{"id":232,"date":"2012-01-17T11:03:03","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T16:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earlychildhoodnyc.org\/newswatch\/?p=232"},"modified":"2012-02-06T15:21:22","modified_gmt":"2012-02-06T20:21:22","slug":"232","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earlychildhoodny.org\/blog\/232\/","title":{"rendered":"New Study Sheds Light on Teachers’ Impact Beyond the Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Few topics cause as much debate and concern in education as teacher quality and effectiveness. Do teachers have a strong impact on a student\u2019s performance? Can we measure this impact? How do we identify effective teachers?<\/p>\n

Last month, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a working paper by researchers Raj Chetty, John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff that addresses these questions. The paper provides a detailed analysis of the effects teachers in large urban school district on both the test scores and long-term outcomes of their students. (Read the executive summary here<\/a> or the full paper here<\/a>). Building on the recent trend toward \u201cvalue-added\u201d measurements (which measures the average gain among students in a teacher\u2019s classroom against the student\u2019s prior test scores), the study included two major findings:<\/p>\n

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1) When a teacher who had high \u201cvalue-added\u201d scores joined a school, the test scores in the grade taught by that teacher would rise; when a high \u201cvalue-added\u201d scoring teacher left, the test scores would fall, and<\/p>\n

2) Students assigned to high \u201cvalue-added\u201d scoring teachers tended to have more success on long-term measures, such as college attendance, salaries, and retirement savings.<\/p>\n

On the whole, most of the reactions to the paper (such as CNN contributor William J Bennett<\/a> and the New York Time\u2019s Nicolas D. Kristoff<\/a>) interpreted these findings as the strongest empirical evidence to date of the substantial impact teachers have on not only their students\u2019 academic performance, but their futures as well.<\/p>\n

Although the findings, as well as the amount of well-collected data supporting them, are undeniably crucial in demonstrating how great of an impact a teacher may have, some<\/a> have cautioned against jumping to policy conclusions right away.<\/p>\n

Considering the broad or specific recommendations based on these findings at this stage would not only be premature, but also skips over the more exciting impact of this study: the questions it raises about teacher efficacy and the path it sets out for research into teacher quality.<\/p>\n

If this study has potentially provided a means of identifying excellent teachers, further research can use this technique to investigate other significant questions regarding teacher quality, such as:<\/p>\n