Forum on Teacher Quality

On Tuesday, the American Institutes for Research (AIR) held a forum on teacher quality. The panelist included:



• Beatrice Briman, Managing Research Scientist at AIR;
• Dan Goldhaber, Research Associate Professor at the University of Washington;
• Susan Moore Johnson, the Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. Professor of Teaching and Learning at Harvard University;
• Michele Rhee, the Chancellor for the District of Columbia Public Schools;
• Brad Thomas, Professional Staff Member for the House Committee on Education and Labor; and
• Alice Johnson Cain, Senior Education Policy Advisor to Chairman George Miller in the House Committee on Education and Labor.
Lynn Olson, the Managing Editor of Special Projects at Education Week moderated the discussion.

The conversation made two issues clear. The first point was that human capital is critical, but the federal effort to improve teacher quality has not proven particularly successful. According to research conducted by Professor Dan Goldhaber, it is clear that state certification is not a reliable measure of teacher effectiveness as measured by student academic outcomes. Often teachers who have failed their certification exams have produced tremendous student academic outcomes, while teachers who have passed their certification exams have produced awful results, Goldhaber found. The current proxy for teacher quality and effectiveness, most agreed, needs to be more sophisticated.

The second point of clarity was the disagreement on the proper federal role in this debate. Alice Johnson Cain made a strong defense of George Miller’s Teach Act. The bill, which Chairman Miller partially incorporated into the Elementary and Secondary Education (ESEA) House Discussion Draft, seeks to improve the recruitment, professional development and career development of teachers through a variety of innovative approaches such as merit pay and teacher career academies. But the economist (and Republicans) in the room cringed at the prescriptive approach and the researchers lamented about the lack of reliable research and data underlying such plans. They argued that the current and proposed federal policies, intended to serve as an assurance of basic quality instruction, have the detrimental effect of focusing educators on compliance and not academic outcomes.

The most evident consensus of the event was that those working on teacher quality policy have ample obstacles to tackle as Congress works on the reauthorization of the ESEA.

Resources:
American Institutes for Research, http://www.air.org/.
Dan Goldhaber, Research Associate Professor of Public Affairs, http://evans.washington.edu/fac/Goldhaber/
Author: DAD