Effective Teachers=Student Achievement

What the Research Says

James Stronge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781138470927
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317926290
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Research has shown that there is no greater influence on a student's success than the quality of his or her teacher. This book presents the research findings which demonstrate the connection between teacher effectiveness and student achievement. Author James Stronge describes and explains the value-added teacher-assessment research that has emerged in the past decade and demystifies the power and practices of effective teachers.

Part I

Effective Teachers = Student Achievement

1

Do Teachers Matter? The Impact of Teachers on Student Achievement

...[T]eacher quality matters—and...it matters a great deal. If we are committed to this premise, then we must be committed to populating our schools with the highest quality teachers possible.

— Stronge, Gareis, & Little (2006, p. 2)

Do teachers matter? Absolutely—and a great deal. In fact, among the factors within our control as educators, teachers offer the greatest opportunity for improving the quality of life of our students. As noted in How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top, an international study comparing data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), “The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers” (Barber & Mourshed, 2007, p. iii).

If we want to improve the quality of our schools and positively affect the lives of our students, we must change the quality of our teaching. This is our best hope to systematically and dramatically improve education. Although we can reform the curriculum, ultimately, it is teachers who implement it; although we can provide professional development on new instructional strategies, ultimately, it is teachers who deploy them; although we can focus on data analysis of student performance, ultimately, it is teachers who produce the results we are analyzing.

The focus of Effective Teachers = Student Achievement is just that: Teachers do matter extraordinarily in terms of both school improvement and student success. In addressing the overarching question of whether teachers matter in this opening chapter, I focus on three concomitant questions:

♦ What is the evidence that teachers matter to student achievement?

♦ Where do student achievement differences occur—at the school or teacher level?

♦ What are the possibilities and pitfalls of estimating teacher effects on student achievement?

What Is the Evidence that Teachers Matter to Student Achievement?

Consider the following findings:

♦ Teacher effectiveness is the dominant factor influencing student academic growth (Sanders & Rivers, 1996; Wright, Horn, & Sanders, 1997).

♦ A post hoc analysis of achievement test gains indicated that the gains made by students taught by exemplary teachers outpaced expected levels of growth (Allington & Johnston, 2000).

♦ Value-added estimates of teacher quality are not correlated to student initial test scores. This means an effective teacher performs well among both low- and high-ability students, whereas an ineffective teacher is ineffective with both types of students (Aaronson, Barrow, & Sander, 2007).

These sobering findings are derived from assessments of the teacher’s measurable impact on student achievement using value-added methodologies. Over the past several years, numerous researchers have explored the “value-added effects” of a particular school or teacher through the use of sophisticated statistical models involving longitudinal data on student achievement. These value-added methods have the advantage of removing the effects of factors not under the control of the school, such as prior student achievement and socioeconomic status, and thereby providing more accurate estimates of school or teacher effectiveness. This statistical modeling approach has taken a number of forms and each has generated differential statistical power of teacher effects (Palardy & Rumberger, 2008; Rowan, Correnti, & Miller, 2002). However, the bottom-line findings of all these value-added studies are that teachers matter and teacher quality is the most significant schooling factor impacting student learning. This impact is not just of statistical significance; more importantly, it is of practical significance.

Statistical Significance Versus Practical Significance

In educational research, statistical significance is used to determine if certain observed differences exist beyond a chance occurrence. However, statistical significance does not determine the magnitude of the differences or the likelihood of obtaining similar results in the future. On the other hand, practical significance refers to the fact that the research findings can be viewed as information of value to teachers, school administrators, policy makers, and others who are involved in day-to-day educational practice (Gall, 2001). Practical significance indicates that results are of a magnitude that would make a real-world difference.

William Sanders pioneered a widely used statistical approach, initially referred to as the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS), for determining the effectiveness of school systems, schools, and teachers based on student academic growth over time. An integral part of TVAAS is a massive, longitudinally merged database linking student outcomes to the schools and systems in which they are enrolled, and to the teachers to whom they are assigned, as the students transition from grade to grade. Research conducted using data from the TVAAS database has shown that ethnicity, socioeconomic level, class size, and classroom heterogeneity are poor predictors of student academic growth. Rather, based on these studies, the effectiveness of the teacher is the major determinant of student academic progress (Wright, Horn, & Sanders, 1997).

The available evidence suggests that the main driver of the variation in student learning at school is the quality of the teachers.... Studies that take into account all of the available evidence of teacher effectiveness suggest that students placed with high-performing teachers will progress three times as fast as those placed with low-performing teachers. (Barber & Mourshed, 2007, p. 12)

After controlling for prior student achievement, the TVAAS studies found the impact of teachers on student achievement to be directly related to the effectiveness of the teachers, themselves.

Regardless of initial achievement level, teachers in the top quintile facilitated desirable academic progress for all students. However, regardless of their entering achievement levels, students under the tutelage of teachers in the bottom quintile made unsatisfactory gains. As the teacher effectiveness quintile increased, lower-achieving students were first to benefit, followed by average students and, lastly, by students considerably above average (Sanders & Rivers, 1996, p. 7).

Moreover,

♦ ineffective teachers were found to be ineffective with all students, regardless of their prior achievement level.

♦ the average teachers facilitated achievement gains with lower achieving students, but not higher student achievers.

♦ highly effective teachers were generally effective with all student achievement levels. (Sanders & Rivers, 1996)

Evidence of Teacher Impact on Student Learning

As demonstrated in the TVAAS studies, teacher effectiveness can be captured by measured student achievement gains. In fact, numerous studies have found similar effects on student learning for effective versus ineffective teachers. Consider the outcomes of teacher effectiveness on student achievement drawn from a sampling of studies presented in Figure 1.1 below.

Figure 1.1. Summary Findings of Teacher Effects on Student Achievement from Selected Studies

Study		Key Findings
Emmer & Evertson (1979)		♦ Study results indicated strong teacher effects on pupil attitudes in both mathema...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Conceptual Framework for the Book
• Research Basis for the Book
• How Do We Know the Impact of Teachers on Student Achievement?
• How Do We Know What Teachers Do Impacts Student Achievement?
• To the Reader
• Part I: Effective Teachers = Student Achievement
• Part II: Resources You Can Use
• Value-Added Methods
• How Value-Added Methods Work
• Virtues of Estimating Teacher Effects by Using Value-Added Model
• Inexactness of Estimating Teacher Effects
• Issues Concerning Value-Added Model Data
• Summary: Value-Added Methodology
• Selected Annotated Bibliography
• References