1 / 13

The Equitable Distribution of Teachers: Documenting Improvement

The Equitable Distribution of Teachers: Documenting Improvement. Laura Goe, Ph.D. Associate Research Scientist, ETS Senior Researcher, NCCTQ March 2007. Challenge: Documenting Change.

cassia
Download Presentation

The Equitable Distribution of Teachers: Documenting Improvement

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The Equitable Distribution of Teachers: Documenting Improvement Laura Goe, Ph.D. Associate Research Scientist, ETS Senior Researcher, NCCTQ March 2007

  2. Challenge: Documenting Change • Many states are able to document the current distribution of highly qualified, experienced teachers by the percentage of poor and minority students in the school. • The challenge is to document change over time and relate change to specific policies or incentives. • To do this, you need complete data about teachers’ experience and highly qualified status at the course level.

  3. Challenge: Data “Silos” • Many states have a problem with data “silos.” • These are databases that do not “talk to each other.” • To document changes in the distribution of highly qualified, experienced teachers, states need relational databases that allow school, course-level, and individual teacher information to be linked over time. Note: See the appendix for more information on relational databases and making data more useful.

  4. Linked Teacher and Student Data • While linking individual students to teachers is essential for many types of analyses, it is not required for documenting the equitable distribution of teachers. • It is only necessary to show school-level change. • Course-level data are essential for middle and high school where teachers may be teaching out of field (thus not highly qualified) part of the day.

  5. Solutions • Many states (including Tennessee) have the capability to follow teachers’ movements because each teacher has a unique identifier. • But most states do not track teachers longitudinally. • Focus on developing a database that lets states track teachers from school to school as well as exiting and reentering the profession.

  6. Solutions • Besides a teacher database, states need a school database in which they can track the following variables over time: • Percentage of poor students • Percentage of minority students • Aggregated student achievement • Percentage of highly qualified teachers • Percentage of teachers with three or more years’ experience • Binary (dummy or pseudo variables) for incentives and policies

  7. Tracking Teachers • With teacher and school data, the state can track teachers’ movement into and away from schools based on such factors as student race and achievement. • The state also can correlate the movement of teachers with policies (using dummy variables).

  8. Dummy Variables • How will you know if a policy or incentive (local or state level) is having an impact on teacher distribution? • Include a dummy variable with “1” for “yes” and “0” for “no” to document the presence of that policy in a given year. • Then it will be possible to correlate changes in teacher distribution with the introduction of various policies and incentives.

  9. Data Analysis • Most monitoring requirements for documenting the distribution of teachers can be met without complex statistics—descriptive statistics are generally are sufficient. • Many states seem to have difficulty displaying data in ways that allow for easy monitoring of progress.

  10. Data Reduction Is the Key! • Good data analysis and display reducesdata to manageable bits of information. • Bar graphs, maps, pie charts, and line graphs are useful ways to visually reduce data. • A bar graph in which each bar represents a different year allows quick comparisons of change over a period of years. • Include a narrative—explain what the table is showing.

  11. Using (and Learning From) Data

  12. Other Useful Information to Collect • In teacher database, include the following • Name of credential-granting institution of higher education (IHE) • Name of degree-granting IHE • Professional development or additional content-specific coursework • Additional certifications (e.g., bilingual or special education beyond regular teaching credential) • Languages spoken • Teacher “effectiveness” (district value-added ranking)

  13. Laura Goe P: 609-734-1076 F: 609-734-1755 E-mail: lgoe@ets.org Learning Point Associates1100 17th Street N.W., Suite 500Washington, DC 20036-4632General Information: 877-322-8700 www.ncctq.org

More Related