1. Teacher Education and Teaching Quality: Creating the Foundation for Teacher Effectiveness

2. Challenges of 21st Century Teaching
Greater Need for Education in Society
Higher Standards for Learning
More Diverse Students with Greater Educational Needs
Greater Expectations of Schools for Ensuring Success
Standards movement is holding kids to higher standards
Yet in many places the system has not mobilized to equalize educational opportunity or to offer kids an education that would let them meet the standards
(Funding differentials: access to qualified teachers and quality curriculum)
Teaching is more difficult and challening

3. 20th Century Teaching Cannot Meet 21st Century Demands

4. Current Dilemmas Little Faith in Teacher Education
Proliferation of Routes and Models
No Credible Quality Standard
Little Leverage on Program Improvement
Many Questions,
Few Clearly Articulated Answers

5. Yet, Well-Prepared Teachers Matter a Great Deal
Studies in NC and NY found student gains related to:
Strong academic background
Teacher preparation prior to entry
Certification in the field taught
Experience (> 3 years)
National Board Certification (NC study)
In NC, together, these predicted more of the difference in student learning gains than race & parent education combined (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2008).
Policies should strengthen & equalize these features.

6. Preparation Reduces Teacher Attrition

7. Teacher Education Investments Boost Achievement

8. Effective Teachers… Engage students in active learning
Create intellectually ambitious tasks
Use a variety of teaching strategies
Assess student learning
continuously and adapt
teaching to student needs
Create effective scaffolds and supports
Provide clear standards, constant feedback, and opportunities for revising work
Develop and effectively manage a collaborative classroom in which all students have membership.

9. These Qualities are Embedded in Standards for Teaching
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (1987)
-- Portfolio used to certify accomplished teaching
Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) (1990)
-- Adopted in > 40 states including California (CSTP)
-- Basis of new licensing assessments
-- Recently revised to reflect Common Core Standards
ISLLCC

10. PISA 2009 Results
Reading Korea Finland Singapore Canada New Zealand Japan Australia Netherlands Belgium Norway
Mathematics Singapore Korea Finland Lichtenstein Switzerland Japan Canada Netherlands New Zealand Belgium
Science
Finland
Singapore Japan
Korea
New Zealand
Canada
Estonia
Australia
Netherlands
Germany

11. What are the Highest-Achieving Nations Doing?
Societal supports for children’s welfare
Equitable resources for schools
Equitable access to a thinking curriculum (evaluated by rich performance assessments)
Substantial investments in initial teacher education and ongoing support
A well-paid and well-supported profession
Schools designed to support teacher and student learning

12. Bureaucratic vs. Professional Approaches to Education
Expertise rests in the classroom
Teachers have extensive knowledge and skill
Tests are aimed at informing practice
Decisions are made collegially based on standards of practice
Emphasis in on what works: “Doing the right things”
Schools function as communities of learning
Bureaucratic
Expertise rests at the top of system
Teachers have minimal skills
Tests and texts are aimed at controlling practice
Decisions are made hierarchically
Emphasis is on following procedures: “Doing things right”
Schools function as assembly lines

13. Professional Learning Opportunities in High-Achieving Nations
The highest-achieving nations:
Ensure extensive initial preparation that includes clinical training in model schools
Provide beginners with intensive mentoring.
Offer sustained learning opportunities embedded in practice:
Teachers have hours a week for collaboration plus additional days for professional learning
Teachers engage regularly in Lesson Study, Action Research, and Peer Observation and Coaching to evaluate and improve practice.

14. What Policies are Associated with High Achievement in the US?

15. CT and MA Reforms Leading to High Achievement in the 1990s
Raised & equalized teacher salaries
Raised standards for teaching and teacher education
Required more preparation for content pedagogy, special education, and literacy development
Offered service scholarships to attract and prepare high-need teachers
Required mentoring focused on a clinical performance assessment (CT)
Invested in high-quality professional development (Reading Recovery, Writing Project, math networks)
Pursued steady policies for > 15 years

16. What Kind of Teacher Preparation matters?

17. US Teacher Education is Today Where Medical Education was in 1910
© Linda Darling-Hammond 2010

18. What Doesn’t Work: Pathways that Reduce Preparation for Teaching

19. It is possible to prepare teachers well. What employers say:
I have sought out Bank Street graduates in all my positions in the last ten years. (NYC principal)
Wheelock does a better job of preparing early childhood teachers than any place I know.
(Boston principal)
As I look for teachers, I most immediately look for Alverno applicants…. I’ll take ten more teachers like the two I’ve had this year (Milwaukee principal)
I take all the [UC-Berkeley] grads I can get…. They are the best teachers – outstanding, dedicated. It is a program that stands out (San Leandro principal)

20. Value-Added Gains of Students Whose Teachers Graduated from Different Teacher Education Programs in NYC
ELA
Strong Gains in ELA and Math
Strong Gains in ELA, not math
Math
Weak Gains in ELA and Math
Strong Gains in Math, not ELA

21. How can we turn the current Race to the Bottom into a Race to the Top for Teacher Education ?

22. Teacher Education Program Features Influencing Teacher Effectiveness
Carefully developed student teaching
Courses in content and content pedagogy
Focus on learning specific practices and applying them in clinical experience
Study of local district curriculum
Portfolio or capstone project tying theory to practice

23. What Else Matters Program coherence and common vision
School – university partnerships that support that vision and create a clinical curriculum

24. The Clinical Curriculum

25. What is Clinical Practice?
IT IS NOT…
Just being in a classroom
Trial and error learning
IT IS …
Explicit modeling of good practice
Opportunities to learn under expert supervision
Assumption of gradual responsibility
Specific clinical experiences linked to aspects of teaching practice and powerful theory

26. Learning about Practice in Practice

27. Supporting Clinical Training: The Need for Professional Schools
As in medicine and other professions, teachers need to see and enact good practice while learning research and theory
Professional development school models can support learning from expert veterans while candidates are taking tightly linked coursework. They can model state-of-the art education for students and teachers as well as opportunities for developing curriculum, new practices, and research.

28. What Can States Do to Leverage Quality?

29. State Levers Recruitment Incentives Preparation Standards
-- Entry and Exit
-- Programmatic Content
Licensing / Relicensing Requirements
-- Standards
-- Assessments
Accreditation
Dissemination of Practice

30. 1) Start with Standards and Build a Unified System
Build on InTASC and National Board standards to create Standards-Based Approaches to state licensure assessment and advanced certification
Use the same standards to shape teacher evaluation tool(s) for local evaluation
Infuse into principal preparation, licensure, and evaluation the ability to evaluate and support teachers based on standards

31. 2) Raise Standards and Create Attractions for Entering Teaching
Create pathways into teaching
Cadet programs, teaching schools
Develop service scholarships for high-ability candidates and those in high-need fields
Use undergraduate and graduate pathways
Integrate leadership development with high-quality preparation
Raise entry standards in ways that are related to the capacity to teach effectively

32. 3) Use Performance Assessments to Guide Teacher Preparation & Licensing
Teacher Performance Assessments examine
-- Planning for a unit of instruction
-- Instruction and rationale
-- Assessment and student learning
-- Reflection on teaching
-- Development of academic language
Trained scorers use analytic rubrics
Calibration and auditing of scores
Assessments predict effectiveness

33. Predictive Validity of Performance Assessments
National Board Certification
-- Effect sizes of .04 to .20 (pass/fail)
Connecticut BEST portfolio
-- Effect size of .46 (4 point scale)
California PACT assessment
-- Effect size of .15 (44 point scale)
20 percentile point difference in student achievement for the highest - and lowest-scoring teacher

34. Teacher Learning is Enhanced
I think for me the most valuable thing was the sequencing of the lessons, teaching the lesson, and evaluating what the kids were getting, what the kids weren’t getting, and having that be reflected in my next lesson...the ‘teach-assess-teach-assess-teach-assess’ process. And so you’re constantly changing – you may have a plan or a framework that you have together, but knowing that that’s flexible and that it has to be flexible, based on what the children learn that day.

35. Teacher Educators Learn
This [scoring] experience…has forced me to revisit the question of what really matters in the assessment of teachers, which – in turn – means revisiting the question of what really matters in the preparation of teachers.

36. Cooperating Teachers Reflect on Practice
[The scoring process] forces you to be clear about “good teaching;” what it looks like, sounds like. It enables you to look at your own practice critically/with new eyes.

37. Programs Learn How candidates do: On different aspects of teaching
In different subject areas
In comparison to other programs
Over time
With different kinds of supports

38. Scores by Teaching Dimension and Institution

39. … And change: Courses The learning sequence
Clinical practice opportunities
Supports for candidates

41. 4) Develop an integrated system
Create a leadership cadre of expert teachers to serve as mentors and assessors
Train and assess prospective and current principals for teacher supervision and support
Create performance-based assessments for principal licensure
Link the implementation of common core standards to teacher and principal preparation and evaluation

42. 5) Strengthen Accreditation
Evaluate all preparation and induction
programs based on results of
-- teacher performance assessments (TPA)
-- graduates’ and employers’ assessments of preparation and preparedness
-- entry and retention rates in teaching
-- effectiveness of graduates in the classroom
Use results for program approval / accreditation

43. 6) Expand High-Quality Pathways to Teaching
Study features of successful programs
Disseminate information about what Works
Create incentives for other programs to adopt these features
Expand the number of successful programs and eliminate those that don’t improve

44. 7) Protect Your Investment: Make induction productive
Train and assign mentors who are highly accomplished teachers
Guide induction with standards linked to a well-design performance assessment
Support serious decisions about competence for tenure and professional / clear licensure
-- High-quality assessment in light of meaningful standards
-- Peer assistance and review processes

45. What About VAM?
VAM estimates of teacher effectiveness … should not used to make operational decisions because such estimates are far too unstable to be considered fair or reliable.
-- National Research Council, Board on Testing and Assessment
In 2009, the NRC’s Board on Testing and Assessment issued a letter report directed to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, commenting on the Department’s proposal on the Race to the Top Fund. That letter included strong cautions concerning value-added models, and strongly urged further research and pilot studies before mandating any operational use of these models. Since then, the evidence has continued to accumulate that these models have serious problems.

46. Concerns Raised about Value-Added Measures
Studies find that individual teachers’ value-added ratings are highly variable across years, classes, and tests and are influenced by:
Student characteristics and attendance
Class size, curriculum, instructional supports, and time spent with students
Tutoring and out-of-school learning
The effectiveness of peers

47. A Teacher’s Measured “Effectiveness” Can Vary Widely
YEAR 1 10
YEAR 2
Same high school
Same course (English I)
Not a beginning teacher
Model controls for:
Prior achievement
Demographics
School fixed effects 1

48. Many Factors Influence Student Achievement
Teacher knowledge, skills, dispositions, and behaviors that support the learning process.
Hanushek et al. estimate the individual teacher effects component of measured student achievement is about 7%-10% of the total.
Student availability for learning – Prior learning opportunities, health, supportive home context, attendance, developed abilities
Resources for learning – Curriculum quality, materials, class sizes, specialist supports, etc.
Coherence and continuity – The extent to which content & skills are well organized and reinforced across grades and classes

49. Work on Nuanced Indicators of Educator Effectiveness
Multiple sources of evidence about student learning appropriate to the curriculum and students being taught
Sensitivity to teaching conditions as well as teacher knowledge and skills
Develop a data dashboard, not a single metric

50. What Should We Focus On?

51. A Smart System Would…
1. Adopt teaching standards across the career
2. Use Performance Assessments for initial licensure, professional licensure, & advanced certification
-- scored by practicing educators / teacher educators
-- used to evaluate and accredit programs
3. Build expertise for evaluation by focusing on principal knowledge and skills
4. Leverage changes in preparation based on what features produce results
5. Equalize access to teachers who are prepared and certified based on these stronger measures.

52. A goal for high-achieving 21st century nations:
“Those who can, do. Those who understand, teach.”
“Those who can, teach.
Those who can’t go into a less significant line of work.”