New Report Focuses on Improving Teacher Effectiveness by Improving Preparation Programs and Competency Testing

Probably the most serious barrier to equal educational opportunity for low income and minority students is that to a disproportionate extent, they are taught by teachers who are inexperienced and/or ineffective. The federal No Child Left Behind Law (NCLB) purported to remedy this situation by requiring states to ensure that minority and low-income students not be taught by inexperienced, or unqualified teachers at rates higher than other children. A major problem, however, is that NCLB essentially defines a “highly qualified” teacher as one with who has met state certification, but the law and its regulations contain no qualitative requirements for state certification, and requirements in many states certification merely attests to the fact that an individual has minimal subject matter knowledge , but in no way confirms “high quality” or effectiveness in actual teaching skills.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is pressing for inclusion of requirements for teacher “effectiveness” in his proposals for reauthorization of NCLB, but the main mechanism for defining teacher effectiveness that the Department is proposing, tying teacher promotion and tenure to student achievement data, appears to be far ahead of the ability of current data and evaluation systems to accurately correlate teacher input to student outcome data. A new report by the Center for American Progress (CAP) takes a different approach to this critical, but elusive problem. It turns the spotlight on improving teacher effectiveness by beefing up teacher preparation programs and re-designing certification requirements and assessments.

The report, “Measuring What Matters” by Edward Crowe, recommends major changes in assessment procedures for graduates of teacher education programs. Crowe is a consultant on teacher quality policy for several foundations and policy organizations, and served as the first director of the Title II Teacher Quality Enhancement Program for the U.S. Department of Education. According to the author, the problem with the current assessments is that the standards are confusing, they have not proven to be effective in determining teacher excellence, and they have “very little value as an accountability mechanism,” partly because the passing rates are set too low. He states that 96 percent of U.S. teacher education graduates passed all state tests in 2006. His proposal would reduce the current mish mash of 1100 different teacher tests to 90 tests to be used nationwide.

Specifically, Crowe proposes:

1. Vastly reducing the number of tests used and developing new tests with predictive validity in mind
2. Eliminating basic skills tests, and adopting rigorous program administration standards to weed out the weakest students before they enter teaching preparation programs
3. Utilizing rigorous new tests of subject area content knowledge and professional knowledge, pegged to meaningful levels of knowledge and performance by grade levels and subject areas
4. Requiring cut scores for passing the tests to be established at levels high enough to ensure that only the strongest prospective teachers are allowed to complete preparation programs and obtain an initial license to teach in public school classrooms
5. Having identical tests and passing scores adopted in every state (as is done with medicine, accountancy and engineering), and covering all forms of teacher preparation, including both traditional and alternative routes.

Crowe also recommends the following set of sophisticated measures of teacher effectiveness tied to student achievement:

1. Tie K-12 pupil learning outcomes to graduates of preparation programs and hold the programs accountable for teacher effectiveness.
2. Begin to implement high-quality observational assessments of classroom teaching by supporting efforts to link these assessments to student achievement and by developing rigorous training for classroom observers to ensure reliable assessment findings.
3. Employ current state data systems to track the teaching persistence rates for graduates of every program, and use the findings as a public disclosure measure.
4. Implement feedback surveys of preparation program graduates and their employers using state education, labor department (or state insurance department), university, and school district data systems.

The article also highlights three states—Louisiana, Florida, and Texas—that are already taking measures toward holding teacher preparation programs accountable for teacher efficacy.

The CAP report suggests using nationwide, common sets of assessment for educators that are split between subject area knowledge and professional knowledge, but it provides few other detailed suggestions for what these exams would look like.

Comparability of Teacher Salaries

A related issue regarding the distribution of effective teachers to schools attended by low income and minority students is that fact that Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) currently allows school districts to satisfy its “comparability” requirements by using average district-wide salary rates in its calculations rather than actual salaries paid to teachers in specific schools in the district. Actual rates are, of course, often substantially higher for the experienced teachers who tend to teach in disproportionate numbers in more affluent schools. This practice leaves high-poverty schools at a disadvantage because they receive fewer funds than low-poverty schools to recruit and maintain teaching staffs, and are thus often unable to attract high-quality professionals.

The CAP published a report in March 2010 discussing this loophole and proposing specific mechanisms to close it. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently addressed this issue, stating that “Under current law…districts can essentially hide inequities in state and local spending between poorer schools and wealthier schools because they only have to show average salaries of teachers—not actual salaries.” Duncan also said that “revising the comparability rule could be one of the most important policy changes in a generation to drive equity for low-income and minority students and we look forward to working with Congress on this issue.”

Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA) recently introduced a bill, “The ESEA Fiscal Fairness Act” (H.R. 5071) that explicitly seeks to close this comparability loophole by requiring that real teacher salaries, not abstract district average figures, be used in calculations of per-pupil expenditures. Cong. Fattah has obtained support for the bill from the National Education Association (NEA) by including a specific provision that states that, “Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to require the forced or involuntary transfer of any school personnel.” Fear of involuntary transfers have been a major concern of teacher unions that historically have opposed closing the comparability loophole for this reason.