Joe Walch

Does the Model Matter? Exploring the Relationship Between Different Student Achievement-Based Teacher Assessments

Policymakers have demonstrated an interest in using measures of student achievement to inform high-stakes teacher personnel decisions, but the idea of using student outcomes as a teacher performance measure is complex to implement for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that there is no universally agreed upon statistical methodology for translating student achievement into a measure of teacher performance. In this article, we use statewide data from North Carolina to evaluate different methodologies for translating student test achievement into measures of teacher performance at the elementary level. In particular, we focus on the extent to which there are differences in teacher effect estimates generated from different modeling approaches, and to what extent classroom level characteristics predict these differences. We find models that only include lagged achievement scores and student background characteristics are highly correlated with specifications that also include classroom characteristics, while value-added models (VAMs) estimated with school fixed effects have a lower correlation. Teacher effectiveness estimates based on median student growth percentiles are highly correlated with estimates from VAMs that include student background characteristics, despite the fact that the two methods for estimating teacher effectiveness are, at least conceptually, quite different. But even when the correlations between performance estimates generated by different models are quite high for the workforce as a whole, there are still sizable differences in teacher rankings generated by different models that are associated with the composition of students in a teachers classroom.

Teacher Tenure: Fog Warning.

Debates over the efficacy of tenure are longstanding but tenure reform is now more prominent in the public eye given recent high-profile legislative battles in states like Ohio and Wisconsin. This focus on tenure also is a natural outgrowth of the large body of research showing that differences between individual teachers can have profound effects on student achievement. Some of the rhetoric in these debates centered on the systems’ inability to fire ineffective tenured teachers. Some contend that the high costs associated with the teacher dismissal process are tantamount to a guarantee that teachers won’t be fired for poor performance. Yet there are counterarguments that weakening tenure will lead to a lower quality teacher workforce. Similarly, others argue that the recent drop in individuals choosing to pursue a career in teaching is related to what’s being called the war against teachers, with tenure reform representing one front in that war (Goldstein, 2014). Our opinion is that direct empirical evidence fails to support the claim that the current wave of reforms affect the teacher labor market or student achievement.

Who Chooses Incentivized Pay Structures? Exploring the Link Between Performance and Preferences for Compensation Reform in the Teacher Labor Market

We report on research examining the revealed preferences of teachers in Denver Public Schools who were given the opportunity to select between remaining on a traditional salary schedule and opting into one of the nation’s high-profile pay reform systems, Denver’s Professional Compensation System for Teachers. The incentive structure creates differential earnings risk for teachers according to their experience and measured effectiveness as well as their staffing assignment and school. We find that teachers are generally responsive to the eligibility criteria, but many teachers who would have earned more under the new system chose not to participate.