How Effective are the Teachers in Your School District?

In Tennessee and several other states, teacher effectiveness can be assessed on the basis of annual student achievement gains.  Although there are exceptions like the reports that were undertaken by the Los Angeles Times, value added data by levels of teacher performance within school districts is rarely available to the public.  That said, even district averages are of value in assessing the quality of teacher hiring, retention, and oversight  As can be seen in the charts below, there are substantial differences between … Read More

Effective and Ineffective New Teachers

How Effective are Tennessee’s Teacher Preparation Programs? Tennessee’s Value Added Assessment System has been in place since 1995. It enables users to estimate the success of teachers, schools, and districts in lifting student achievement and it does so in a way that permits statistically fair comparisons. Since 2007, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission has published a report card that uses the TVAAS data to estimate success of Tennessee’s teacher preparation programs in graduating “highly effective” new teachers. Highly … Read More

NCTQ 2014 Teacher Prep Review

posted in: Briefings & Reports, Teachers & Teacher Preparation |

How are the nation’s institutions that train tomorrow’s teachers doing? The second edition of NCTQ’s comprehensive Teacher Prep Review has the answers. This edition is one third bigger than last year’s, and features program rankings, so that teacher prep’s consumers can readily know which are the best bets. Click here to read more.

Improved Student Achievement is Not Teaching’s Top Priority

Recent studies have made it clear that significant differences in ability to improve student achievement exist among fully trained and experienced teachers. J. E. Stone’s paper argues that these differences reflect the education community’s view that student achievement is not public education’s highest priority. Rather, achievement is only one valued outcome among many, and it often suffers from inattention. The education community’s priorities are consistent with ideals that have been taught in teacher training programs for decades, but especially since the sixties. They have come … Read More