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to IntroductionBy Stephen Clements
From Kentucky's Teachers: Charting a Course for KERA's Second Decade
pp. 5-10, published 1999
Any assessment of Kentucky’s teacher workforce should be placed within the context of several developments in public school research and policymaking at both the national and state levels. First, new empirical evidence is accumulating that teacher quality matters. This conviction has, of course, driven teacher policies for decades. But only in recent years have research studies honed in on the relative effects on student achievement of teacher quality. Second, as noted earlier, numerous Kentucky school reforms have targeted teacher quality, and so policymakers and members of the public should keep these reforms in mind when analyzing school reform efforts in the Commonwealth. And third, new attention at the national level has been given to matters of teacher quality. Inasmuch as Kentucky participates in this national dialogue about improving its teacher workforce, it could benefit from ideas promoted by those in other states to improve its teacher workforce. Information about developments in these areas forms the context for this report.
Though the notion that good teaching leads to better student achievement is common sensical, until recently few social science studies firmly established and quantified this linkage. The empirical evidence about the effects of teacher quality has recently been marshaled and disseminated by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF). Headquartered at Columbia University’s Teachers College, NCTAF’s primary policy focus has been to encourage teacher improvements through increased regulation of the certification system, and through control of profession governance bodies by classroom teachers themselves.
Toward that end, NCTAF released an influential report in 1996 recommending that new professional standards be set for teachers and their training, that professional development be improved, that better recruiting and hiring practices be adopted, that teacher knowledge and skills be rewarded, and that schools be redesigned so they are better organized for student and teacher success.(1) Incidentally, a dozen states, including Kentucky, have been auditing their own policies for NCTAF to determine how closely they reflect the Commission’s recommendations.
A 1997 NCTAF publication summarizes evidence about the effects of teacher quality. Among the more prominent studies cited was an examination of 900 school districts in Texas. The author of that study ". . . found that teachers’ expertise—as measured by scores on a licensing examination, master’s degrees, and experience—accounted for about 40 percent of the measured variance in students’ reading and mathematics achievement" at several grade levels.(2) Figure 1 recounts some additional findings from this study. As social research has repeatedly demonstrated, the socioeconomic status of children’s parents has the greatest influence on achievement levels. This study reaffirms that perennial conclusion but finds teacher quality is only slightly less influential in terms of impact on achievement. Reduced class size, on the other hand, accounts for only a small amount of the variation in student performance.
The Commission cites similar studies of school systems in Tennessee and Alabama as well as some national studies that also show significant, quantifiable impact of higher quality teachers on student achievement, at least as quality is reflected by licensing exam scores, master’s degrees, and experience levels.(3) These studies establish the strong correlation between teacher quality and student performance, although in addition they show that other factors in students’ lives powerfully influence academic performance as well. Such evidence, though, lends credence to the growing attention being given to the knowledge and skill levels of those in the teacher workforce.
An important part of this study’s context involves KERA, which was approved by the General Assembly in 1990. This landmark legislation reformulated the Commonwealth’s entire education code and sought to move the public school system from a focus on inputs—teacher-pupil ratios, number of books in the library, minutes per week spent on math, and the like—to a focus on outputs, specifically student performance and school accountability. Kentucky’s school reform approach reflected the policy prescriptions of many national education policy organizations at the time.
Though KERA has garnered much attention within the state and nationally, the 1990 reform act did not signify the beginning of serious education improvement efforts in Kentucky. Indeed, as noted earlier, some policymakers within the state had been working for years to upgrade Kentucky’s public schools. By the early 1980s, various education committees of the General Assembly became more involved in education policy and budget decisions, as did the Prichard Committee and sundry other public school advocacy groups. State education policy leaders spent the bulk of the 1980s addressing deficiencies in the system. These efforts led to school improvement legislation in 1984, 1985, and 1986, components of which focused on teachers. For example, in 1984 Kentucky was one of the first states to approve a first-year teacher internship program to help new teachers adjust to the classroom. Similarly, new mechanisms for evaluating Kentucky teachers have been developed since the mid-1980s. In a sense, these efforts culminated in the 1989 Kentucky Supreme Court ruling that the entire common school system was unconstitutional, and in passage the next March of KERA. Viewed from this perspective, KERA represented consolidation and augmentation of previous policies, not a dramatic break with past policy.
For much of the past eight years, public discussion of school reform has focused on KERA implementation issues and the extent to which school communities have adjusted to the new policies that took effect fully in 1996. Public discourse about school reform has hence been about such things as the effectiveness of local school councils, the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS) accountability testing system, district school board decisionmaking, and the new reading or math curriculum that might have been chosen for the elementary school at the end of the street. Kentucky schools and communities are thus well into what might be called the KERA era. No longer do citizens debate whether school change and improvement should take place. Rather, they discuss how reform should proceed and how KERA should be tweaked so as to function more effectively.
What many ordinary Kentuckians may have missed about the state’s school reform efforts amid the acronyms and the widespread attention to student testing results is that significant portions of KERA—and of pre-KERA reforms as well—are about improving teaching in Commonwealth classrooms. Kentucky policymakers understood in 1990 that if children are to reach the higher levels of achievement stipulated by KERA, then teachers must become significantly more adept at their craft and reach new levels of performance.
Arguably, the bulk of KERA’s changes target teachers and teaching. The creation of a core curriculum linked to KIRIS assessments, for example, was meant to guide teachers about what students should know and be able to do, not simply represent a slight improvement over the previously used standardized test system. Similarly, school councils, which must make key decisions about curriculum, personnel, and school direction, are dominated by teachers. Hence, individuals with the greatest personal stake in classroom matters play the largest role in setting site-level policies.
Teachers were also given effective control over the Education Professional Standards Board (EPSB), an entity created by KERA to govern teacher preparation and certification matters in the Commonwealth. The idea here was that classroom teachers, not Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) bureaucrats or education professors, should make important decisions affecting members of the teaching profession. Strictly speaking, therefore, since the early 1990s a teacher-dominated board has played a crucial role in altering teacher certification and preparation policies to meet the strictures of the 1990 reform act.
Through at least two additional means, KERA recognized the pivotal position of teachers and teaching in the reform scheme. The legislation included significant pay raises for teachers during the first years of implementation to help make up for salary erosion during the latter 1980s and to make the profession more attractive to both talented potential recruits and skilled instructors already in the classroom. Indeed, the presumption was that as greater remuneration and increased responsibilities and accountability flowed to teachers, the respect for them and their profession would increase.
KERA also significantly increased the amount of state money devoted to professional development, in recognition of the fact that teachers would need assistance in adjusting to new expectations and procedures. The legislature also made more time available for teacher training during the first few years of reform implementation by allowing districts to replace up to five instructional days with professional development days. Not only would more revenue and time be available for such activities, but also teachers, through school councils, would decide what types of professional development programs to undertake at a given school. No longer would teachers be forced to choose only among options arranged for them by districts or KDE (although districts would still be able to provide some professional development options themselves).
Through these and sundry other means, according to the logic of KERA, Kentucky teachers would become adequately equipped to move children to ever higher levels of achievement. In addition, able, caring, and inspirational women and men would be drawn into the profession or would remain in it past retirement eligibility, and hence ensure a workforce of gifted teachers for years to come.
Given that buttressing the teaching force in Kentucky has been at the heart of school reform efforts for well over a decade and has been integral to Kentucky’s much lauded, massive systemic education reform program since 1990, it is fitting to ask what evidence is available about the teaching force in Kentucky, in terms of education, experience, academic training, professional development, salary levels, and the like, that might allow citizens and policy leaders to make judgments about the strengths and weaknesses of this most crucial cadre of individuals.
Another feature of the teacher workforce context is that the national spotlight has again moved to issues of teacher knowledge and skill levels. Teacher competence received considerable attention during the educational "excellence movement" of the 1980s, out of which KERA emerged. Raising standards for teachers was a key recommendation of A Nation at Risk, the 1983 report that helped spur a wave of state-level reforms. Later in the decade, two influential national reports on teacher training—Tomorrow’s Teachers, produced by an assemblage of education school deans called The Holmes Group, and A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century, issued by the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy—appeared.(4)
Both of these latter documents urged, among other things, that prospective teachers receive broader and deeper liberal arts training at the undergraduate level and that much pedagogical instruction be moved to the graduate or fifth year level; that higher minimum standards be established for entry into the profession; that different categories of teachers be developed to recognize superior teaching skills and competencies; that teachers be freed from regulations that hamper creativity and professional judgment; and that schools become better environments for teachers to work in. In Kentucky, the Prichard Committee’s influential reform manifesto, The Path to a Larger Life, contained many of these same ideas. These and other recommendations regarding teacher preparation and certification became important parts of national and state level education reform agendas during the latter 1980s and early 1990s.
Over a decade later, teacher workforce issues have again come to the fore, drawing attention from various sources, most prominently NCTAF, the Commission cited earlier. In addition to identifying studies that show the effects of teacher quality on achievement, NCTAF has also been highlighting the problem of "out-of-field" teaching, which arises when certified teachers—primarily at the middle and high school levels—teach in academic fields in which they have received only modest undergraduate training. The National Commission found evidence, for example, that almost a quarter of high school teachers have not earned at least a college minor in the main field in which they teach, and the figure rises to 30 percent for mathematics teachers.(5)
These and other data strongly suggest that students in American schools are often taught by instructors who may be caring and competent in pedagogical skills, but not well versed in the subject matter they teach. The data also suggest the problem is considerably worse in some places than in others. It ought to be useful, therefore, to determine the extent of this problem in Kentucky, inasmuch as this is possible, and its effect on student achievement.
Both national teacher unions have also been developing strategies to upgrade teacher knowledge and skill levels. Though it is unclear what specific initiatives the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) will undertake, both organizations have been reorganizing themselves or launching programs to focus on teacher quality.(6) In addition, Education Secretary Richard Riley has recently made teacher quality issues a focus of speeches and has promoted Education Department publications on the improvement of teacher quality.(7)
Teacher quality has also entered national political discussions indirectly, through President Clinton’s proposal to spend federal dollars to help the states hire 100,000 new teachers over the next few years to reduce the number of students in the nation's classrooms. After much rancorous debate, this proposal passed congressional muster shortly before the 1998 fall election, with bipartisan support. Though Congress only approved a little over $1 billion for fiscal year 1999 for the class-size reduction program, it is estimated that Washington will have to spend at least $12 billion over several years to hire enough teachers to reach the Administration’s goals. Moreover, the proposal contains many costs that the states will have to bear. Given the apparent political support for this policy approach, however, many voters must believe class size reduction is a credible and workable approach to ensuring that students get enough attention from their teachers.
Moreover, class size reduction is a policy that Kentucky lawmakers themselves have embraced in the past.(8) Yet KERA gave school councils the right to decide class size policies at individual schools. It is unclear how class size reduction mandates would mesh with KERA’s decisionmaking structure. In addition, matters of teacher training and credentialing will clearly also come into play as Kentucky seeks to receive the estimated $19 million it would likely be allocated under the plan in fiscal 1999 to hire new teachers.(9)
There is also evidence that teacher quality issues will play an increasingly large role in both southern regional and Kentucky politics and education policy. The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), for example, in two recent publications—Educational Benchmarks 1998, and Improving Teaching in the Middle Grades: Higher Standards for Students Aren’t Enough—also chose to focus attention on out-of-field teaching and other issues associated with preparing a strong teacher workforce.(10) In the Commonwealth, the state’s major newspapers have published articles recently about teacher quality and preparation levels.(11) In addition, the Prichard Committee has agreed to work with teacher policy officials at the Education Professional Standards Board and around the state on an effort to upgrade the teacher profession. And the Commissioner of Education has issued his own plan to improve teacher knowledge and skill levels.
As if to reinforce the point that teacher quality is high on the public agenda, in late 1998 a poll was released that showed that teacher quality was the second highest educational priority—behind only school safety—among the national sample of citizens polled. According to a report entitled "The Essential Profession," which included the poll results, nine out of ten of those sampled rated placing well-qualified teachers in classrooms as more important than beefing up the curriculum, enhancing classroom discipline, or reducing class size.(12)
And finally, at press time the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released a publication entitled Teacher Quality: A Report on the Preparation and Qualifications of Public School Teachers.(13) In remarks made as this report was released, NCES Commissioner Pascal Forgione recognized the heightened concern about the need for excellent teachers, and indicated that his organization would be offering biannual reports on teacher quality.
From the standpoint of interest in teacher quality issues at the national, regional, and state levels, therefore, this is an opportune moment to examine the status of Kentucky’s teacher workforce. The National Commission and others have focused new attention on issues of teacher training and certification, in the hope of prompting dialogue about and scrutiny of teacher policies in states around the country. Moreover, the quality of teacher trainees has been an ongoing concern of state lawmakers, and teacher preparation and certification may become more salient as federal and state governments resume the push for improved student performance.
Ahead
to Indicators of Teacher Quality
National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future (New York: Author, 1996). Return to text.
Based on data presented in Ronald F. Ferguson, "Paying for Public Education: New Evidence on How and Why Money Matters," Harvard Journal of Legislation 28 Summer (1991). The Ferguson study findings on teacher qualifications were, in turn, presented in Linda Darling-Hammond, "Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education," The Brookings Review Spring 1998: 28-32. Return to text.
See, for example, Ronald F. Ferguson and Helen F. Ladd, "How and Why Money Matters: An Analysis of Alabama Schools," in Helen Ladd, ed., Holding Schools Accountable (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1996) 265-298; William L. Sanders and June C. Rivers, Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers on Future Student Academic Achievement (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Value-Added Research and Assessment Center, 1996). Return to text.
The Holmes Group, Tomorrow’s Teachers (Lansing, Michigan: Author, 1986); Task Force on Teaching as a Profession, The Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century (New York: Author, 1986). It is noteworthy that the UK College of Education was a member institution of the original Holmes Group. Return to text.
What Matters Most 15. Return to text.
Ann Bradley, "NEA, AFT Strategies for Upgrading Quality of Teachers Drawing Nearer," Education Week 23 Sept. 1998; Ann Bradley, "NEA, AFT Take Up the Thorny Issue of Teacher Quality," Education Week 7 Oct. 1998. Return to text.
See, for example, information about "Promising Practices: New Ways to Improve Teacher Quality," available at the U.S. Education Department’s web site at: www.ed.gov. Return to text.
For example, class size reduction was a key component of House Bill (HB) 6, the education reform legislation produced during the summer 1985 special session of the General Assembly. The class size targets set by HB 6 were never met, however, because the legislature did not appropriate enough revenue to hire the additional teachers necessary to implement the policy. Return to text.
Estimated state expenditures supplied by the U.S. Department of Education and cited in Debra Viadero, "Small Classes: Popular, But Still Unproven," Education Week 18 Feb. 1998. Return to text.
The SREB determined, for example, that member states (including Kentucky) were doing poorly on four of six teacher education areas. In short, says the Benchmarks report, "Too many teachers have inadequate backgrounds in the subjects they teach." P. 49 Southern Regional Education Board, Educational Benchmarks 1998 (Atlanta: SREB, 1998). Return to text.
See, for example, Bill Bishop, "Teacher Education Part of the Cycle of Mediocrity," Lexington Herald-Leader 12 Aug. 1998; see also Lonnie Harp, "KERA Task Demands Change in Teaching, Culture," The Courier-Journal 8 Dec. 1997; see also "The Learning Gap," Lexington Herald-Leader 15 Nov. 1998. Return to text.
Jeff Archer, "Public Prefers Competent Teachers to Other Reforms, Survey Finds," Education Week 25 Nov. 1998. Return to text.
Statistical Analysis Report, January 1999, NCES 1999-080, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Return to text.