Teacher Quality: A Conversation with Amy Jackson
NECC writer Elizabeth Goldman spoke with Amy Jackson, deputy director of the National Comprehensive Center on Teacher Quality, during the Partners in Literacy Symposium. Some excerpts:
EG: The No Child Left Behind Act defines "highly qualified" teachers in terms of degrees, certification, and licensure. How does the Center address that?
AJ: Certainly meeting those aspects of being highly qualified does not necessarily translate into teacher quality in the classroom in terms of teaching, instructional design, assessment, analysis of student work, and interacting with parents. The Center has decided to array its services by thinking carefully about a teacher's continual development in a typical professional life, starting with recruitment, teacher preparation, certification and licensure, then moving into induction and mentorship and coaching and ongoing professional development.
Obviously, it's just the beginning. Issues related to leadership arise, as do overall issues related to things like retention and mobility, so that if we do certify and employ teachers, where do they go and why did they stay? Or why did they leave? How can we help states think about those issues in relation to No Child Left Behind?
EG: How do you deal with the relative lack of scientifically based research on teaching?
AJ: We try to be very transparent. When we cite research we describe it so that people are aware of whether it is just a promising practice or whether in fact a statistical analysis moves it closer to being scientifically based and therefore replicable and meeting some of those gold standard criteria. We state exactly what that research contains, how it was done, what the level of analysis was, and what the findings have been.
I think we have to face the fact that in education we haven't had the opportunity or the funding always to do longitudinal studies, the kind of control group studies that might help our profession. But I think people are becoming more aware of the need to pursue research in that way, and hopefully by having these conversations around the country about research, it might provoke more research that would meet the criteria being set up for us.
It is an interesting sort of tension-oriented dynamic, because yes we want to be very clear about the criteria, and so when we go to search, will we find it? And then of course, if we don't, what will we do about that? All complicated things.
EG: Would you say part of your work is enhancing the professionalization of teachers?
AJ: I think a lot of people are struggling with a systematic approach to understanding impact in public education. How do we design non-invasive systems to collect data on what we are trying to put into place? Most states I think are really struggling because sometimes their student data sets are connected to their teacher data sets, and sometimes they are not. Sometimes they haven't even collected teacher data because they have been so focused on student achievement.
A Center goal this next year is to think through this notion that working on teacher quality could very well improve student achievement. The research supports this. We have heard a lot about anxiety related to student test data, and tension around the fact that they don't have clean data sets and they don't always have good and accurate reporting mechanisms. And they do need to get going on some of those things. But if you do that without thinking about teacher quality, you are not going to necessarily see the kind of growth and advancement you would like to.
So we could provide opportunities to bring people together to discuss teacher quality by linking it to enhancing student achievement, and keeping those two clearly connected. There is a growing body of evidence around the link between teacher quality and student achievement.
And clearly, I think as No Child Left Behind directs and as the research has proven, the stronger a handle you have on your content, the higher the student achievement. I think there is a lot more research and study that needs to be done for us to truly identify what knowledge, skills, and abilities a teacher must demonstrate to link it to student achievement.
EG: Isn't it also a case of not just what knowledge but when?
AJ: It would be nice to see researchers asking what teachers should know and be able to do and when we should ask them to demonstrate it. Is there a continuum? Should we expect all of this of a beginning teacher? Should we really not put beginning teachers in the classroom alone in their first two years? Should we require beginning teachers to team-teach in true internships, as opposed to a "let's see how you do and we will step in and help you if you need it" approach?
Hopefully, this increased focus on teacher induction, beginning teacher programs, is really acknowledging that teachers are not "cooked" when they are done with their first level of a credential and that maybe we should consider multi-tier credentialing systems.
I have talked to thousands of beginning teachers and really, they are worn out with being in school. They want to feel done. They have a certificate, they are licensed, they have a job, they are eager to be independent adults, and they really believe they do know how to teach, when in fact typically, they need a lot more support and a lot more experience to understand exactly what they don't know about teaching.
EG: What about the idea that teachers could take on more responsibility professionally and be more active in the whole system?
AJ: We haven't clearly articulated the roles that teachers can take in their professional lives. Yes, you do come in as a novice, and you should be expected to have certain types of knowledge, and you should have access to professional development. But as you move through your 3rd and 4th and 5th years, what is your role? Do you move into administration if you are highly successful as a teacher and want to advance? Could we not construct a different path where teachers become teacher leaders, and take on the role of mentoring other teachers?
How do we help teachers grow as practitioners and feel valued so that they want to stay teachers in the classroom, and to extend their knowledge base to people coming up behind them? I think some of our young dynamic, four and five year teachers are moving into administration because they need to move professionally or financially forward, and there are not necessarily incentives for teachers who advance their knowledge base or extend their knowledge to their colleagues.
EG: How can the Center address this?
AJ: I think it goes back to how we help people build this data system, so we can understand teacher mobility better and perhaps study why teachers leave and come back or leave and never come back. I think that having a better articulated sense of the professional role as it changes for a teacher might be helpful for the profession. It's something that the center might be able to reflect on or bring people together to work on.
EG: The Center is still new. What do you see as the big challenges coming up?
AJ: There are several. One is to provide viable research to help people make decisions about how to offer education. I think it is really useful that we are setting criteria for the kind of research we can all believe in and apply, and hopefully that will drive policy in this country to fund the research. Of course we have to be patient. Good research takes time. That is a big challenge, but I think that it is good that we are facing it.
And then, if we don't find scientifically replicable research to defend instructional choices, what are we doing in the meantime? We want to offer "promising practices" and leave it to good consumers to determine how to make progress in the meantime. Then there is the challenge of systematizing data collection so that when you analyze it, it is actually useful. There is a lot to learn about data collection and data analysis. That is a big challenge and perhaps we can be supportive.
EG: Other challenges?
AJ: I strongly believe that as we are doing all this work to collect the research and identify the promising practices, we must include an analysis of cost and time. Even if we found that a practice was hugely promising, if it costs $100 million, we need to know that before we jump into trying it and have to abandon it because we have no funding.
Even if we find a research base that is replicable and works in many different environments for many different kinds of learners, and we find some strategies that are promising and work most of the time, we still have to find the funding. We are going to have to build the public policy for it. That may be a difficult thing to think about, but I think we have to ask, "So what does it really take? What does it cost?" And to study the cost of not doing something. I think the Center may be able to help with that kind of cost analysis.
We have a strong commitment to listening to the regional centers and the state educational agencies. We want to stay flexible and make sure that as the landscape changes, through policy, legislation, and funding, that we are shifting and can provide teacher quality resources when they are needed.