This page contains the academic and policy research used to inform and advance the perspectives presented in the booklet Improving Teacher Quality; Here’s How. For more hands-on materials targeted at grassroots community advocates, leaders and parents, please look at our materials under the Toolkit page.  

Go for the Talent

There is little evidence that current training and certification processes for teachers contribute to their effectiveness in the classroom. They do, however, narrow the pool of potential candidates by posing barriers to entry into the teaching profession.

The formal training program offered in colleges includes coursework in both education methodologies and content areas. Teachers who complete the program take a licensing test in order to be “certified” to teach in a public school, as required by every state except Montana and Nebraska. On average, college students who major in education have much lower academic aptitude than students in other majors. Those who major in education score significantly lower on the GRE, LSAT, and GMAT than students with other majors. Such figures indicate that the talent pool for teachers is weak compared to that for other professional jobs.

Some studies find a correlation between credentials and student outcomes. Another body of evidence, however, suggests this correlation is weak. Several studies that use strong research methods have found that teacher training may benefit some individuals, but that, on average, teachers with traditional certification are not more effective at helping students learn than teachers who take an alternative route to teaching. Other studies suggest that certification itself is not a strong predictor of student learning. For those that believe that alternative routes to certification are better, the evidence is mixed. A recent study in New York City found that teachers who came through alternative routes (the New York City Teaching Fellows program and Teach for America) appear to have improved student achievement. On the other hand, other studies suggest that, on average, students taught by teachers who went through alternative routes perform no better or worse than traditionally certified teachers.

Ultimately, states have not done a thorough job of evaluating whether existing training programs, traditional or alternative, are preparing qualified teachers to boost achievement. Only 18 states collect meaningful data on the effectiveness of teacher training programs, according to a 2007 review. Until states require education schools to systematically measure these characteristics, they won’t know how to better prepare their teacher graduates for the demands of 21st century classrooms.

Further complicating the problem, district leaders do not know how to choose the candidates who will make effective teachers. In general, teachers with advanced degrees are not more effective at raising student achievement. The exception appears to be teachers with advanced degrees in science or math who teach these subjects in high school. In the first few years, research suggests that experience does have a positive effect on student learning. After their first year of teaching, teachers typically show steady improvement for a few years, but the effect disappears after that. Teachers’ verbal ability is more predictive of effective teaching than any other easily measured teacher characteristic; and yet districts do not always make it a high priority in their hiring decisions. Several studies conclude that teachers’ verbal ability, as measured by their performance on standardized tests such as the ACT, SAT, or GRE, accounts for significant variations in their students’ learning. (Given this correlation, it is particularly distressing that, as reported earlier, students who enter education have lower SAT scores, on average, than their peers.)

Even when quality individuals are attracted to teaching, Very few districts prioritize staffing decisions to meet the needs of low-performing or high-poverty schools; and principals of such schools often have relatively little opportunity to choose from a pool of strong candidates. On the surface, it seems far more efficient to have human resource offices screen applicants than to have principals poring over hundreds of applications and conducting dozens of interviews. But research suggests that district HR offices often suffer from serious mismanagement. Burdensome application processes, poor customer service, and inadequate data systems not only slow down the process, but can frustrate potential candidates.

Even effective human resource offices often do not know how to match teachers with schools where they will be most effective. In addition, late hiring timelines are a serious barrier to placing talented candidates in positions where they are needed. The New Teacher Project documents the detrimental effect of late hiring on teacher quality. In a study of four urban districts, between 30 and 60 percent of new teacher applicants withdrew from the pool, often to take jobs in higher-performing schools in the suburbs, where districts often had an accelerated hiring timeline. In follow-up analysis, TNTP found evidence that the applicants who withdrew had significantly higher undergraduate GPAs and were 40 percent more likely to have a degree in their teaching field.

Even worse, in most districts, teachers who seek to move to a new school or those whose jobs are eliminated are guaranteed another job in the district by collective bargaining and contractual agreements. This means that sometimes a more junior teacher who is more effective with students can be displaced by transferring teacher with more seniority. It also means that a teacher who is not successful at one school can be passed among many other schools, rather than getting help or facing dismissal.

These policies exacerbate the staffing inequities that begin with the hiring process. Across the country, low-income students are more likely than their higher-income peers to have teachers who are not certified, who performed poorly on college and licensure exams, and who are teaching outside of their field of study.

Make Results Count

Teacher evaluations, as currently designed, are rarely used to distinguish top performers from those who are reasonably good or barely adequate, or to improve the quality of individual teachers or of the faculty as a whole.  As The New Teacher Project concluded in its 2009 report The Widget Effect, “ teachers’ effectiveness—the most important factor for schools in improving student achievement—is not measured, recorded, or used to inform decision-making in any meaningful way.”

Instead, Evaluations are rarely based on teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom and their contributions to student learning. There are two primary reasons for this: first, administrators are typically not well-trained to evaluate the quality of teachers’ instruction, in part because they do not necessarily have a background in the field of study they are observing. To compensate, evaluations typically focus on how teachers teach, rather than on what they teach – and thus miss a vital opportunity to assess whether teachers understand the subject matter well enough to teach it.  

Secondly, the only objective method to measure student achievement is scores on standardized mid-year and end-of-year tests. Because the tests are only given in some subjects and at certain grade levels, they cover only some teachers.  Many experts have suggested evaluating teacher performance by how much students’ test scores increase during the time they are taught by a particular teacher, with adjustments for factors outside of the teacher’s control.  But many states only report the percentage of students who have achieved proficiency in a given subject, not by how much students have progressed. 

The current situation in most schools is one where evaluations are rarely if ever linked to professional development and no targeted assistance is identified to address weak spots. Once teachers are tenured, formal evaluations are rarer. Effective evaluations—the bedrock of any strong performance management system—could reap enormous benefits for students, prompting improvements in teacher recruitment, screening, training, professional development, and career management.  But because it raises the possibility of removing ineffective teachers, revamping teacher evaluation is one of the most contentious issues in education. 

Help Teachers Improve

Beginning teachers, however talented they are, by definition have less practice in knowing how to reach challenging students.  Nevertheless, they are routinely assigned to the most difficult classes, with little or no effective support to succeed. They also get little effective help in taking on that challenge. Although “induction” programs for new teachers exist in most districts, research suggests that they rarely focus enough attention on improving instruction, nor do they meet teachers’ desire for support with classroom management.  Research also indicates that very few teachers receive comprehensive induction that includes the help of a supportive mentor and opportunities to collaborate with other teachers.  Some research suggests that teachers who participate in high-quality mentoring programs are more likely to stay in teaching.  Of course, retention is not a sufficient end in itself: incapable teachers should be encouraged to leave. But induction appears to be a powerful way to help more teachers be successful and keep them longer in the classroom. 

Once recruited into the profession, teachers face an uphill climb for quality professional development. Professional development is universal among school districts, but often poorly focused and most activities have little or no demonstrated impact on the quality of teaching and learning. Teachers typically spend dozens of hours a year in training activities and many spend far more.  Some estimates suggest that public schools spend as much as $14 billion a year on professional development.  A 2002 study found that Chicago Public Schools spent an average of $123 million annually on professional development, but its offerings were not integrated into a comprehensive strategy for improving instruction. In one large study, 79 percent of teachers participated in “traditional” forms of professional development: workshops, seminars, and institutes.  Many of these training experiences were generic one-day workshops with little follow-up, and they were not connected to the content students were expected to master or to current, classroom-level data on student achievement. This is typical of many districts, in which teachers choose much of their own professional development independent of supervisors’ evaluations or any overarching school or district strategy. As in so many other areas, there is little evidence connecting professional development to improvements in student learning.  

Of the massive amounts of material written on the topic, only the high quality research shows that, when professional development activities are focused on the academic content that students are expected to learn and are embedded in teachers’ daily activities, instruction and student achievement are likely to improve. Promising strategies include teachers collectively examining and discussing student assignments, trying new strategies in practice, observing each other’s teaching, and collaboratively analyzing student test results.   More importantly, studies of high-performing schools suggest that teachers who have access to ongoing information about student progress, and who use this information to adjust their teaching, are better able to improve student learning.

Reward excellence

In other professions, compensation is viewed as a powerful tool to improve employee performance and determine who stays and who leaves.  Teacher pay does not work that way.  In fact, the evidence suggests that current compensation systems actually work against quality teaching, encouraging lower performers to enter the profession while giving higher performers reason to stay away or leave in higher numbers.  

Almost all public school teachers are paid according to a single salary schedule.  Teachers under this system get a salary bump for every year they teach and for earning an advanced degree.  Districts pay 11 percent more for a master’s degree, 14 percent more for an education specialist's degree, and 17 percent more for a doctorate over what a teacher would earn with a bachelor's degree only. But these characteristics have a limited impact on teacher effectiveness. 

On a single salary schedule all teachers with the same level of experience and education are paid the same, regardless of their effectiveness in the classroom, the level of challenge in their schools, or what the wider market would pay for their expertise.  Moreover, there are widespread shortages of teachers in particular fields – including science, math, special education and programs for English-language learners.   The fact that ineffective teachers are paid the same as exemplary or high-demand teachers can undermine morale. 

Tenure decisions could be a powerful opportunity for schools to reward high performers and weed out poorly-performing teachers, but they rarely work that way. Tenure policies vary from state to state, but in general are designed to give teachers enhanced job security, far beyond what is common in other fields.  The problem is that evidence from around the country indicates that districts almost always award tenure without considering any evidence of a teacher’s performance. 

Once teachers are awarded tenure, they cannot be dismissed without formal charges of an “actionable offense” (typically defined by statute or case law), a hearing, and multiple appeals.  Under this system, principals typically cannot dismiss mediocre teachers – only those that are egregiously bad, and the process may take years in some districts. With odds like this, most principals are unlikely to attempt to dismiss even their lowest-performing teachers, so they have less opportunity to build a team of teachers who are the best fit for their building. 

Not only is it hard to get rid of ineffective teaches, compensation programs have incentives for them to stay teaching. Almost all public school teachers are covered by traditional defined benefit pension systems where the amount each teacher receives is based on their age and/or length of service.  Many states allow a teacher to draw a full pension before age 65, but benefits are typically back-loaded so that a teacher will not earn maximum benefits unless she remains a teacher in the same state over several decades.   Costs, however, are incurred from the time teachers enter the profession, and can be quite significant.  In some cases, contributions from the district and the teacher combined can exceed 20 percent of a teacher’s pay.

A well-planned retirement benefit system would provide incentives for the most effective teachers to stay in the profession as long as possible, encourage the least effective to leave, and entice (or at least not discourage) new, talented candidates to enter the profession. In far too many states, however, current pension systems work against these goals. 

Unfortunately, delayed compensation may discourage young candidates, who often change jobs multiple times over their career, and might prefer to retain a greater portion of their salary rather than pay into a system from which they may never benefit.  For many of these young workers, the typical teacher pension system – as opposed to a more portable retirement benefit, such as a 401K — may be a disincentive to entering the profession.