So I caught a bit of a very interesting episode of NPR's Talk of the Nation earlier this week. The subject was grading teacher performance, and the main guest was Jason Felch of the LA Times. The Times has been running a series called Grading the Teachers, which included analyzing seven years of data that had been collected on the effectiveness of LA Unified's faculty. As a data and research geek, I was naturally intrigued!
Many of the findings of the Times' analysis were, of course, somewhat specific to LA, but some more general findings that I found interesting were:
• Highly effective teachers routinely propel students from below grade level to advanced in a single year. There is a substantial gap at year's end between students whose teachers were in the top 10% in effectiveness and the bottom 10%. The fortunate students ranked 17 percentile points higher in English and 25 points higher in math.
• Many of the factors commonly assumed to be important to teachers' effectiveness were not. Although teachers are paid more for experience, education and training, none of this had much bearing on whether they improved their students' performance.
If you'd like to read more, click here to be transported to the entire first article in the series, which also includes other related links.
Cheers,
Rob
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