Re: [Phys-l] Is the 'Teacher Effect' the Dominant Factor in Students' Academic Gain?

[Hugh Haskell <haskellh@verizon.net>]

At 5:51 AM -0700 4/15/11, M. Horton wrote:
> 1) If poverty is a stronger factor affecting student achievement than the
> teacher effect, wouldn't that mean that poor children cannot be taught well?
> I've met tens of thousands of exceptions to this rule.  I work with the AVID
> program and for 20+ years, we've been falsifying the hypothesis that poor
> children whose parents didn't go to college cannot be successful.  If a
> teacher is capable of educating a single poor student to high levels, then
> by definition, this hypothesis is incorrect. I'll be sitting with 5,000
> exceptions at AVID senior recognition in a couple of weeks.  These kids
> complete more AP courses than their affluent peers and complete college-prep
> courses at almost 100%.  I'll let them know that they should go home because
> they are not capable of learning.  I always love it when research says that
> something is impossible when people are out there doing it.
>
> 2) Maybe I misunderstand what you mean by "teacher effect" but shouldn't
> teacher effect INCLUDE whether or not they are actively engaging their
> students?  Seems like pedagogy would be a strong piece of "teacher effect."
>
> I, personally, would rephrase this argument as, "An exceptional teacher has
> the ability to overcome the effects of poverty on learning.  Interactive
> engagement has been shown to be an effective part of an exceptional science
> teacher's repertoire."
But there is a high correlation between overall student performance 
and economic status of their family. It's not the educational level 
of their family. If that were true, children of uneducated parents 
would never make it to college. But the issue is complex. Schools in 
poor neighborhoods tend to have higher drop-out rates, but they also 
get the short end of the resources, the least experienced teachers 
and the students come disproportionately from dysfunctional families 
(that isn't correlated with parental educational levels, but it is 
with poverty). Families where both parents work or one parent is 
missing and there isn't anyone to supervise the kids after school 
have a higher rate of problems, and those families are concentrated 
in the poor neighborhoods. And it seems to me that districts with a 
high proportion of students from low-income families tend to be under 
the control of much more authoritarian administrations where policies 
are administered "by the book" rather than with some degree of 
intelligence. Smart kids, even if they are poor can see this and it 
tends to drive them away.

And you are probably right, that an exceptional teacher can have a 
positive effect on "underprivileged" students. But isn't that why we 
call them "exceptional" if all teacher could do that then we wouldn't 
be looking for the exceptional ones (who, except for those few with 
the "calling" would rather die than work under those conditions).

The facts are that schools in poor neighborhoods mostly do worse than 
their counterparts in well-off neighborhoods. There are exceptions, 
of course, but our system does tend to beat them down. I read 
recently where a school whose recently appointed principal had 
largely turned the school around, but when the district won a Race To 
The Top grant to further boost that school, it was awarded on the 
condition that the principle be fired (he wasn't a fan of high-stakes 
testing).

We have to look in lots of corners for source of the problems of the 
low-income urban schools, but at the bottom it remains poverty. It's 
really hard to find the time to devote to the future, even of your 
children, when the largest problem you face is simply survival.

I didn't think much of the film "Waiting for Superman." but they did 
manage to show that there were plenty of students who wanted to excel 
and parents or care-givers who supported them to the best of their 
ability, but the system is definitely weighted against them, by 
people who have little hands-on experience with education but who are 
convinced that they have found the solution. Unfortunately, many of 
those people have reputations that far exceed their 
accomplishments--people such as Michelle Rhee or Arne Duncan, for 
example.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
mailto:hugh@ieer.org
mailto:haskellh@verizon.net

It isn't easy being green.

		--Kermit Lagrenouille