Teacher Quality: EvidenceBased Policy Practice in Education

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Teacher Quality Evidence-Based Policy/ Practice
in Education

• Jane Hannaway, Director
• The Urban Institute
• CALDER
• www.caldercenter.org

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Two Necessary Conditions for Improvement

• POLITICAL WILL
• TECHNICAL KNOW-HOW
• Few, but growing, guideposts

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PARADIGM SHIFT Technical Know-How with Evidence

• Who has the evidence?
• Where are the makings?
• Why do we have it?
• Why important?

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Research Background What We Know

• Teachers matter- single most important schooling
  contributor to student outcomes
• Wide variation in teacher effectiveness. Some
  teachers are simply much better than others.
• Standard measures of teacher quality not much
  related to effectiveness, but directly related to
  spending.

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Research BackgroundWhat We Dont Know

• What is it about teachers that matters?

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Three Possibilities

• Personality Characteristics
• Selection
• Malleable Characteristics
• Training
• Product
• Value-added
• Judgment/ observation

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3 Research Probes

• Teacher Maldistribution
• Teacher Selection
• Teacher Mobility
• Principal Judgment

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Teacher Maldistribution 1

• Comparison of VA of teachers in high/ low poverty
  schools
• North Carolina and Florida
• Findings
• Low poverty - higher va, but not much
• High poverty larger variation in school

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Teacher Value-Added at Percentiles by School
Poverty Levels (North Carolina-Math)
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Teacher Value-Added at Percentiles by School
Poverty Levels (Florida- Math)
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• Novice teachers are less effective than
  experienced teachers.
• Returns to experience taper off 3-5 years.

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Distribution of Value-Added of Elementary Math
Teachers in High Poverty Schools
Solid line Novice teachers Dash line Teachers
with 1-2 years of experience Dotted line
Teachers with 3-5 years of experience
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Teacher Maldistribution 2

• New York City
• Phasing out of emergency certification
• Introduction of alternative route teachers

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LAST Exam Failure Rate of Elementary Teachers by
Poverty Quartile, 2000-2005
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LAST Exam Failure Rate of New Teachers by Poverty
Quartile, 2000-2005
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Predicted Effectiveness For Highest and Lowest
Poverty Schools
Narrows by 25
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Teacher Selection

• Teach for America
• North Carolina
• Secondary school
• Mainly math and science

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TFA Findings high school
Student FE, Math subjects
All TFA coefficients are significant at the .05
level.
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Teacher Mobility

• Mobility highest at most challenging schools
• The worst teachers more likely to leave
• General tendency to move to more affluent schools

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Principal Judgment and Personality Characteristics

• Principal Judgment
• Correlated with value-added
• Better than exper, adv degree
• Adds information, esp when little va
• Personality Characteristics
• intelligence, skills, subject knowledge

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Topic of the Day Performance Incentives

• Objective??
• Recruitment/ selection
• Retention/ deselection
• Increase performance thru effort

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Issues

• How good are the measures?
• Individual vs school rewards?
• Teachers without test scores?

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VA Measures

• Problems
• Year to year variability
• Measurement error
• Sorting
• How serious?
• Less serious for policy research
• More serious for individual stakes

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Predicting Performance

• Using first 2 yrs of performance top to top/
  bottom to bottom quintile
• Goldhaber and Hansen (NC) 46/ 44
• Koedel and Betts (SanDiego) 29/ 35
• Sass (Florida) 22-32/ 24-24

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Policy/ Practice Implications

• Use VA freely for research
• Use VA carefully for individual teacher judgments
• Important information
• Corroboration
• More years are better
• Move tenure decision out