Welcome
The Pope Center for Higher Education Policy is sponsoring an important education forum, "How Can We Get Better Teachers?" on January 15 in Raleigh. In anticipation of their event, this week’s CommenTerry outlines a handful of major research studies that examine the critical issue of teacher quality.
Bulletin Board
- Attend. A list of upcoming events sponsored by the John Locke Foundation can be found at the bottom of this newsletter, as well as here. We look forward to seeing you!
- Donate. If you find this newsletter mildly informative or entertaining, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to the John Locke Foundation. The John Locke Foundation is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization that does not accept nor seek government funding. It relies solely on generous support from individuals, corporations, small businesses, and foundations.
- Share. The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle and high school courses in North Carolina history. Go to the N.C. History Project website for further information.
- Discuss. I would like to invite all readers to submit brief announcements, personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Requests for anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at [email protected].
- Revisit. We have archived all research newsletters on our website. Access the archive here.
CommenTerry
There is no question that high-quality teachers produce high achieving students. The problem is that none of the standards that states traditionally use to identify high quality teachers has a significant effect on student performance. A large body of research shows that advanced degrees, years of experience, education courses, teacher test scores, and certification status do not improve teacher effectiveness. Writer Malcolm Gladwell said it most succinctly, "Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree — and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before." Until we reach Gladwell’s ideal, there are ways to reform the current certification and licensure system.
Unfortunately, North Carolina’s teacher certification policies continue to use these criteria to determine who can and cannot teach. These policies guarantee that mediocre but credentialed teachers remain in public schools, while talented but uncertified applicants are excluded from the teaching profession. The goal of North Carolina’s public schools should be to recruit the highest-quality teachers for our children, rather than finding teachers who have jumped through a sequence of required hoops.
North Carolina offers an alternative route to state certification called "lateral entry." The lateral-entry process allows qualified but uncertified candidates to earn state certification while teaching in a public school. Lateral-entry teachers must pass a series of tests and successfully complete a course of study prescribed by a college or university (or courses specified by one of the state’s three alternative-licensing centers).
North Carolina’s alternative-certification process is very similar to traditional certification. In fact, there is only one aspect of the process that is truly "alternative" — lateral-entry teachers complete state certification requirements after they receive a college degree, rather than before. A genuine alternative certification program is one that allows prospective teachers to earn state certification or otherwise qualify to teach in a North Carolina public school without enduring the expensive, time-consuming, and often unproductive sequence of education school coursework. The preponderance of research bears out this point.
Several studies show, for example, that the average lateral-entry teacher struggles in the classroom. Researchers Alisa Chapman and Gary Henry found that both alternative-entry and out-of-state teachers generally performed lower than the average North Carolina public school teacher. Graduates of UNC System universities performed slightly above average. On the other hand, of all types of teachers evaluated in the study, Teach for America teachers were, by far, the most effective novice teachers assessed. The Teach for America (TFA) program recruits top-notch college graduates (most of whom do not have an education degree or state certification) to teach in low-performing and/or low-income schools for two years.
Chapman and Henry’s findings about TFA teachers and certification (whether it is traditional or lateral-entry) are not unique. Another study using data from North Carolina evaluated the effectiveness of TFA teachers at the high-school level. Researchers found that inexperienced and unlicensed TFA teachers generally outperformed more experienced and licensed teachers. In fact, they concluded that disadvantaged students in secondary schools would be better off with TFA teachers, especially for the subjects of math and science, than with fully licensed in-field teachers with three or more years of experience.
Experience has a positive effect on student performance during the teacher’s first five years in the classroom. Multiple studies of North Carolina teachers confirm that teachers with one or two years of experience produce larger gains in student achievement than teachers with no experience. Of course, few would dispute the claim that teachers with experience tend to outperform those with none. Yet, there is evidence that teacher experience effects flat-line after a handful of years in the profession.
In 2011, UNC-Chapel Hill professors Gary Henry and Kevin Bastian and Georgia State University professor C. Kevin Fortner published a study of teacher retention and attrition in North Carolina. Henry and his associates asked a critical question: Did measures of teacher effectiveness increase because the early-career teachers acquired on-the-job skills or because less effective teachers left the profession?
The researchers examined teachers and test scores from North Carolina public schools and concluded:
- On average, teachers substantially increase their effectiveness between their first and second years of teaching.
- For teachers who remain in the profession for at least five years, returns to experience generally flatten after the third year of teaching.
- Frequently, teachers who leave after their first year are less effective than those who continue teaching into their second or later years.
- Teachers who leave after their third or fourth year are less effective in their final year of teaching, on average, than teachers who continue teaching into a fifth year.
- The performance of teachers who leave after three or four years of teaching often drops in the final year of teaching.
As mentioned earlier, North Carolina’s teacher pay scale is based on credentials and experience. If teacher effectiveness plateaus after the third year of teaching, then why does the state compensate teachers partly based on experience? The state pays experienced teachers more because they assume that experience continues to make teachers more effective or valuable over the course of their educational careers. If this is not the case, then we should pay teachers differently.
Note: The above is an excerpt from the forthcoming John Locke Foundation book, First in Freedom: Transforming Ideas into Consequences for North Carolina.
Facts and Stats
Percent of fully licensed teachers — 96.4%
Percent of emergency/provisional licensed teachers — 0.6%
Percent of lateral entry teachers — 2.3%
Percent of teachers with advanced degrees — 28.7%
Source: NC Department of Public Instruction, "State Level Report Card, 2011-12 School Year" NC School Report Cards website, http://www.ncreportcards.org/src/stateDetails.jsp?Page=1&pYear=2011-2012.
Education Acronym of the Week
TFA — Teach for America
Quote of the Week
"In general, the preponderance of evidence concludes that effective teachers are capable of inspiring significantly greater learning gains in their students when compared with their weaker colleagues. Most of this evidence is based on "value added" analyses of large sets of data linking individual students’ test scores to their teachers."
– Education Week overview of teacher quality research
Click here for the Education Update archive.
