How Do You Find An Effective Teacher? Ask A Kid

SEATTLE — Adults may be a little surprised by some of the preliminary findings of new research on what makes a great teacher.

How do you find the most effective teachers? Ask your kids. That's one of four main conclusions of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its research partners after the first year of its Measures of Effective Teaching Project.

Preliminary results of the study were posted online Friday; a more complete report is expected in April, according to the foundation.

The foundation aims to build a fair and reliable system of teacher evaluation and feedback to help teachers improve their craft and assist school administrators in their personnel decisions.

The report credits some of the top names in educational research across the nation and the work is paid for by the Gates Foundation but includes voices, ideas and analysis from top universities, nonprofit organizations and educational consultants.

Researchers have collected digital videos of more than 13,000 lessons in classrooms of teachers who volunteered to be studied. They asked students to report their perceptions of each teacher's class, and students also took an extra test to supplement the scores already gathered on their statewide achievement tests.

The classrooms being studied in grades four through eight are in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the Dallas Independent School District, Denver Public Schools, Hillsborough County Public Schools in Tampa and St. Petersburg, Fla., Memphis City Schools, The New York City Department of Education and Pittsburgh Public Schools.

The first four conclusions of the study are as follows:

_The average student knows effective teaching when he or she experiences it.

_In every grade and every subject, a teacher's past success in raising student achievement on state tests is one of the strongest predictors of his or her ability to do so again.

_The teachers with the highest value-added scores on state tests, which show improvement by individual students during the time they were in their classroom, are also the teachers who do the best job helping their students understand math concepts or demonstrate reading comprehension through writing.

_Valid feedback does not need to come from test scores alone. Other data can give teachers the information they need to improve, including student opinions of how organized and effective a teacher is.

The videos and widespread classroom research make up one part of the Gates Foundation's five year teacher effectiveness project. The other part involves a small group of school districts experimenting with some new ways of assessing and improving teachers.

Those districts will focus on teacher training, putting the best teachers in the most challenging classrooms, giving the best teachers new roles as mentors and coaches while keeping them in front of children, making tenure a meaningful milestone, getting rid of ineffective teachers, and using money to motivate people and schools to move toward these goals.

"It really is about an effective teacher for every student every year of their school career," said Vicki Phillips, director of the foundation's K-12 education program. "If we did that, we would make the kind of progress that we have all long dreamed about in this country."

____

Online:

Measures of Effective Teaching Project: http://www.metproject.org/

Comments

[sl26]

06:00 PM on 12/16/2010

Standardize tests do not measure success or failure for a student, teacher, or school. It's time to get off this bandwagon.

[timbeaux]

12:13 AM on 12/24/2010

Then what does measure success or failure for a teacher or a school? I hear over and over that this system or that system of evaluation doesn't work, but I rarely hear a professional educator suggest an evaluation system that does work. What would you recommend?

[sl26]

02:01 PM on 12/27/2010

Look at this article by Diane Ravitch posted right here on HP.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/what-randi-really-said-an_b_425849.html

[KMel]

12:16 AM on 12/16/2010

Here is a quandary....we want to put more effective teachers in the difficult classrooms, but who says that they want to be there? Just because you're a good teacher doesn't mean your chomping at the bit for a more difficult life. Not unless you're going to pay them more money.

[EmmaNYC]

09:13 PM on 12/14/2010

"It really is about an effective teacher for every student every year of their school career," said Vicki Phillips, director of the foundation­'s K-12 education program. "If we did that, we would make the kind of progress that we have all long dreamed about in this country."


Perhaps.
And perhaps if we had an effective law officer on every corner, we could eradicate crime.
And perhaps if we had an effective politician in every office, we could pass laws that would benefit all the people in the country.
And perhaps if we had effective educators in charge of education, we wouldn't have to listen to the nonsensical spoutings of some foundation's director on a subject they know nothing about.

[Farro]

03:28 PM on 12/13/2010

Also, this story should be at the top, not the story on parenting class...

[Farro]

03:27 PM on 12/13/2010

I fully support giving the people most affected by a good or bad teacher at least some power in the evaluations of teachers...

[Ralf Klinsmaan]

01:15 AM on 12/13/2010

Student Feedback about teachers is never used in a standalone fashion.
It is linked with student performance, class discipline, attendance, supervisor feedback etc...

While negative feedback from students is indeed disheartening teachers should understand that no one is rushing to make an opinion based solely on that. It is understood that some negative feedback can be caused by other variables and care is taken to discount them.

[Nikki123]

10:11 PM on 12/12/2010

Why does this study start at grade 4? There is plenty of data available to measure learning in the early grades. The foundational skills in K-3 are crucial for success throughout the grades. Haven't Bill and Melinda heard that when you close the achievement gap at K (kindergarten), the gap goes away?

[ArtTeach]

09:14 PM on 12/12/2010

Be wary of anything Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools is willingly participating in. they are currently trying to get teachers off the state payroll so they can institute "pay for performance" like it's commission. Not a bonus system, but a minimum-wage type salary with anything beyond that based on tests they are currently devising. - Tests that will have no bearing on the students' grades but will be used solely to determine the "effectiveness" of the teacher. I'm sure the students will put forth their best effort...

[reasonnotfaith]

09:02 PM on 12/12/2010

"It really is about an effective teacher for every student every year of their school career," said Vicki Phillips, director of the foundation's K-12 education program. "If we did that, we would make the kind of progress that we have all long dreamed about in this country."

I'd take anything Gates education director Vicki Phillips says with a grain of salt, given that she earned her ticket to the Gates foundation by first thrashing Portland (OR) Public Schools within an inch of its life.

She forced all schools to implement a dumbed-down, one size fits all reading curriculum (previously each school decided what best fit the needs of the kids they knew best). She also closed schools in the poorer parts of town-- ostensibly in the name of implementing a K-8 model, but actually to save money. The K-8 model/closures had little research to support it, merely Phillips "Trust me." She set community against community, at meetings where stakeholders were asked to determine just which schools to close. (Big surprise-- the more affluent parts of town had no closures.) The K-8 redesign forced kids into buildings that didn't fit, i.e., wrong size toilets for kindergartners (more important than you might think!), no science labs for middle schoolers, inadequate numbers/types of books in school libraries, etc. And now, after "Hurricane Vicki" has relocated to Gates, PPS is facing overcrowding in its schools and massive cleanup of her missteps.

[gravity defiant]

04:21 AM on 12/13/2010

Ugh. I'm a sub in PPS, and I see every day what a disaster this K-8 plan is. (And don't even get me started on the reading curriculum.) However, I'm relatively new to the city, never remember prior superintendents' names, and hadn't made the connection with who Phillips is until now. So thanks for connecting the dots for me. Just another reason to mistrust Bill & Melinda.

[goboinouterspace]

11:42 AM on 12/13/2010

As a teacher in the south, the K-8 model that seems to be norm or gaining speed in other parts of the country is a little strange, as that is what we quickly trying to move away from here (and we are usually the ones behind on educational trends). Here it is becoming very unusual for fourth and fifth graders to be in a building with K-3, let alone seventh and eighth graders.

[researcher]

08:16 PM on 12/12/2010

the teacher is but one of the significant variables in the classroom.

the same problems at wall street, banks, etc are the same problems in out educational insitutions.

this is going down the same road as the decline of the big three. blame the workers for poor quality.

this is a leadership problem. leadership has no idea how to create a national system in education that is effective for the most students.

americans are a results only oriented society and education is process oriented. big problem there.

then we have this idea that we can buy performance with the carrot and stick approach called pay for performance or hidden under the name of merit pay. pure ignorance that no univerisity has any idea of its ignorance.

this is an american problem not just an educational problem. look around we are failing on so many levels of leadership.

[Laura Hayes]

08:07 PM on 12/12/2010

Not true. In high school, I thought the cool young teachers were effective but as I got older and went through college I realized it was my cranky English teacher that taught me the most. Don't know where I would be today without her

[lilpeg]

09:31 AM on 12/14/2010

Me too, it was my cranky Math teachers and English teachers that taught me the skills that I use even 40 years later.

[KJLSanDiego]

03:29 PM on 12/16/2010

For me, it was Subject Knowledge + Passion = I work really hard to make the teacher proud!

[floyd1976]

08:05 PM on 12/12/2010

Great, I'm going to set my skepticism aside and rejoice that we can now accurately measure teacher effectiveness. Now, let's start tying administrator pay into how much they help their teachers improve and fire them if they can't take ALL the teachers they have and help them succeed in the classroom. As principals are the lead instructors in schools, if they teachers are failing, it is on them. What are they doing to help improve teacher effectiveness rather than just firing them.

Or, do "reformers" hold administrators to a different standard? Teachers should have all students grow and succeed, so, shouldn't administrators be able to work with all teachers and help them all improve every year?

[StealersWheel]

10:23 PM on 12/12/2010

seems like a strong point, HOWEVER, teachers (like me) are paid to improve the skills of all of their students because all of their students have a right to their education. We do not have a right to our jobs and so administrators do not have a responsibility to improve all of our skills. If we behave like our worst students and give less than our best effort or show an inability to learn new methods quickly enough, we should lose our jobs to people who can do them better. Just like everyone else in every other field.

[EmmaNYC]

06:54 PM on 12/13/2010

As a second choice, since administrators can fire untenured teachers who fail to help 'all' the students in their clases succeed, let's make it possible to fire all the students who fail to come to school prepared to learn with their homework and the proper attitude. That would greatly improve teachers' success rates as well as curb the spread of failing schools.

[Farro]

07:12 PM on 12/13/2010

Your anti-youth attitude is disturbing. Are you by any chance a teacher?

[traceydouglas]

10:41 PM on 12/13/2010

Emma - you mean just like they do in charter schools??? I think you're on to something here! :)

[Kevin Watik]

04:32 PM on 12/12/2010

The assumption under the claim (the title) is faulty.

Two teachers, one promises all play no work, while the other demands hard work, which one would likely be chosen, or liked, by kids?

Even adults are not guaranteed to make the "correct" decisions, let alone kids. American voters have been choosing the guy promises the unrealistic easy way out over the guy with the real solution, over and over again. How could you expect the same scheme to generate good results on kids?

It is the bane of democracy, that popular choices are not always the right choices. Many politicians have been using this to manipulate the electorate for their own personal gains.

I hope they do not follow this study and let students vote/choose the teachers. One ridiculous experiment on our kids, like that Harvard professor who gives cash to kids who finish their homework, is one too many.

[StealersWheel]

10:28 PM on 12/12/2010

You are mostly right, but don't be so quick to dismiss the kids. I have a lot of candid conversations with my students and they say things like "Mr. Smith's class is awesome, we have so much fun in that class." When I ask them who is a better teacher they go on to say things like, "well, Mr. Smith's class is fun and all, but Ms. Jones is a better teacher because she cares so much about us." How do you know she cares, I will inquire. "Because she's really hard on us and she is always pushing us, it's really annoying but we learn a lot in her class."

Kids get it more than they think you do. Sure, if you just ask them who they like, that question may lead you to the worst teacher. Ask them who is effective though, and I think you will get more insightful answers than you are giving them credit for.

[eceresa]

10:35 PM on 01/29/2011

Absolutely... with some kids. But when you tell them that they can control teachers' jobs and pay, and let them figure out that they can then dictate what kind of teacher they have, are they going to pick Mr. Smith or Ms. Jones?

In too many schools, they're going to pick Smith, have fun for four years of high school, and regret it in a decade.

[teacher39years]

04:30 PM on 12/12/2010

Last week, Michelle Rhee's Foundation was introduced, test results from Shanghai were reported , and a man from the Department of Education talking about how Education was in shambles.
This week, we have another study conducted by Bill Gates., which leads me to question the motivation behind the study in the first place.
The Reformers have been trying to figure out what makes an effective teacher since Educational Reform began. They identified some external classroom window dressing and made it a criteria to base "Classroom Walkthrough". The found , however, that they could not quantify the "subjective" qualities , such as pacing, that made teachers excel and students learn.

[StealersWheel]

10:31 PM on 12/12/2010

I too am a teacher and I have no idea what you just wrote. Please tell me that your communication with your students is more clear and that you hold them to higher proof reading standards than you held yourself before you posted this unreadable message.

[Martha T]

04:06 PM on 12/12/2010

That's how I want to be judged..Whether or not I am organized and effective by 7/8 graders who have a hard time bringing a pencil to class...more BS from non-educators. Being a singer, a billionaire, or a CEO does not mean you know what the heck you are talking about when it comes to education. Gates would be happiest with classrooms run by technology and no teacher present. Please....................