January #10

NEW REPORT FINDS THAT STATES
SQUANDER OPPORTUNITIES WITH NEW TEACHERS

A new report released by the not-for-profit, non-partisan National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) finds that the laws and regulations of a majority of states discourage promising new teachers from sticking with the profession, while doing little to identify and move out ineffective teachers.

The report finds that states: 1) do not require sufficient support and evaluation of new teachers, a problem since most districts rarely opt to exceed state requirements; 2) do not require or even allow a teacher’s effectiveness to be considered when granting tenure, although states control how and when tenure is awarded; 3) cling to anachronistic compensation schemes rather than advancing differentiated pay systems; 4) are lagging in the development of the systems necessary for identifying effective teachers; 5) place a disproportionate emphasis on providing pension benefits to retiring teachers at the expense of providing benefits that would appeal to younger teachers; and 6) allow far too many ineffective teachers to remain in the classroom and gain tenure, including teachers who repeatedly fail to meet the state’s own licensing standards.

NCTQ President Kate Walsh said, “The third through fifth years of teaching represent an opportunity lost for teacher quality. That’s certainly when teachers begin to add real value, and it’s also when they tend to make decisions about staying or leaving. States can help districts do much more to ensure that the right teachers stay and the right teachers leave."

The 2008 State Teacher Policy Yearbook finds that state regulations are in need of significant reforms in order to improve teacher quality and offers states specific guidelines for rectifying substandard policies. Each state’s Yearbook, as well as a national summary, is immediately available for free download at www.nctq.org/stpy.

NCTQ, in consultation with over 150 leading thinkers, organizations, and teachers in the country, identified 15 policy goals that support the retention of effective new teachers. While no one state represents a national model for change, NCTQ found South Carolina to be leading other states, earning a rating of B-. South Carolina has particularly noteworthy policies for ensuring that ineffective teachers do not remain in the classroom. Other states with some strong and effective policies in particular areas are Alabama, Ohio, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Tennessee, all of which received an overall grade of C. Eight states received a C-, 30 states received a grade in the D range, and six received an F.

Key findings include:

• States' laws ensure that teachers can gain tenure without demonstrating they are effective: States do virtually nothing to establish teachers' effectiveness in the classroom before awarding them permanent employment status—more commonly known as tenure.

• Only 2 states require their school districts to determine if a teacher is effective before they award tenure. 44 states allow teachers to earn tenure in three years or less, which is simply not enough time to accumulate sufficient data on a teacher’s performance.

• 3 states award teachers permanent status after a single year of teaching. States are not playing their part in the identification of effective teachers: Determining which teachers will be effective before they begin to teach remains an elusive goal. The absence of predictive indicators creates a critical need to identify whether teachers are effective as soon as possible, before tenure is awarded.

• Only 23 states require that new teachers be evaluated more than once a year, a necessary component for determining effectiveness.

• Only four states require evidence of student learning to be the preponderant criterion in teacher evaluations.

• Just two states use value-added data to assess teacher effectiveness.

States are complicit in keeping far too many ineffective teachers in the classroom: Although it is local districts that hire and fire teachers, states could do considerably more to ensure that ineffective teachers do not remain in the classroom indefinitely.

• Only 13 states specify that teachers who have been rated unsatisfactory on multiple evaluations should be eligible for dismissal.

• Only half the states require that teachers who receive even one unsatisfactory evaluation are placed on an improvement plan.

• Twenty-two states permit teachers to remain in the classroom for three years or more without passing all required licensing tests.

State policies raise unnecessary barriers for advancing in the profession, and could do much more to influence teachers’ decisions to stay or go: In the areas of compensation, certification and induction, there is much more states could do to support the retention of effective teachers early in their careers.

• More than half of states do not require that local districts provide new teachers with adequate support.

• Eighteen states require districts to pay more to teachers with advanced degrees, which have been shown repeatedly to bear no connection to teacher effectiveness.

• In order to advance from a probationary to a professional license, 20 states require teachers to complete additional coursework that is not specifically targeted to improve their practice.

State pension systems are generally inflexible and unfair to all teachers, but they particularly disadvantage teachers early in their careers: States continue to provide teachers with expensive and inflexible pension plans that do not reflect the realities of the modern workforce.

• Just four states offer teachers a defined contribution plan as their primary pension plan; the portability of these plans can be attractive to an increasingly mobile workforce.

• Pension systems also overly commit districts' resources to retirement benefits, leaving little room to provide benefits that might be of more immediate relevance to new teachers.

While school districts are certainly key players in shaping the quality of their own teaching force, the public may not fully appreciate the considerable role played by states. Without exception, state laws and regulations touch upon every aspect of the teaching profession, having a measurable impact on the quality of new teachers. While the state has long been the traditional licensing body of teachers, nearly every state also has laws on the books which establish the tenure process, retirement benefits, dismissal procedures, evaluation requirements and even pay structures. This report analyzes what each state is doing to identify teachers' effectiveness; support the retention of valuable, early career teachers; and dismiss those found to be ineffective, with each of these factors measured against a realistic blueprint for reform.

Unlike the more comprehensive analysis of all aspects of states' teacher policies provided in the 2007 edition of the State Teacher Policy Yearbook, this year's report focuses on a particular policy issue. The 2009 Yearbook will revisit and reevaluate the states' progress in meeting the full set of goals first analyzed in 2007, as well as the new goals examined this year.

For more information on Yearbook findings at the national and state level, methodology, and background on the report, go to www.nctq.org/stpy.

STUDY: LEARNING SCIENCE FACTS DOESN’T BOOST SCIENCE REASONING
A study of college freshmen in the United States and in China found that Chinese students know more science facts than their American counterparts -- but both groups are nearly identical when it comes to their ability to do scientific reasoning.
Neither group is especially skilled at reasoning, however, and the study suggests that educators must go beyond teaching science facts if they hope to boost students’ reasoning ability.
Researchers tested nearly 6,000 students majoring in science and engineering at seven universities -- four in the United States and three in China. Chinese students greatly outperformed American students on factual knowledge of physics -- averaging 90 percent on one test, versus the American students’ 50 percent, for example.
But in a test of science reasoning, both groups averaged around 75 percent -- not a very high score, especially for students hoping to major in science or engineering.
The research appears in the January 30, 2009 issue of the journal Science.
Lei Bao, associate professor of physics at Ohio State University and lead author of the study, said that the finding defies conventional wisdom, which holds that teaching science facts will improve students’ reasoning ability.
“Our study shows that, contrary to what many people would expect, even when students are rigorously taught the facts, they don’t necessarily develop the reasoning skills they need to succeed,” Bao said. “Because students need both knowledge and reasoning, we need to explore teaching methods that target both.”
Bao directs Ohio State’s Physics Education Research Group, which is developing new strategies for teaching science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. For this study, he and his colleagues across the United States and in China decided to compare students from both countries, because the educational systems are so different.
In the United States, only one-third of students take a year-long physics course before they graduate from high school. The rest only study physics within general science courses. Curricula vary widely from school to school, and students can choose among elective courses.
In China, however, every student in every school follows exactly the same curriculum, which includes five years of continuous physics classes from grades 8 through 12. All students must perform well on a national exam if they hope to enter college, and the exam contains advanced physics problems.
“Each system has its strengths and weaknesses,” Bao said. “In China, schools emphasize a very extensive learning of STEM content knowledge, while in the United States, science courses are more flexible, with simpler content but with a high emphasis on scientific methods. We need to think of a new strategy, perhaps one that blends the best of both worlds.”
The students who participated in the study were all incoming freshmen who had just enrolled in a calculus-based introductory physics course. They took three multiple-choice tests: two which tested knowledge of physics concepts, and one which tested scientific reasoning.
The first test, the Force Concept Inventory, measures students’ basic knowledge of mechanics -- the action of forces on objects. Most Chinese students scored close to 90 percent, while the American scores varied widely from 25-75 percent, with an average of 50.
The second test, the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment, measures students’ understanding of electric forces, circuits, and magnetism, which are often considered to be more abstract concepts and more difficult to learn than mechanics. Here Chinese students averaged close to 70 percent while American students averaged around 25 percent -- a little better than if they had simply picked their multiple-choice answers randomly.
The third test, the Lawson Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning, measures science skills beyond the facts. Students are asked to evaluate scientific hypotheses, and reason out solutions using skills such as proportional reasoning, control of variables, probability reasoning, correlation reasoning, and hypothetical-deductive reasoning. Both American and Chinese students averaged a 75 percent score.
Bao explained that STEM students need to excel at scientific reasoning in order to handle open-ended real-world tasks in their future careers in science and engineering.
Ohio State graduate student and study co-author Jing Han echoed that sentiment. “To do my own research, I need to be able to plan what I’m going to investigate and how to do it. I can’t just ask my professor or look up the answer in a book,” she said.
“These skills are especially important today, when we are determined to build a society with a sustainable edge in science and technology in a fast-evolving global environment,” Bao said.
He quickly added that reasoning is a good skill for everyone to possess -- not just scientists and engineers.
“The general public also needs good reasoning skills in order to correctly interpret scientific findings and think rationally,” he said._How to boost scientific reasoning? Bao points to inquiry-based learning, where students work in groups, question teachers and design their own investigations. This teaching technique is growing in popularity worldwide.

Skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined

As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved, according to research by Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles.

Learners have changed as a result of their exposure to technology, says Greenfield, who analyzed more than 50 studies on learning and technology, including research on multi-tasking and the use of computers, the Internet and video games. Her research was published this month in the journal Science.
Reading for pleasure, which has declined among young people in recent decades, enhances thinking and engages the imagination in a way that visual media such as video games and television do not, Greenfield said.
How much should schools use new media, versus older techniques such as reading and classroom discussion?
"No one medium is good for everything," Greenfield said. "If we want to develop a variety of skills, we need a balanced media diet. Each medium has costs and benefits in terms of what skills each develops."
Schools should make more effort to test students using visual media, she said, by asking them to prepare PowerPoint presentations, for example.
"As students spend more time with visual media and less time with print, evaluation methods that include visual media will give a better picture of what they actually know," said Greenfield, who has been using films in her classes since the 1970s.
"By using more visual media, students will process information better," she said. "However, most visual media are real-time media that do not allow time for reflection, analysis or imagination — those do not get developed by real-time media such as television or video games. Technology is not a panacea in education, because of the skills that are being lost.
"Studies show that reading develops imagination, induction, reflection and critical thinking, as well as vocabulary," Greenfield said. "Reading for pleasure is the key to developing these skills. Students today have more visual literacy and less print literacy. Many students do not read for pleasure and have not for decades."
Parents should encourage their children to read and should read to their young children, she said.
Among the studies Greenfield analyzed was a classroom study showing that students who were given access to the Internet during class and were encouraged to use it during lectures did not process what the speaker said as well as students who did not have Internet access. When students were tested after class lectures, those who did not have Internet access performed better than those who did.
"Wiring classrooms for Internet access does not enhance learning," Greenfield said.
Another study Greenfield analyzed found that college students who watched "CNN Headline News" with just the news anchor on screen and without the "news crawl" across the bottom of the screen remembered significantly more facts from the televised broadcast than those who watched it with the distraction of the crawling text and with additional stock market and weather information on the screen.
These and other studies show that multi-tasking "prevents people from getting a deeper understanding of information," Greenfield said.
Yet, for certain tasks, divided attention is important, she added.
"If you're a pilot, you need to be able to monitor multiple instruments at the same time. If you're a cab driver, you need to pay attention to multiple events at the same time. If you're in the military, you need to multi-task too," she said. "On the other hand, if you're trying to solve a complex problem, you need sustained concentration. If you are doing a task that requires deep and sustained thought, multi-tasking is detrimental."
Do video games strengthen skill in multi-tasking?
New Zealand researcher Paul Kearney measured multi-tasking and found that people who played a realistic video game before engaging in a military computer simulation showed a significant improvement in their ability to multi-task, compared with people in a control group who did not play the video game. In the simulation, the player operates a weapons console, locates targets and reacts quickly to events.
Greenfield wonders, however, whether the tasks in the simulation could have been performed better if done alone.
More than 85 percent of video games contain violence, one study found, and multiple studies of violent media games have shown that they can produce many negative effects, including aggressive behavior and desensitization to real-life violence, Greenfield said in summarizing the findings.
In another study, video game skills were a better predictor of surgeons' success in performing laparoscopic surgery than actual laparoscopic surgery experience. In laparoscopic surgery, a surgeon makes a small incision in a patient and inserts a viewing tube with a small camera. The surgeon examines internal organs on a video monitor connected to the tube and can use the viewing tube to guide the surgery.
"Video game skill predicted laparoscopic surgery skills," Greenfield said. "The best video game players made 47 percent fewer errors and performed 39 percent faster in laparoscopic tasks than the worst video game players."
Visual intelligence has been rising globally for 50 years, Greenfield said. In 1942, people's visual performance, as measured by a visual intelligence test known as Raven's Progressive Matrices, went steadily down with age and declined substantially from age 25 to 65. By 1992, there was a much less significant age-related disparity in visual intelligence, Greenfield said.
"In a 1992 study, visual IQ stayed almost flat from age 25 to 65," she said.
Greenfield believes much of this change is related to our increased use of technology, as well as other factors, including increased levels of formal education, improved nutrition, smaller families and increased societal complexity.

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