Research & Insights

Productivity Returns to Experience in the Teacher Labor
Market: Methodological Challenges and New Evidence on Long-Term Career Improvement
by Papay & Kraft

Back in the day, we thought that teachers stopped
improving after their first few years in the classroom. Turns out, a few gray
hairs don’t signal the end for professional improvement. This myth may have
been more a reflection of imperfect statistical models, rather than a product
of any reality about teachers. Even after more than a decade, more experience
can mean better teaching.
Can’t get enough statistics? Read more here:  TQB

Uneven Playing Field? Assessing the Teacher Quality Gap
Between Advantaged and Disadvantaged Students by Goldhaber, Lavery, &
Theobald

Looking for a bright spot? This isn’t it.
New research confirms that disadvantaged students (whether defined as being
part of an underrepresented minority, free and reduced lunch status, or last
year’s test scores), tend to get lower-quality teachers (whether defined by
experience, licensure test score, or value added measure). No witty remark
here. We’re too depressed.
Feel like you could use a tiny glimmer of
hope? See this: TQB

The Mirage by TNTP

Just make sure you leave before they read the headline findings. TNTP estimates that, on average, districts spend a whopping $18,000 on professional development per teacher per year (cue coffee spit-take). One would think all that spending would provide some decent returns. Not so—few teachers showed improvement, and no clear connections emerged between professional development and teachers’ improvement. When planning next year’s budget, districts may want to think about whether all this cost is going to result in much benefit.
Want our take? Find it here: TQB

Over the course of the year, the Trendline covered
everything from hot topics like teacher evaluation
and salary
(including this interactive
map) to the nitty gritty of teacher planning time and
the length of
teacher contracts. As the year draws to a close, here is a brief look at
our most popular topics of 2015…

As eternal optimists, we’re choosing to look on the bright side
of a disheartening new study.

Researchers Jennifer Steele, Matthew Pepper, Matthew Springer
and J.R. Lockwoodprovide additional evidence of educational inequities, finding that teachers with lower value added
measurements (VAM) are more likely to teach at schools populated by mostly
minority students—the same schools that also house a higher rate of more novice
teachers and teachers with lower college GPAs.
This graph depicts how the distribution of teachers
dramatically changes as soon as one turns from a school with a mostly white
population to one with a mostly minority population. The change is so sudden
it’s like a switch goes off.
                                              

However, the same study finds that once a teacher with a high
VAM score starts teaching in a
high-minority school, he or she is not more likely to leave—a trend
inconsistent with the popular belief that once teachers prove themselves in
urban or high-minority schools, they move on to suburban or lower-minority
ones. 
Though the high-minority schools in the study reported
relatively high teacher turnover rates, as is the case with most schools
serving high numbers of minority students, the turnover is not due to an exodus
of high-VAM teachers. The better teachers were no more likely to leave the
school than other teachers. Some (non-statistically significant) numbers even suggested
the opposite—higher VAM teachers were more
likely to stick around in these
high-minority schools once they got there. And even those high VAM teachers who
did leave didn’t go teach in lower-minority schools any more or less frequently
than other teachers (though the researchers lost track of any teacher who left
the district—which is whybroader administrative data sets are very helpful
in examining these questions).
Of course, these data come from a single unnamed school
district, so it remains to be seen if these results are replicable. Count us
excited, however, if this study is replicated and confirms that once we get
highly-effective teachers into high-minority schools they are likely to stay.

Upon the release of our first comprehensive Yearbook
that included state grades in 2009, the headline read: “Taken as a whole, state
teacher policies are broken, outdated and inflexible.”

After six more annual encyclopedic
reviews of just about every policy states have on their books that impact the
teaching profession, the 2015 State Teacher
Policy Yearbook reaches a decidedly more positive conclusion. In
fact, we think 2015 may just be a tipping point year for teacher effectiveness
policy in the United States.

Across the nation, the average
state teacher policy grade for 2015 is now a C–. Thirteen states earned grades
in the B- to B+ range. Not a single state earned higher than a C in 2009. 

While the C- average is a mark
that is still far too low to ensure teacher effectiveness nationwide, it is a
very real improvement over the D average earned by the states in 2009.  If
an increase from a D to a C- doesn’t strike you as overly impressive, bear in
mind that we continue to raise the bar on certain topics as we see states
exceeding our original expectations. 
This year, we scored for the first time states’ alignment of their
teacher preparation policies with the instructional shifts required by college-
and career-readiness standards, a policy area in considerable need of
attention.

A tipping point is defined as the
point at which an issue or idea crosses a certain threshold and gains momentum.
In the 2015 Yearbook,
we see the tide changing on elementary teacher licensing and prep program
admission, with more than half of all states improving for teacher preparation
requirements. In addition, 27 states now require annual evaluations for all
teachers, 16 states include student achievement and growth as the preponderant criterion
in teacher evaluations, and 19 others include growth measures as a significant
factor.

This year, an all-time high of 23 states now require that
tenure decisions are tied to teacher performance. Not a single state had such a
requirement in 2009.  Importantly, 28 now
articulate that ineffective teaching is grounds for teacher dismissal,
something only 11 states permitted in 2009. 

The Yearbook documents
good state teacher policy progress to be sure. But there’s no coasting to the
finish line on the other side of this tipping point. On several critical fronts
there are still only a precious few state leaders paving the way forward.
Secondary teacher licensing, for example, is simply out of sync
with the adoption of college- and career-readiness standards. Just five
states—Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, South Dakota and Tennessee—require
secondary teachers to demonstrate their knowledge of the subjects they will
teach without any loopholes in the disciplines of general science or social
studies.  Most states still turn a blind
eye to the fact that just because someone knows some biology that doesn’t make
them qualified to teach physics.
Special education remains a huge black mark for teacher policy,
with 37 states still permitting special education teachers to teach any grade
level K-12, something they would never dream of allowing for general education
teachers. Just 14 states require elementary special education teachers to
demonstrate that they have the subject-matter knowledge they’ll need, and only Missouri, New York and Wisconsin
require secondary level special education teachers to pass a test in each
subject in which they are licensed to teach.
Teacher compensation reform also remains a stubbornly
unchanging area of teacher policy. Only a handful of states have been willing
to take on the issue of teacher pay: Florida,
Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada and Utah all now
tie compensation to teachers’ evaluation results.
Reflecting on a decade of tracking teacher policy, there is real
energy behind states moving down a reform path focused on teacher
effectiveness. Many states have taken just small steps while others have
enacted watershed reforms. But with a few stubborn exceptions, each year fewer
and fewer states remain out of step on numerous Yearbook goals.  Given how
far they’ve come, NCTQ thinks states are better positioned than ever to make
meaningful reforms championing teacher effectiveness.
The national summary of the Yearbook and 51 state-specific
versions can be found here. The Yearbook dashboard provides easy access to graphs, infographics
and narratives for national and state-specific findings. 

This month, the Trendline takes a look at the role of student growth in evaluation ratings and how districts connect evaluation ratings with compensation and dismissal policies.

Results are in for the first full year of implementation of a new teacher evaluation system in Dallas, a system that the district claims to be “the most rigorous teacher evaluation system in the nation.” Given the initial results, perhaps it is. 

Many districts undertake what appear to be strong eval systems only to, disappointingly, end up reporting little differentiation among teachers. Not so in Dallas.
Among the system’s seven possible teacher effectiveness ratings, about a third of the district’s 11,000 teachers were assigned to one of the three lowest. Around 40 percent received a middle-of-the-road rating. Only 22 percent received one of the highest three ratings.
Further, Dallas reported a fairly typical turnover rate for an urban district of 16 percent, suggesting that teachers weren’t all that fussed about the new system (which wasn’t the case for Washington, DC’s first year of implementation, though that could have been because of all the national attention). Those Dallas teachers who did choose to leave were likely the ones the district would have chosen to go anyways: over half rated “unsatisfactory” did not return and a quarter of teachers who performed just marginally better did not return. Conversely, only a small percentage of higher performing teachers chose to leave.
                                 

Why is the Dallas approach off to such a positive start?
We think the use of seven ratings—versus four or five in most other states—has something to do with it, allowing for more fine-grained distinctions among teachers. The district also carefully defined what it took to fall into each of the seven categories, field testing a rubric that measures in detail a teacher’s performance across nearly 20 different performance indicators. The result is an instrument that is much more successful at actually grouping teachers into the different rating tiers.
                           

Also, the system relies on more than just a formal
observation and written summary—school leaders conduct a minimum of ten spot
observations per year to provide teachers with regular instructional feedback.
Spot observations (only 10-15 minutes each) appear to be a more palatable
choice to school leaders, and their very nature may be a much better match with
the generally frenzied pace of running a school. 
The most significant reason the Dallas system might have met with such early success is that it was so carefully piloted for a number of years in a much smaller school district, which allowed the kinks to be worked out. Dallas’s superintendent, Mike Miles (who recently left) had been previously posted in the Harrison School District in Colorado Springs, Colorado where he developed the rudiments of the Dallas system. (N.B. Mike Miles sits on NCTQ’s Board of Directors).
Perhaps what’s most interesting about the Dallas system is its impact on teacher pay. A highly effective teacher can now earn quite a bit more in the new regime, e.g. an “Exemplary” teacher earns a minimum of $74,000 per year, compared to $56,000 for a teacher rated “Proficient 1.” Still Dallas did not pay out a single dime more in salaries this year. While most returning teachers (71 percent) received a salary increase, the additional expense was offset by the sizeable group of teachers who did not qualify. 

In striving to achieve valid teacher evaluations, schools often overlook those who spend the most time observing teachers in action: students. As the 2013 MET study reported, student surveys are a critical tool for effective teacher evaluation. By our calculations, a classroom of 30 students might clock about 27,000 hours observing a single teacher over a school year.  It’s no wonder students are more likely to arrive at a more accurate assessment than a single principal who reaches his or her conclusion on the basis of a few hours of observation.
New findings from a Dutch study not only reinforce these groundbreaking MET findings, but also add some intriguing nuance to our understanding of what students are able to discern about their teachers. 
Some 5,000 students were asked how their teachers performed across six areas, including classroom management and clarity of instruction. Because students rated teachers over three years, their perception of a teacher’s development from one year to the next could be captured.  Adding even more evidence that student surveys are as accurate as any evaluation tool, they reached the same conclusion so many other kinds of research have consistently reported—that new teachers steeply improve for the first few years of teaching before leveling off. 
                                          
The study also explores new territory. Because the sample of teachers included both teachers who had entered the classroom with formal preparation as well as those who had not, researchers probed to see if students could decipher any differences between the two groups. They could. 
Across all areas, students gave consistently higher marks to teachers who had been formally trained than they did their walk-on counterparts. Given that most studies in the US have not been able to discern such differences (though no study that we know of has asked students to answer this question), this new finding suggests that either student surveys are more accurate than any measure that’s previously been considered—or that the Dutch just do a better job of preparing teachers.
If the latter is the case, what might be the secret sauce of Dutch teacher prep? The central features of its preparation look like the American system—at least on the surface. New teachers must have demonstrated content proficiency in language and mathematics exams and have completed structured clinical practice, exactly the bones of what happens in the US. But in the Netherlands, practical experience is more extensive. Teacher candidates must complete 12 to 18 months of student teaching, typically in a school connected to the university.
In any case, the study builds the case for using student survey data in teacher evaluations, if not a closer examination of how the Dutch prepare their teachers. 

I am one of NCTQ’s biggest supporters, but I am
very disappointed with the recent publication of The Good Behavior Game as a
means for improving classroom management.  This is not a criticism of the
Good Behavior Game.  There is also a Classroom Protocol Game produced by
the people at the Huberman Foundation.  There are also discipline
programs—two popular ones are Restorative Justice and Positive Behavior
Interventions and Support (PBIS).  And then there are behavior rubrics and
contracts, and every advocate swears that they have research to back their
game, program, rubric, and contract.

The Good Behavior Game has nothing to do with classroom management; it has to
do with behavior management and the two are separate entities.  As long as
we continue to subscribe to the notion that discipline is classroom management,
we will never attain improved student achievement, which is the goal of
NCTQ.  The purpose of classroom management is to maximize student learning
with a well-organized classroom, not to minimize student misbehavior.

Classroom management is the most misused term in education.  Classroom
management has to do with managing or organizing a classroom for student
learning.  Effective teachers MANAGE their classrooms, whereas ineffective
teachers DISCIPLINE their classrooms.  So many teachers have the mistaken
belief that classroom management has to do with discipline; thus, every day is
a self-fulfilling prophecy of going into battle with the students, because that
is the expectation.  Teachers who incorrectly define classroom management
as discipline are likely to join the ranks of the thousands who quit the
education profession after their first few years on the job.

Classroom management is not about discipline.  It is about organization
and consistency.  Store managers manage a store; they do not discipline
the customers.  Team managers manage a team; they do not discipline the
players.  Likewise, effective teachers have a classroom management plan
consisting of a series of practices and procedures that are used to organize an
environment in which instruction and learning can take place.

Can you imagine asking a store manager what she does and she responds, “I was
hired to discipline the customer,” or a stage manager says, “I was hired to
discipline the actors.”  Yet, when you say classroom management to people
in (and out of) education, they invariably equate this with discipline.

I do not deny that discipline is an issue that must be addressed, and if The
Good Behavior Game helps, that is great; however, no learning takes place when
a teacher disciplines.  Learning only takes place when a classroom is
organized so the students know how to do things (procedures) correctly in the
classroom.  The reason behavioral problems occur in the classroom is
because there is no organized management plan in place so the students know
what to do.

Regretfully, the great majority of teachers think that classroom management is
synonymous with discipline, so they spend their days looking for games or programs
to solve their behavior problems.  To tell me that a game helps classroom
management is not classroom management.  My question is, “How do YOU
manage a classroom, and can you teach someone else how to manage a classroom?”

The GBG cannot succeed on its own any more than a diet book can succeed on its
own.  As Kate Walsh so wisely states, “The GBG serves to keep students
focused on learning by promoting appropriate and on task behavior, but the game
is more effective in an environment where the essential components of classroom
management are already in place.”  So I ask again, “Where is your
classroom management plan?”

Teaching classroom management has been our forte for well over 35 years, over
the course of which thousands of teachers have told us, “Thank you for teaching
me the difference between discipline and procedures.”  Procedures range
from how to head a paper, how to begin class on time, and how to write an
essay.  When students know how to run a classroom, you not only minimize
misbehavior, you have a class that can function on its own, and can even run
itself in the teacher’s absence.  Simply put, when you teach students how
to do things, then they won’t do what you do not want them to do.

We teach teachers how to be proactive, not reactive.  A proactive teacher
has a plan to prevent problems; a reactive teacher has no plan, and when a
problem occurs, they react from one problem to another, looking for a game, an
activity, or a threat.  To be effective and successful, all a teacher
needs is a classroom management plan.

Effective teachers prevent problems with a plan that keeps their students
focused and on task, from the moment the opening bell sounds, until the end of
each day.  This is done with procedures, which simplify the tasks students
must accomplish to increase learning and achieving.  Once taught,
procedures become the responsibility of the students to carry out the
appropriate tasks.  A well-managed classroom is safe, predictable,
nurturing, and focus-driven.  A classroom management plan ensures learning
takes place efficiently, with minimal stress.  When you have an organized
classroom, you avoid the pitfalls of becoming a disciplinarian.

Students want a plan, too.  It is extremely important to realize that many
students come from disorganized, unstructured home environments, where chaos
abounds.  Neglected children crave structure and guidance.  Give them
a well-managed, organized classroom with clear daily practices and procedures,
and they will respond positively.

Chelonnda Seroyer, a high school English teacher in Atlanta, says, “My students
enjoy having a predictable classroom.  They feel safe because they know
what to expect each day.  They like consistency in a world that can be
very inconsistent.”

Amanda Brooks is a teacher in Dyersburg, Tennessee.  Upon completing her
first year of teaching, she said, “With procedures that organized my class, I
never had to waste time repeating what they should be doing or reprimanding
them for bad behavior.  I created an environment where students could just
learn.  I simply taught and enjoyed my students.”

At the end of her second year of teaching, Amanda said, “My state test scores
just came back and my class had the highest test scores in my school, and I am
only saying this to encourage new teachers to get it right on the first day of
school and then enjoy the rest of the school year.”

A veteran teacher of 40 years, Audrey Lowery of Irvington, Virginia, says, “If
our new teachers would implement classroom procedures and keep them separate
from rules, they would be in education for the long haul.”

I trust that those who read about The Good Behavior Game will not misconstrue
it as a panacea for classroom management, because the mission of NCTQ is to
promote teacher quality and quality teachers, such as Chelonnda Seroyer, Amanda
Brooks, and Audrey Lowery know the difference between classroom management and
behavior management.

*Dr. Wong is the author  of several popular books used in teacher education.

Four teachers’
use of a self-monitoring checklist that successfully helped them use the Good
Behavior Game is reported in a new study.* 
We perked up when we saw attention paid to the Good Behavior Game (GBG)
because we’ve previously commented on this classroom management practice:
unlike virtually every other classroom practice in vogue or out, the GBG’s
effects have been replicated in over 50 studies between 1969 and 2015. Each
study has proven the GBG’s effectiveness in reducing disruptive behaviors in
pre-K through 12th grade and in producing longer-term positive effects on
academic performance.  Nonetheless, our
regular readers won’t be surprised to learn that we estimate that only two percent of teacher candidates are even exposed
to any information about the GBG in their preparation, much less taught to use
it.  That’s why we were heartened to see
this study:  four more teachers out of
the nation’s 3.5 million classroom teachers now know something to help their
classroom management – something that they should have learned long ago.

*Four subjects is usually a pretty small “n” size for a credible study, but this research actually does meet Institute of Education Sciences’ pilot design standards for single-case studies, no small feat. 

NCTQ has been tracking teacher policy for a decade. Over these years, no policy has seen such dramatic transformation as teacher evaluation. It hasn’t been an easy road for states. The simultaneous implementation of teacher effectiveness policies and the Common Core, along with the transition to new college- and career-ready assessments, have almost every state in the country in flux. The pressure is on to curb state testing and roll back teacher evaluation policies. 

But for now, we remain optimistic that states will stay the course and build on their efforts around teacher effectiveness. NCTQ’s new report released this week, State of the States 2015: Evaluating Teaching, Leading and Learning, presents the most comprehensive and up-to-date information on how states are evaluating teachers and using those results to inform policy and practice. The report also breaks new ground by providing a first look at the policy landscape on principal effectiveness.
What is clear is that teacher effectiveness policy has a strong foothold in state policy – and that’s important to its endurance. In 2015, 43 states require that student growth and achievement be considered in teacher ratings and in 35 states evaluations of teacher effectiveness are significantly or mostly informed by student growth and achievement. Twenty-three states require districts to factor teacher performance into tenure decisions.
                                       

Only three states NCTQ once recognized for having developed teacher effectiveness policies (South Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin) no longer appear to require student growth and achievement to be a significant factor in teacher ratings. Today there are just five states (California, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska and Vermont) that have no formal state policy requiring that teacher evaluations take objective measures of student achievement into account in evaluating teacher effectiveness. ESEA waivers haven’t been the policy driver some think they’ve been; most state action happened before waivers came on to the scene. And most later on the scene states have enacted state policy too. In fact, only Alabama, New Hampshire and Texas have teacher evaluation policies that exist only in waiver requests to the federal government.
In our first survey of the principal evaluation landscape, we identified 34 states that require annual evaluations of school leaders. In most cases the requirements for how student achievement and other factors are weighed in principal ratings mirror the requirements for teacher evaluations. Still, principal effectiveness seems often to be an afterthought in many states. Many states do not specify who is responsible for conducting evaluations of principal effectiveness, don’t require observations of school leaders doing their jobs and don’t require training and/or certification for principal evaluators. New Jersey is a notable exception in requiring principals to be evaluated on the quality of the teacher evaluations they oversee.
While the evaluation policy landscape has been transformed, much work remains on implementation. Some states and districts have had and are continuing to learn the hard way that some practices are ill advised (Using schoolwide data only to measure student growth for teachers of non-tested grades and subjects and requiring tests that serve no instructional purpose but to provide teacher evaluation data are two that readily spring to mind). As we’ve argued all along, the real power in performance-based evaluations lies in using the results to recognize and encourage effective instruction as well as to prepare and value highly-effective teachers and leaders. And states are increasingly making some of these critical links, turning what was once a bureaucratic exercise into a more meaningful process with the potential to continually improve teaching and learning.

During a late night drive through the streets of Newark, two rising political stars—Democrat Cory Booker, then mayor of Newark, and Republican Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey—hatched a plan to transform the Newark school system. And so begins Dale Russakoff’s The Prize, telling the story of an unlikely partnership to close failing schools, expand charter school options and weaken labor agreements they saw as barriers. Within a year, Booker had caught the attention of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who agreed to donate $100 million to the cause. As Russakoff writes, “Their stated goal was not to repair education in Newark but to develop a model for saving it in all of urban America.”

Many have already written excellent summaries of the book (see here and here), so it will suffice to say that implementing a reform plan in Newark was more difficult than expected, and the money went fast. The spending led to mixed results. Some newly minted charters have been successful, while others have not. Graduation rates have increased, but test scores have decreased. To date, the investment has not produced the model of education reform that its dreamers envisioned.
We’ll leave it to others to parse whether or not Russakoff’s take on the cost of politics, personal ambition and implementation missteps to education reform in Newark is right. NCTQ’s lens is squarely focused on her characterization of the district’s teachers. Throughout the book, Russakoff includes stories from on-the-ground teachers who were at the heart of many of the city’s successes. Russakoff profiles Princess Lee, a kindergarten teacher, as an example: She’s hard working, knows how to manage a classroom and can deliver content to students in ways that they understand. But these skills are presented as accessories; in the picture Russakoff paints, the key to Lee’s success is that she herself grew up poor and survived dysfunctional schools in Newark. According to Russakoff, the children in Lee’s class respect and respond to her because she is able to relate to the poverty and violence that dominate their lives, and she provides a model of how they too can be successful.
Narratives like these perpetuate the idea that the best teachers arrive to their work with certain innate qualities and life experiences that make them more effective with specific types of students. While shared life experiences can lay the foundations for meaningful classroom relationships, many successful teachers of disadvantaged students do not fit this mold. Moreover, this assumption does little to professionalize teaching, nor does it encourage districts to design a roadmap for recruiting and retaining the teaching force they need.
How can school districts get more teachers like Lee into the classroom? Great teachers aren’t just born; they are trained. We should certainly work harder to recruit talented people of color and those from low income communities to join the profession, but this has to happen in conjunction with higher expectations of teacher preparation. To begin, districts can identify the skills and knowledge necessary to teach successfully in their schools. From there, districts must convey these requirements to prospective teachers and teacher preparation programs and vet potential hires for them. 
The real prize in the American education game is highly effective teachers—and school districts need to be strategic about how to capture that prize for themselves. They can start by abandoning the narrative that great teachers are created only through context and not training.

This month’s Trendline considers the characteristics of teacher contracts and school board policy documents that govern the relationship between teachers and districts, including the average length of contracts and how many districts are operating under expired contracts.

We can all agree that building a more diverse corps of teachers is important. While only a few studies have examined the role of teacher diversity in student achievement, there’s some evidence that students may learn more when taught by a teacher of their same race and that, on average, Black teachers hold higher expectations for Black students. But just recently we learned the troubling findings from a Shanker Institute report that the number of Black teachers working in some of our largest school districts is on the decline.
Just how we can attract and retain a more diverse teaching corps is a conundrum every school district in America faces.
Many advocate that the answer is to keep academic standards low for entry into teacher preparation programs so that as many minority candidates as possible make it through the pipeline. That’s a “solution” fraught with problems. For starters, it’s insulting to minority teacher candidates as well as minority students, suggesting that what’s best for them is to have a teacher who merely looks like them, regardless of how well he or she may teach.
It’s also a solution grounded in a false dichotomy, arguing that we must choose between a diverse teacher corps and high standards, but we cannot have both. In fact, the National Council on Teacher Quality has found that is simply untrue. We estimate that there are some 60 teacher preparation programs that set a high bar for entry (based on criteria like SAT/ACT scores or GPA) and also do a great job recruiting candidates of color. True, we’d like that number to be much higher, especially given that we’ve just learned from the Shanker Institute of the declining numbers of minority teachers in many cities, but the fact that dozens of preparation programs meet both goals shows that it should be within any program’s reach.
What’s worth pointing out is that well-meaning efforts to lift various academic barriers, such as removing standardized tests from undergraduate admissions criteria, haven’t done much to increase diversity. As New America analyst Stephen Burd reported in his blog, researchers are taking a hard look at colleges that are going test-optional—and what they are seeing isn’t pretty. A group of University of Georgia researchers studied 180 selective liberal arts colleges and found that colleges that made ACT and SAT scores optional for admissions actually had lower proportions of minority and low-income students.
What did these colleges gain? Higher rankings on college scorecards. Since test scores weren’t required, more people applied, so the colleges were able to boast a lower admission rate, a critical factor in college scorecards. Furthermore, only students with high SAT and ACT scores had reason to submit their scores, so colleges’ average SAT scores increased.
Instead of trying to attract teachers by dropping standards for entry, let’s try a new tactic: Make teacher preparation programs an inviting place for college students who want to learn and work hard—no matter what their race—by making the professional coursework more rigorous and substantial.
Just check out the twitter hashtag #EdMajor if you want to learn what college students have to say about how easy the education major is.
That reputation attracts college students who want to coast to a degree, but it’s a turnoff for more serious college students. Our recent report Easy A’s finds that teacher candidates are far more likely to graduate with honors than other students on the same campus. We also learned that course assignments in teacher coursework are often more subjective in nature, making it much easier to earn an “A.”
Programs also need to embark on a more aggressive recruitment of minority talent. Prep programs can take an active role in targeting promising high school students, offering scholarships, and giving additional support throughout college. In this instance, traditional preparation programs could learn from the efforts of alternative certification programs like Teach For America, whose own quite aggressive minority recruitment efforts have paid off: 49 percent of its 2015 teacher corps identify as people of color.
Yes, low teacher salaries are a hurdle to enacting high standards, especially when appealing to talented minorities who are heavily recruited. Yes, high student loans make anyone think twice about considering a career in teaching. However, these problems do not excuse colleges and universities from doing their part to raise the status of the teaching profession. Preparation programs cannot convincingly advocate for higher pay with one hand while ushering every applicant through an open door with the other.
We’re all for increasing teacher diversity. But let’s look at solutions that can be effective without sacrificing teacher quality for the students who most need great teachers. Rather than perpetuating the myth that teaching is a job that anyone can do, let’s increase recruitment efforts and seek out the people who have the academic aptitude to become our next generation of great teachers.
Note: This editorial appeared previously in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.

When most companies are handing out
more pink slips than paychecks, getting a job in teaching starts to look
awfully attractive—including to people who hadn’t initially planned on a career
in the classroom. But a teaching degree
may not seem as good an option to those seeking challenging and lucrative
careers.

Looking at recessions dating back to
the 1970s, a new study
from Markus Nagler, Marc Piopunik and Martin West found that teachers who begin
their careers during recessions were more effective than teachers who begin
teaching at other points in the economic cycle.
Using the value-added scores of
Florida teachers (where a teaching degree isn’t required to enter the
classroom), they found that teachers starting their careers during a recession
were, on average, better at raising their students’ math and reading scores
than teachers who began teaching in a stronger economy. The effect was evident
across teachers at all levels of ability, but particularly striking was that
the effectiveness of top teachers outpaced the top performers of non-recession
years by an even greater margin. The trend toward more effective teaching was
more pronounced for men than women, minorities compared to whites, and those
who were older when starting to teach compared to those who were younger.
What might cause this pattern? The
authors suspected that the effect came from a group of people entering teaching
who otherwise would not have. People choose their careers based largely on
expected earnings. In a recession, teaching appears better-paid and more stable
than many other jobs, so as other job prospects shrink, teaching looks more and
more attractive. The improvements in test scores were visible for teachers
entering in most recessions since 1970. The pattern held even in the Great
Recession of 2008, when teacher layoffs occurred but were far rarer than
private sector layoffs. The fact that teachers who enter during recessions are
higher performing gives credence to the theory that highly skilled people who
would usually choose another job are more likely to become teachers in such
conditions.
Of course, creating recessions for
the sake of raising the quality of the teacher corps isn’t sound public policy.
Instead, the researchers offered a more feasible lesson: raise teacher pay to
attract high-performers into the classroom, even when there aren’t layoffs in
other fields. While this policy suggestion ignores the appeal of job stability
and availability, it fits with the study’s compelling case that people do
consider how teaching stacks up against other career choices. Moreover, the
findings suggest that districts should recognize recessions as potential
opportunities to find some great teachers.
But another recent
study complicates the picture. Erica
Blom, Brian Cadena and Benjamin Keys found that those who experienced poor
economic conditions at age 20 (when they were choosing their college major)
were less likely to major in education than those who chose their major in good
economic times. The authors suggested that students in recessions will pick
majors that they think will lead to high-paying jobs and will be seen as
rigorous. Since fewer students choose to major in education at such times, this
suggests that it’s not perceived as lucrative or challenging (see our findings
on the lack of rigor in teacher prep here).
The two studies are not
contradictory—they consider different choices (job vs. college major) and
different populations (teachers vs. all undergraduate students). Taken
together, they suggest—unsurprisingly—that people consider much more than just
their passion for the work itself when choosing a major and a career.

NCTQ is
thrilled to announce the arrival of Barbara R. Davidson as our new Senior Vice
President for Teacher Preparation Strategies. In addition to overseeing
the work of the Teacher Prep Review,
Ms. Davidson will direct our newly launched website Path to Teach, our new Pipeline initiative and our growing consultation
practice with school districts and higher education institutions. Ms. Davidson
comes to NCTQ with a terrific background in management of nonprofit education
organizations, having served both as the President of StandardsWork and most
recently the Deputy Director of Great Minds (formerly Common Core).  As
our teacher preparation work is rapidly expanding into new territories and
reaching new audiences, Ms. Davidson’s experience and skill sets, particularly
in organizational growth and educational marketing, provide a welcome addition
to our leadership team.

A few weeks ago Whitney Tilson, writing in his always
entertaining blog, gave a nice nod
to an op-ed
by Dan Willingham in the New York Times,
addressing the sorry state of American teacher preparation.

Amid his effusive praise of the Willingham piece, Whitney writes:
“I think morphemes and phonemes matter too but
maybe not as much as Willingham does.” 

This gently stated but dismissive consideration for the
importance of good reading instruction troubles me, because I think it captures
a viewpoint widely shared by many ed reformers. 

I don’t think it’s because there are many ed reformers that reject
the science here—unlike many in teacher prep. 
Researchers long ago identified the reading methods which would reduce
the current deplorable rate of reading failure from 30% to somewhere well south
of 10%—if only schools would take that step.  Teacher prep programs which fail to teach
elementary teacher candidates the integral connection between spoken sounds and
written words are essentially committing malpractice.

Instead, I think the issue for some ed reformers is that
other reforms are a lot more important.  I
can’t quite figure out why there are still perfectly reasonable, rational
people who aren’t willing to embrace the 2+2=4 connection between children
learning how to read and every other outcome reformers fight for.  One gets the sense that we “pro-phonemes”
reformers have a bug up our behinds and that we just need to get over it.
I’m not out to pick a fight here, certainly not with an indefatigable
ed reformer who consistently both puts his money where his mouth is and fights
the good fight.  I’d take my complaints
offline except I maintain that Whitney is only expressing out loud a view that others
share in silence. The fact is that better reading preparation as critical
reform is not tops on most peoples’
minds or conference agendas or policy fights or funded grants, and its absence speaks
volumes. 
There is an aversion for taking on the reform fight over
curriculum writ large, not just reading, even by people who normally have no
problem landing a blow. I’ll never forget Michelle Rhee’s comment
as chancellor:  “The last thing we’re going to do is get wrapped up in
curriculum battles.” (Notably, DC schools have a far different take on
curriculum now—see below!)
A few weeks ago, New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, announced
a plan to hire and dispatch at great expense a reading coach (their sources
unknown) for every one of its 700 schools to tackle that city’s skyrocketing
rate of reading failure.  (At 70%, it’s well
over twice the national average).  His plan
raises the obvious question as to why the city is taking a pass on the more
high-leverage intervention of just giving actual classroom teachers a strong
reading curriculum and some good PD.
The last chancellor, Joel Klein, will tell you that his own
inattention to curriculum, including sound reading methods, was his biggest
regret from all his years as chancellor. 
Many of the big charter authorizers like KIPP have also recognized the
errors of their way and have adopted much stronger curricular materials.
It’s ironic that ed reformers are so united behind the
Common Core standards and  yet 1) those
very standards explicitly endorse scientifically based reading instruction (how
about we don’t cherry pick?), and 2) the focus on the importance of “reading
complex text” appears to be at the expense of early reading instruction.  As is the case in any skill, the simple must
be mastered before we can master the complex. 

Kids are paying a high price for our neglect. It also allows
many teacher educators to continue, unchallenged, taking an approach to reading
instruction where the most popular assignment in reading courses is to ask
students to “journal” about their own memories of learning how to read.  And that exercise helps them how?
This isn’t complicated. 
There’s really nothing here to debate. 
Can’t we all get on the same page?

At this point, we figure that everyone else has already written about the more interesting and insightful takeaways about TNTP’s latest report, entitled The Mirage (see here and here). (That’s what we get for putting out a newsletter only once every two weeks). No question that the results were depressing, finding that school districts are spending about $18,000 per teacher on professional development that isn’t developing anyone.
One explanation we liked for PD’s lack of an impact didn’t seem to get much of a bounce around the echo chamber. On the day of the report’s release, Washington, DC’s Chancellor Kaya Henderson observed that the biggest “bang for the buck” in teacher PD might lie in teachers’ study of curriculum (see above!)—hashing through standards, joint unit and lesson planning, sharing resources and materials—and that is something American school teachers just do not seem to get to do a lot, at least compared to other countries.
As if to confirm our hunch, shortly after The Mirage was released, we stumbled across an even more depressing example of How Bad PD Is in the USA, and which illustrates the disconnect between professional development and curriculum.
Two Florida State University researchers describe how school districts there essentially squandered a generously funded opportunity to allow teachers to spend a lot more time on curriculum. While roughly half of all Florida districts signed up to use dedicated Race to the Top funds to implement a Japanese Lesson Study,mostnever followed through.
No question that Lesson Study involves a significant amount of time and resources. Groups of teachers must meet regularly to set goals, review content and plan and practice lesson delivery. Doing Lesson Study right requires a hefty budget for training on how to implement the PD, devoted planning time and substitute teachers to cover classes while teachers observe each other’s lessons. When it came down to making the changes that Lesson Study requires in schedules and spending, not only did districts fail to benefit from the money they were slated to receive, most never even requested the money.
Motoka Akiba and Bryan Wilkinson never were able to pinpoint why exactly the money wasn’t spent. We could posit a few guesses, but then so could our readers, we imagine.
Professional development that dives deep into curriculum, where content and pedagogy intersect, may not be simple, but it is, in our humble opinion, the Holy Grail. 

This month’s Trendline updates NCTQ’s analysis in Smart Money: What teachers make, how long it takes and what it buys them and estimates how much a teacher can make over his or her career, using salary information from the 2014-2015 school year.

When trying to improve educational outcomes, it is hard not to feel the need for urgency. We want to figure out what works now andimplement changes now because if we wait, those kids who are in schools now will miss out. Unfortunately, this pressure to act quickly may be fundamentally at odds with the ability to measure what really works, since a meaningful change in the trajectory of student achievement is not always apparent until years later. Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach of Northwestern University provides a compelling example of exactly this conundrum.

Schanzenbach’s
thesis is that too often, education research only assesses an intervention’s
immediate or intermediate outcomes without capturing its full long-term
benefits. This may be particularly relevant, she asserts, when judging the
impact of early childhood investments.
 
Schanzenbach
offers the example of two studies (both of which she co-authored) on the famous
1990s Project STAR class size experiment in Tennessee. That well-known
experiment assigned students randomly to either regularly sized classes or
small classes. Researchers behind both papers (the first from Dynarski,
Hyman and Schanzenbach, 2013,
and the second from Chetty, Friedman, Hilger, Saez,
Schanzenbach and Yagan, 2011)
found that the smaller kindergarten classes yielded an immediate bump in
students’ test scores for that year—but both papers report that this bump faded
as students entered middle school.
But
that’s not the end of the story. When the students became adults, clear
positive impacts reemerged, so to speak, for those students who had been placed
in the smaller classes. Schanzenbach concludes that “we find that the actual
long-run impacts were larger than what would have been predicted based on the
short-run test score gains.”
The
failure of test score gains to endure and carry through to what later turn out
to be positive outcomes may confirm public skepticism about test scores as an
accurate indicator of long-term achievement.
But not
so fast. 
Schanzenbach
is right in noting that the fade-out of higher test scores two to six years
after the intervention did not correlate with more positive life outcomes.
However, the immediate test score gains from the year of the intervention, when
students were in kindergarten, were
highly predictive of students’ college attendance and degree completion.
Schanzenbach admits as much, stating with her colleagues that “the short-term
effect of small classes on test scores, it turns out, is an excellent predictor
of its long-term effect on adult outcomes,” (Dynarski et al., 2013).
Schanzenbach’s
theory finds stronger footing in her second paper, Chetty et al. This paper
looked at both kindergarten class size and each student’s kindergarten
classroom quality (as measured by the average test scores of his classmates at
the end of kindergarten—a proxy for a combination of peer effects, teacher
effects, and other classroom characteristics). Again, small kindergarten
classes correlated with higher kindergarten test scores and higher college
attendance.
Moreover,
while the higher kindergarten test scores were correlated with higher earnings
at age 27, they provide a statistically significant explanation for only a
small portion of the difference in earnings. Thus, the short-term test score
bump can barely begin to explain the benefits students derived later on in life
from having been assigned to a smaller or higher-quality class.
The
missing piece of the statistical puzzle was students’ non-cognitive skills. When the STAR students were in 4^th
and 8^th grades they were assessed on non-cognitive outcomes, with
results finding stronger non-cognitive outcomes but faded test-score gains for
the students who had been in the small class sizes.
Furthermore,
these non-cognitive measures seem to explain a much greater share of future
earnings than do the academic outcomes. Teasing apart the positive impact of
higher test scores and stronger non-cognitive skills achieved in a one-standard
deviation higher-quality kindergarten classroom, the higher 4^th
grade test scores would predict an
additional $40 of income at age 27 but, the non-cognitive
skills would predict an additional $139 in earnings.
Although
we think Schanzenbach’s characterization of the findings in Dynarsky et al.
undersells the predictive power of immediate test score gains, she does raise
several critical points. The first is that early childhood interventions may foster outcomes that most strongly
emerge long after the initial study period has ended, thereby eluding
researchers who only measure immediate and intermediate
outcomes for a few years. The second is that interventions may yield effects
that cannot be evaluated purely by measures of academic skills and content. As
our understanding of the importance of grit and executive functioning grows, so
too should our measures of the impact of classroom experience on these skills
alongside standardized test scores. 

Today’s TQB features commentary from Melody Arabo, Michigan’s 2015
Teacher of the Year.

Imagine a hybrid role
that allows teachers to take on leadership initiatives in a supported
environment, and stay connected to students in the classroom. Would teachers
and administrators be interested? Would people see the value in it? Michigan’s Walled Lake Consolidated School
District is looking to find the
answers as they implement an innovative teacher hybrid role during this school
year.
Being in a classroom
every day is exhilarating, but also very limiting. Teachers often feel
overwhelmed and disconnected from the outside world. Many would like to
collaborate and influence decision-making, but they aren’t given the chance. In
the rare instances leadership opportunities do arise, they come packaged with
extra responsibilities tacked on to an already overflowing teacher workload.
This is one of the reasons why, in an effort to make a greater impact or
further their careers, effective teachers leave the classroom and move into
other positions.
Unfortunately, not long after
an educator leaves the classroom to serve in other roles, other teachers are
not as receptive to what they have to say. That’s understandable—things
change so quickly in teaching and it is hard to fully understand the day-to-day
dynamic unless you are actually experiencing it. While this may not be the
right attitude to have, it is the nature of our profession. On
the opposite end, because school structure can be so limiting, administrators
and policy makers rarely have the opportunity to get input from teachers, at
times resulting in well-intentioned but uninformed decisions that can
negatively impact teachers’ work. The transition from theory to practice gets
lost in this shuffle.
As the 2015 Michigan
Teacher of the Year, I stepped out of my classroom for a year to travel around
the state and nation and explore all aspects of education. Professionally, my
biggest takeaway from that experience was that there is a massive disconnect
between those that are in the classroom and those who make decisions for the
classroom. I was shocked by the lack of teacher voice in the places it is
needed most and am desperate to find a solution. Personally, my biggest
takeaway was that I had reached a crossroads in my career and felt pressure to
decide the path I would take. I spent 12 years in a classroom working directly
with kids and the last year immersed in the world of teacher leadership working
with adults, all work which I loved. I became determined to find a way to
incorporate the best of both worlds. These factors became the driving force
behind an idea that I developed with my great friend and talented colleague,
Angela Colasanti.
The idea is simple: a
Co-Teacher/Leadership Development Hybrid Role where two teachers share one
classroom and all teaching responsibilities. How teachers are paired in this
role is key; the two must have a strong level of trust and comfort with one
another, along with a similar classroom management and teaching style. Both
would work in the classroom together on a regular basis, but having two
teachers provides flexibility for either to be elsewhere when needed. Even
while in the classroom together, one teacher can focus on instruction and the
other can be implementing new initiatives.
It is important to note
that this is not a 50/50 shared time position. This differs from a
typical half-classroom, half-instructional coach position because it offers a
fluid structure, allowing teachers to work together, collaborate and implement
ideas while sharing the same space. Their classroom would be up-to-date on all
current best practices and can be used as a lab class for professional
learning.
This hybrid role aims to
serve as a bridge between all levels of the school system in order to
strengthen each of them. By providing teacher perspective in places where it
has been missing, it will create more balance and impact in policy because
teachers should be at the table anytime the conversation is about
education. At the same time, teachers will gain a better understanding of the
dynamics that occur beyond our classrooms. This position is meant to tap into
leadership potential, increase teacher efficacy, strengthen instructional
practices, provide opportunities to connect and learn from one another and
build capacity for sustainable change. All of these things will result in
positive changes that will benefit educators, students and the community as a
whole.
The more we move towards
hybrid roles, the more we professionalize the profession and see teachers as
the valued experts they are. We hope you follow along in Walled Lake’s journey
as “The Hybrid Teachers” develop new career pathways for educators!

I can be a slow learner.

My colleagues at NCTQ and I have been working together on teacher quality for well over a decade. For a long time, we sorted issues into neat little buckets, which allowed us to organize complicated problems into some manageable order: 1. Teacher preparation programs. 2. State policies. 3. School district policies and practices. 
Those buckets are what made us overlook an opportunity, right under our nose, to rapidly and systematically improve teacher quality through student teaching partnerships formed when preparation programs work with school districts to place teacher candidates in schools in order to get real classroom experience.  
NCTQ studied and ranked student teaching programs over the last five years in order to better understand why so many student teachers don’t have good experiences. Given the problems we and others have chronicled, it certainly didn’t seem likely that student teaching could serve as a promising vehicle for solving the nation’s teacher quality challenges.
The aha moment was a realization that the student teaching experience is the point at which the interests of two institutions we had perceived to be in separate silos actually do intersect. Where interests intersect, so do the possibilities. After that critical point, their interaction and interests diverge: any attempts to alter outcomes for teacher candidates simply will be too late.
So back it up a bit—just as we did. What if both institutions approached student teaching differently and ended up the better for it?  
To begin, school districts would stop indiscriminately accepting as many student teachers, regardless of subject area, and instead adjust the numbers to line up with what is indicated by their general hiring trends. For example, if the district doesn’t typically hire more than 25 elementary teachers each year, it would no longer accept a couple hundred of elementary student teachers.
Conversely, programs in high production states would also look increasingly out of state to place student teachers—particularly in rural areas, which have such a hard time finding teachers. Rural districts would embrace such partnerships, since they know that they’re much more likely to be able to convince a student teacher, hopefully fresh off a positive experience and having overcome the hurdle of moving to an unfamiliar place, to come teach in their district.
Such shifts would produce a much closer alignment of teacher supply with teacher demand and insert some rationale for the ongoing overproduction of elementary teachers.   
Beyond subject areas, school districts would also make sure that student teachers have necessary knowledge and skills. Where there is a mismatch, programs would have to look elsewhere to place candidates or adjust their preparation programs to better meet the needs of the district.
This shift would lead to a better alignment between the demands of preparation and of the classroom, as school districts and teacher prep programs would have to agree on the core knowledge and skills every student teacher should have acquired.
School districts would take much more seriously the quality of the classroom teacher who is assigned to mentor student teachers. Instead of basing these assignments on recruiting any willing teacher—regardless of aptitude—they would only allow great teachers to mentor student teachers. While it’s true that many great teachers currently turn down the chance to mentor a student teacher for fear of having to essentially babysit a weak student teacher, our bet is that they would line up for the privilege given the assurance that the student teacher was capable and dedicated to the profession.
This shift would ensure a uniformly strong student teaching experience to all student teachers and would result in a more seamless pipeline of teacher talent into the district. Keep in mind that a student teacher who has had a fabulous experience is much more likely to accept a job offer than one who has not. Districts need to treat their best teachers as their top recruiters.  
With these shifts in mind, NCTQ has launched a new initiative to make student teaching partnerships work a whole lot better than they currently do for all parties: teacher candidates who want strong student teaching experiences, teacher prep programs who want to make sure that student teaching is a top-notch culminating experience, and school districts who want to recruit and hire the best teacher candidates. We’re calling it Pipeline, because that is the role that student teaching should play as the connector from preparation programs into districts. In this pilot year, we’re working with a select group of districts before offering it to a national audience.  
In any case, now I get it. When thinking about teacher quality, it’s not about what teacher prep programs need to do “over here” and what school districts should be doing “over there.” It’s about making sure that, since their interests are shared, they work together, and, yes, maybe turn a little straw into gold for the benefit of a new generation of teachers and their students.