eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Traditionally, states have required individuals complete a program of study in a university-based teacher preparation program in order to be licensed to teach. In recent years, however, various “alternative certification” programs have been developed and the number of teachers obtaining teaching certificates through routes other than completing a traditional teacher preparation program has skyrocketed. In this paper I use a rich longitudinal data base from Florida to compare the characteristics of alternatively certified teachers with their traditionally prepared colleagues. I then analyze the relative effectiveness of teachers who enter the profession through different pathways by estimating “value-added” models of student achievement. In general, alternatively certified teachers have stronger pre-service qualifications than do traditionally prepared teachers, with the least restrictive alternative attracting the most qualified perspective teachers. These… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In the spring of 2009, the Partnership for Learning (PFL) asked The New Teacher Project (TNTP) to analyze challenges Washington faces in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) instruction and to make recommendations to overcome these challenges as part of a new STEM initiative. This initiative aims to dramatically raise student achievement in STEM subjects and close the achievement gap in math and science–ensuring that all Washington students graduate from high school college- and career-ready. Research has shown that teachers have a greater impact on student success than any other school factor, which means that teachers are a critical part of any solution to Washington’s STEM challenges. With this in mind, TNTP drew on its experience studying human capital challenges in education to identify the policies and… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Most analyses of teacher quality end without any assessment of the economic value of altered teacher quality. This paper combines information about teacher effectiveness with the economic impact of higher achievement. It begins with an overview of what is known about the relationship between teacher quality and student achievement, which provides the basis for consideration of the derived demand for teachers which comes from their impact on economic outcomes. Alternative valuation methods are based on the impact of increased achievement on individual earnings and on the impact of low teacher effectiveness on economic growth through aggregate achievement. A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The 2009 “State Teacher Policy Yearbook” provided a comprehensive review of states’ policies that impact the teaching profession. As a companion to last year’s comprehensive state-by-state analysis, the 2010 edition provides each state with an individualized “Blueprint for Change,” building off last year’s “Yearbook” goals and recommendations. State teacher policy addresses a great many areas, including teacher preparation, certification, evaluation and compensation. With so many moving parts, it may be difficult for states to find a starting point on the road to reform. To this end, this paper provides a state-specific roadmap, organized in three main sections. Section 1 identifies policy concerns that need critical attention, the areas of highest priority for state policymakers. Section 2 outlines “low-hanging fruit,” policy changes that can be implemented in relatively… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The Improving Teacher Quality (ITQ) State Grants Program is currently operating professional development grants for California teachers at 40 sites statewide. This is as large a cadre of projects as the California Postsecondary Education Commission has operated since the ITQ Program began with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The projects are: (1) Academic Literacy in Secondary Education (seven projects); (2) Science and Math Teacher Retention Master Grant Initiative (19 sites); (3) K-2 Education (eight projects); and (4) Elementary Education (six projects). This paper reports updates on the Improving Teacher Quality Program. Link til kilde
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Given the challenges facing American public education today, identifying effective teachers is a more vital task than ever before. In the U.S. public school system today, the method used to determine teacher effectiveness–and thus to drive salary, promotion, and tenure decisions–is based on a few external credentials: certification, advanced degrees, and years of experience in the classroom. Yet according to a new analysis of student performance in Florida that two colleagues and the author conducted, little to no relationship exists between these credentials and the gains that a teacher’s students make on standardized math and reading exams. The expansive study included all test-taking public elementary school students in the state of Florida over a period of four years. This study, to be published in the peer-reviewed journal… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: One way to improve struggling schools’ access to effective teachers is to use selective transfer incentives. Such incentives offer bonuses for the highest-performing teachers to move into schools serving the most disadvantaged students. In this report, we provide evidence from a randomized experiment that tested whether such a policy intervention can improve student test scores and other outcomes in low-achieving schools. The intervention, known to participants as the Talent Transfer Initiative (TTI), was implemented in 10 school districts in seven states. The highest-performing teachers in each district–those who ranked in roughly the top 20 percent within their subject and grade span in terms of raising student achievement year after year (an approach known as value added)–were identified. These teachers were offered $20,000, paid in installments over a… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: States are increasingly interested in including measures of student achievement growth, or “value- added,” in evaluating teachers. Annual state assessments, however, which are the typical measure of student growth, usually cover only reading and math teachers and only in grades 4-8. These state assessments thus cannot generally be used to measure contributions to student achievement growth for early elementary school teachers, most high school teachers, and teachers of other subjects. As a consequence, a growing number of states and school districts are exploring alternatives for measuring teachers’ contributions to student learning. These alternatives have the potential to be used for evaluating not only teachers who work in grades and subjects outside the annual state testing regime but also as complementary growth measures for teachers of tested grades… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: We study the effects of various types of education and training on the ability of teachers to promote student achievement. Previous studies on the subject have been hampered by inadequate measures of teacher training and difficulties addressing the non-random selection of teachers to students and of teachers to training. We address these issues by estimating models that include detailed measures of pre-service and in-service training, a rich set of time-varying covariates, and student, teacher, and school fixed effects. Our results suggest that only two of the forms of teacher training we study influence productivity. First, content-focused teacher professional development is positively associated with productivity in middle and high school math. Second, more experienced teachers appear more effective in teaching elementary math and reading and middle school math.… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Since its inception in 2002, the National Center for Education Research (NCER) in the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has funded over 700 education research grants and over 60 education training grants. The research grants have supported exploratory research to build theory or generate hypotheses on factors that may affect educational outcomes, development and innovation research to create or refine academic interventions, evaluation studies to test the efficacy and effectiveness of interventions, and measurement work to help develop more accurate and valid assessments, and the training grants have helped prepare the next generation of education researchers. NCER’s education research grantees have focused on the needs of a wide range of students, from pre-kindergarten through postsecondary and adult education, and have tackled a variety of topic areas. The… Continue Reading →
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