The anti-teacher education crowd must be rubbing its proverbial head.
A recent study by researchers Donald Boyd, Pamela Grossman, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, and James Wyckoff have surfaced some intriguing and thought-provoking conclusions, drawn from their major study of the effects of different pathways into teaching in New York City on the teacher workforce and on student achievement. Using a large, sophisticated database and employing thoughtful and fair-minded analyses, these researchers offer up important findings regarding the importance of teacher education in improving teaching quality. The bottom line, much to the chagrin of the teacher education misanthropists, is that there is nothing from the Boyd study that suggests university-based teacher preparation needs to disappear from the face of the earth.
Indeed, the February 7th newsletter of the National Council for Teacher Quality (NCTQ) — a consistent supporter of the demise of all things that smack of university-based teacher preparation — quietly and somewhat humbly admitted that short-cut alternative certification programs like the New York Teaching Fellows and Teach for America may not be the best idea since “sliced bread.” However, the authors of the NCTQ in this recent edition of their electronic rag, had to “cherry pick” a research finding to claim that the Teaching Fellows, after three years, “leave their traditional counterparts in the dust.”
I am not sure if the NCTQ crowd read the same Boyd, et.al. paper I read. (In any case, you should read the full paper, available for free (not $5 as advertised by NCTQ).
So let me set the record straight by first setting the context, something that the anti-teacher education crowd rarely does.
First of all, NYC employs 80,000 teachers, and because poor salaries and even poorer working conditions, the district has experienced horrific teacher shortages. In response, no surprise, the district has resorted to hiring increasingly less-prepared teachers to fill growing numbers of empty classrooms. In the spring of 2002, NYC employed 12,400 teachers with temporary licenses, and, as such, has relied on hiring teachers who enter through a variety of different pathways. Along with traditionally prepared or College Recommended (CR) teachers — primarily recruited from the local City University of New York (CUNY) system — NYC also brings in teachers from a variety of alternative, or short-cut routes into teaching, including highly recognized programs like Teach for America (TFA) and the NY Teaching Fellows program (Fellows).
In 2004, the Fellows brought almost 2500 new teachers to New York City, while TFA provided less than 350. Importantly, unlike most CR recruits, the Fellows and TFA recruits receive substantial support (e.g., stipends and tuition discounts) in taking the required teacher education courses they need to be certified. As the researchers noted:
Participants enrolled in alternate route programs must fulfill the same requirements as all other candidates for teaching certificates, and thus by the end of their programs, they have completed a similar set of courses to those taken by graduates of college recommended programs…. However, the costs of entering teaching through an alternative route are substantially less for the individual teacher than the costs of traditional university-based teacher preparation.
This fact, ignored by those at NCTQ, has a great deal of bearing on why the students of Fellows (in middle, but not elementary school) eventually catch up to their peers taught by the more traditionally-prepared CR teachers. So let’s go through the major findings of the study as described by Don Boyd and his colleagues.
First, teachers from both the Fellows and TFA have clearly upped the ante on the academic qualifications of new recruits to NYC. In the 2003-2004 academic year, 16 percent of the CR recruits did not pass the general knowledge certification exam on their initial attempt, compared to none of the TFAers and less than two percent of the Fellows. This is good news. But as the researchers note both the Fellows and TFA pathways are “less costly for the student to complete,” prompting them to speculate that the academic quality of CR recruits would most likely increase if they too had the financial support provided to their alternative route counterparts. I guess the anti-teacher education crowd is quietly saying, “ouch.”
Second, the students of CR recruits do fare better in both elementary and middle school reading and language arts than their counterparts taught by temporary licensed teachers as well as the Fellows and TFAers. In fact, even temporary licensed teachers do better than Fellows. This makes sense. Although CR recruits graduate from a variety of “traditional” university-based teacher education programs (some very effective while others very ineffective), they are taught to some extent how to teach reading! This one probably hurts the anti-teacher education crowd even more.
Third, in elementary math, students of CR recruits initially outperform students of other teachers. The anti-teacher education crowd does not highlight this finding. The Fellows start out performing worse, but gain more over the first year than do other teachers. By the second year, their students perform as well as CR students. Students of TFA recruits make gains during their first year but they are “never statistically different from a CR teacher.” This one forces a smile out of the anti-teacher education crowd. But stay with me.
Fourth, in middle school math both Fellows and TFAers do a slightly better job than both CR and temporary teachers. No surprise. Both the Fellows and TFAers have a lot more math in their backgrounds. And this is a good reason to recruit them. I am all for alternative routes into teaching. Our schools do need more teachers who have a stronger background in math – but the anti-teacher education crowd just cannot own up to the fact that they need to also know how to teach as well. The Fellows, in particular, get better by Year 3 of study because by then they have received a bunch of teacher education. If the anti-teacher education crowd owned up to this fact, then they would need to go the doctor for some pain medication.
Fifth, when it comes to measuring the effects of different pathways into teaching, turnover matters; and it matters a lot. TFA recruits, compared to both CR and the Fellows, are far more likely to leave teaching after two years. By the third year of the study only 25 TFAers were still teaching! Over time the relative attrition of the Fellows grows so that it is roughly comparable to CR teachers, and actually exceeds them after three and fours years. The researchers assert boldly, “If one pathway consistently has higher turnover even if its teachers do well relative to those in other pathways with the same experience, the pathway may not be providing the most effective teachers, on average.”
Some Fellows and TFAers as well as CR teachers can become effective teachers. But, if they do not stay around more than a few years then they cannot help very many students learn. The solutions to the problem — i.e., better salaries and working conditions as well as better pre-service and more extensive induction programs — will cost money as well as a lot of bureaucratically and politically painful reallocation of money. The anti-teacher education crowd does not mention this fact. More money for more teacher education is not the only response to the problem, but it is part of it. Just ask any number of education school deans who are trying to put into place more clinically-based teacher preparation programs, while their state funding keeps getting reduced.
Finally, let’s be real — and dead serious here. There is a lot of variation within pathways. For example, about 25 percent of the so-called more traditionally prepared, college recommended recruits did their student teaching as teacher of record. What this means is that it is difficult to tease out the differential effects of traditional versus alternative preparation when traditional recruits take on the qualities associated with alternative ones and vice versa. It also means that, as the researchers note, “the variation in effectiveness within pathways is far greater than the average differences between pathways.” There is effective and ineffective traditional preparation; and there is effective and ineffective alternative preparation.
So what are the implications of this important study — which has a number of additional components that will shed even more light soon on these matters. The evidence here suggests that teacher preparation and certification does matter in improving teaching quality and student achievement, but what counts for teacher education and current licensing requirements at this time is not enough for the students who must be served. Although for the most part the CR teachers are more effective than the Fellows and TFAers, the differences are not large. I am not a fan of what still goes on inside of most “traditional” university-based teacher education programs.
However, there is no evidence at all in this report that current alternative route programs, as NCTQ suggests, are “the best place” to recruit secondary school teachers. The surveys and interviews that Boyd and company are conducting and analyzing will help policymakers and practitioners get smarter about what needs to be done to ratchet up the quality of teacher preparation, both traditional and alternative alike, and to dramatically improve the support systems (e.g., induction, professional development) and working conditions necessary for teachers to be effective. So let’s get beyond the traditional versus alternative debate and do what is right the students – who are the ultimate beneficiaries of teacher education.