1. Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation
Donald J. Hernandez | The Annie E. Casey Foundation | April 2011
SUMMARY
This new Annie E. Casey Foundation study confirms the link between third grade reading performance and high school graduation rates, and marks the first national study to break down the likelihood of graduation by different reading skill levels and poverty experiences. The study’s author, Donald J. Hernandez, used national data to examine nearly 4,000 students throughout their school careers. Hernandez found that students who don’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely not to graduate from high school. For struggling readers who live in poverty, the odds of graduating from high school are even worse: children from low-income families are more likely to have low third grade reading test scores (83 percent do not read proficiently) and are six times more likely to drop out of high school than proficient readers. For African American and Latino students, the combined effect of poverty and low third grade reading skills makes the dropout rate eight times greater. The study offers several policy solutions to improve third-grade reading proficiency and eliminate barriers to student success. First, Hernandez recommends that quality Pre-K programs’ curriculla and methods need to be better aligned with those found in K-3 programs to avoid the “fade out” of high quality Pre-K programs once students enter the elementary grades. Hernandez also recommends improving attendance rates, offering summer learning, improving access to healthcare for students, and education for parents in low-income communities to help increase learning time, identify and treat health problems, and provide parents with tools to support their children’s success in school.
CT CONTEXT
This study provides a sobering look at the consequences of early reading struggles, especially for children in poverty. Connecticut Mastery Test results from 2010 show that in Connecticut, more than 40 percent of all third graders cannot read at grade level, meaning more than 16,000 third graders in our state are now at least four times less likely to finish high school. More than 9,000 of our third graders who cannot read on grade level are from low-income families, meaning they are six times less likely to finish high school. This failure imposes high costs for both students and our state: high school dropouts earn about $10,000 less each year compared to graduates, which for Connecticut’s Class of 2008, translates into $2.5 billion in lost lifetime earnings. It’s time for state policymakers to take action to fix this now, starting with appointing a strong, reform-minded Commissioner of Education with a vision for change. Our state and district leaders also need to ensure that teachers have access to quality formative assessment tools that generate timely and actionable data on student abilities so that educators can identify struggling readers early and provide appropriate interventions. Additionally, Connecticut’s teacher preparation programs showed mixed results on a test of elementary teachers’ early reading instruction skills, with some programs showing more than a 90 percent pass rate and others in which nearly 50 percent of teachers failed the test. If we want to close our worst-in-the-nation achievement gap, we must ensure that our teachers are well prepared, especially to teach reading. Senate Bill 929, which is now heading towards a vote by the State Senate, would put many of these critical early literacy reforms into place. In addition, we need a legislative solution that will enable schools and districts to adopt a smart approach to school staffing that prioritizes teacher quality, not just time on the job, to keep our best teachers in the classroom.
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2. It’s easier to pick a good teacher than to train one: Familiar and new results on the correlates of teacher effectiveness
Matthew M. Chingos and Paul E. Peterson | Economics of Education Review, Volume 30, Issue 3 | June 2011
SUMMARY
In this study, Harvard University’s Matthew Chingos and Paul Peterson use data from Florida’s Education Data Warehouse to construct a value-added model that links student growth to individual teachers. They examine factors correlated with highly effective teaching including teacher education, advanced degrees, university selectivity, certification, and experience. The authors found that majoring in education, attending a more selective university, or holding advanced degrees had little, if any, influence on teacher effectiveness. National Board certification was found to have a slightly positive influence. In terms of teacher experience, Chingos and Peterson found that effectiveness tends to improve over the first 2-5 years of teaching, and then holds steady or slightly declines after the first five years of teaching. Given these study results, the authors conclude that teacher recruitment and pay policies, which are now largely structured around credentials and experience, need to be re-evaluated to map more closely to factors correlated with effective teaching.
CT CONTEXT
Time and again, research shows that teachers are the most important factor in determining students' success in school. This study adds to a growing body of evidence supporting efforts to identify effective teachers that include a primary focus on past evidence of improved student achievement growth, not just by credentials or years of experience alone. New Haven has led the way in developing a teacher and principal evaluation system that relies on student growth. New Haven’s efforts, along with the findings of this and similar studies, should guide the state’s Performance Evaluation Advisory Council (PEAC), which is now working to develop a state teacher evaluation system. Our state needs a fair and consistent way to identify and support our best educators, help those who are struggling, and ultimately release those who do not improve. The PEAC is supposed to develop this system by 2013. Until then, many districts facing severe budget crunches will be forced to lay off teachers. Unless the state legislature takes action to fix this situation, the newest teachers will be laid off first, regardless of how well they teach. State leaders can act now to change this by providing districts with flexibility to use existing measures of quality to guide layoffs, such as educators who have consistently been rated as underperforming, are under intense supervision, or are chronically absent without documented cause. Such a policy should also allow district leaders to keep teachers who have specialized training unique to a school or a district program or have achieved extraordinary merit, such as teachers of the year.
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3. Do low-income students have equal access to the highest-performing teachers?
Steven Glazerman and Jeffrey Max | Mathematica Policy Research for the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences | April 2011
SUMMARY
This brief examines elementary and middle schools in ten school districts in seven states to determine whether low-income students have equal access to highly effective teachers. The authors use value-added student growth measures to identify the top 20 percent of teachers in each grade level, which are the teachers they consider to be highly effective. In other words, the “students in these teachers’ classes averaged greater gains on achievement tests from one year to the next across multiple years on tests of achievement than similar students taking similar courses in the district from other teachers.” Students with this group of teachers improved by four to 14 percentile points more than their district’s average, and even more when compared to the lowest-performing teachers. Across all 10 districts, lower-income middle schools had fewer highly effective teachers, but there was no difference in the distribution of effective teachers across elementary schools. In both math and language arts, the lowest income middle schools had about half as many highly qualified teachers as the highest income middle schools. The distribution of effective teachers varied from district to district, and while the authors acknowledge the limited scope of the study, they suggest that districts can use this kind of information about teacher quality to pursue a more equitable distribution of teacher quality.
CT CONTEXT
Every student deserves to have an effective teacher, but as this report shows, some teachers are much more effective than others, and too often, low-income students don’t have equal access to the most effective educators. We need smarter staffing policies that can help ensure that we take a close look at teacher effectiveness and equitably distribute our most effective educators across all types of schools. This equitable distribution must be achieved and preserved, even when budgets force teacher layoffs. To accomplish this goal, we need to ensure that the evaluation system being developed by the state Performance Evaluation Advisory Council is a rigorous system that includes student achievement growth as a priority among a balanced set of effectiveness measures. It is also time for state policymakers to end outdated practices, such as last-in, first-out layoffs, that require personnel decisions to be made without consideration of teacher effectiveness.
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4. Building Teacher Evaluation Systems: Learning from Leading Efforts
The Aspen Institute | March 22, 2011
SUMMARY
This Aspen Institute report compares Achievement First (AF) and District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) teacher evaluation systems and examines lessons learned in the design and implementation of these systems. The report finds a significant difference in the specificity of teaching standards across the two systems. AF established very explicit expectations for teachers, while the DCPS developed more general standards without mandating specific instructional techniques. The highly detailed AF expectations make it easy for teachers to understand what is expected of them, but this level of detail can also prevent evaluators from observing holistic teacher performance and providing more general feedback. The more broad DCPS approach gives teachers and evaluators more flexibility to define and “own” the standards, but effectively implementing the system requires quality professional development to establish a shared understanding of the standards. Both DCPS and AF provide teachers with several interim evaluations during the year that give specific feedback and are designed to help teachers improve during the school year. This practice is different from many current evaluation systems that fail to provide teachers with frequent and actionable feedback. The report suggests that teacher ownership of an evaluation system is important to the system’s success, and suggests ways to engage teachers, including involving teachers in writing standards or having teachers serve as peer evaluators. The report also discusses ways to design professional development that helps teachers understand and meet the standards. Finally, the authors note that for a performance management system to truly function well, implementation needs to be viewed as a system-wide, ongoing effort that seeks to continually refine and improve the system. For example, DCPS placed a priority on refining the evaluation process to achieve consistency across teacher evaluations.
CT CONTEXT
Connecticut needs an evaluation system that provides teachers with a reliable tool to help them improve their skills as educators. This report highlights the evaluation system used by Achievement First, which operates several high-performing, high-poverty public charter schools in Connecticut. New Haven is another example of a school system in Connecticut that is implementing a robust system of teacher evaluation and professional development. Lessons learned from both of these models can guide the work of the state’s Performance Evaluation Advisory Council. The PEAC’s work is of critical importance: a robust evaluation system for teachers and administrators is an essential step towards a smarter staffing policy that will make educator quality and student growth an important factor in personnel decisions.
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