Defining and Measuring Teacher Effectiveness Shantell Lee and Patrick Anderson

Every Student Succeeds Act “Title II – Preparing, Training, and Recruiting High-Quality Teachers, Principals, or Other School Leaders” While this section lists tools for improving teacher effectiveness such as school leader and residency programs and teacher residency programs the definition of an effective teacher and how to measure a teacher’s effective remains unclear and vague.

“Strengthening State Teacher Licensure Standards to Advance Teaching Effectiveness” The challenges listed include the following: • Creating a system that allows teachers to enter teaching through multiple pathways and on different timelines while increasing (not lowering) entry standards to meet the demands of 21st-century teaching and learning. • Closing down long-standing, traditional university-based teacher education programs as well as high-profile and popular alternative certification approaches when they do not prepare teachers for the schools of tomorrow. • Realizing that strengthening teacher licensing systems will require additional investments in more powerful teaching effectiveness tools and better data systems to make accurate assessments of who is ready to teach. • Investing in a larger set of teaching policy reforms so teachers can learn over time and spread their expertise to one another in team-based approaches to improving student achievement.

“Strengthening State Teacher Licensure Standards to Advance Teaching Effectiveness” The recommendations listed include the following: • Promote the kinds of preservice training that lead to effective teaching. • Require that teachers know both content and how to teach it to diverse learners for 21st- century schools. • Hold all teacher candidates to high, 21st-century standards. • Hold all university-based and alternative preparation programs to the same high standards. • Require that teachers pass a performance assessment, demonstrating that they know how to teach before serving as the teacher of record.

“Where Did All The Black Teachers Go?” Brent Staples In this review studies showed children who encountered African American Teachers are most likely to be recognized as bright enough to be gifted and talented programs, more likely to be viewed as capable of success and more likely to graduate from high school and aim to college . This same study suggested that black teachers are powerful role models, particularly for black boys that they are more likely than white teachers to recognize competence in their blacks students and that subjective judgements by teachers play a vital role in determining success at school. In a 50th anniversary reappraisal of Brown published in The Journal of Negro Education a researcher spoke of how states and localities with significant black populations are beginning to recognize the whiteness of the teacher corps as an obstacle to student achievement.

Louisiana Department of Education Partners In Preparation – A Survey of Educators & Education Preparation Programs The survey provide valuable insight into the challenges new teachers, principals, district leaders and preparation programs face as well as opportunities to address those challenges. 1. Schools system and preparation programs agree that teacher candidates needs more hands on experience prior to entering into the classroom fulltime. 2. Preparation programs and school systems generally agree what should be taught to teacher candidates but greater collaboration is needed to better prepare new teachers to be “ready on day one for the classroom” 3. Schools systems experience shortages of teachers in specific subject areas but typically do not coordinate with preparation programs on recruitment into those subject areas.

“Teaching Effectiveness and Why It Matters” Robert A. Barry “The current movement in thinking and research that is taking us from the concept of a Highly Qualified Teacher in every classroom, to the need for a Highly Effective Teacher in every classroom, is a logical and needed evolution in our thinking about improvements in the way teaching and learning takes place in our schools,” (3). Barry argues that the question is not what is an effective teacher but rather how to ensure that these practices are demonstrated in every classroom. In order for effective teachers and practices to be visual in all classrooms, schools and school districts have to be responsible for holding their teachers to the same standard across the nation.

“Measuring Teacher Effectiveness: Are We Creating an Education Nightmare?” Patricia Deubel “Educators are concerned because their evaluations will be tied to results of their students’ standardized testing, which are used in value-added calculations, while other factors, such as experience and training, are diminished,” (1). “Value-added models require annual testing of students, and if high-stakes for teachers are attached to results, all teachers will need to be included, with high-stakes testing in art, music, physical education, electives and so on,” (2). “We can quantify their ‘knowledge of general and subject-specefic methods for teaching and for evaluating student learning’ and knowledge of human development’ (p.2). However, their ‘skill in effectively teaching students from racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse backgrounds; and the skills, capacities and dispositions to employ such knowledge wisely in the interest of students’ (p.2) define an artistic side that is qualitative for evaluation purposes,” (5).