EDUCATION WEEK OCTOBER 26.

2011

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W EWS IN
School Boards:
Raise Standards
For Teacher Ed.
NASBE report argues for
more intense K-12 exposure
Teacher colleges need to set higher standards for admission and give aspiring
educators much more thorough, intense
exposure to K-12 classrooms during their
training, the NationeJ Association of State
Boards of Education argues in a new report.
The group says that experience in classroom settings md continued mentoring
once teachers are on the job are critical to
developing top-notch educators.
But the report, released by NASBE last
week, also says that the admissions standards for meiny teacher colleges are unacceptably low. They may not, for instance,
require minimum test scores or grade
point averages, and many draw candidates
from the bottom two-thirds of their college
classes.
Transforming that process is essential to
raising the overall status of the teaching
profession, the authors say.
"As foreign countries endure teacher
shortages, they do not lower the standards
for admission," the report says, "but instead find innovative ways to recruit and
induct candidates. These methods have
yielded much lower attrition rates than
the United States'."
The report urges caution on states creating and adopting new teacher-evaluation and merit-pay systems. It concludes,
however, that boosting teacher salaries, in
addition to improving working conditions,
would likely lure more graduatesfromthe
top-third of college classes.
The authors also urge state school boards
to work with teacher-licensing boards to
Eilign certification requirements and evaluation standards, and ensure that a system
is in place to monitor the quality of teacher
education programs.
In addition, the authors say state boards
and teacher colleges need to make sure
that educators-in-training are given a
broad range of experiences. Among them:
learning to collaborate with colleagues,
developing expertise with formative assessment, and spending time in wellmonitored teacher-residency programs.
-SEAN CAVANAGH

ing on high-stakes exams that

influence not only the futures of
students but also the ratings of
Despite a campaign-style push by public schools and teachers' caPresident Barack Obama, the U.S. reers.
Senate last week scuttled paredIn a report to the state board
back jobs legislation aimed at help- of r e g e n t s , t h e d e p a r t m e n t
ing state and local governments recommends spending more than
avoid teacher layoffs.
$2 million to spot-check more
The $35 billion bill failed on a exams, prohibiting most teachers
50-50 test vote that fell well short from scoring their own students'
of the 60 votes needed to break a exams, retaining tests for more
filibuster. Three Democrats voted than one year for potential invesagainst the legislation, and two oth- tigations, and moving to "centralers said they couldn't support the ized scanning" of multiple-choice
questions to better spot possible
president's imderlying plan.
The bill, which included $30 bil- cheating.
lion for hiring or retaining teachRecords reviewed by the Associers and other school staff, bad been ated Press found growing concern
broken offfromthe president's $447 about teachers prompting students
bulion jobs measure that failed ear- toward correct answers or inflating
lier in the month.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS scores, especially those near the 65
percent passing mark.
However, the records also show
that
such cases are difficult for tbe
New N.Y. Measures Aim to Stop
state to prove. Many involve eraCheating on High-Stakes Tests
sures on tests with correct answers,
The New York education depart- with no evidence of what motivated
-AP
ment is recommending several the changes.
measures to crack down on cheat-

U.S. Senate Rejects

Teacher Jobs Bills

Colo. Lawmakers Vote to Ease

Post-Columbine Discipline
Colorado lawmakers moved forward last week with a plan to scale
back the state's post-Columbine
school disciplinary policies t h a t
they say have led to mandatory expulsions for offenses such as inadvertently having a butter knife in
a backpack.
The proposal, given preliminary
approval by a legislative committee, seeks to give education officials
more discretion over expulsions
and police referrals, which lawmakers say became more common after
tbe 1999 rampage at Columbine
High School in Littleton, where two
students killed 13 people and then
themselves.
Committee members said t h a t
zero-tolerance policies adopted
during the past decade have tied
the hands of^ school administrators,
who U"e forced to expel students for
minor infractions. About 100,000
students statewide have been referred to police during tbe past
decade.
-AP

BOOMING
GENERATION:

A student learns
to write in a
lower-primary
school in Khankar
village on the
outskirts of
Gauhati, India,
last week. At least
80 poor children
study in the
lower-primary
school, which was
set up by villagers
without any
government aid.

Value-Added, Observation Measures of Teacher Effectiveness Found to Be Complementary

Both a value-added measure of teacher effectiveness
and a series of scored observations bear a positive relationship to students' future academic achievement,
according to a study in tbe journal Labour Economics.
When a teacher scored well on one measure of teaching ability, he or she also tended to score well on the
other measure, it finds.
"Tbe value-added information is useful information,
but it's imperfect; the subjective complements it and
makes us more certain in tbe overall evaluation," said
Jonah E. RockofF, an associate professor at the Columbia
graduate school of business and a research fellow at the
National Bureau of Economic Research wbo was one of

the stud^s authors. "If someone is performing highly on

both of these metrics, we can be more confident they're
actually truly outstanding."
For tbe study, Mr. RockofT and his co-autbor, Cecilia
Speroni, then a senior research assistant at Teachers
College, Columbia University, analyzed teacher-student data from New York City between 2003 and 2008.
Using a value-added method, tbey looked at first-year
teachers' performance in tbe classroom.
Then, they analyzed two forms of subjective, observation-based evaluations for teachers bired through
tbe city's Teaching Fellows program and from a district
mentoring program and compared all tbe measures to

see bow well tbey predicted teacbers' future performance. Tbey found that both tbe observations uid tbe
test-score-based measures were correlated; that both
types picked up effectiveness information; and that information was complementary. Tbefindingsidso suggest that the two forms of information could serve as
a check on one another: If a teacber scored well on one
measure and not on tbe otber, it could point to a problem in tbe evaluation.
Tbe paper also underscores tbe importance of using
observations in addition to value-added measures because they can pick up on teaching skills not captured
by test scores.

-STEPHEN SAWCHUK

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