Identifying Effective Teachers Policy
Providing comprehensive reporting may be the state's most important role for ensuring the equitable distribution of teachers among schools. New Jersey reports little school-level data that can help support the equitable distribution of teacher talent.
New Jersey does not require districts to publicly report aggregate school-level data about teacher performance, nor does the state collect and publicly report most of the other data recommended by NCTQ. New Jersey does not provide a school-level teacher-quality index that demonstrates the academic backgrounds of a school's teachers and the ratio of new to veteran teachers. New Jersey does not report on the percentage of highly qualified teachers at the school level. However, the state does report school-level data on the educational attainments of its teachers or on teacher absenteeism and turnover.
New Jersey's most recent Equity Plan was approved by the U.S. Department of Education in October 2015. It appears to further address the components contained in this goal.
Report school-level teacher effectiveness data.
New Jersey should make aggregate school-level data about teacher performance—from an evaluation system based on instructional effectiveness—publicly available. Given that New Jersey requires teacher evaluations to be based to a significant extent on evidence of student learning (see "Evaluation of Effectiveness" analysis and recommendations), such data about the effectiveness of a school's teachers can shine a light on how equitably teachers are distributed across and within school districts.
Provide comparative data based on school demographics.
Providing comparative data for schools with similar poverty and minority populations would yield an even more comprehensive picture of gaps in the equitable distribution of teachers.
Ensure that ideas outlined in the Equity Plan evolve into state policy.
New Jersey's 2015 Equity Plan outlines the state's intention to further report on the equitable distribution of its teachers throughout the state. However, because adherence is voluntary, New Jersey is strongly encouraged to follow through with its public reporting plan.
New Jersey recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis. New Jersey added that given it has only collected one year’s worth of evaluation data, the state believes it would be inappropriate to use evaluation component-level or summative ratings for this purpose now. New Jersey has always emphasized and will continue to stress the importance of taking time to conduct thoughtful, thorough implementation of a new system. Without providing the full context of local dynamics or fidelity of implementation in a given school or district, drawing attention to raw numbers would not benefit educators or students. Instead, various state offices work directly with districts or programs identified from the early data as needing extra support.
Distribution data
should show more than just teachers' years of experience and highly qualified
status.
Transparency is one of the most important tools states have to promote the equitable distribution of teachers within and across higher and lower-need schools and districts. States generally report publicly little more than
what is mandated by federal requirements, which highlights years of experience
and highly-qualified status. However, while teaching experience matters, the benefits of
experience are largely accumulated within the first few years of teaching.
School districts that try to equalize experience among all schools are
overestimating its impact. There is no reason why a school with many teachers
with only three or five years' experience cannot outperform a school with
teachers who have an average of more than 10 years' experience.
For this reason, states need to report data that are more
informative about a school's teachers. As more states require evaluation
systems based primarily on teacher effectiveness , the most
important distribution data that a state can make available is school-level data
about teacher performance. This is not
to say that individual teacher ratings should be reported, but school level
data would shine an important light on whether all students have access to
effective teachers.
In the absence of teacher performance data that reflect evidence of student learning, states can still provide meaningful information by
using an index for quantifying important teacher credentials found to correlate
with student achievement. A good example of a strong index is the academic
capital index developed by the Illinois Education Research Council,
incorporating teachers' average SAT or ACT scores; the percentage of teachers
failing basic skills licensure test at least once; the percentage of teachers
on emergency credentials; average selectivity of teachers' undergraduate
colleges and the percentage of new teachers. These factors are complicated, so
the state should install a system that translates them into something more
easily understood, such as a color-coded matrix indicating a high or low score
for a school.
States need to report
data at the level of the individual school.
Only by achieving greater stability in the staffing of
individual schools can districts achieve the nation's goal of more equitable distribution
of teacher quality. A strong reporting system reflecting effectiveness data and/or the index described
above, as well as data on teacher attrition, teacher absenteeism and teacher
credentials can lend much-needed transparency to those factors that contribute
to staffing instability and inequity.
The lack of such data feeds a misconception that all
high-poverty schools are similarly unable to retain staff because of their
demographics. If collected and disaggregated to the level of the individual
school, however, such data could shift the focus of districts and states toward
the quality of leadership at the school level and away from the notion that
instability and inequity are unavoidable consequences of poverty and race.
Variations in staff stability are considerable among schools with similar numbers of
poor and/or minority children. School culture, largely determined by school
leadership, contributes greatly to teacher morale, which in turn affects
teacher success and student achievement. By revealing these variations among schools
facing the same challenges, school leadership can be held accountable—and
rewarded when successful.
Within-district comparisons are crucial in order to control
for as many elements specific to a district as possible, such as a collective
bargaining agreement (or the district's personnel policies) and the amount of
resources.
Equitable Distribution: Supporting Research
For
comprehensive review of the literature on teacher quality and distribution, see
Jennifer King Rice, "The Impact of Teacher Experience: Examining the Evidence and Policy Implications", Calder Institute, August 2010, Brief 11. For more about how poor and minority
children do not get their fair share of high-quality teachers, read L. Feng and
T. Sass, "Teacher Quality and Teacher Mobility.", Calder Institute, Working Paper 57, January 2011; T. Sass, J. Hannaway, Z. Xu, D. Figlio, and L. Feng, "Value Added of Teachers in High-Poverty Schools and Lower-Poverty Schools," Calder Institute, Working Paper 52, November 2010; and Education Trust,
Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality (Washington, DC: Education Trust, June 6, 2006).
Education
Trust also produced an analysis of the first set of state Equity Plans that
pointed out the inadequacies of most states' data systems to produce reliable
information about teacher qualifications and experience levels in schools
disaggregated by poverty and racial composition of schools. Although almost all
states were required to resubmit their plans and earned approval for them, many
of the shortcomings of state data systems remained. For example, few states are
equipped to identify by school, teachers' years of experience, meaning they
cannot identify the ratio of new teachers to the full school staff. See
Education Trust, Missing the Mark: States' Teacher Equity Plans Fall Short (Washington, DC: Education Trust, August 10, 2006).
For
an example of a teacher quality index, see B. White, J. Presley, and K. DeAngelis, Leveling
Up: Narrowing the Teacher Academic Capital Gap in Illinois, Illinois
Education Research Council, Policy Research Report: IERC 2008-1, 44 p.; http://www.siue.edu/ierc/publications/pdf/IERC2008-1.pdf.
For
more about teachers' effectiveness in the early years of teaching, see Identifying
Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job by R. Gordon,
T. Kane, and D. Staiger at: The Hamilton Project, http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/200604hamilton_1.pdf, April 2006; See also Jennifer King Rice, Teacher Quality: Understanding the Effectiveness of Teacher Attributes (Washington, DC:
Economic Policy Institute, 2003).