You rock. That’s exactly what I was looking for.

It seems to me that finding a way to fairly evaluate the effectiveness of different schools would do more to improve teacher quality then any other initiative out there.

The professional learning community (PLC) model is an attempt to increase collaboration happening within schools. There is very little direct research on its benefits, but it is a popular approach right now in K-12. The tenets of the model speak to the point you make: rather than leaving it up to individual teachers to sink or swim, have them formally work together and share best practices across classrooms.

For more info on the model, just google “Rick DuFour”, one of the main proponents.

Parry

Three programs (Louisiana College, Northwestern State University, and The New Teachers Project) have evidence that their teachers are more effective than experienced teachers. Other schools produce a lot more teachers who are a lot less effective.

Are there any studies that show the relative effectiveness of education majors from different programs?

I don’t mean subjective Newsweek college rankings, but value added rankings based on which schools produce the most effective beginner teachers.

Everyone talks about alternate certification vs traditional routes, but I refuse to believe that all traditional routes are the same.

I am willing to wager than if measurable school rankings are published, that education schools would start to make some dramatic changes in their curriculum and programs.

This graph appears in the context of a policy brief, without the methods/data description usually in a formal paper. I know that they’ve published data on NYC with different questions, but have they published the L.A. stuff with more detail? In research, silence is not consent.

But back to the larger question: I think that the larger point is correct, that variation within categories is pretty large. That’s not surprising — whether you think standard certification works or not, no one is going to say that all programs — or all alternative-cert programs/routes — are the same. How to deal with that huge variation is a challenge.

And, yes, the Mathematica study on induction is depressing.

In order to be more selective, teaching cannot continue to be a solo performance where one teacher gets a room full of kids to themselves. The prior commentor suggest we need more and better principals to weed out the bad ‘uns. But I’d suggest we need to look at ways of building feedback and evaluation into the job by changing the way the job is structured.

If teaching were more collaborative, if teamwork were more ingrained into the job, not only would ’selection’ become easier, but ‘development’ and ‘training’ would be a lot easier.

I’m not that well read in the research to know if this idea has been explored sufficiently. But from my lay perspective it seems to me that teachers are left way to much to their own devices and really could benefit from more teamwork and collaboration.

But the CAP also notes that many schools are “lucky to get even two applicants per opening per year.”

Gordon calculated the results of removing the botoom quartile. But if you just had subs taking over those classrooms, you haven’t gained anything. Unless you play your cards skilfully, his proposals could do far more harm than good to poor students.

If we want to help kids, the devil is in the details. If you want to know enough about the details to make things better, you have to work with the only people who have a detailed knowledge of actual schools. That means listening to real live inner city teachers and our unions.

But I agree with the main thrust of your post.