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• Guest Editorial: What to make of the power of SES
• Teacher mobility: Getting the best teachers where they are needed the most
• Film Review: American Teacher
• When school isn't out for summer
• Thank you Chiefs for Change
• Welcome to latest Advisory Board member

By Dick Startz, University of Washington, Seattle

As Kate Walsh pens in the above, "SES and family background swamp school effects by a 3:1 margin. In spite of these odds, we can still have daily reminders that teachers matter plenty."

Both statements by Walsh are firmly backed by the scientific evidence.

Begin with the idea that parents (or families or communities) are the most important factor determining student outcomes. Well-intentioned people draw the logical-sounding conclusion that if background is the most important factor in determining student outcomes, then background is the key to getting better student outcomes. I see this coming from people who believe that parents drive outcomes (arguably true) and therefore teacher-centric solutions are relatively unimportant (hogwash)--unlike the NCTQ position.

When we look to see which 'input' is most responsible for explaining why some kids thrive in school and others fall by the wayside, we have to look both at how much the input varies across kids and how large an effect follows from that variation in inputs. The comes-to-school-with-the-kid (parents, community) input varies enormously, and the effect is large enough that comes-to-school-with-kid is the greatest explanatory factor for why some kids make it and others don't.

But if we want to change outcomes, we must ask a different question. Which input among those that have a big effect can we change? Changing the input provided by the average parent is a delightful thought, but it's not going to happen. In contrast, we know that teachers do have a huge effect and that teacher input is changeable.

Think of it this way. Suppose we observe outcomes for a group of kids. If we know about their parents' contribution to their education, we could probably do a pretty good job of ranking outcomes for the students. Once in a while, a really spectacular teacher will make enough of a difference to move her students above what you might have expected given the parents. But this won't happen too often.

Now suppose we reformed teacher quality by making every teacher better by an equal amount and then re-ranked the students. (Remember, we're oversimplifying.) Every student would have equally improved. So relative rankings would be unchanged. Post-reform, we'd still conclude that parents are the definitive factor.

But every student would have a better outcome. That, of course, is the goal of reform. In other words, parental contributions may be the explanation for differential student outcomes, but teacher contributions are the route to improve outcomes for all students.

Those who argue for the primacy of parents implicitly believe the parent term varies much more than the teacher term. That may be true, but it has nothing to do with where we should concentrate reform efforts. The right questions to ask are: 1) can reformers change teacher input (the answer is yes), and 2) is the multiplier 'teacher effectiveness' large (the answer is emphatically yes).

I've simplified and put the discussion in hypothetical terms. But the situation I've described is very much how the real world works. Dan Goldhaber and colleagues' recent study on teaching math provides an example based on the effectiveness of Washington State math teachers. The authors provide a pictorial breakdown of the importance of various explanatory factors for student learning of math.

You see immediately that student background swamps the role played by teachers. Heck, even "unexplained" swamps teacher effects.

The authors also calculate the size of the factor from the same data. They find that increasing teacher input quality so that the median post-reform teacher performs as well as the current 84th percentile teacher would improve student outcomes by the equivalent of 2.6 months of extra schooling. That's enormous! If we did this for teachers in all grades and the student effect cumulated, the average student would learn two and a half years more material than she does now!

Moral: Arguing over whether parents or teachers are more important is a distracting irrelevancy.

(An earlier version appeared at www.ProfitOfEducation.org.)

Birds of a feather, flock together. That's the finding from a new study exploring patterns in teacher transfers. In other words, high performing teachers tend to transfer to schools with a large proportion of other high performing teachers (and also high performing students), while low performing teachers tend to cluster in bottom quartile schools.

The trends found in this CALDER study result in what the authors Li Feng and Tim Sass describe as the "rich getting richer" phenomenon, feeding and exacerbating differences in teacher quality between schools. One way the authors propose easing the natural flow of high performing teachers to already high performing schools is to offer salary differentials for highly effective teachers willing to re-locate to schools serving more disadvantaged students, effectively also shutting down the pattern of weak teachers filling those spots. This solution is something that a handful of Florida districts now have in their contracts. It's been recently expanded, thanks to new state law offering salary supplements for teachers both in Title I schools and schools in the bottom two categories of school improvement.

By Priya Varghese

As evidenced by the audience's response to the Washington, D.C. debut of American Teacher, personal sacrifice and dedication of public school teachers play nearly as well as Deborah Kerr's showing up in a wheelchair at the top of the Empire State Building in the blockbuster An Affair to Remember.

By featuring four hard-working, nurturing, popular teachers, the movie's producers deliver a well-executed, emotional appeal for increasing teacher salaries, though we aren't sure who it is that needs convincing. The film implies that most of us remain ignorant of the challenges teachers face every day (a sentiment also openly expressed by several panelists convened for the screening), but we think most Americans have an inkling. It's not hearts that need winning here, but heads.

We recognize that a policy polemic on teacher pay is not exactly blockbuster material, but filmmakers Dave Eggers and Nínive Calegari find a number of opportunities to push their point of view as we watch the personal struggles of these highly dedicated teachers unfold. In an April 30th New York Times piece, they write that teacher accountability and measurement--issues we view as critical to settling the compensation question fairly--should be of secondary concern to that of salaries. But we're not sure they grasp what makes this issue so complex, at least for the rest of us.

The film highlights D.C. Public Schools as one of the districts investing in and rewarding its teachers at the level they deserve. It fails to mention, however, that D.C.'s compensation system is tightly linked to a rigorous evaluation system, one that has ruffled many a teacher's feathers. At the reception before the film began, I chatted with a DCPS teacher-friend, rated "highly effective" and awarded a substantive bonus, who remains disconcerted by the intrusions of five 30-minute classroom observations she receives each year. I had to bite hard into my pita chip to keep from pointing out that other professionals, like myself, share an office with their bosses, and are observed every minute of their work day.

Districts and principals do not have the same luxury as filmmakers in selecting their stars; they cannot settle for those who labor, however valiantly, for their students. They must have a reliable method for determining which teachers are raising student achievement.

Eggers and Calegari are right in comparing educators and soldiers: we don't blame the latter when military operations get bungled. Indeed, soldiers enjoy a unique halo from criticism, one that sets them apart from teachers and also just about everyone else. Some other things that set soldiers apart are boot camp, expulsion of low performers who fail physical or intellectual requirements, and a rigid, merit-based hierarchy of leadership.

We wish The Teacher Salary Project success in convincing America to put its money where its mouth is and helping to transform the teaching profession into one that attracts and keeps the very best for our children. In the meantime, the devil remains in the details: tight budgets, poor coaching, and fuzzy evaluation instruments. Back to work.

With more attention to summer learning loss, school districts are looking to summer school as a targeted intervention for struggling students. But with summer school staffing often resembling "teacher-welfare," according to Jeff Smink of the National Association for Summer Learning, districts need to rethink who is in front of the classroom.

Our Tr3 database will soon include data on summer school hiring practices in 125 districts, revealing dramatic variation in the processes districts use to fill summer vacancies. Of the 20 largest districts in the country, only Houston uses teacher evaluations as the primary criterion for selecting summer teachers, and only because the district just changed its policy. Tenure and seniority are primary hiring factors in New York and Chicago. In three Florida districts--Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade--union representatives are given the first shot at open summer positions.

Houston will fill summer school slots based on who is the most effective (as determined by the district's new value-added system) and give a 25 percent summer pay bump to particularly effective teachers.

We are both honored and gratified by the June 1st announcement by the Chiefs for Change that their eight state school chiefs are formally endorsing our review of the nation's teacher preparation programs. Along with the similar statement of support released last year by school superintendents from across the country, as well as the seal of approval on our standards and methodology conferred by our Technical Panel, it is increasingly clear that educators at all levels want this review to move forward.

NCTQ is pleased to welcome McKinley Broome to our Advisory Board. McKinley has served Baltimore County Public Schools since 2005 as a fourth grade general educator, Gifted and Talented teacher, and teacher leader. In addition to being recognized as Rookie Teacher of the Year and honored as one of only 54 winners of the nation-wide, prestigious Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award, McKinley spends his summers with Baltimore County Public Schools New Teacher Academy, helping new teachers prepare for their first days in the classroom.