ED478408 2003-07-00 Indicators of

Teacher Quality. ERIC Digest.

ERIC Development Team

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Indicators of Teacher Quality. ERIC Digest................................... 1

TEACHER DEGREE LEVELS................................................ 2

TEACHER PREPARATION: PEDAGOGICAL VERSUS CONTENT

KNOWLEDGE............................................................. 2

TEACHER LICENSURE....................................................... 3

TEACHER YEARS OF EXPERIENCE...................................... 3

TEACHERS' ACADEMIC PROFICIENCY.................................. 4

REFERENCES.................................................................. 4

ERIC Identifier: ED478408

Publication Date: 2003-07-00

Author: Goldhaber, Dan - Anthony, Emily

Source: ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education New York NY.

Indicators of Teacher Quality. ERIC Digest.

THIS DIGEST WAS CREATED BY ERIC, THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

INFORMATION CENTER. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ERIC, CONTACT

ACCESS ERIC 1-800-LET-ERIC

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act requires that states employ only "highly qualified"

teachers by the end of the 2005-2006 school year, and, indeed, research has

demonstrated teacher quality is the most important educational factor predicting student

achievement (Ferguson, 1998; Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 1999). Although studies have

ED478408 2003-07-00 Indicators of Teacher Quality. ERIC Digest. Page 1 of 6
produced contradictory findings about which attributes of teachers are most likely to

translate into effective classroom performance, some information on how specific

teacher attributes correlate with teacher quality is available, and it can help guide

administrators' hiring decisions. This digest briefly reviews this knowledge.

TEACHER DEGREE LEVELS

The research on the value of a teacher's advanced degree is mixed: some studies show

that while additional teacher education has a positive correlation with student

achievement in some cases, others find that it negatively affects achievement

(Greenwald, Hedges, & Laine, 1996; Hanushek, 1986). Goldhaber and Brewer (1997)

found that a teacher's advanced degree is not generally associated with increased

student learning from the eighth to the tenth grade, but having an advanced degree in

math and science for math and science teachers appears to influence students'

achievement. The same results were not found to be true for teachers of English or

history.

Goldhaber and Brewer (1997) suggest that the findings of other studies about the

impact on student achievement of teachers' advanced degrees are inconclusive

because they considered only the level of the degree and not the subject of the degree,

which may affect student achievement in different ways than the degree level.

Nevertheless, results from all the studies seem to imply that there is not a positive

correlation between teachers having advanced degrees in subjects other than those

they teach and student achievement.

TEACHER PREPARATION: PEDAGOGICAL

VERSUS CONTENT KNOWLEDGE

Here, too, there is no strong consensus about the value of pedagogical preparation for

teachers, the teaching of how to teach. In addition, because the quality and content of

teacher training programs vary greatly, the impact is not always clear (Wilson, Floden, &

Ferrini-Mundy, 2001). Some teacher education courses focus on content specific

teaching methods (for certain school or student types), while others teach subject

specific teaching methods. Few studies directly link how the type of education courses

taken by teachers affects student achievement. Discussions about pedagogical

preparation focus instead on secondary measures like the relationship between student

achievement and teachers' scores on standardized tests measuring pedagogical

knowledge, and the relationship between student achievement and teacher certification

status, considered an indication that the teacher completed some kind of pedagogical

training.

Because content knowledge is also not clearly defined or measurable in all content

areas, studies often rely on an individual's undergraduate coursework as proxies for

content preparation. Coursework, however, varies across institutions as does an

individual's mastery of content. Whereas Goldhaber and Brewer (1997) found that

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Page 2 of 6 ED478408 2003-07-00 Indicators of Teacher Quality. ERIC Digest.
students who had teachers with subject-related advanced degrees in math and science

performed better than students of teachers without subject training, Monk and King-Rice

(1994) found that even in subjects where subject-specific training may make a

difference (e.g., math), its impact depends on the context of the classes taught: the

number of college math courses taken by teachers had an impact on high school

students' math achievement, but additional teacher coursework beyond that only

mattered if the teacher was teaching an advanced course.

Given that additional studies had similar findings, it can be concluded that teachers with

advanced degrees in specific subjects can have an impact on student learning in those

subjects in certain settings. There is too little research available to conclude whether

non-subject-specific degrees are correlated with student outcomes.

TEACHER LICENSURE

Traditionally, state teacher licensure has helped ensure at least a minimal standard of

teaching competence. Licensing typically requires that prospective teachers complete a

standard set of college level courses in pedagogy or in the subject they wish to teach,

and that they pass one or more standardized tests. Because of a tighter teacher labor

market, many states now permit schools to employ non-traditionally-licensed teachers.

Some believe that such teachers are not prepared to teach, while others feel that

alternative licensing may attract better candidates to teaching.

A recent study (Goldhaber & Brewer, 2000) comparing achievement levels of high

school students taught by teachers with different types of licensure found that students

taught by fully-licensed teachers tended to have higher levels of performance in math

and science on average. When measuring achievement growth, though, there were few

differences in achievement between students with teachers who held standard state

certification and those with emergency certification in subjects. Their findings illustrate

the importance of measuring student achievement gains instead of levels.

A review of about 150 studies on teacher certification by the Abell Foundation (Walsh,

2001) concluded that they did not show that certified teachers are more effective than

uncertified teachers, touching off a heated debate about both the Foundation's findings

and the quality of the studies reviewed (see, for example, the rejoinder by

Darling-Hammond, 2001). Additional studies have also found that students of

alternatively certified teachers do at least as well as students whose teachers are fully

state-certified (e.g., Miller, McKenna, & McKenna, 1996), while others found that that

fully licensed teachers are more effective (e.g., Hawk, Coble, & Swanson, 1985).

Thus, we believe that there is not a strong enough research base from which to draw

definitive conclusions about the value of state regulation of the teacher labor market.

TEACHER YEARS OF EXPERIENCE

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There is a wide range of findings on the relationship between years of teaching

experience and student outcomes. Hanushek (1986) found that fewer than half of the

109 previous studies on the estimated effects of teacher experience showed that

experience had any statistically significant effect on student achievement; of those, 33

studies found that additional years of experience had a significant positive effect, but

seven found that more experience actually had a negative impact on student

achievement. Other studies show a stronger positive relationship between teacher

experience and student outcomes in some, but not all, cases they reviewed (e.g.,

Greenwald et al., 1996). Murnane (1995) suggests that the typical teaching learning

curve peaks in a teacher's first few years (estimated at year two for reading and year

three for math).

It is also plausible that a positive finding on experience actually results from the

tendency of more senior teachers to select higher-level classes with higher achieving

students (Hanushek, 1986). Thus we might reasonably infer that the magnitude of the

experience effect, should it exist, is not terribly large.

TEACHERS' ACADEMIC PROFICIENCY

Researchers have also considered the relationship between student outcomes and

teachers' general academic proficiency. Measures such as performance on tests of

verbal ability, teacher licensure, or college entrance exams, and the selectivity of the

undergraduate institutions attended by teachers, are used as reflections of intelligence

and motivation. The research predicting student achievement that includes measures of

teacher academic proficiency is not plentiful, but it consistently shows a positive

relationship between the two (e.g., Strauss & Vogt, 2001). However, the studies were all

conducted at the school or school district level, as opposed to teacher or student level,

casting some doubt on them. Measurement issues and issues of causality leave

unanswered the question of whether higher-scoring teachers lead to higher-scoring

students or whether affluent districts, which tend to have higher achieving students, hire

teachers with higher scores.

A few studies conducted at the individual student level found that teachers who

attended more selective undergraduate colleges are more effective (Ehrenberg &

Brewer, 1994; Summers & Wolfe, 1975). Greenwald et al. (1996) found a total of only

nine studies that analyzed the effects of teacher academic proficiency on student

achievement, but positive relationships between teachers' academic proficiency and

student achievement were found in the overwhelming majority of them. Thus, taken as a

whole, the above literature suggests that measures of teacher academic proficiency

represent one of the best predictors of teacher quality.

REFERENCES

Darling-Hammond, L. (2001). The research and rhetoric on teacher certification: A

response to "Teacher certification reconsidered." Unpublished paper, Stanford

University, Palo Alto, CA.

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Page 4 of 6 ED478408 2003-07-00 Indicators of Teacher Quality. ERIC Digest.
Ehrenberg, R., & Brewer, D. (1994, March). Do school and teacher characteristics

matter? Evidence from "High School and Beyond." Economics of Education Review,

13(1), 1-17. (EJ 483 386)

Ferguson, R. (1998). Can schools narrow the Black-White test score gap? In C. Jencks

& M. Phillips (Eds.), The Black-White test score gap (pp. 318-374). Washington, DC:

The Brookings Institution. (ED 423 765)

Goldhaber, D., & Brewer, D. (1997). Evaluating the effect of teacher degree level on

educational performance. In W. Fowler (Ed.), Developments in school finance, 1996

(pp. 197-210). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for

Education Statistics. (ED 409 634)

Goldhaber, D., & Brewer, D. (2000, Summer). Does teacher certification matter? High

school teacher certification status and student achievement. Educational Evaluation and

Policy Analysis, 22(2), 129-145. (EJ 615 883)

Greenwald, R., Hedges, L., & Laine, R. (1996, Fall). The effect of school resources on

student achievement. Review of Educational Research, 66(3), 361-396. (EJ 596 389)

Hanushek, E. (1986, September). The economics of schooling: Production and

efficiency in public schools. Journal of Economic Literature, 24(3), 1141-78.

Hanushek, E., Kain, J., & Rivkin, S. (1999). Do higher salaries buy better teachers?

Working Paper No. 7082. Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Hawk, P., Coble, C., & Swanson, M. (1985, May-June). Certification: It does matter.

Journal of Teacher Education, 36(3), 13-15. (EJ 320 453)

Miller J., McKenna, B., & McKenna, M. (1996). A comparison of alternatively and

traditionally prepared teachers. Journal of Teacher Education, 49(3), 165-176. (EJ 572

744)

Monk, D., & King-Rice, J. (1994). Multi-level teacher resource effects on pupil

performance in secondary mathematics and science: The role of teacher subject matter

preparation. In R. Ehrenberg (Ed.), Choices and consequences: Contemporary policy

issues in education (pp. 29-58). Ithaca, NY: ILR Press. (ED 377 756)

Murnane, R., Willett, J., & Levy, F. (1995, May). The growing importance of cognitive

skills in wage determination. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 77(2), 251-66.

Strauss, R., & Vogt, W. (2001, March). It's what you know, not how you learned to teach

it: Evidence from a study of the effects of knowledge and pedagogy on student

achievement. Paper presented at the annual meeting of American Educational Finance

Association, Cincinnati.

ERIC Resource Center www.eric.ed.gov

ED478408 2003-07-00 Indicators of Teacher Quality. ERIC Digest. Page 5 of 6
Summers, A. & Wolfe, B.L. (1975). Which school resources help learning? Efficiency

and equity in Philadelphia public schools. Business Review. Philadelphia, PA: Federal

Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Department of Research. (ED 102 716)

Walsh, K. (2001). Teacher certification reconsidered: Stumbling for quality. Baltimore,

MD: Abell Foundation. (ED 460 100)

Wilson, S., Floden, R., & Ferrini-Mundy, J. (2001). Teacher preparation research:

Current knowledge, gaps, and recommendations. A research report prepared for the

U.S. Department of Education. University of Washington, Center for the Study of

Teaching and Policy, Seattle.

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This Digest summarizes a portion of an ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education

monograph, Teacher Quality and Student Achievement. Paper copies are available

from the Clearinghouse for $5.00 each. It is also available for no charge in full text on

the Clearinghouse's web site.

This Digest was developed by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education, with

funding from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, under

contract no ED-99-CO-0035. The opinions in this Digest do not necessarily reflect the

position or policies of IES or the Department of Education.

Title: Indicators of Teacher Quality. ERIC Digest.

Note: Digest Number 184. For the monograph upon which this Digest is based, see UD

035 698.

Document Type: Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs)

(071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073);

Available From: ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education, Institute for Urban and

Minority Education, Box 40, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY

10027. Tel: 212-678-3433 or 800-601-4848 (Toll-Free); Fax: 212-678-4012; e-mail:

eric-cue@columbia.edu; Web site: http://www.eric-web.tc.columbia.edu.

Descriptors: Academic Achievement, Educational Quality, Elementary Secondary

Education, Higher Education, Knowledge Base for Teaching, Pedagogical Content

Knowledge, Preservice Teacher Education, Teacher Certification, Teacher

Competencies, Teacher Effectiveness, Teaching Experience, Teaching Skills

Identifiers: ERIC Digests, Out of Field Teacher Assignment

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