scholarly journals Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 85-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Kirabo Jackson ◽  
Elias Bruegmann
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Test Score ◽  
School Teacher ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Peer Learning ◽  
Experienced Teachers ◽  
Achievement Gains ◽  
Teacher Effect ◽  
Out Of Sample ◽  
Over Time

Using longitudinal elementary school teacher and student data, we document that students have larger test score gains when their teachers experience improvements in the observable characteristics of their colleagues. Using within-school and within-teacher variation, we show that a teacher's students have larger achievement gains in math and reading when she has more effective colleagues (based on estimated value-added from an out-of-sample pre-period). Spillovers are strongest for less experienced teachers and persist over time, and historical peer quality explains away about 20 percent of the own-teacher effect, results that suggest peer learning. (JEL I21, J24, J45)

scholarly journals Value-Added Modeling of Teacher Effectiveness: An Exploration of Stability across Models and Contexts

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoxia A. Newton ◽  
Linda Darling-Hammond ◽  
Edward Haertel ◽  
Ewart Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Student Learning ◽  
Teacher Effectiveness ◽  
Low Income ◽  
School Teacher ◽  
High School Teacher ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Learning Gains ◽  
Achievement Gains ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Stability

Recent policy interest in tying student learning to teacher evaluation has led to growing use of value-added methods for assessing student learning gains linked to individual teachers. VAM analyses rely on complex assumptions about the roles of schools, multiple teachers, student aptitudes and efforts, homes and families in producing measured student learning gains. This article reports on analyses that examine the stability of high school teacher effectiveness rankings across differing conditions. We find that judgments of teacher effectiveness for a given teacher can vary substantially across statistical models, classes taught, and years. Furthermore, student characteristics can impact teacher rankings, sometimes dramatically, even when such characteristics have been previously controlled statistically in the value-added model. A teacher who teaches less advantaged students in a given course or year typically receives lower effectiveness ratings than the same teacher teaching more advantaged students in a different course or year. Models that fail to take student demographics into account further disadvantage teachers serving large numbers of low-income, limited English proficient, or lower-tracked students. We examine a number of potential reasons for these findings, and we conclude that caution should be exercised in using student achievement gains and value-added methods to assess teachers’ effectiveness, especially when the stakes are high.

How Large Are Teacher Effects?

2004 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Nye ◽  
Spyros Konstantopoulos ◽  
Larry V. Hedges
Keyword(s):  
Student Achievement ◽  
Mathematics Achievement ◽  
Low Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Variance Components ◽  
Selection Effects ◽  
Teacher Effects ◽  
Low Socioeconomic ◽  
Achievement Gains ◽  
Teacher Effect ◽  
Teachers And Students

It is widely accepted that teachers differ in their effectiveness, yet the empirical evidence regarding teacher effectiveness is weak. The existing evidence is mainly drawn from econometric studies that use covariates to attempt to control for selection effects that might bias results. We use data from a four-year experiment in which teachers and students were randomly assigned to classes to estimate teacher effects on student achievement. Teacher effects are estimated as between-teacher (but within-school) variance components of achievement status and residualized achievement gains. Our estimates of teacher effects on achievement gains are similar in magnitude to those of previous econometric studies, but we find larger effects on mathematics achievement than on reading achievement. The estimated relation of teacher experience with student achievement gains is substantial, but is statistically significant only for 2nd-grade reading and 3rd-grade mathematics achievement. We also find much larger teacher effect variance in low socioeconomic status (SES) schools than in high SES schools.

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