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Research
That Matters
What Is the measure of a good teacher? With pressing demands to improve teacher quality, it’s a fair question to ask. Obvious answers revolve around credentials, advanced degrees, professional training, years on the job, and classroom scores on high-stakes achievement tests.
But the question — posed against a challenging educational landscape — is not so simple nor so easily quantified, as the work of two tenacious University of Washington researchers illustrates.
College of Education colleagues Marge Plecki and Ana Elfers began to systematically probe the broader “quality” question more than half a decade ago. Rather than looking at individual teachers at work in their classrooms, Plecki and Elfers set out to get a big picture of the teaching force across the state. Who, exactly, was teaching in Washington state classrooms? What and whom they were teaching? How well prepared were they, and did they feel equipped to deal with the increasingly diverse populations in their classrooms?
Table 1. (click for PDF)
They posed layers upon layers of questions: What kind of degrees did teachers hold? Did the degrees match assigned subject matter? Did teacher skills match the student needs? What factors played into students’ performances on that high-stakes test, and what weight should be given to scores?
The UW researchers also wanted to examine what kind of support teachers received, how equity issues played into the big picture, and how colleges could reshape teacher education programs to address emerging challenges.
Answering those questions was not easy. “Our state has lacked key data to answer even basic questions about teacher quality,” says Plecki, associate professor in educational leadership and policy studies.
DATA CHALLENGES
Plecki and Elfers describe assembling the data as a tedious and time-consuming task. They started with state datasets, using available material never intended to answer the kinds of questions they were asking. As they tried to link personnel and other state information to districts and schools, they kept running up against “silos” of data.
“These datasets had no way of talking to each other,” says research assistant professor Elfers. The UW researchers kept at it, digging, untangling, reconfiguring, double-checking as they began to compile a portrait of the state’s teaching workforce.
Even after years of work, Elfers and Plecki say there are limitations to the types of questions that state level data can answer. Yet emerging patterns from their research bear serious attention from teacher educators and policy makers, particularly when framed with questions of teacher quality and equity.
Why, as the research shows, do some of the state’s high-poverty, racially-mixed schools have the highest teacher turnover? Why do their ranks often include the least experienced teachers?
The UW researchers’ portrait of Washington classrooms shows that about nine of ten teachers, including newcomers, are white, with a predominance of females. While almost a quarter (22%) of the state’s teachers are over the age of 55, this is close to the same proportion under the age of 35 (25%). Most of the state’s teachers are monolingual, despite an increasing number of English language learners and other high-needs students in their classrooms.
Comparisons of student and teacher demographic data show that new teachers of color are not entering the profession in numbers matching the increasing population of students of color. The research also shows that the state’s small number of African-American teachers is growing older, and that they are not being replaced by younger colleagues in the same proportions.
“This issue of proportionality becomes increasingly important as the number of students of color continues to rise,” says Plecki.
TEACHER RETENTION AND MOBILITY
The UW researchers also zoomed their lens in on teacher education programs across the state. They started by following a cohort of UW graduates off campus and into classrooms. With help from Teachers for a New Era funds, they were able to expand that research to follow students from an additional 17 higher-education institutions in the Washington Association for Colleges of Teacher Education (WACTE).
Following new teachers over five years allowed Plecki and Elfers to challenge some common myths. One was the widespread belief that half of all beginning teachers leave the profession their first five years — a belief used by some as evidence of a “national crisis” in teaching.
In fact, the Washington state data showed that, although recent teacher education graduates tended to move from school to school more often than their more experienced colleagues, only about a quarter actually exited the Washington state school system after five years (See Table 2). Moreover, those who left high-poverty schools often went to a school with similar demographics.
Table 2. (Click for PDF)
The highest attrition rates were for first- and second-year teachers — where tracking too often stops. “Typically, teacher education institutions may do follow-up surveys of their students right after graduation, but there’s little longitudinal, reliable data about whether they stay in teaching, where they teach, what they teach, and what that teaching looks like over time,” reports Plecki.
Given the limitations of available state data, the researchers employed surveys to query Washington state teachers at all career stages about factors affecting their practice. The surveys explored issues of classroom assignment, certification, working conditions and professional development.
A majority of the teachers reported that they felt ill-prepared to manage the increasingly diverse learning needs of students in classrooms, particularly English language learners. Only a quarter of the state’s novice teachers said they were “very prepared”; less than half of experienced teachers said they were “very prepared.”
“This speaks to specific kinds of pre-service training that can better prepare and enable new teachers to adapt their teaching strategies for working with diverse learners,” says Plecki.
Since the researchers launched their project in 2003, with support from the non-profit Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession, Washington has made some gains in coordinating a statewide database system, upgrading and integrating data systems and convening a data feasibility task force. “The state is trying to get its arms around the problem,” says Plecki.
Still, huge gaps remain. There is no easy way to relate teacher qualifications and skills to assignments by subject or grade, no way to measure the effects of high teacher turnover on students, no way to examine what happens when teachers are assigned to teach out of their field.
For teacher educators, there is still no way to rigorously link, on a large scale, teacher practice to student learning, and student learning to teacher preparation. “We still can’t get to the classroom level — not accurately, not consistently,”
says Plecki.
A revamped statewide database that can fill in these missing links is at least two to four years out, say the researchers. “Once we have a system with multiple indicators, operating in as close to real time as possible, we won’t be saying ‘Most of the kids are doing OK,’ but asking ‘Which students are not being well-served, and how can we address their educational needs?’ ” says Plecki.
“At that point we can see what the child is doing and what the system is doing in response to that child’s needs.”
In changing U.S. classrooms, that complicated equation may turn out to be a critical new measure of teaching quality.
CITATIONS
Plecki, M., Elfers, A., Knapp, M. (2006). Who’s Teaching Washington’s Children: A 2006 Update. http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/PDFs/WhosTeaching2006.pdf
Knapp, M, Elfers, A., Plecki, M., Loeb, H., Zahir, A. (2005) Teachers’ County: Support for Teachers’ Work in the Context of State Reform. http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/PDFs/teacherscount.pdf
Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy
Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession
Washington Association for Colleges of Teacher Education
