to evaluate teachers based on their impacts on students’ test scores, commonly termed the “value-added” (VA) approach. A teacher’s value-added is defined as the average test-score gain for his or her students, adjusted for differences across classrooms in student characteristics such as prior scores. School districts from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles have begun to use VA to evaluate teachers. Proponents argue that using VA can improve student achievement (e.g. Hanushek 2009), while critics argue that test score gains are poor proxies for a teacher’s true quality (e.g. Baker et al. 2010).

The debate about VA stems from two fundamental questions. First, does VA accurately measure teachers’ impacts on scores or does it unfairly penalize teachers who may systematically be assigned lower achieving students? Second, do high VA teachers improve their students’ long-term outcomes or are they simply better at teaching to the test? Researchers have not reached a consensus about the accuracy and long-term impacts of VA because of data and methodological limitations.

We address these two questions by tracking one million children from a large urban school district from 4th grade to adulthood. We evaluate the accuracy of standard VA measures using several methods, including natural experiments that arise from changes in teaching staff. We find that when a high VA teacher joins a school, test scores rise immediately in the grade taught by that teacher; when a high VA teacher leaves, test scores fall. Test scores change only in the subject taught by that teacher, and the size of the change in scores matches what we predict based on the teacher’s VA. These results establish that VA accurately captures teachers’ impacts on students’ academic achievement and thereby reconcile the conflicting conclusions of Kane and Staiger (2008) and Rothstein (2010). These methods provide a simple yet powerful method to estimate the bias of value-added models in any district; interested readers can download computer code to implement these tests from this link.

In the second part of our study, we analyze whether high VA teachers also improve students’ long-term outcomes. We find that students assigned to higher VA teachers are more successful in many dimensions. They are more likely to attend college, earn higher salaries, live in better neighborhoods, and save more for retirement. They are also less likely to have children as teenagers.

Teachers’ impacts on students are substantial. Replacing a teacher whose true VA is in the bottom 5% with a teacher of average quality would generate lifetime earnings gains worth more than $250,000 for the average classroom. VA estimates are less reliable when they are based on data from a small number of classes. However, even after observing teachers’ impacts on test scores for one year, estimates of VA are reliable enough that such personnel changes would yield large gains on average.

Teachers have large impacts in all the grades we analyze (4 to 8), implying that the returns to education remain large well beyond early childhood. Teachers’ impacts on earnings are also similar in percentage terms for students from low and high income families. As a rough guideline, parents should be willing to pay about 25% of their child’s income at age 28 to switch their child from a below-average (25th percentile) to an above-average (75th percentile) teacher. For example, parents whose children will earn around $40,000 in their late 20s should be willing to pay $10,000 to switch from a below-average to an above-average teacher for one grade, based on the expected increase in their child’s lifetime earnings.

Overall, our study shows that great teachers create great value – perhaps several times their annual salaries – and that test score impacts are helpful in identifying such teachers. However, more work is needed to determine the best way to use VA for policy. For example, using VA in teacher evaluations could induce undesirable responses that make VA a poorer measure of teacher quality, such as teaching to the test or cheating. There will be much to learn about these issues from school districts that start using VA to evaluate teachers. Nevertheless, it is clear that improving the quality of teaching – whether using value-added or other tools – is likely to have large economic and social returns.

See, Annie Lowrey’s New York Times article, Big Study Links Good Teachers to Lasting Gain

Erik Robelen writes in the Education Week article, Knowing Student Misconceptions Key to Science Teaching, Study Finds which finds that teacher knowledge matters in science teaching.

It seems obvious that teachers need to understand the content they’re trying to convey to students. But a new study finds that what’s especially critical to improved science learning is that teachers also know the common misconceptions students have. And in science, there are plenty of things that young people—and a lot of adults—don’t correctly understand, such as what causes the change of seasons.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, targeted middle school physical science. The researchers enlisted 181 teachers to administer a multiple-choice test of student knowledge of science concepts. Twelve of the 20 items were designed to have a “particularly wrong answer corresponding to a commonly held misconception,” explained Philip Sadler, the lead author and a senior lecturer at the Harvard-Smithsonian center.

The “unusual” part of the study, he said, was that teachers also took the test, and were asked to identify both the correct answer and the one students were most often likely to incorrectly select. Although the teachers overall did “quite well” at selecting the correct answer, the results were more mixed in predicting students’ incorrect response.

“Teacher knowledge was predictive of higher student gains. No surprise there,” Sadler explained in an email. “However, for more difficult concepts where many students had a misconception, only teachers who knew the science and the common misconceptions have large student gains.” What’s key, he said, is knowing “what was going on in their students’ heads.”

The study, supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, was recently published online in the American Educational Research Journal. The study also is the focus of an article published yesterday in Science Daily.

The researchers acknowledge that many educators question the value of tests composed of multiple-choice items, but said in the study that when items are written to include popular misconceptions as “distractors, they function well in diagnosing misconceptions that impede the learning of science.” The test questions were based on concepts covered in a set of science content standards published by the National Research Council in 1996. Topics addressed included properties of matter, motions and forces, and transfer of energy.

In his email, Sadler said the study was sparked by the reaction many educators have had to a video he helped to develop, called “A Private Universe,” in which graduating Harvard University seniors reveal “the same wrong ideas” about science as middle-school students. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2013/05/it_goes_without_saying_that.html

Citation:

The Influence of Teachers’ Knowledge on Student Learning in Middle School Physical Science Classrooms

  1. Philip M. Sadler,

  2. Gerhard Sonnert,

  3. Harold P. Coyle,

  4. Nancy Cook-Smith and

  5. Jaimie L. Miller

+ Author Affiliations

  1. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between teacher knowledge and student learning for 9,556 students of 181 middle school physical science teachers. Assessment instruments based on the National Science Education Standards with 20 items in common were administered several times during the school year to both students and their teachers. For items that had a very popular wrong answer, the teachers who could identify this misconception had larger classroom gains, much larger than if the teachers knew only the correct answer. On items on which students did not exhibit misconceptions, teacher subject matter knowledge alone accounted for higher student gains. This finding suggests that a teacher’s ability to identify students’ most common wrong answer on multiple-choice items, a form of pedagogical content knowledge, is an additional measure of science teacher competence.

This Article

  1. Published online before print March 6, 2013, doi: 10.3102/0002831213477680 Am Educ Res J March 6, 2013 0002831213477680

  1. » AbstractFree

  2. Full Text

  3. Full Text (PDF)

Every child has a right to a good basic education. In order to ensure that every child has a good basic education, there must be a quality teacher in every classroom.

Resources:

National Council on Teacher Quality

How I was evaluated as a first-year teacher – 10/04/2012

A first year teacher, ripe for feedback and improvement, gets none.

What’s the Latest on Teacher Evaluation? – 10/02/2012

We’ve got the skinny on what states are doing to evaluate their teachers and award them tenure. Read more

2011 State Teacher Policy Yearbook

January 2012

State of the States: Trends and Early Lessons on Teacher Evaluation and Effectiveness Policies

October 2011

State of the States 2012: Teacher Effectiveness Policies

October 2012

Center for Teaching Qualityhttp://www.teachingquality.org/

The National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality http://www.tqsource.org/

Related:

Linda Darling-Hammond on teacher evaluation https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/linda-darling-hammond-on-teacher-evaluation/

Report: Measuring teacher effectiveness                   https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/report-measuring-teacher-effectiveness/

Where information leads to Hope. ©                               Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                      http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©                                             http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©                                                                                                    https://drwilda.com/

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Study: Performance of teachers can be tracked over time

5 Mar

Moi wrote in Report: Measuring teacher effectiveness:

Public Impact has a produced a report, Measuring Teacher Effectiveness: A Look “Under the Hood” of Teacher Evaluation in 10 Sites which examines teacher evaluation efforts in three states. So, how is teacher effectiveness measured? Well, kids know good teaching when they see it. Donna Gordon Blankinship of AP reports in the Seattle Times article, How Do You Find An Effective Teacher? Ask A Kid

Adults may be a little surprised by some of the preliminary findings of new research on what makes a great teacher.

How do you find the most effective teachers? Ask your kids. That’s one of four main conclusions of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its research partners after the first year of its Measures of Effective Teaching Project.

Preliminary results of the study were posted online Friday; a more complete report is expected in April, according to the foundation….

The first four conclusions of the study are as follows:

-The average student knows effective teaching when he or she experiences it.

-In every grade and every subject, a teacher’s past success in raising student achievement on state tests is one of the strongest predictors of his or her ability to do so again.

-The teachers with the highest value-added scores on state tests, which show improvement by individual students during the time they were in their classroom, are also the teachers who do the best job helping their students understand math concepts or demonstrate reading comprehension through writing.

-Valid feedback does not need to come from test scores alone. Other data can give teachers the information they need to improve, including student opinions of how organized and effective a teacher is….

See, Students Know Good Teaching When They Get It, Survey Finds

https://drwilda.com/2012/06/13/report-measuring-teacher-effectiveness/

Sarah D. Sparks reports in the Education Week article, Best and Worst Teachers Can Be Flagged Early, Says Study:

New teachers become much more effective with a few years of classroom experience, but a working paperRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader by a team of researchers suggests the most—and least—effective elementary teachers show their colors at the very start of their careers.

“This is a fundamentally different time period for teachers, when we know they are going through changes,” said lead author Allison Atteberry, a research associate in the Center on Education Policy and Workforce Competitiveness at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She discussed preliminary results of the study at a research meeting on K-12 and postsecondary education held by the Washington-based National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, known as CALDER, on Feb. 21.

“We know less about how these value-added measures work in the early career,” she added.

The study tracked the individual effectiveness of more than 7,600 incoming New York City teachers in mathematics and English/language arts. Each of the teachers taught 4th or 5th grade from 2000 to 2006.

The researchers analyzed teacher records from the New York city and state education departments, along with data on the teachers’ students, including achievement-test results in math and English/language arts, gender, ethnicity, home language, poverty, special education status, and absences and suspensions.

Predicting Performance

While incoming New York City teachers became more effective at improving their students’ mathematics and English/language arts performance in their first few years on the job, new research finds that they’re often still in the same performance quintile after four or five years. Researchers compared the mean effectiveness in the first two years with effectiveness in later years.

Ms. Atteberry’s co-authors are Susanna Loeb, the director of Stanford University’s Center for Education Policy Analysis, and James H. Wyckoff, an education professor at the University of Virginia. They and Ms. Atteberry are all associated with CALDER.

For the incoming teachers who continued to teach for at least five years, the researchers compared the mean value-added effectiveness at improving student achievement in math and English in their first two years of teaching with their effectiveness for the next three years.

Overall, the teachers improved significantly in their first two years in their value-added score. While more than 36 percent of teachers were rated in the lowest of five levels of effectiveness at the start of their careers, only 12 percent were still rated in that same quintile by their third year of teaching.

Limited Growth?

However, when teachers at each initial level of effectiveness were tracked individually over time, their growth was much less significant. Compared with other teachers who started at the same time they did, teachers in the lowest 20 percent were still likely to be in the lowest 20 percent three to five years later.

“When you look at teachers who in the future are low-performing, very few of those come from the initially highest quintile of performance, and the same is true in the opposite direction,” Ms. Atteberry said. “We see that even more at the high end: Teachers who are initially highest-performing are by far the most likely to be in the highest quintile in the future….” http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/03/06/23teacher.h32.html?tkn=MOYFY6ibw6ZMewuL2mU5P2GmWgqqd0wVbbr2&cmp=clp-edweek&intc=es

Citation:

Do First Impressions Matter? Improvement in Early Career Teacher Effectiveness

Allison Atteberry, Susanna Loeb, and James Wyckoff

CALDER Working Paper No. 90

February 2013

Abstract

There is increasing agreement among researchers and policymakers that teachers vary widely in their ability to improve student achievement, and the difference between effective and ineffective teachers hassubstantial effects on standardized test outcomes as well as later life outcomes. However, there is notsimilar agreement about how to improve teacher effectiveness. Several research studies confirm that onaverage novice teachers show remarkable improvement in effectiveness over the first five years of their careers. In this paper we employ rich data from New York City to explore the variation among teachers in early career returns to experience. Our goal is to bet ter understand the extent to which measures of teacher effectiveness during the first two years reliably predicts future performance. Our findings suggest that early career returns to experience may provide useful insights regarding future performance and offer opportunities to better understand how to improve teacher effectiveness. We present evidence not only about the predictive power of early value-added scores, but also on the limitations and imprecision of those predictions. http://auth.calder.commonspotcloud.com/publications/upload/wp90.pdf

Every population of kids is different and they arrive at school at various points on the ready to learn continuum. Schools and teachers must be accountable, but there should be various measures of judging teacher effectiveness for a particular population of children. Perhaps, more time and effort should be spent in developing a strong principal corps and giving principals the training and assistance in evaluation and mentoring techniques. Really, it comes down to each population of kids should have solutions tailored for their needs. There really should not be a one size approach to education.

Related:

Is classroom practice the missing ingredient in teacher training?                                                                     https://drwilda.com/2012/10/04/is-classroom-practice-the-missing-ingredient-in-teacher-training/

The teacher master’s degree and student achievement https://drwilda.com/2012/07/23/the-teacher-masters-degree-and-student-achievement/

Urban teacher residencies                                            https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/urban-teacher-residencies/

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Is classroom practice the missing ingredient in teacher training?

4 Oct

Moi wrote in Teacher credentials: ‘Teacher Performance Assessment’:

Because teacher training programs will be evaluated by the National Council on Teacher Quality, there is interest in examining how teachers are prepared. See, Building Better Teachers http://www.nctq.org/p/edschools/home.jsp Amy Hetzner and Becky Vevea of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have written the article, How Best to Educate Future Teachers which is part of a series

Alverno College, the small women’s college on Milwaukee’s south side, has been widely cited as a national model for training teachers, thanks to its combination of clinical and classroom experience and use of video and other tools to evaluate whether graduates are meeting the standards for what makes a good teacher….

Key elements of an excellent teacher education program:

  • Strong content knowledge, teaching skills. Future teachers gain a solid grounding in the content to be taught as well as how to teach it.

  • Flexible methods. Emphasis is placed on teaching diverse learners – knowing how to differentiate teaching to reach a broad range of students.

  • Fieldwork. Coursework clearly is connected to fieldwork. The clinical experience, like in medical school, consists of intensive student-teaching, preferably for a semester or entire year, under the supervision of an experienced mentor.

  • Professional mentors. Mentors observe future teachers in the classroom – sometimes videotaping for later analysis – and work with them on everything from lesson-planning and creating assignments to monitoring student progress and grading.

  • Designated “learning schools.” Mentors and school sites for student-teaching are well-chosen. There are close relationships and a sense of joint responsibility among the school sites at which future teachers train, the local district and the teacher-education program.

  • Escalating teaching responsibilities. Future teachers gradually take over a full classroom, first teaching short segments on a single topic with a small group of students, then co-teaching with the mentor before assuming full responsibility for a class.

  • Feedback. Feedback from multiple sources (mentors, professors, peers) is routine.

  • Selective admission standards. Admission to the program is selective; not everyone has the necessary skills or demeanor to be an effective teacher.

Sources: National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education; faculty at Columbia University Teachers College, Stanford and Harvard Universities. Compiled by Justin Snider of The Hechinger Report

These are the elements that have made the graduates of Alverno College successful. https://drwilda.com/2012/07/31/teacher-credentials-teacher-performance-assessment/

Jay Mathews has written an interesting Washington Post article, Why teacher training fails our teachers:

American public elementary and secondary schools spend about $20 billion a year on what is called professional development — helping teachers do their jobs better. Many teachers will tell you much of that is a waste of time and money.

Now, three former teachers involved in training have discovered an important reason. Teachers are rarely given time and opportunity to practice what they have learned.

“Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better,” is the new book by Doug Lemov, Erica Woolway and Katie Yezzi exposing this flaw in teacher training and the way most of us learn any complex skill. Professional athletes know the value of repeating moves again and again before the game starts. Michael Jordan was famous for how much time he spent practicing in the gym, even after he became a superstar…

For teachers, the authors of “Practice Perfect” say, pre-game repetition is crucial. “If a teacher’s performance during a given class is less than what she wanted, she cannot get it back,” they say. “She cannot as, say, a lawyer working on a contract might do, stop in the middle of her work and call someone to ask for advice. She can’t give it her best shot and then, as we are doing as we write this book, go back and tinker and revise and have the luxury of being held accountable for a final product that reflects actions taken and reconsidered over an extended period….”

They learned this only recently after analyzing the results of a study of great teachers in high-poverty public schools, reported in Lemov’s previous best-selling book, “Teach Like a Champion.” The teachers with the best results “were often the most likely to focus on small and seemingly mundane aspects of their daily work.” The authors liken this to legendary basketball coach John Wooden, who went so far as to teach players how to put their socks on correctly. But the insight did not immediately illumine the importance of practice….

The authors realized that their trainees hadn’t practiced. It was the equivalent of trying to learn a new backhand in the middle of a match at center court Wimbledon.

They added repetitive exercises to their training workshops. Teachers played students so the situation would resemble a real classroom. Teachers still had trouble getting it right. The real world situation was too distracting, The authors dialed down the student disruption so their trainees had a chance to do the technique correctly several times. Once it became automatic, they could handle unpredictable moments….

In the future, schools will still often spend big money on training teachers in ineffective ways. Learning to practice, this book vividly illustrates, takes time and effort, trial and error. It won’t happen tomorrow. But even a small movement in the direction of more practice will reap benefits, in teaching and many other things we do. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/why-teacher-training-fails-our-teachers/2012/10/03/f88d470a-0c56-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_blog.html

Every child has a right to a good basic education. In order to ensure that every child has a good basic education, there must be a quality teacher in every classroom.

Resources:

National Council on Teacher Quality

How I was evaluated as a first-year teacher – 10/04/2012

A first year teacher, ripe for feedback and improvement, gets none.

What’s the Latest on Teacher Evaluation? – 10/02/2012

We’ve got the skinny on what states are doing to evaluate their teachers and award them tenure. Read more

2011 State Teacher Policy Yearbook

January 2012

State of the States: Trends and Early Lessons on Teacher Evaluation and Effectiveness Policies

October 2011

State of the States 2012: Teacher Effectiveness Policies

October 2012

Center for Teaching Quality http://www.teachingquality.org/

The National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality http://www.tqsource.org/

Related:

Linda Darling-Hammond on teacher evaluation https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/linda-darling-hammond-on-teacher-evaluation/

Report: Measuring teacher effectiveness https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/report-measuring-teacher-effectiveness/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART© http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©                                       http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©                                                                                  https://drwilda.com/

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