Sunday, February 14, 2010

Teacher quality

Everybody knows that schools differ massively in their quality. This is not just - or even especially- an Irish phenomenon. However finding the elusive factors that determine what make schools good has proved both scientifially challenging and politically tricky. There is now a fairly substantial body of evidence showng that reducing class size is not that important, certainly once it is below a certain level. Nonetheless it continues to get a lot of air-time here partly because teachers' unions like it (no surprise there) and because it is intuitively appealing.
The emphasis elsewhere has shifted, the US' No Child Left Behind Act introduced by George W. Bush focused attention on school accountability. This idea has certainly not caught on here in Ireland where lack of accountability is effectively enshrined in law: data on school performance may not be published.
Some researchers in the US, notably Eric Hanushek of Stanford University, have emphasized the importance of teacher quality. In an interesting development, policy makers have got behind the idea of teacher quality, under the Race to the Top program, and have linked states' access to funds available through the stimulus package. Specifically, states are being asked to reform around four areas:
  • Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy;
  • Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction;
  • Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; and
  • Turning around our lowest-achieving schools.
The article below from the Atlantic Monthly has a very good overview of these developments. Given the huge potential returns to society from improving educational attainments at school level (see my recent posting, link below), one wonders what does it take for policy makers, the education sector and the community generally to finally get serious about improving our schools?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/201001/good-teaching

http://gearybehaviourcenter.blogspot.com/2010/02/high-cost-of-low-educational_12.html

12 comments:

Stephen Kinsella said...

How does this kind of work sync/jar with Borooah's recent ESR paper on school quality in Ireland? If 'better' teachers end up in Irish speaking schools, by self-selection, then we're onto a winner in Limerick. For once ;)

Kevin Denny said...

Stephen, I haven't that paper 'though I have seen the abstract. The Gaelscoil phenomenon is an interesting one but probably a small part of the picture over-all. I am sure that its not just selection of teachers though. There is also selection of students: there will be virtually no emigrants in these schools (even why they try to get in).
My guess is that if you look at Gaelscoils (okay, 'scoileana) as with multi/non-denominational schools that you find higher levels of parental involvement & probably more middle-class parents.

Liam Delaney said...

Kevin - is there a well developed literature on the education production function that incorporates town level variables e.g. libraries, connectedness of parents groups and so on?

Kevin Denny said...

Good question:I don't think so. In some respects the literature is at quite an early stage & has focused mostly on a small number of issues like class size, maybe teacher qualifications, public/private & the inevitable endogeneity issue. The variables you mention would bring in some further technical issues - measuring the effect of external type variables is hard even assuming we can measure them.
Interestingly, one of the stylized facts from work on PISA & related datasets is that the best predictor of a kid's test score is the number of books at home.

Liam Delaney said...

In the work we did on drinking, we tried where possible to control for as many town effects as possible and I spent a lot of time with colleagues coming up with different taxonomies of Irish towns. There is of course enormous historical feedback loops between the development of towns and the development of the schools in them, so disentangling town characteristics is tricky.

My own anecdotal experience of education, that I would like to see tested, is the importance of the local library for bookish working class kids. In my case, both the psychology and economics sections were well-stocked and the main librarian was friendly. In a pre-internet age, it is difficult to think of where else I would have formed a fixed idea that studying Psychology and Economics in Trinity was something worth doing. I remember also as a kid the library running competitions that motivated kids to read. In general, I have pretty strong memories of pro-reading campaigns that I was exposed to back in Thurles library in the day. Certainly, any effects these had on my later wages are an effect of the treatment on a selected treatment group, but again working it logically it is not clear how else the initial desire to learn I picked up at home could have been absorbed.

Liam Delaney said...

On the Irish-speaking schools Kevin, I don't have the same sense that they are higher SES. I did a brief search on this. If anyone knows, feel free to link

Liam Delaney said...

come to think of it, ballyer to oxford back in the 60s must have involved a local library somewhere in the chain?

Kevin Denny said...

Yes a public library was very important to me but in combination with parents who pushed me & my older brothers to use it.
So I am sympathetic to the notion that libraries may be important. Of course the nature of libraries is changing massively with the growth in the web.
On the Gaelscoils & SES, its only a guess. It may be more true in the cities. In the secret world of Irish education, it would be difficult to find out for sure.

Anyway, all of this is beside the point: HOW DO WE RECRUIT AND RETAIN GOOD TEACHERS?

Liam Delaney said...

Again, my sense in Ireland is that the generation of teachers since I have been in college are "good" in the sense that points are high to get into teaching courses and postgraduate courses are extremely competitive. It is also competitive to get placed into schools. I think the curriculum and the incentives in the schools may be letting kids down in key areas but its hard to argue that there is a low "human capital" stock among Irish teachers.

Liam Delaney said...

it could be argued Kevin that more subtle variables about how schools are organised augment teacher quality. Schools with good curricula, good parents structures, facilities and so on are certainly also more likely to have better teachers. Disentangling those aspects from pure teacher quality is one challenge.

Kevin Denny said...

If you read interviews with people or stop and ask them about their school days and why they liked or disliked them, they very seldom say "well the class size was too big" or "the facilities were good", they say "Mr Smith was great so I loved Egnlish" or "Mr Jones was terrible so I hated maths". That would be my own response about every stage of education I have been through. Now I know thats very subjective & there are issues of salience and so on. If my students didn't get a lot out of my classes, it wasn't becasue of the overhead projector or the textbook (they are basicallythe same), it was me largely.
We certainly have no good scientific evidence on teacher quality in Ireland currently (though I might be able to come up with some) but there is evidence internationally and I think its unlikely that Ireland is an exception. Sure, other things matter like school management (which is done partly by teachers i.e. the principal)& parental involvement.
The curricula in Ireland is common across schools so that cannot explain school differences.

Liam Delaney said...

The curriculum may not vary across schools but it can interact with the characteristics and things can be done with curricula that will differential affect schools with different characteristics.

In terms of teacher quality, what more can they really do on the flows. You have to do a degree and a postgraduate qualification and a competitive interview process. I agree that accountability is not at all in place, but I wonder whether the "deadbeat" teacher model really applies to the flows in Ireland. If anything, there may be an overskilling of younger teachers in Ireland and an undersupply. Also, most schools now operate and enforce probation periods on teachers.

I would be prepared to bet that many of teacher quality issues in Ireland are legacy issues.