Good teachers get results

Good teachers get results Everyone knows that a good teacher makes a difference, but establishing who the good teachers are, and what difference they make, has long been a problem. A new study by economists at Harvard University attempts to answer these questions. They analyzed the school records and earnings information for 2.5 million children, and found that, when a high "value-added" teacher joins a new school, results for their class improve. Having a high value-added teacher (in the top 5%) for one year raises a child's cumulative lifetime income by $50,000. How this information is used is clearly a matter of policy, but any system that aims to reward good performance while supporting or punishing poor performance would need to be carefully designed and tested. An interesting article about the study can be found on the Shanker Institute's blog.

Should we be trying to reduce class sizes? Class size has long been a hot topic. As populations increase and funding decreases, pressure on class size is likely to grow. A research review from the UK's Department for Education considers a number of issues around this topic, including the impact of class size on educational outcomes. The authors found a number of benefits from smaller classes, such as individual students being the focus of the teacher's attention for longer. However, previous research has shown that reducing class size is beneficial when classes are as small as around 15 students. According to the UK report, available evidence suggests that class size reduction policies are not the best option in terms of value for money to raising student achievement compared to others options such as increasing teacher effectiveness.

Are low and middle income children ready for school? We see a lot of research into the school readiness of the poorest children, but what about those from low- to middle-income (LMI) families? The Resolution Foundation in the UK has published a new report that uses data from the Millennium Cohort Study to explore this, and found that LMI children are five months behind their more affluent peers on vocabulary skills when they begin school and exhibit more behavior problems. A number of factors were found to influence achievement for this group, including parental education, which was shown to be a powerful predictor of school readiness for these children. The challenge is how to break this cycle, and research-based parenting programs are one possibility.

Time to think about prevention Should we put a fence at the top of the hill or an ambulance at the bottom? Instead, how about an ounce of prevention? That is the topic of a recent blog post from Robert Slavin, Director of Johns Hopkins School of Education's Center for Research and Reform in Education. On his new Education Week blog, "Sputnik: Advancing Education through Innovation and Evidence," he writes, "There are good reasons to invest in proven educational programs at all levels and in all subjects, but when proven programs also reduce government expenditures within a few years, even the most bottom-line oriented administrator or legislator should see the need to invest in proven prevention."