Teacher Quality
Key to Student Success
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In a knowledge based economy that makes education more important than ever, teachers matter more than ever. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education are focused on teachers in the classroom as the key to meaningful school reform. Education research shows that teacher effectiveness is the difference maker – an influence even greater than race, poverty level, or parent’s education.
Katie Haycock of The Education Trust notes: “Research shows that kids who have two, three, or four strong teachers in a row will eventually excel, no matter what their background, while kids who have even two weak teachers in a row will never recover.” The difference between having an effective teacher or ineffective teacher for three years in a row can represent as much as 50 percentage points in student achievement on a 100 point scale (Babu and Mendro, 2003).
The 2010 Global Strategy Group poll offered seven options on the best way to improve education in Louisiana. The citizens of Louisiana noted that their number one option was “holding teachers more accountable for their students’ progress.” Their number two options was “providing more support and professional development for teachers.”
Increasing teacher effectiveness in Louisiana requires a six part strategy:
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Attracting capable individuals to enter the teaching profession and redesigning university programs to better prepare teachers for the classroom.
- Recognizing, rewarding, and learning from the truly exceptional teachers.
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Improving “quality of teaching” for all teachers with job embedded and targeted professional development.
- Encouraging the most effective teachers to teach in hard to staff schools.
- Keeping the best teachers in the profession over time. The current retention rate in Louisiana is 75% at one year, 50% at three years, and 40% at five years
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Replacing teachers who are not effective with students.
