Helen F. Ladd is a distinguished professor of public policy and economics at Duke University.
In this article, which appeared in the News-Observer in North Carolina, Ladd explains why the schools need experienced teachers, not just a steady supply of novices who serve for two or three years, then leave.
She writes:
In an effort to keep educational costs in check, America’s cash-strapped states, local school districts and charter schools are hiring less-costly novice teachers. Some of the new hires are energetic college graduates supplied for two-year stints by programs such as Teach for America.
In the late 1980s, most of the nation’s teachers had considerable experience – only 17 percent had taught for five or fewer years. By 2008, however, about 28 percent had less than five years of experience. The proportions of novices in the classroom are particularly high in schools in underprivileged areas. Some observers applaud the rapid “greening” of the teaching force because they think that experienced teachers are not needed. But this view is short-sighted. Although a constant flow of new recruits is healthy, research shows that teacher experience matters in important ways:
Experienced teachers, on average, are more effective at raising student achievement. In research I have done with colleagues in North Carolina, experienced teachers greatly boost student achievement in elementary, middle and high schools alike. This pattern holds even after we adjust for the fact that experienced teachers are more likely to work in schools with more advantaged students.
She and her colleagues recently completed a study of teacher effectiveness in North Carolina among math teachers, and they found that:
…math teachers become increasingly effective at raising student test scores through about 15 years, at which point they are about twice as effective as novices with two years of experience. The productivity gains are less dramatic for middle school English teachers but follow the same trajectory.
Experienced teachers also strengthen education in numerous ways beyond improving test scores. Our research suggests that as North Carolina middle school teachers gain experience, they become increasingly adept at producing other important results, such as reducing student absences and encouraging students to read for recreational purposes outside of the classroom. More experienced teachers often mentor young teachers and help create and maintain a strong school community.
Also, as other research has shown, constant teacher turnover is disruptive for schools and harmful to students, especially in disadvantaged schools. All too often, inexperienced teachers are initially assigned to disadvantaged schools, where the challenges of maintaining order and effectively instructing students are very high.
Experienced teachers means a better experience for students.
Somehow, in the effort to appeal to people’s latent sense of entitlement (which is exactly what TFA is built on, from all angles), that notion of a positive experience for children during the school day was pushed to the background. And it needs to be brought back to the forefront again. Time at school should be time well spent. And time is better spent at school when there are folks with experience in the classrooms.
Reblogged this on Roy F. McCampbell's Blog.
Reblogged this on Roy F. McCampbell's Blog.
Is there a link to the research that Dr. Ladd cites? It would be interesting to compare it to the findings of Dr. Haertel that were cited in an earlier post. I am also interested in seeing how Dr. Ladd handled the correlation between inexperienced teachers and underprivileged areas. Differentiating between test score growth that comes from family affluence and test score growth that comes from teacher experience must be difficult when more experienced teachers systematically move to more affluent school districts.
Well, if standardized test scores make up the main part of the criteria for determining “teacher effectiveness” I’d have to throw that baby out with the dirty bath water.
How can people begin to believe that standardized test scores can be, should be used to evaluate the teacher’s skills, abilities and accomplishments in the teaching and learning process? Absurd, insane, utterly fantastically inane.
Duane Swacker: rest assured—or remain perturbed—that if present conditions persist, test scores will continue to reign supreme.
And we will keep witnessing what Art Costa, prof. emeritus of Cal State-Fullerton, described: “What was once educationally significant, but difficult to measure, has been replaced by what is insignificant, and easy to measure. So now we test how well we have taught what we do not value.” [Jim Horn and Denise Wilburn, THE MISMEASURE OF EDUCATION, 2013, p. 1]
😒
I would say also that schools (just as organizations) need continuity and people with institutional memory and longer relationships with one another to function properly, or at all, really.
If they encourage “churn” they’ll just keep reinventing the wheel over and over again. You really need a core group of people who say “we tried that, it didn’t work” or “that won’t fit here, because…”
One of my concerns as a public school parent is that ed reformers are standardizing schools and this work so they can easily slot employees in and out, as is the model in a low wage workplace. I don’t believe schools should be “run like businesses” at all, but if I did I certainly wouldn’t choose that model.
I’m particularly concerned about some attempts in our (reform-dominated) statehouse to create a class of publicly-paid teachers who would be “independent contractors”. They wouldn’t even be “employees” of the educational management organizations that run charter schools in Ohio:
http://10thperiod.blogspot.com/2013/05/teacher-union-busting-in-stem-schools.html
The research on learning communities supports what you say.
In the business world, when large numbers of experienced workers are laid off or fired and replaced with cheap novices, speculations are made about the solvency of the company, the wisdom or legality of the move. One thing you don’t see is serious discussions in the media as to whether novices do a better job than experienced workers.
Thanks for this link Chiara. It makes good points and many states are hiring educators in higher ed, as well as K – 12, to teach as adjunct professors. These highly trained academics, often recently awarded their PhDs, become ‘freeway flyers” who rush to a number of colleges to teach a class at each. They are cost effective since they are not union members and have no protection by a union, have no health insurance nor retirement benefits, and seem doomed to a future of meager earnings.
In California, particularly in community colleges, this situation has been the norm for many years.
Turning K-12 teachers into contingent workers, as has happened in higher education, is one of the primary motivations of the so-called education reformers.
Temporary or part-time, powerless, disposable, without benefits or a voice in their workplace: that’s the reality for the overwhelming majority of US workers, and it’s the wet dream of every so-called education reformer.
Exactly Michael…Rhee has turned into a multi millionaire and media darling beating the drum of reform. Our educational devolution mirrors that in American corporate industry…see Detroit…and the greed of the 1% seeking to change the total society into a serfdom.
Pensions will be a thing of the past…and all of the investment by workers made for old age retirement will be, is being, stolen.
Ellen
…and yes, Chiara, they are hired as independent contractors.
Ellen Lubic
And in PA the state is considering changing the school code so that layoffs can be done for economic reasons and that would allow the most experienced (most highly paid) to be laid off first. Nothing like living/working in an elightend, progressive state.
http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20131203_ap_dea5d35628f04cc9bc711453aed79a43.html
Experienced teachers are good … I guess. But, honestly, looking back some of my better teachers were not that experienced and some of my best teachers were very experienced.
My mom was a teacher and she had a gift – she took kids that everyone said “couldn’t read” and would be able to get them to read and advance at least three levels in a year. She replicated this at various grade levels and schools. She often felt that many teachers just didn’t care or want to put forth the effort and, frequently, the tenured teachers were the worst. Then again, there were other teachers who had been teaching for 30-40 years and were still excellent.
I’m not saying experience doesn’t matter but I just don’t buy that experienced teachers or tenure or any of that is the silver bullet. I think more money needs to be put into schools and I think teachers need to be paid more but again, neither of these things are silver bullets – parents need to be educated, kids need to have a safe environment to learn and live, etc…..
You can have all the experienced teachers you want but if parents aren’t involved, kids are living in fear of being shot on the way to and from school, and there’s no money for food, I don’t think the kid is going to learn.
The whole testing and scores debate is silly and distracting.
You are so right – effective teaching is an art and a science. The science part we can teach people to do- pedagogy, learning styles, behavioral management… the art part is more intangible and is often referred to as the “it” factor. A good teacher that as the “it” factor sees things that others don’t, they persevere in ways that others don’t and they connect with students in wonderful ways and their students thrive. They respond to what is in front of them and make split second decisions all day long.
This is what we need to be fostering and supporting not testing.
Helen Ladd is a hero– from a couple of years ago:
http://nyti.ms/1eQVFFr
“But let’s not pretend that family background does not matter and can be overlooked. Let’s agree that we know a lot about how to address the ways in which poverty undermines student learning. Whether we choose to face up to that reality is ultimately a moral question.”
Yes, there are some veteran teachers that aren’t very good and new teachers that are good at what they do and will improve over time. There are as many variations of this theme as there are people.
The important question is, will there be teachers to assume the role as mentors? It is a process of handing down the knowledge, skills, wisdom, history, and tricks of the trade that is collectively learned over a long period of time.
Teaching is like the performing arts; it has to be actively learned, performed, and heard in order for its continued existence.
From today’s Google Doodle,
“Google Doodle Honors Grace Hopper, Early Computer Scientist”
“In her commencement speech to the Trinity College class of 1987, which was excerpted in TIME, she said:
‘There’s always been change, there always will be change . . . It’s to our young people that I look for the new ideas. No computer is ever going to ask a new, reasonable question. It takes trained people to do that. And if we’re going to move toward those things we’d like to have, we must have the young people to ask the new, reasonable questions. A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. And I want every one of you to be good ships and sail out and do the new things and move us toward the future.'”
I wonder what Grace Hopper, Early Computer Scientist, would have to say about the Common Core. Are our children being given the opportunity to “sail out” ?