Teacher Quality and Student Achievement a Review of State Policy Evidence

This article is part of a new Education Side by side series commemorating the 50th ceremony of James S. Coleman's groundbreaking written report, "Equality of Educational Opportunity." The total series will announced in the Spring 2016 issue of Education Next.

50 years after the release of  "Equality of Educational Opportunity"—widely known as the Coleman Report—much of what James Coleman and his colleagues reported holds up well to scrutiny. It is, in fact, remarkable to read through the 700-plus pages and meet how trivial has changed almost what the empirical evidence says matters. The report'south conclusions virtually the importance of instructor quality, in particular, have stood the test of fourth dimension, which is noteworthy, given that today's studies of the impacts of teachers utilize more-sophisticated statistical methods and utilise far better data. Moreover, many of the Coleman findings foretold debates over school and teacher policy that continue to rage today.

What the Report Didn't Say

The Coleman Report focused on differences in schooling resources bachelor to white and minority students and on the degree of racial segregation in America's public schools. It was also the first major, large-scale report to try to document the influence of schooling resources on educatee accomplishment, and how the influence of schooling resources compares to the influence of pupil groundwork and socioeconomic status. This comparison resulted in the ofttimes-cited finding that "schools don't matter." Interestingly, that quote does non appear in the Coleman Report, yet information technology is widely interpreted as a primal determination. The actual text is far more nuanced, suggesting that

schools are remarkably similar in the way they chronicle to the achievement of their pupils when the socioeconomic background of students is taken into account.… When these factors are statistically controlled…it appears that differences between schools account for only a minor fraction of differences in student achievement.

The phrases "minor fraction" and "betwixt schools" are important. The finding that differences betwixt schools only explicate a small fraction of the variation in pupil achievement does non suggest that policymakers wishing to improve the lives of students are necessarily hamstrung. That differences in resource do not explain a large share of the differences in test scores between white and minority students (the study focused on African American students) does not necessarily mean those resources do not bear upon student achievement. Not only do nosotros now know more than definitively that the quality of schools and teachers do matter, merely too, importantly, these are resource over which policymakers have directly control (at least more than and so than socioeconomic status). And the fact that the Coleman findings are based on differences between schools means that information technology ignores important differences in resource—teacher quality in particular—that we know today be inside schools.

What Did Coleman Say virtually Schooling and Instructor Quality?

Of the characteristics that were measured in the Coleman Report, "those that bear the highest relationship to pupil achievement are kickoff, the teacher's score on the verbal skills examination, and so his educational background."
An integrated kindergarten class in the 1950s in Washington, D.C.

Beyond the headline finding about the impact of schooling overall, the study contains a off-white amount of nuance on which schoolhouse characteristics do (and, importantly, which do not) predict student achievement. The principal belittling technique used involved assessing the proportion of the variation in student accomplishment explained past different factors. Across grades and dissimilar pupil subgroups, the Coleman study plant that well-nigh of the variation in student accomplishment is inside rather than betwixt schools, merely a larger share of the variation is found betwixt schools in earlier grades and amid more disadvantaged subgroups. Regarding instructor quality specifically, one of the key conclusions is that

the quality of teachers shows a stronger relationship [than school facilities and curricula] to pupil achievement. Furthermore, information technology is progressively greater at higher grades, indicating a cumulative impact of the qualities of teachers in a school on the pupil's achievements. Once again, teacher quality seems more of import to minority achievement than to that of the majority.

The finding that "instructor quality is ane of the few schoolhouse characteristics that significantly affects student operation" is quite consistent with more-recent research. Likewise in line with electric current studies is the report'south finding that "for any groups whether minority or not, the upshot of expert teachers is greatest upon the children who suffer well-nigh educational disadvantage in their background, and that a given investment in upgrading teacher quality will take nearly consequence on achievement in underprivileged areas." Contempo studies, for instance, observe that college funding levels, smaller classes, and more-qualified teachers all have larger effects on disadvantaged students than on other students.

What characteristics of teachers are predictive of student accomplishment? The report includes various caveats about the findings, including that "many characteristics of teachers were non measured in this survey; therefore, the results are non at all conclusive regarding the specific characteristics of teachers that are about important." Merely of the characteristics and attitudinal factors that were measured, "those that conduct the highest human relationship to educatee accomplishment are showtime, the teacher's score on the verbal skills test, and then his educational groundwork—both his ain level of education and that of his parents." As well measured were teaching feel (in years), professional journals read, and teachers' perceptions of the ability and effort levels of their students.

The finding that teachers' verbal skills announced to be predictive of student achievement is consistent with later reviews of the factors predicting student achievement and with bear witness from the last decade showing that teachers' licensure test scores are also predictive of achievement. There is far less testify from research today that teachers' educational background (having a principal's degree in particular) matters for students. One possibility is that teacher degree level was more predictive of teacher quality in the 1960s than it is today. School systems today are non very discriminating when it comes to crediting teachers with a primary's degree (with a substantial pay crash-land). About reward the degree regardless of the focus of the master's work—it is often unrelated to the instructor'due south classroom assignment—and pay no attention to the quality of the establishment granting the degree. Moreover, a far lower proportion of the teacher workforce had an advanced degree in the 1960s; obtaining such a degree may have been more probable to reverberate the quality of those teachers who pursued this credential.

Students assigned to loftier-value-added teachers are more than likely to graduate from high schoolhouse, get to college, be employed, and earn college wages.

One finding from the Coleman Study that is rarely mentioned relates to the structure of the teacher labor market place. The data collection for the Coleman Report included several questions about where teachers in a school grew up and went to loftier school and college. Every bit is the example today, "In the Nation, there is considerable evidence that [minority students] are more than likely to be taught by teachers who are locality-based, in the sense that they are products of the surface area in which they teach and that they secured their public school grooming nearby." This finding reflects what is now popularly known as the "draw of abode" in the teacher labor market. Similar much in the globe of educational activity, this attribute of the instructor labor market appears not to exist very different today than 50 years ago.

The Coleman et al. study has been discipline to a number of critiques, including, for example, that the cross-exclusive nature of the data used did non support causal claims about schooling effects, and that the percentage of variance explained by different subgroups of variables are sensitive to the order in which these are entered into statistical models. It is worth noting that the report itself addresses many of the bug brought up by critics. For instance, it reports the findings on the proportion of explained variation associated with entering explanatory variables in different order and notes the possibility that

schoolhouse effects were non evident considering no measurement of educational growth was carried out. Had it been, then some schools might have shown much greater growth rates of students than would others and these rates might have been highly correlated with school characteristics.

My interpretation of the Coleman Report findings is consistent with the reanalysis and reinterpretation by scholars in the early 1970s: in short, the findings hold up remarkably well.

What Accept We Learned since Coleman well-nigh Teacher Quality?

New empirical work, using better data (e.g., that enable researchers to judge the relative impact of factors affecting student achievement growth from year to year) and more-sophisticated statistical techniques has, in broad terms, reinforced the Coleman Report conclusion that teacher quality is the most of import schooling variable.

Some of the acknowledged limitations of the data used in the Coleman report—the need to focus on the human relationship betwixt teacher variables averaged to the school level and student achievement, in particular—have been addressed by more than-recent research. Specifically, the Coleman written report was unable to explore the extent to which teacher quality varies within schools or gauge how much of the impact of individual teachers might be related to teacher attributes not associated with those school-level variables. Researchers today have the benefit of longitudinal data sets that link individual teachers and students over time. This allows for the use of statistical models to estimate the total contribution—that owing to both observable and unobserved instructor attributes—of teachers toward student test-score gains (frequently referred to as "value added"). Although these models are controversial, the weight of the evidence suggests that they produce valid estimates of teachers' contributions to student learning.

The importance of being able to estimate the value added of teachers for both policy and inquiry cannot exist overstated. Absolutely, many observable instructor characteristics—
gender, age, an advanced degree, or even country certification of competence—are not unremarkably found to be associated with effectiveness in the classroom. Yet qualities less hands (or unremarkably) quantified appear to matter a great deal, every bit the differences betwixt individual teachers accept been found to have profound effects. Not surprisingly, teachers who are successful with students in one year tend to be successful in other years; hence, measures of a teacher's performance in the by tend to be a good predictor of how well future students assigned to that teacher will achieve. And recent studies that consider inside-schoolhouse differences in teacher effectiveness evidence just how important teachers are (see Effigy ane). For example, the median finding across 10 studies of teacher effectiveness estimates that a teacher who is i standard divergence higher up the average in terms of quality produces additional learning gains for students of 0.12 standard deviations in reading and 0.14 standard deviations in math. These inside-school differences likely understate the overall import of teacher effectiveness considering, every bit contempo evidence suggests, there are also differences in teacher quality beyond schools. Despite this, the impact of having an effective teacher (ane at the 85th percentile) in a particular school versus having an boilerplate teacher (ane at the 50th percentile) is several times larger than the differences nosotros typically discover between a novice and third-year teacher.

We also now know that it is difficult to enhance teachers' performance past a substantial margin. Most studies find that teachers improve with additional experience merely early on in their careers. Gains in average instructor quality later on five years are seldom detected, withal. This is despite the fact that schoolhouse districts invest considerable resource in professional person evolution in an effort to improve teacher performance. For case, a 2015 study past The New Instructor Project found that districts spend an average of $18,000 per year per teacher on professional development, but well-nigh professional development programs fail to yield changes in teacher effectiveness that are detectable in educatee test scores.

Finally, although the lion'due south share of instructor-quality research since the Coleman Report has focused on the connections between teacher quality and student test scores, new bear witness is shining a calorie-free on the extent to which teachers affect other long-term non-test student outcomes also. Of import work by Stanford Academy researcher Raj Chetty and his colleagues finds that value-added measures of teacher quality predict students' outcomes long into the future. Students assigned to high-value-added teachers are more likely to graduate from high schoolhouse, go to college, be employed, and earn college wages (meet Figure 2). This has profound implications: Chetty and colleagues estimate that replacing a teacher whose value added is in the lesser five percent of the distribution with an average teacher would increase the present discounted value of students' lifetime income by more than $250,000 for a typical form (of 
28 students).

Coleman and Policy Debates Today

Have the last l years of education enquiry led us to fundamentally different conclusions nigh the impact of teachers on the educational achievement of students? There is a bit more than nuance to the respond than "not really," simply "non actually" comes awfully close to hitting the marker. If anything, the half century of research on student achievement has strengthened arguments for a policy focus on teacher quality. More-sophisticated enquiry has been conducted over the final two decades, since states began collecting longitudinal data that connect teachers and students. This piece of work shows both how dissimilar teachers are from 1 another, in ways not readily captured past their qualifications, and how of import these differences are for student accomplishment and long-term outcomes.

Those who buy the notion that the Coleman Report basically got it right might ask why nosotros have not made more progress in improving the quality of the instructor workforce (or schools more by and large). Certainly, ane function of the problem is that, 50 years later, we are still debating the extent to which education policy ought to focus on instructor quality, and on the performance of individual teachers in particular. The inquiry showing the important variation in instructor quality within schools and its connection not only to test scores but as well to other important outcomes ought to strengthen arguments for teacher-oriented policy interventions. But it is precisely the focus on teacher evaluation—and whether it is continued to pupil exam scores—that is at the center of the most hotly contested education policy debates.

Recent revisions to the most prominent federal law dealing with school quality—the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—mark a sharp rollback of the federal role in teacher evaluation and accountability. It is not clear whether states and localities will consequently focus less attention on teacher quality, just if this is the consequence, policymakers volition have failed to internalize the important lesson of both the Coleman Report and subsequent research: the principal way that schools affect student outcomes is through the quality of their teachers.

Dan Goldhaber is director of the National Center for Assay of Longitudinal Data in Pedagogy Inquiry at American Institutes for Research and manager of the Center for Education Information and Enquiry at the University of Washington.

Last updated February three, 2016

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Source: https://www.educationnext.org/in-schools-teacher-quality-matters-most-coleman/

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