Teacher Training, Teacher Quality and Student Achievement

1
Teacher Training, Teacher Quality and Student
Achievement

• Douglas Harris Tim R. Sass
• Dept. of Educational Dept. of Economics
• Policy Studies Florida State Univ.
• Univ. of Wisconsin

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Teacher Training and Educational Policy

• Strong evidence that teacher quality has a large
  impact on student achievement
• Aaronson, et al. (2003)
• Ballou, et al. (2004)
• Nye, et al. (2004)
• Rockoff (2004)
• Hanushek, et al. (2005)
• Rivkin, et al. (2005)

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Teacher Training and Educational Policy

• Wide array of proposals to improve teacher
  training
• strengthening traditional teacher preparation
• highly qualified teachers required by NCLB
• enhancements to professional development
• alternatives to traditional teacher preparation
  programs
• Teach for America, state alternative
  certification routes

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Previous Studies of the Effects of Teacher
Training

• Recent panel data/random assignment studies using
  U.S. data
• In-service professional development
• Jacob and Lefgren (2004)
• College major
• Betts. et al. (2003)
• Experience and/or advanced degrees
• Clotfelter, et al. (2006), Dee (2004), Ding and
  Lehrer (2005), Hanushek, et al. (2005), Jepsen
  (2005), Nye, et al. (2004), Rivkin et al. (2005),
  Rockoff (2004)
• Alternative certification
• Boyd, et al. (2006), Kane, et al. (2006)

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Summary of Results from Recent Studies
Teacher Characteristic or Form of Preparation Estimated Effect on Teacher Effectiveness Insignificant/ Positive Negative Estimated Effect on Teacher Effectiveness Insignificant/ Positive Negative
Undergraduate Major 0 1
Graduate Degree 3 6
Professional Development 0 1
Experience 9 1
Traditional Teacher Prep. Small, mixed effects (2) Small, mixed effects (2)
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Three Methodological Issues

• Non-random assignment of teachers to training
• Non-random assignment of teachers to students
• Measurement of teacher training
• pre-service (undergraduate)
• in-service (professional development and
  post-graduate degrees)
• experience (on-the-job training)

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Value-Added Model
where Astudent achievement Xtime varying
student/family inputs Pclassroom peer
characteristics Ttime varying teacher
characteristics indices individuals (i),
classrooms (j), schools (m) and time (t).

• Computational issues estimating 3-level fixed
  effects models with large data sets
• Solutions
• teacher-school spell effects
• iterated OLS

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Floridas K-20 Education Data Warehouse

• Census of all students attending public schools
  in Florida, 1995/96 2004/05
• Student records linked over time
• Includes student test scores and student
  demographic data, attendance, disciplinary
  actions and program participation
• Statewide testing began in 1999/2000
• Includes all employee records including
  individual teacher characteristics and means of
  linking students and teachers to classrooms
• Includes undergraduate records of teachers who
  attended Florida public colleges and universities

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Sample for Analysis

• All students in Florida, grades 3-10
• Elementary students in self-contained classrooms
• Middle and high school students in math and
  reading/language arts/English classes
• Sample restricted to
• Classes with 10-50 students per class
• Classes with a single primary instructor
• Students enrolled in only a single course in the
  relevant subject area at a point in time

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Two-Stage Estimation

• First Stage
• estimate student achievement gains as a function
  of teacher fixed effects, professional
  development and experience
• model includes time-varying student
  characteristics, student fixed effects, exogenous
  peer characteristics, class size and
  teacher/school fixed effects
• Second Stage
• Regress estimated teacher/school fixed effects
  from first stage on teacher pre-service variables
  and school fixed effects
• since college information only available back to
  1995, can only include relatively young teachers

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Effects of Teacher Experience and Professional
Development on Student Achievement(No Teacher
Fixed Effects)
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Effects of Teacher Experience and Professional
Development on Student Achievement(With Teacher
Fixed Effects)
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Effects of Teacher Experience and Professional
Development on Student Achievement(With Teacher
Fixed Effects)
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Effects of Teacher Professional Development
onStudent Achievement(With Teacher Fixed
Effects)
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Impacts of Pre-Service on Estimated Teacher Fixed
Effect College Major
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Impacts of Pre-Service on Estimated Teacher Fixed
Effect College Major
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Impacts of Pre-Service on Estimated Teacher Fixed
Effect Course Content
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Impacts of Pre-Service on Estimated Teacher Fixed
Effect Course Content
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Summary of Findings

• Experience matters, even after controlling for
  unmeasured teacher characteristics
• Positive correlations between in-service
  professional development and teacher
  effectiveness only found for middle-school math
  teachers
• No evidence that education majors perform better
  than non-education majors
• Limited evidence that subject content course work
  in education is correlated with improved teacher
  effectiveness in high school math