Teacher Quality

�Schools of education, teachers unions, the existing teacher workforce, state governments, and local school boards are just some of the players who have an impact on teacher quality. Changing teacher preparation, teaching methodologies, teacher incentives, and other key teacher quality factors is a monumental undertaking.� (Teacher Quality, Lance T. Izumi & Williamson M. Evers, 2002) A � simple definition of teacher quality: good teachers are ones who get large gains in student achievement for their classes�� �a good teacher will get a gain of one and a half grade-level equivalents, whereas a bad teacher will get a gain of only half a year for a single academic year�� �having three years of good teachers (85th percentile) in a row would overcome the average achievement deficit between low-income kids...� (Teacher Quality, Lance T. Izumi & Williamson M. Evers, 2002, p.3)

From �Teacher Quality�, Lance T. Izumi & Williamson M. Evers, 2002

Public School Resources in the United States, 1960-1995 
Resource  Pupil 	  % of teachers 	   Median years 	Current expenditure/ADA
	Teacher	   with master�s 	    of teacher      (1996-1997 dollars)	
          Ratio     or higher degree     experience

1960	25.8		23.5		11		$2,122
1970	22.3		27.5		8		$3,645
1980	18.7		49.6		12		$4,589
1990	17.2		53.1		15		$6,239
1995	17.3		56.2		15		$6,434
��average real spending per pupil has increased by more than 75 percent, that is, by three-quarters after allowing for inflation. But if we look at student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, we see that performance is virtually unchanged in math and reading and has fallen in science. This is hardly what the proponents of increased resources suggest should have happened.� (p.6)

The cumulative and residual effects of teachers on the academic progress of students are huge. (p.18) Students unfortunate enough to encounter two or more ineffective teachers in sequence show measurably retarded growth. (p.22)

[�] �The TVAAS [Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System] database contains approximately six million student achievement test records from 1991 to the present. The individual student information was linked to specific teachers in 1994, allowing estimation of teacher effectiveness�� �Many research findings from the TVAAS, replicated by other researchers, are pertinent to the issue of teacher quality�� (p.15)

� The effect of teachers can be separated from ethnic, socioeconomic, and parental influences. (4)
� The variability of teacher effectiveness increases across grades and is most pronounced in mathematics. (5)
� In the extreme, fifth-grade students experiencing highly ineffective teachers in grades three through five scored about 50 percentile points below their peers of comparable previous achievement who were fortunate enough to experience highly effective teachers for those same grades.(6)
� A teacher�s effect on student achievement is measurable at least four years after students have left the tutelage of that teacher. (7)
� When a student has experienced an ineffective teacher or a series of ineffective teachers there is little evidence of a compensatory effect provided by experiencing more effective ones in later years. (8)
� Regardless of ethnicity, children of similar previous achievement levels tend to respond similarly to an individual teacher. (9)
� Teachers who are relatively ineffective tend to be ineffective with all student subgroups across the prior achievement spectrum, whereas teachers who are highly effective tend to be very effective with all student subgroups across the same spectrum. (10)
� The effect of the teacher far overshadows classroom variables, such as previous achievement level of students, class size as it is currently operationalized, heterogeneity of students, and the ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of the classroom.(12)
� In the extreme, for students scoring in the lowest quartile in fourth-grade math, the probability of passing an eighth-grade-level test (required for high school graduation) ranged from 15 to 60 percent as a function of the sequence of teachers and how effective they were. Students in this achievement group experiencing four teachers of average effectiveness had a 38 percent probability for passing the test.(13)

(4) D.A. Harville, �A Review of the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS)� (manuscript, Iowa State University, 1995); H.R. Jordan, R.L. Mendro, & D. Weerasinghe, �Teacher Effects on Longitudinal Student Achievement� (paper presented at the National Evaluation Institure, Indianapolis, Ind., 1997); William L. Sanders & S. Horn, �Educational Assessment Reassessed: The Usefulness of Standardized and Alternative Measures of Student Achievement as Indicators for the Assessment of Educational Outcomes: in Educational Policy Analysis Archives 3, no. 6; Sanders, Saxton, and Horn, �Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System� (5) University of Tennessee Value-Added Research and Assessment Centre, Graphical Summary of Educational Findings from the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) 1995 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Value-Added Research and Assessment Centre, 1995). (6) Jordan, Mendro, and Weerasinghe, �Teacher Effects�; William L. Sanders and June C. Rivers, �Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers on Future Student Academic Achievement: Research Progress Report: (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Value-Added Research and Assessment Center, 1996) (7) June C. Rivers-Sanders, �The Impact of Teacher Effect on Student math Competency Achievement� (Ed.D. diss., University of Tennessee, 1999); Sanders and Rivers, Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers. (8) Sanders and Rivers, Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers (9) Sanders and Rivers, Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers (10) Sanders and Rivers, Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers (12) S.P. Wright, S.P. Horn, and William L. Sanders, �Teachers and Classroom context Effects on Student Achievement: Implications for Teacher Evaluation� in Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education 11, no.1, 57-67 (13) June C. Rivers-Sanders, �Impact of Teacher Effect on Math Achievement

Union Disruptions

Canadians Question School System in New Survey
Canadian Press, August 29, 2004
From http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1093801835559_49/?hub=Canada

�With the new school year just starting, about 60 per cent of Canadians surveyed in a recent poll expressed satisfaction with the education system in their province. The Leger Marketing poll found that 58 per cent of respondents were satisfied, compared with 36 per cent who were dissatisfied. The others didn't know or refused to answer. Regionally, 67 per cent of Manitoba and Saskatchewan respondents were satisfied with their education system. Other breakdowns along the same lines were: the Atlantic provinces and Quebec, 62 per cent; Alberta and Ontario, 55; and British Columbia, 52.

The vice-president of the British Columbia Teachers' Federation pointed a finger at her provincial government as she responded to the poll's findings in B.C. �People don't believe the education system is properly funded,� said Irene Lanzinger, who teaches high-school mathematics and science. �Since the Liberals came to power in 2001, we've had 113 schools close and we've had a reduction in the teaching force of 2,500 teachers.� �There are larger classes, fewer librarians, fewer counsellors, there are some schools in which resources are a problem - there aren't enough textbooks or schools run out of paper in March.� Further to the east, the president of the Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation had kinder words for his provincial government, which he said has supported education �reasonably well.���

� �Monday was the first day back to school for most of Quebec's students. As they slid into their desks, they were told not to expect their teachers to coach their teams, supervise their lunchtime activities, or take them on field trips.� (http://www.cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/1999/08/30/quebecedu990830, August 31, 1999)

In Canada: �Teachers� salaries, accounted for about three-quarters of all expenditures in 1999-2000� (http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/81-582-XIE/2003001/highlights.htm)

� �Over the weekend, 3,500 teachers meeting in Edmonton decided to return to classes on Monday but stop doing things they're not legally required to do while they wait for the results of a Monday afternoon meeting between the province's premier and the head of the ATA. Until the dispute is resolved, the teachers will work to rule which means they won't be doing things such as marking tests for the government and spending their own money on supplies�� (http://calgary.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=teachworkca020304, March 2002)

� Equal funding=equal pay: �Effective Monday, November 4, 2002, Secondary Teachers are on Full Withdrawal of Services [�] [because] Teachers will have to do two hours a week of hallway, bus and cafeteria duty on top of their teaching and voluntary activities. [�] Guidance counsellors and librarians are bargaining chips. [�] This is all unacceptable to Teachers and it has to be unacceptable to parents and students. We ask parents and students to fight for their teachers.� (http://www.oectasimcoemuskoka.on.ca/Worktorule.htm, November 2002)

"Since last December, the government has given school boards $680 million for teacher and staff salaries," said Eves. "Despite fair and reasonable wage increases, students have had their educational experience hurt by labour disputes of one kind or another�" �Since 1985, there have been almost 1,000 lost days because of strikes and lockouts in Ontario - each one representing potentially thousands of hours of lost learning for our students�� (http://ogov.newswire.ca/ontario/GPOE/2003/05/20/c3617.html?lmatch=&lang=_e.html, May 2003)

�The work-to-rule has been an important feature of high school teacher resistance, particularly in response to the increase in class contact time and forced participation in after-school activities that the Ontario government has insisted on adding to contracts. Teachers in two-thirds of the province�s school boards worked to rule and boycotted after-school activities to protest against these contractual changes during the 2000-01 school year. [...] Students also walked out and protested against the dissappearance of extra-curricular activities due to teacher work-to-rule campaigns.� (Retooling the Mind Factory; Education in a Lean State, Alan Sears, 2003, p.241-242)

In The United States: �Why do top teacher union officials, like National Education Association (NEA) President Reg Weaver, describe themselves as �classroom teachers� rather than union representatives? The annual Harris Poll provides a ready answer: Teachers are regarded by almost half of the American public as belonging to an occupation of �very great prestige,� whereas only 15 percent regard union leaders that way. The teacher union has been so successful in downplaying its identity as a labor union that a survey of members of the Alabama Education Association in 2000 showed only 19 percent regarded the NEA as a union, with an overwhelming 77 percent saying it was �a professional association.� The idea of putting teachers front and center in the presentation of the labor union's viewpoints was one of three recommendations made in 1997 by the Kamber Group, which had been hired by the NEA to address union concerns that many Americans at that time considered the NEA �the number one obstacle to better public schools.� The Kamber Group's analysis and recommendations are discussed in one of the chapters in a new publication from the Olympia, Washington-based Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF). EFF reports many members of the Washington Education Association were unaware the association they had joined was a labor union. �I was shocked to learn the Washington Education Association is not what it claims to be,� said Grant Pelesky, a fifth-grade teacher from Puyallup, Washington. �Rather than an association of professional educators, it is in fact nothing more than a labor union. Though I do not philosophically oppose labor unions, I do oppose being forced to be a member of one against my will.��� (George A. Clowes, Labor Union Masks Motives Behind Teacher Fa�ade, October 1, 2004http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=15710, Published In: School Reform News) �The NEA was founded as a professional association for school superintendents and teachers in the mid-1800s. In a battle for members with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in the 1960s, the NEA was transformed into a powerful labor union--a union made even more powerful by President John F. Kennedy, who signed an executive order lifting a long-standing ban on public employees organizing a labor union. Now, with funds deducted directly from the paychecks of its 2.7 million members--and non-members, too--the NEA has an annual budget of more than $1 billion. As the EFF report points out, those interests are union interests, not the interests of parents and children. Former AFT President Albert Shanker once remarked, �When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children.� �The union's lobbying efforts have very little to do with ensuring that excellent teachers are recruited and well compensated and that students are literate and ready for the world of work and citizenship,� writes EFF Executive Director Lynn Harsh in her introduction to the report. EFF's publication is designed to explain how the NEA has achieved its considerable influence over the operation of the nation's public schools and how the union expects to maintain that sway. Suggestions for beginning to reduce union influence are provided for teachers who have religious objections to union policy and for teachers who want to become agency fee-payers.� (George A. Clowes, Labor Union Masks Motives Behind Teacher Fa�ade, October 1, 2004http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=15710, Published In: School Reform News)

In the United States: "The 2002-03 average teacher salary was $45,771, [US$] up 3.3 percent from the previous year, and average beginning teacher salaries rose 3.2 percent to $29,564 [US$] for the same period." (http://www.aft.org/salary/index.htm)

�At a San Jose elementary school, a father saw an obscenity scrawled on the entrance wall. A woman in the office told him the district would send a cleaning crew. The next day, it was still there. The dad, who worked in construction, grabbed cleaning materials from his truck and started to remove the graffiti. A staffer ran out to stop him. It was a union job, she explained. No volunteers allowed. If he didn't leave, she said, he'd be arrested. The father left. For two weeks, his children walked past the obscenity to enter their school. It was a four-letter word starting with �f.� �It wasn't even spelled right," the father said�� (More money for schools doesn't end the problems, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/09/12/ING6I8M6AK1.DTL, Setpember 12, 2004)

In England: �The First Minister did raise hopes of reform recently when he announced the end of the �ordinary comprehensive, because there is no such thing as an ordinary child�, and at the same time his staff even started using the "S" word - selection. Within days, however, those hopes were dashed when McConnell explicitly ruled out a return to selection on the grounds of ability and restated his faith in the comprehensive system, complete with some waffle about identifying the 20 worst secondaries and labelling them �schools of ambition�. What happened to force this depressing about-turn? We cannot know for sure, but you don�t need an Advanced Higher in Politics to guess that McConnell was caught between his own Scylla and Charybdis. The monstrous obstacles were the teaching unions, especially the all-powerful Educational Institute of Scotland, and the local authorities that run our schools. And, unlike Jason, Jack clearly failed to find a path between these crushing vested interests. The EIS was set up in 1847 to promote higher teaching standards but self-interest has made it one of the most antediluvian of trades unions. It has been wedded to comprehensives since their introduction 40 years ago, and it knows that opening the door to reform in schools can only raise questions that persist about the performance of many teachers, despite McCrone�s efforts to modernise the profession. Although the EIS and local authorities as the employers of teachers are more usually foes than friends, they stand together against modernisation in schools. What councils fear more than anything else is the loss of their control over schools, which is their real power base and brings them 40% of the �8bn a year they receive in funding from the Scottish Executive. Faced with such a powerful unholy alliance, our First Minister clearly crumbled and backed away from reform�� (McConnell must do better with schools, http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1071642004, September 12, 2004)

Do Parents Need A National Parents Federation

It is interesting to imagine the amount of money and lobby power, a National Parents Federation of School Aged Children could command. Requesting a $10 or $20 yearly fee to represent the interests of parents and students, within Canada and United States � seems an interesting alternative to the present system.

We have accepted �a form of rule that relies on the consent of the ruled�.
(Retooling the Mind Factory; Education in a Lean State, Alan Sears, 2003)

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