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The Reference Desk, using available evidence and research, provides quick-turnaround responses to questions submitted by education stakeholders around the Northeast and Islands Region. Every Friday, REL-NEI highlights one or two questions submitted to its Reference Desk.
Question of the Week
What Are Successful Models for Preparing Teachers for Urban Schools?
Each month, the Reference Desk receives many questions about teacher preparation programs, including questions about subject-specific training or population-specific training, among others. This week’s Digest looks at research on program models and the impact of these programs for preparing teachers for urban schools.
Question
What are some program models that prepare teachers to work in urban schools? What is the research on the impact of these programs?
Research Synthesis
Reference Desk researchers found several documents examining programs that prepare teachers to work in urban schools. These resources organize the programs into three types: university-based teacher preparation programs, alternative certification programs (such as Teach for America or New York City Teaching Fellows), and Urban Teacher Residency programs. Our researchers found two studies that linked teacher preparation models with student achievement, one of which compared teachers from university-based preparation programs with those from alternative certification programs (Kane, 2006, and Boyd, 2008; see below).
Publicly Available Resources
- Creating and Sustaining Urban Teacher Residencies: A New Way to Recruit, Prepare, and Retain Effective Teachers in High-Needs Districts. August 2008; Berry, B., Montgomery, D., Curtis, R., Hernandez, M., Wurtzel, J., and Snyder, J.; The Aspen Institute/Center for Teacher Quality; 41 pages.
From the executive summary: “There is growing attention to [Urban Teacher Residencies] UTRs as an additional pathway to improving teacher quality. A number of major school districts are considering launching programs, and with the recent passage of the federal Higher Education Opportunity Act, millions of dollars have been authorized to develop and support UTRs. This report examines two UTR programs, the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) in Chicago and the Boston Teacher Residency (BTR). The report aims to inform policymakers and practitioners about the design and financing of UTRs, the evidence of their impact, and the conditions relevant to their success and sustainability.
In UTRs, aspiring teachers—known as Residents—are selected according to rigorous criteria aligned with district needs. They integrate their master’s level course work with an intensive, full year classroom residency alongside an experienced Mentor. In their second year, they become a teacher with their own classroom while continuing to receive intensive mentoring” (p. 5).
- What Does Certification Tell Us About Teacher Effectiveness? Evidence from New York City. 2008; Kane, T. J., Rockoff, J. E., and Staiger, D. O.; Economics of Education Review; Vol. 27; pp. 615–631.
From the abstract: The authors “use six years of panel data on students and teachers to evaluate the effectiveness of recently hired teachers in the New York City public schools. On average, the initial certification status [certified, uncertified, and alternative certified, through Teach for America and the New York Teaching Fellows Program among others] of a teacher has small impacts on student test performance. However, among those with the same experience and certification status, there are large and persistent differences in teacher effectiveness. Such evidence suggests that classroom performance during the first two years is a more reliable indicator of a teacher’s future effectiveness. We also evaluate turnover among teachers by initial certification status, and the implied impact on student achievement of hiring teachers with predictably high turnover. Given modest estimates of the payoff to experience, even high turnover groups (such as Teach for America participants) would have to be only slightly more effective in each year to offset the negative effects of their high exit rates” (p. 615).
- Teacher Preparation and Student Achievement. December 2009; Boyd, D. J., Grossman, P. L., Lankford, H., Loeb, S., and Wyckoff, J.; Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis; Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 416–440.
From the abstract: “There are fierce debates over the best way to prepare teachers. … Most agree, however, that we lack a strong research basis for understanding how to prepare teachers. This article is one of the first to estimate the effects of features of teachers’ preparation on teachers’ value added to student test score performance” (p. 416).
From the conclusion: “The results suggest that there is variation across programs in the average effectiveness of the teachers they are supplying to NYC [New York City] schools, with some programs graduating teachers who have a significantly greater effect on student achievement. On average, programs that produce childhood certified teachers who are more effective in math also produce teachers who are more effective in ELA, although there are some programs that are stronger in one area than in the other. The results also suggest that features of teacher preparation can make a difference in outcomes for students” (p. 433).
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