Moderator:
Michael DeArmond
Researcher, Center on Reinventing Public Education
Speakers:
Tom Stritikus
Dean and Professor, University of Washington College of Education
Dan Goldhaber
Director, Center for Education Data & Research, University of Washington
Parker Baxter
Consultant, Center on Reinventing Public Education
The issue of improving the pipeline for educators has received a great deal of attention since the 2009 release of The Widget Effect, especially in states that won Race to the Top, noted moderator Mike DeArmond as he launched the session. Two essential themes for furthering this work are that teachers matter and effectiveness varies across the workforce, according to DeArmond. “All these reforms are trying to move away from the widget treatment and toward recognizing and responding to differences in effectiveness,” he said.
DeArmond said current work being done to improve the quality of teachers entering the profession includes:
- The National Council on Teacher Quality is overseeing a review of teacher preparation programs. (It is scheduled to be released in fall 2012.)
- Accreditation of preparation programs is being discussed in New York.
- Assessments of teacher candidates are being developed in CA, IL, TN, CO, and NY.
Improving accountability for teacher preparation programs
Parker Baxter of the Center on Reinventing Public Education spoke about CO SB 191, passed in 2010, and used as a model for many states looking to improve teacher effectiveness. He noted that it was bundled with several other laws that work together. One created the Colorado Growth Model which allows the state to track individual student performance, year to year, and compare to similar cohorts across the state. Another measure—initially opposed by the teacher unions--created an “educator identifier” that made it possible to tie that individual student test data to teachers in individual schools. Lastly, SB 10-036, known by the acronym PREP (Program Results for Teacher Preparation) requires the state to use individual student growth data to report on teacher prep programs. As a result of these changes, it is now possible for Colorado to track individual student growth results, tie those results to individual teachers, and to use this data to report on—and potentially evaluate—the state’s teacher preparation programs.
“I’m not advocating for this data to be used to make immediate decisions on personnel or program accreditation, but now that we can capture this data it would be crazy for educators and policy-makers not to use it to inform our decision making,” said Baxter. “At the district and school level, if you have the student growth data and it’s tied to individual teachers it’s obvious that any smart leader would start looking at where the teachers are getting their training. I don’t mean it to be punitive, but it is another level of data that we can use to inform decision-making and hopefully improve quality. The data Colorado is now capturing also includes data on alternative certification programs, so now we’ll be able to compare those teachers to traditionally trained teachers as well.”
How evaluating preparation programs can improve teaching
Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Education Data & Research (CEDR), said it’s important to distinguish between value-added models for teachers and assessments of preparation programs because there’s not a great baseline measure for prep programs. He said CEDR’s research has shown some schools do better than others in terms of screening for the right people, while others do a better job of training their education students. “At this point, our finding is that most programs can’t be differentiated from each other,” he said.
When asked why it’s important to evaluate teacher preparation programs, Tom Stritikus of the University of Washington Seattle said, “What’s addressed by doing this work is that we don’t have any confidence that licensure is connected to student learning. It doesn’t mean licensure is bad, or that it couldn’t be good, but we just don’t know that this process actually helps kids. Preparation programs—both alternative and traditional providers—are in desperate need of accountability.” Stritikus said he’s most interested in how evaluation data can be used to improve practice.
Goldhaber said outside evaluation of preparation programs can help education schools transform. “I think it gives education school deans the ability to have hard conversations with the faculty, since it’s so hard to get people to change their practice,” he said. “It’s possible that that outside pressure might give you the freedom to get the department at the education school to move.”
The critical need for data
Stritikus said the goal should be putting the right kind of data in front of people. “What are willing to say about what quality teaching is?” he asked. “Are there a set of practices in teaching? What about across different subject domains? I’d push us toward that kind of data.”
Baxter said, “Right now, only a handful of states—Colorado, Louisiana, and Tennessee—have data on how student performance might differ depending on where a teacher is trained, but once we have it, it can be a powerful tool If, for example, we have two colleges of education training the majority of a district’s teacher candidates, we’re now able to see which school is doing a better job of educating teachers of English-Language Learners, rural vs. urban kids, or students with special needs. Traditionally, we’ve trained all teachers as if they go into the same classrooms with the same kids, but maybe the data will show us the need for differentiation. The idea that colleges of education and district and school leaders wouldn’t use this data to inform decision-making and improve program quality is insane.”
