Dear Chalkboard,
In Sue Hildick's Op-ed in The Oregonian last week, she mentioned that research had made the case that if a group of disadvantaged students were given an effective teacher for five years in a row, the achievement gap between that group and their privileged peers would disappear. This month's teacher effectiveness newsletter highlights that 2005 report by Steven G. Rivkin, Eric A. Hanushek, and John F. Kain entitled, "Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement. "
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Teachers, Schools and Academic Achievement
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 Rivin, Hanushek, and Kain's research was based on test score data collected on three cohorts of students in the mid-1990s over the span of grades 3 though 7. The cohorts included over one-half million students in over three thousand schools.
The goal of the research was to determine the effects of teachers on the academic growth of students. Because the researchers had multiple scores from the same students over time, they were able to see whether students demonstrated statistically significant increases in their scores. With this large pool of data the researchers were able to statistically control for factors outside of the classroom and narrow down the findings to score increases that could be tied to the effects of the classroom teacher.
Highlights from the report:
- Disadvantaged students tend to be taught by less experienced teachers. In order to lessen the impact of inexperience, districts should consider mentoring programs and other policies to decrease teacher turnover.
- Effective hiring, firing, mentoring and promotion practices are essential for supporting teacher effectiveness.
- The benefits of lowering class size by ten students, the report suggests, would be smaller than the benefits of increasing the number of effective teachers in a school.
Read the complete research article: http://www.chalkboardproject.org/images/national%20research/teachers.econometrica-1.pdf
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