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Teacher Qualityreviewed by Janice L. Hall - 2003 ![]() Author(s): Lance T. Izumi and Williamson M. Evers (Eds.) Publisher: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford ISBN: 0817929320, Pages: 84, Year: 2002 Search for book at Amazon.com My time is so precious that I won’t finish a book unless
I’m learning a lot from it and it is written well enough to
keep me interested in continuing. I not only finished this
book but will also refer to it many times in the future. If
you deal with teacher quality issues, I believe you will want a
copy of this one. The forward of the book states that teacher quality has the
greatest impact on improving the performance of students. For
this reason, the Hoover Institution and the Pacific Research
Institute for Public Policy (PRI) convened a conference in May 2000
on teacher quality to address critical issues in teacher
education. They gathered together the nation’s leading
experts to present formal papers on various aspects of teacher
quality. The book includes a preface by William J. Bennett
and essays on teacher quality, equity in educational opportunity,
accountability systems, teacher training and pedagogical issues,
and teaching methods.
“Teacher Quality” by Eric A. Hanushek discusses how
government can improve the quality of teachers without making the
current problems worse. The two main issues he addresses are
certification and incentives. These sections point out that
many popular political initiatives have little evidence to suggest
that they are strongly related to teacher quality and student
achievement. However, he feels that “without federal
involvement there is likely to be too little investment in
evaluation and knowledge production” (p. 10). “Teacher Quality and Equity in Educational Opportunity:
Findings and Policy Implications” by June C. Rivers and
William L. Sanders describes “how teachers can be evaluated
based on the academic gains students make in their
classrooms” (p. 13). It discusses an innovative system of
assessing teacher effectiveness through student progress.
These researchers declared that “many teachers do not
recognize that they are ineffective until confronted with the
objective evidence that their students are not making appropriate
rates of gain” (p. 21). They offer suggestions on how
to minimize the impact of ineffective teachers.
“Teacher Quality Accountability Systems: The View from
Pennsylvania” by Eugene W. Hickok addresses how to find,
prepare, and retain good teachers while dealing with those who are
incompetent. It describes a bill signed into law in May 2000
in Pennsylvania called the Education Empowerment Act. The
bill provided low-performing districts with flexibility to contract
out certain services, create more choice, reconstitute schools, or
charter the entire district. The districts are also eligible
for additional resources. The rest of the article discusses
other developments in the state on teacher preparation,
certification, professional development, and alternative
certification programs. It is interesting to note that the
deans of the various schools of education and the teacher unions
were not supportive of the reforms. The reasons are explained
in the article and should give valuable information on their
objections to anyone who is facing similar reforms in their
state. “Teacher Training and Pedagogical Methods” by J. E.
Stone discusses the difference between education’s consumers
and providers. This article will stimulate the reader to want
to read more about the ideas the author presents. One of
these ideas is that “schools of education are not really
interested in teaching that is primarily intended to improve
achievement” (p. 34-35). This seems to be a
pretty powerful allegation, but the author goes into detail on why
this conclusion was drawn. The author also examines current
reforms in teacher education, discussing the efforts of the
National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF),
the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education
(NCATE), and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
(NBPTS), and arguing that the changes “have little to do with
advancing what most parents and taxpayers want” (p.
49). In the final section Stone explains why value-added assessment
of teacher effectiveness is significant. Arguing on behalf of
teachers, Stone notes that “One of the most frustrating
aspects of teaching is that you can do an excellent job of getting
students to learn and your efforts may never be noticed, much less
appreciated” (p. 53). The article ends with a brief
discussion of Title II of the 1998 Higher Education Act and
explains why “Tennessee’s Value-Added Assessment System
would be an excellent gauge of program performance” (p.
54). “Teaching Methods” by Herbert J. Walberg
“documents effective teaching methods and examines which, if
any, are implemented in classrooms in the United States” (p.
55). This article presents nine Educational Productivity
Factors which would be helpful in discovering the causes of
learning. What follows is a valuable descriptive summary of
pedagogical methods that are not new to the teaching profession,
but very well examined, in brief, as to their effectiveness.
A second list of observable Indicators of School Quality Associated
with Achievement helps further to present the conditions for
effective teaching.
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