teaching and californias - wested · kati haycock aaaaaaaa a a aaaaaaaa a a aaaaaaaa a a aaaaaaaa a...

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GOOD TEACHING MATTERS...A LOT

The Center for the Futureof Teaching & Learning

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ByKati Haycock

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Teaching and California’s Future is sponsored by The Center for the Future of Teachingand Learning. The Center is made up of education professionals, scholars and public policy expertswho care deeply about improving the schooling of California’s children. The Center was founded in 1995as a public, nonprofit organization with a focus on strengthening the capacity of California’s teachers fordelivering rigorous, well-rounded curriculum, and ensuring the continuing intellectual, ethical and socialdevelopment of all children. Margaret Gaston, Harvey Hunt, John Thompson and Patsy Wilkes of TheCenter for the Future of Teaching and Learning organized and directed the work.

Cosponsors include The California State University Institute for Education Reform; Policy Analysis forCalifornia Education; Recruiting New Teachers, Inc.; The University of California, Office of the President;and WestEd.

Funding for this initiative was generously provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, theWalter S. Johnson Foundation, the Philip Morris Foundation, the Stuart Foundation, and the Universityof California, Office of the President.

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The paper “Good Teaching Matters... A Lot,” was written by Kati Haycock, Director of the EducationTrust, Inc., 1725 K Street, N.W., Suite 200, Washington, DC. 20006. Phone: 202/293-1217,www.edtrust.org. Reprinted with permission from Thinking K-16, published by The Education Trust,Volume 3, Issue 2, Summer 1998.

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GOOD TEACHING MATTERS... A LOTByKati Haycock

Director, The Education Trust

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Reprinted by permission: © 1998: The Education Trust. All rights reserved.

How Well-Qualified TeachersCan Close the Gap ............................................ 3

Good Teaching Matters... A Lot ........................... 4

• Teacher effects: Tennessee ............................. 4

• Teacher effects: Dallas .................................. 5

• Teacher effects: Boston .................................. 6

• What makes for teacher effectiveness? ........... 6

• Inequities in distribution ................................ 8

• Race more than class? .................................. 8

• A more equitable distribution ofteacher expertise .......................................... 9

• Assuring qualified teachers forall of our children ......................................... 9

State Investment in Well-Prepared Teachers ........ 10

El Paso Closing the Gap ................................... 14

Notes .............................................................. 15

INDEX

Reprinted by permission: © 1998: The Education Trust. All rights reserved.The Center for the Future of Teaching & Learning • 133 Mission Street, Suite 220 • Santa Cruz, CA 95060

831-427-3628 • www.cftl.org

Good Teaching Matters... A Lot

INTRODUCTION

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THE CENTER FOR THE FUTURE OF TEACHING AND LEARNING 3

For decades, educators, educators-in-training andthe public more broadly have been relentlessly fedthe same message about achievement among poorand minority students: “Because of poverty andother neighborhood conditions, these studentsenter school behind other students. As theyprogress through the grades, the deficits accumu-late, leaving them further and further behind otherstudents.” Their conclusion? Nothing schools domakes a very big difference.

As an organization, we have questioned the pre-vailing explanation for some time. “If poverty al-ways overwhelms everything else,” we ask, “whatexplains the 89% pass rate on the Texas state as-sessment by the Loma Terrace School in El Pasowhere almost 90% of the children are poor? Orwhat about the 95% fourth grade pass rate on thesame exam by the entire Mission IndependentSchool District with a 94% poverty rate? And why,if schools really don’t make a difference, are thelow-income students in Community School Dis-trict #2 in New York City performing so muchhigher now than were their counterparts a decadeago?”

Always, the response is the same. “It’s that super-star principal/superintendent (choose one). Wecan’t expect those kinds of feats from the meremortals who lead most of our schools.”

But what if that answer is wrong? What if theseschools are succeeding not on the force ofsomeone’s personality, but simply by teaching stu-dents what they need to know to perform at highlevels? What if, in other words, poor and minor-ity students are performing below other students

not because something is wrong with them or theirfamilies, but because most schools don’t botherto teach them what they need to know?

By now, those of you who are familiar with ourwork know that we are absolutely convinced – byboth research and extensive experience in class-rooms all over the country – that poor and minor-ity youngsters will achieve at the same high lev-els as other students if they are taught at thoselevels. In our groundbreaking report, EducationWatch: The Education Trust National and StateData Book, we document the clear relationshipbetween low standards, low-level curriculum, un-der-educated teachers and poor results. We argue,further, that if states and school districts work hardon these three issues, they can close the achieve-ment gap.

Most of the time, we have felt as Ron Edmondsundoubtedly felt: surrounded by researchers cling-ing to dog-eared copies of the Coleman Reportand arguing that nothing works.

Recently, however, a number of large-scale stud-ies provide convincing proof that what we do ineducation does matter. Schools – and especiallyteachers, it turns out – really DO make a differ-ence. Earlier educational researchers just didn’thave very good ways of measuring the variables.

We have chosen to focus this issue of Thinking K-16 on what all of the studies conclude is the mostsignificant factor in student achievement: theteacher. We focus here not because we think im-provements in teachers’ capabilities or changes inteacher assignment patterns are, by themselves, a

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If we only took the

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simple step of

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assuring that poor

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and minority

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children had highly

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qualified teachers,

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about half of the

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achievement gap

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would disappear.

HOW WELL QUALIFIED TEACHERSCAN CLOSE THE GAP

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TEACHING AND CALIFORNIA’S FUTURE4

Parents have always known that it matters a lotwhich teachers their children get. That is why thosewith the time and skills to do so work very hard toassure that, by hook or by crook, their childrenare assigned to the best teachers. (That is also atleast part of the reason why the children of lessskilled parents are often left with the worst teach-ers, but more on that later.)

Professional educators typically reject these no-tions. When parents ask for their children to beassigned to a particular teacher, or to be movedout of the classroom of another, most principalscounsel them not to worry. “Your child will learnwhat he or she needs to from any of our teach-ers.”

Recent research from Tennessee, Texas, Massa-chusetts and Alabama proves that parents havebeen right all along. They may not always knowwhich teachers really are the best, but they areabsolutely right in believing that their children willlearn a lot from some teachers and only a littlefrom others-even though the two teachers may bein adjacent classrooms. “The difference betweena good and a bad teacher can be a full level ofachievement in a single school year,” says EricHanushek, the University of Rochester economistnotorious for macro-analyses suggesting that vir-tually nothing seems to make a difference.

■ TEACHER EFFECTS: TENNESSEETennessee is one of the few states with data sys-tems that make it possible to tie teachers toachievement in their classrooms. Moreover, thestate’s value-added approach for assessing studentachievement allows observers to look at the gainsstudents make during a particular school year.

William L. Sanders, director of the Value-AddedResearch and Assessment Center at the Univer-sity of Tennessee, Knoxville, has studied these dataextensively. By grouping teachers into quintilesbased on their effectiveness in producing studentlearning gains, his work allows us to examine theimpact of teacher effectiveness on the learning ofdifferent types of students, from low- to high-achievers.

The chart adjacent shows the effect teachers fromdifferent quintile levels have on low-achieving stu-dents. On average, the least effective teachers (Ql)produce gains of about 14 percentile points dur-ing the school year. By contrast, the most effec-tive teachers (Q5) posted gains among low-achiev-ing students that averaged 53 percentile points.

The Tennessee data show dramatic differences formiddle- and high-achieving groups of students,too. For example, high-achieving students gainan average of only 2 points under the direction ofQ1 (least effective ) teachers but an average of 25

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GOOD TEACHING MATTERS... A LOT

silver bullet, but because such changes are clearlymore important to increasing student achievement– especially among poor and minority students –than any other.

We focus on teacher qualifications here also be-cause this is an issue within our power to change.If we but took the simple step of assuring that poorand minority children had teachers of the samequality as other children, about half of the achieve-ment gap would disappear. If we went further andassigned our best teachers to the students who mostneed them (a step, by the way, that makes sense to

most people outside of education), there’s persua-sive evidence to suggest that we could entirelyclose the gap.

Thought provoking, yes? Read on.– Kati Haycock

We gratefully acknowledge the support of theNational Science Foundation Division of Under-graduate Education, the National Association ofSystem Heads, and the State Higher EducationExecutive Officers for this publication.

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■ TEACHER EFFECTS: DALLASA variety of recent studies in Texas show similardifferences in achievement between studentstaught by teachers of differing quality. Borrowingfrom some of Sanders’s techniques, researchersin the Dallas Independent School District recentlycompleted their first-ever study of teacher effectson the ability of students to perform on assess-ments. In sharing their findings, Robert Mendro,the district’s executive director of institutional re-search, said, “what surprised us the most was thesize of the effect.”3

For example, the average reading scores of a groupof Dallas fourth graders who were assigned to threehighly effective teachers in a row rose from the59th percentile in fourth grade to the 76th percen-tile by the conclusion of sixth grade. A fairly simi-lar (but slightly higher achieving) group of stu-dents was assigned three consecutive ineffectiveteachers and fell from the 60th percentile in fourthgrade to the 42nd percentile by the end of sixthgrade. A gap of this magnitude – more than 35percentile points – for students who started offroughly the same is hugely significant.

points under the guidance of Q5 (most effective)teachers. Middle achievers gain a mere 10 pointswith Q1 teachers but in the mid-30s with Q5 teach-ers.

There is also considerable evidence that, at leastin Tennessee, the effects of teachers are long-lived,whether they advance student achievement orsquash it. Indeed, even two years after the fact,the performance of fifth-grade students is still af-fected by the quality of their third-grade teacher.The chart to the right shows the examples of dif-ferent patterns of teacher effectiveness for onemetropolitan system.

As Sanders points out, students whose initialachievement levels are comparable have “vastlydifferent academic outcomes as a result of the se-quence of teachers to which they are assigned.2

Differences of this magnitude – 50 percentilepoints – are stunning. As all of us know only toowell, they can represent the difference between a“remedial” label and placement in the “acceler-ated” or even “gifted” track. And the differencebetween entry into a selective college and a life-time at McDonald’s.

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The impact of teacher effectiveness is also clearin mathematics. For example, a group of begin-ning third-graders in Dallas who averaged aroundthe 55th percentile in mathematics scored aroundthe 76th percentile at the end of fifth grade afterbeing assigned to three highly effective teachersin a row. By contrast, a slightly higher achievinggroup of third graders-averaging around the 57thpercentile-were consecutively taught by three ofthe least effective teachers. By the conclusion offifth grade, the second group’s percentile rankinghad fallen to 27th. This time the youngsters, whohad scored nearly the same as beginning third-graders, were separated by a full 50 percentilepoints just three years later.

■ TEACHER EFFECTS: BOSTONThe Boston Public Schools are taking a seriouslook at factors that influence student learning, in-cluding the effectiveness of their teachers. A re-cently released study by Bain and Company con-ducted on behalf of the district shows the correla-tion between high school teachers and their stu-dents’ academic growth in math and reading. Theauthors examined classrooms of BPS tenth-grad-ers whose average scores were approximately thesame and charted their progress over the year byteacher. The differences were dramatic. In read-ing, they found that although the gains of studentswith the top third teachers were slightly below thenational median for growth (5.6 on average com-pared to 8.0), the students with teachers from thebottom third showed virtually no growth (0.3). Themath results were even more striking. The top thirdteachers produced gains on average that exceededthe national median (14.6 to 11.0 nationally),whereas the bottom third again showed virtuallyno growth (-0.6).

Altogether, this means that one-third of BPS teach-ers are producing six times the learning seen inthe bottom third. As one frustrated headmaster putit, “About one-third of my teachers should not beteaching.”

■ WHAT MAKES FOR TEACHEREFFECTIVENESS?

None of these studies has yet advanced to the ob-vious next step: identifying the qualities that makefor an effective teacher. But other researchers haveused Texas’s extensive database on both teachersand students to examine the impact of specificteacher characteristics on student achievement.Together with work from Alabama and NorthCarolina, this research helps us to get underneaththe matter of teacher effectiveness.

1. Strong Verbal and Math SkillsThe first thing that is clear when you look acrossthe various studies is the critical importance ofstrong verbal and math skills. Harvard’s RonaldF. Ferguson, for example, has looked closely atthe relationship between student achievement andteacher performance on a basic literacy examina-tion (the Texas Examination of Current Adminis-

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trators and Teachers, which was administered toall teachers and administrators in Texas in 1986).Ferguson found a significant positive relationshipbetween teacher test scores on TECAT and stu-dent scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS),with higher scoring teachers more likely to pro-duce significant gains in student achievement thantheir lower scoring counterparts. Indeed, a changeof one standard deviation in a district’s teacherscores produced a corresponding change of .17standard deviation in student scores, when otherdifferences were controlled.4

Ferguson got similar results in an analysis of theimpact of teacher and classroom qualities on stu-dent achievement scores in Alabama. As in theTexas studies, he found a strong positive relation-ship between teacher test scores (in this case, ACTscores) and student achievement results.5

2. Deep Content KnowledgeThere is also considerable research showing howimportant teachers’ content knowledge is to theireffectiveness with students, especially at themiddle and senior high school levels. The data areespecially clear in mathematics and science whereteachers with majors in the fields they teach rou-tinely get higher student performance than teach-ers who did not. Goldhaber and Brewer examinedthis relationship using data from the National Edu-cational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS), anongoing survey of individuals who were in eighth

grade in 1988. Goldhaber and Brewer found a sig-nificant positive relationship between teachers’degrees and students’ achievement in technicalsubjects. They concluded that “in mathematics andscience, it is the teacher subject-specific knowl-edge that is the important factor in determiningtenth-grade achievement.”6

The data are less clear in English and social stud-ies; in these subjects students taught by majorsdon’t show consistently better scores than studentstaught by teachers who majored in something else.However, other evidence suggests that content isno less important in these two disciplines. For ex-ample, a recent study in Hawaii asked social stud-ies teachers to rate their own level of understand-ing about various historical periods and teachingmethods, then compared teacher expertise to stu-dent achievement. Not surprisingly, there was analmost perfect match: students performed best inthe domains where teachers indicated the mostexpertise.7

3. Teaching Skill?All of this seems to beg the question: what aboutteaching knowledge and skills? Is content knowl-edge really sufficient for effective teaching?Clearly not. One only has to spend a few semes-ters in higher education to see that the deep con-tent knowledge inherent in the Ph.D. doesn’t nec-essarily lead to effective teaching.

That said, the large-scale studies we have reviewedare not particularly helpful in identifying ways toquantify teaching expertise. Neither educationcourses completed, advanced education degrees,scores on professional knowledge sections of li-censure exams nor, interestingly, years of experi-ence seem to have a clear relationship to studentachievement. Perhaps the work going on at theNational Board for Professional Teaching Stan-dards or Lee Shulman’s work on “pedagogicalcontent knowledge” at the Carnegie Foundationfor the Advancement of Teaching will advance ourunderstanding of – and options for developing andmeasuring – teaching knowledge and skill.

In the meantime, we suggest that educational lead-ers not get sidetracked: there is more than suffi-cient evidence about the importance of deep con-

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Students’ test scores

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can mean the

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difference between

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a remedial label

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and the gifted

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track – or between

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entry into a

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selective college

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and a lifetime

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at McDonald’s.

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tent knowledge and strong verbal skills to serveas a foundation for immediate action. At the veryleast, we know enough to call the question withfaculty in the arts and sciences, who, after all, areresponsible for developing both content knowl-edge and verbal skills among intending teachers.It is also enough to justify a second look at hiringand assignment criteria. If good teachers matter,we need to be sure that we are getting the best wecan.

■ INEQUITIES IN DISTRIBUTIONOur emerging understanding of the critical impor-tance of good teachers has especially profoundimplications for poor and minority youngsters. Forno matter how quality is defined, these youngsterscome up on the short end. While the teaching forcein high-poverty and high-minority communitiescertainly includes some of the most dedicated andtalented teachers in the country, the truth is thatthese teachers are vastly outnumbered by under-and, indeed, unqualified colleagues.

These patterns are clear in national data tabula-tions on out-of-field teaching specially preparedfor the Education Trust earlier this year by Rich-ard Ingersoll, a professor at the University of Geor-gia. As is evident in the table below (as well as inthe state tabulations on page 10-11) minority andpoor youngsters – the very youngsters who aremost dependent on their teachers for contentknowledge – are systematically taught by teach-ers with the least content knowledge.

Similar inequities show up at all grade levels inthe state-level studies described above, and manymore. For example, in Tennessee, black studentsare almost twice as likely to be taught by ineffec-tive “Q1” teachers as are white children, and areconsiderably less likely to be taught by the mosteffective teachers.

The patterns look quite similar in Texas, where,according to researchers John Kain and KraigSingleton, African American and Latino childrenare far more likely to be taught by teachers whoscored poorly on the TECAT examination. Indeed,as the percentage of non-white children in theschool increases, the average teacher score de-clines.8 Finding the same patterns in his analysis,Ferguson wrote that “[i]n Texas, and certainly inother places too, attracting and retaining talentedpeople, with strong skills to teach in the districtswhere black students are heavily represented ispart of the unfinished business of equalizing edu-cational opportunity.”9

■ RACE MORE THAN CLASS?Contrary to the assumptions that many people maymake, inequities in the distribution of teacher ex-pertise are not driven wholly by finances. If theywere, we would expect that poor minority chil-dren would have teachers of about the same qual-ity as poor white children. But such is not alwaysthe case.

In their analysis of Texas data, Kain and Single-ton found disturbing differences. Poor white chil-dren, it turns out, appear to have a higher likeli-hood of having well qualified teachers than poorblack children.10

Similar patterns are evident in teacher quality datafrom other states. In the chart on following pages,for example, it is clear that students who attendpredominantly minority secondary schools inVirginia are more likely to be taught by under-qualified teachers than students who attend high-poverty secondary schools. The same is true inPennsylvania and Oklahoma: students in high-minority secondary schools are more likely to betaught by teachers without a college major in thesubject they are teaching.

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The problems in central cities are particularlyacute, according to a 1995 report from the NationalGovernors Association. “Emergency hiring, as-signment of teachers outside their fields of prepa-ration, and high turnover in underfunded schoolsconspire to produce a situation in which many poorand minority students are taught throughout theirentire school careers by a steady stream of the leastqualified and experienced teachers.”11

percentage of students who fail standardizedcompetency exams. 13

In other words, much of what we have blamed onchildren and their families for decades is actuallythe result of things we have done to them. As anation, we have deprived our neediest students ofthe very ingredient most important to learning: ahighly qualified teacher.

In his analyses of the Texas data base, Fergusonfound a small number of school districts that areexceptions to the general pattern (see chart on page12). A look at how their youngsters benefit from asteady diet of higher performing teachers givesus a glimpse of how the national data for poor andminority students could look ... if we had the will.

■ ASSURING QUALIFIED TEACHERS FORALL OF OUR CHILDREN

These findings have profound implications forstates and communities that are striving to getvastly larger numbers of their students to high stan-dards of achievement. If education leaders wantto accomplish this goal in the near term, they arefar more likely to do so if they focus, first andforemost, on quality – quality in teacher prepara-tion, recruitment, hiring, assignment, and ongo-ing professional development.

This goes doubly for schools and communitieswith concentrations of poor and minority children.Rather than continuing to accept the crumbs, theseschools and communities must insist on the verybest teachers for their children. After all, poor andminority children depend on their teachers like noothers. In the hands of our best teachers, the ef-fects of poverty and institutional racism melt away,allowing these students to soar to the same heightsas young Americans from more advantagedhomes. But if they remain in the hands ofunderqualified teachers, poor and minority stu-dents will continue to fulfill society’s limited ex-pectations of them.

What, then, are the elements of a strategy to as-sure highly qualified teachers for all young Ameri-cans?

We don’t yet have all the answers. But we knowenough to start the conversations. Here are the

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In the hands of

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our best teachers,

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the effects of poverty

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and institutional

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racism melt away...

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■ A MORE EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OFTEACHER EXPERTISE

What would happen if minority and poor childrenhad teachers of the same quality as other children?A large part of the gap would simply disappear.The estimates vary somewhat depending upon thestatistical model used, but in no case is the effectminor.

• Ferguson’s modeling for several metropolitanAlabama districts suggests that an increase of1 standard deviation in the test scores ofteachers who teach black children wouldproduce a decline of about two-thirds in theblack/white test score gap in that state.12

• Strauss’s study of student achievement inNorth Carolina suggested that a 1% relativeincrease in teacher scores on the NTE wouldbring about a 5% relative decline in the

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The most important educational investment astate can make is in highly qualified teachers.When teachers have too little knowledge of thesubjects that they teach, their students are de-nied the most basic learning resource. There areseveral ways to examine teacher quality. Thischart shows one: the percentage of secondaryschool classes taught by teachers who lack a col-lege major in the subject area.

The chart shows, by state:• the overall percentages of classes taught byteachers who do not have a major in thesubject they teach; and

• the percentages of classes taught by teacherswho do not have a major in the subject thatthey are teaching in high-poverty schoolshigh-minority schools (schools in which morethan 50% of the students are low-income ornon-white) vs. low-poverty schools/low-minority schools (schools in which fewerthan 15% of the students are low-income ornon-white).

In reviewing the chart, the reader will see a starkand troubling pattern: low-income students andstudents of color are less likely than other stu-

dents to be taught by teachers with a college ma-jor in the subject area that they are teaching.

The data used to build this chart are drawn fromthe Schools and Staffing Survey conducted bythe National Center for Education Statistics(NCES) in school year 1993–94. RichardIngersoll of the University of Georgia conductedthe analysis. While the Schools and StaffingSurvey is large scale, in some states the data areinadequate to support stable estimation for cer-tain kinds of schools so we have not printed apercentage. There are other cases where thesample meets normal standards, but the Educa-tion Trust staff cautions the reader with an “*”that these samples are “on the smallish side” andadvises further research.

We have ranked states on the overall quality oftheir teachers. The fewer underqualified teach-ers, the better the rank. We also rank states ac-cording to disparity in assignment ofunderqualified teachers. “Disparity by poverty,”for example, is the difference between the per-centage of classes in high- and low-povertyschools that are taught by underqualified teach-ers.

STATE INVESTMENT IN WELL-PREPARED TEACHERS

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When teachers

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have too little

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knowledge of the

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subjects that they

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teach, their students

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are denied the

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most basic

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learning resource.

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more powerful ideas we have gleaned from ourwork with leading states and cities:

1. Standards for entry into the profession.A number of states are raising the standards forentry into the profession. Virginia, for example,has raised both course requirements in the arts andsciences and cut scores on the Praxis examina-tions for aspiring teachers. Massachusetts has de-vised new and much more rigorous examinations,especially in the content areas.

While these attempts are commendable, it is alsoimportant to make sure that the measures forteacher content knowledge are solid and alignedwith K-12 standards.

Preliminary information suggests that existing ex-aminations may be too low: an analysis of a widelyused test for prospective high school physicsteachers, for example, featured content that onereviewer described as “appropriate for a rigorousninth-grade physical science course.” If this iscorrect, these tests are wholly insufficient eitherto assure adequate content knowledge of indi-vidual teachers or to use for accountability pur-poses with arts and sciences departments.

Any discussion about raising entry standards forteachers should include an examination of how

well the standards align with the K-12 contentcandidates will have to teach, and the assessmentsused to find out if candidates can teach this con-tent.

2. Accountability measures for colleges anduniversities that prepare teachers.

In Texas, for example, colleges that have pass ratesbelow 70% (soon to be 75%) on the state’s teacherlicensure exam will lose the right to prepare teach-ers. To be sure that its intentions are understood,the legislature spells out precisely what it means:70% of the white graduates, 70% of the Latinograduates, 70% of the black graduates and so on.Not a single group can be left behind. Moreover,if aspiring math teachers, for example, cannot passthe exam, then the math department loses the fran-chise. Other states are heading in this direction,as well. Universities, together with their nearbyschool districts, could take the lead from suchstate-level actions: decide on what intending teach-ers need to know in their subjects and hold aca-demic departments accountable for getting themthere before they graduate.

3. Professional development for existingteachers.

Teacher effectiveness is not forever fixed. Throughcareful development, teachers can build their ef-fectiveness over time. In Community School Dis-trict #2 in New York City, Superintendent TonyAlvarado has invested generously in the profes-sional development of his principals and teach-ers. Focusing initially on reading, and then mov-ing to mathematics, Alvarado made sure his teach-ers, in particular, got lots of on-site coaching fromexperts. As a result, student achievement hasclimbed steadily over the past 10 years. Univer-sity of Michigan researcher David Cohen’s recentstudy of professional development in Californiaalso shows its impact on student achievementwhen professional development focuses on newcurricula and the content that undergirds it.14 Simi-lar results are evident in broad achievement gainsin the three El Paso school districts, where morethan 50 full-time teacher-coaches provide in-school assistance to teachers as they strive to im-prove student achievement.

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These successful strategies differ in importantways from many professional development pro-grams and initiatives. Far from the three-hourworkshop about isolated topics, these strategiesare ongoing, on-site and focused on the contentthat students should learn.

4. Assurance that poor and minority childrenhave teachers that are at least as qualifiedas the ones that teach other students.

Actually, if we had our druthers, we would pushfor a policy requiring that, for the next two de-cades or so, these students should systematicallybe assigned our best teachers. Achieving eithergoal, though, would require careful attention to:

• Just who we are preparing to teach – wherethey come from and where they want to teach,in particular;

• Interdistrict differences in salaries forbeginning and mid-career teachers;

• The practice of concentrating beginningteachers in school buildings with concentra-tions of poor children;

• District policies – often gained throughcollective bargaining – that reward seniorteachers with the “right” to transfer to “easier”schools;

• Practices within schools, where teachers fightover who has to teach whom, with the senior,better educated teachers often winding up withthe most advanced children; and

• The absence of clear incentives and prevalenceof disincentives for teachers to work with poorand minority children.

These practices have been around for so long thatthey seem beyond change. But some school dis-tricts are beginning to make headway on rootingout these inequities. In San Antonio, for example,new policies on teacher assignment have begunto balance the distribution of teachers within thedistrict. In other districts, special targeting of morehighly compensated “mentor” positions is begin-ning to even out teacher expertise. Energetic prin-cipals can also reverse the normal pattern. Forexample, in the Los Angeles Unified School Dis-trict, where uncertified and out-of-field teachers

are the norm, Principal Lupe Simpson of the all-minority Nimitz Middle School has a mathemat-ics department full of fully certified, mathematicsmajors. How? By working her contacts with localuniversities.

5. “Parent Right to Know” policies.Parents deserve to know when their children arebeing taught science by history majors or historyby physical education grads. To be sure, thisknowledge has been available to some, mostlyaffluent parents through their community grape-vines. But nowhere has there been a systematicway of letting all parents know that their child’steacher has enough background in the subject toteach it so their students will understand it. Whenparents know where the needs are greatest, theycan become partners in local efforts to secure anadequate number of well-qualified teachers for alltheir students.

6. Recruitment and rewards to attract the bestinto teaching.

We worry that, instead of seeking out the very best,too many teacher preparation programs simplymake do with what walks in the door. That’s notgood, because SAT and other data suggest that thehigh school seniors who aspire to become teach-ers are among the least able of all prospective col-lege students. It’s also not good for communitieswith concentrations of minority and poor studentsbecause few of those who aspire to become teach-ers either grew up in or want to teach in such com-munities.

Many leaders in teacher preparation programs saythat they’re doing the best they can – that low sala-ries and lower prestige make it impossible to at-tract able candidates, especially minorities, to theteaching profession and higher standards willmake it worse. We remain unconvinced. If theseclaims are correct, then why does Teach forAmerica, which has far higher standards than mosteducation schools, routinely attract far more quali-fied graduates than it can place? And why, amongTeach for America’s way-above-average corpsmembers, are there more than twice as many mi-norities as there are in education schools?15 Thesame would appear to be true for alternate certifi-

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If education

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leaders want

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to close the

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achievement gap,

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they must focus,

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first and foremost,

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on developing

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qualified teachers.

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cation programs that cater to young or mid-careerprofessionals from other fields: no lack of smartor minority applicants.

These experiences and others tell us that we canproduce the highly qualified teachers that we needby combining:

• High entry standards;

• Rich incentives like generous scholarships andloan forgiveness for highly able professionalswho want to teach in high-poverty schools;

• Accountability systems that reward depart-ments and campuses for the numbers of theirtop students that enter teaching; and

• Non-traditional, yet still rigorous, routes intothe profession.

These are just some of the pieces of a solution tothe vexing problem of assuring that we have teach-

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We cannot wait

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until every piece

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of this puzzle is

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in hand. We must

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use the devices

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we have to lure

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the best teacher

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candidates in,

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screen others out,

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and develop

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the rest.

In 1992, leaders at the University of Texas-El Paso and the three El Paso-area schooldistricts, El Paso, Ysleta, and Socorro cametogether to create the El Paso Collaborative,a comprehensive effort to raise studentachievement kindergarten through college.Their goal was to prepare every young per-son in this highly impoverished border cityto be able to enter college withoutremediation, and the El Paso Standards theyset reflected that goal.

Over the next five years, they focused hardon what matters most: excellent teaching.Through the Collaborative, El Paso teach-ers received intensive assistance in improv-ing instruction, including summer institutesand regular on-site coaching, funded througha combination of NSF dollars and a redirec-tion of federal and state funds. Meanwhile,leaders at the University made major changesin the way they were preparing teachers, tomake sure that such teachers were fully pre-pared to teach to the El Paso standards.

ers to match our goals. Solving this problem re-quires concerted action from policymakers, lead-ers in both K-12 and higher education, teacherunions, and parents. No single party can win thebattle alone. All must be involved and at the tableif we are to craft sound policies that will succeed.

But we must also understand that we cannot waituntil every piece of this puzzle is in hand. Ourinability to answer every question about teachereffectiveness right now shouldn’t make us reluc-tant to use the devices we do have to begin to lurethe best in, screen others out, and intensively de-velop the rest. And it certainly shouldn’t deter usfrom doing what it takes to assure that poor andminority youngsters get at least their fair share ofeffective, well-prepared teachers.

EL PASO CLOSING THE GAP

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The results of their hard work are clear inthe data below: improved achievement anda narrower gap between groups. This is a re-freshing change from the national picture offlat achievement and a widening gap be-tween groups. Investing in teachers reallydoes pay dividends!

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1. Eric A. Hanushek, “The Trade-Off Between ChildQuantity and Quality,” Journal of Political Economy,1992

2. William 1. Sanders and June C. Rivers, “Cumulativeand Residual Effects of Teachers on Future StudentsAcademic Achievement,” 1998, p. 9

3. Jeff Archer, “Students’ Fortune Rests With AssignedTeacher,” Education Week, Washington, DC, February 18,1998

4. Ronald F. Ferguson, “Evidence That Schools CanNarrow the Black-White Test Score Gap,” 1997, p. 32

5. Ronald F. Ferguson and Helen F. Ladd, “How and WhyMoney Matters: An Analysis of Alabama Schools,” inHolding Schools Accountable: Performance Based Reformin Education, Brookings Institute: Washington, DC, 1996

6. Dan D. Goldhaber and Dominic J. Brewer, “Evaluatingthe Effect of Teacher Degree Level on EducationalPerformance,” in Developments in School Finance, 1996,p. 199

7. Eva L. Baker, “Report on the Content Area Perfor-mance Assessments (CAPA): A Collaboration AmongHawaii Dept. of Education, the Center for Research onEvaluation Standards and Student Testing, and theTeachers and Children of Hawaii,” 1996, p. 17

8. John F. Kain and Kraig Singleton, “Equality ofEducational Opportunity Revisited,” New EnglandEconomic Review, May/June 1996, p. 109

9. Ferguson, “Evidence That Schools Can Narrow theBlack-White Test Score Gap,” p. 30

10. Kain and Singleton, p. 109

11. Linda Darling-Hammond, “The Role of TeacherExpertise and Experience in Students’ Opportunity toLearn,” in Strategies for Linking School Finance andStudents’ Opportunity to Learn, National GovernorsAssociation, Washington, DC: 1996

13. Ferguson and Ladd, p. 278

14. Robert P. Strauss and Elizabeth A. Sawyer, “SomeNew Evidence on Teacher and Student Competencies,”Economics of Education Review, 1986, p. 41

15. David K. Cohen and Heather C. Hill, “State Policy andClassroom Performance,” CPRE Policy Briefs, January1998

16. Teach for America, 1997 Annual Report, New York,NY

NOTES

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