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Yes, Effective Teaching Can Be Identified

“Good Teachers Linked to Test Success”
by Stephanie Banchero
Wall Street Journal
January 9, 2013

A study found that effective teachers can boost the test scores of students who had struggled under low-performing instructors, marking a new salvo in the national debate over teacher performance.

The three-year study by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, published Tuesday, is the first large-scale research to show, using random student assignment, that some teachers can produce test-score gains regardless of the past performance of their students, according to foundation officials.

Tom Kane, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and leader of the research project, said the data provide the best evidence yet that some teachers can “cause student achievement to happen, and this is a really big deal.”

Education officials increasingly emphasize the need to evaluate, pay and fire teachers based on performance. More than two dozen states have passed laws to evaluate teachers, in part, on test scores, prodded by the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education initiative, which offered money to states that began the process.

The Gates Foundation said its study found that a combination of student surveys of teacher quality, well-crafted observations of classroom teaching and test scores is the best predictor of teacher effectiveness. Mr. Kane said combining all three is the best predictor of teacher quality.

Critics say the Gates effort is flawed because it begins in part with the assumption that test scores are a good measure of teacher effectiveness, and then seeks to prove it by using test scores. Some teachers unions and parents say tests are a crude measure of teacher effectiveness.

Jay P. Green, a professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, called the Gates research a “political document and not a research document.” He said the research doesn’t support that classroom observations are a strong predictor of quality teaching.

“But the Gates Foundation knows that teachers and others are resistant to a system that is based too heavily on student test scores, so they combined them with other measures to find something that was more agreeable to them,” he said.

Critics of the study also say the formulas used to adjust student scores for race and poverty are problematic because they cause teachers’ scores to jump around too much.

The three-year Gates study videotaped 3,000 teachers and their students in Charlotte, N.C.; Dallas; Denver; Hillsborough County, Fla.; Memphis, Tenn.; New York City and Pittsburgh. Dozens of researchers studied the results.

In the most recent update to the study, the Gates Foundation analyzed students’ 2010 test scores for about 1,600 of the 3,000 teachers and ranked the instructors using a formula, known as value added, that adjusts scores based on students’ race, family income and past performance on state exams. The ranking also included scores from student surveys and classroom observations.

The next year, students were randomly assigned to classrooms. The study found that the teachers who were ranked the highest on average produced the highest student achievement the following year. These students also scored well on other exams that measured deeper, conceptual knowledge of math and reading, the report said.

Ryan Kinser, who participated in the study and teaches eighth grade English at Walker Middle School in the Hillsborough district, said he watched videos of himself in the classroom and noticed he “looked wooden” and “talked too much.” Once, he spent 10 minutes teaching his students the meaning of “hierarchy” and saw on the video that students appeared bored, and one remarked, “This is stupid, man.”

“It forced me to reflect and better prepare for my kids,” said Mr. Kinser, who is rated highly effective by his district.