William A. Owings

Teacher Quality and Student Achievement: Recommendations for Principals.

Principals play major roles to ensure both teacher and teaching quality in classrooms. Understanding essential research findings on both teacher and teaching quality and their relation to student learning can help principals significantly improve student achievement.

Assistant Principals: The Case for Shared Instructional Leadership

In todays restructuring secondary schools, principals have new instructional leadership responsibilities on top of already demanding management responsibilities. Not enough time exists for one person to address all these expectations successfully. Assistant principals can effectively share instructional leadership roles to increase a schools success as a learning organization for students and educators.

Teacher Quality and Troops to Teachers: A National Study With Implications for Principals

A 2005 national study surveyed 2,103 Troops to Teachers (T3) program completers and their school administrators using 21 research-based instructional practices and four effective classroom management strategies associated with increased student achievement to determine whether T3s were more effective in the classroom than traditionally prepared teachers with comparable years of teaching experience. Sixty-one percent returned completed surveys. Principals overwhelmingly (more than 90%) reported that T3s are more effective in classroom instruction and classroom management/student discipline—and have a more positive impact on student achievement—than traditionally prepared teachers. Moreover, T3s teach in high-poverty schools, teach high-demand subjects (special education, math, science), plan to remain in teaching, and increase the teaching pools diversity.

The Politics of Teacher Quality: Implications for Principals

The academic and political arguments about teacher quality affect how secondary principals do their jobs. Educational research provides useful guidance about which teacher candidates may be most likely to increase student achievement, but it must be used critically and cautiously. When individuals with varying political agendas interpret the same findings in completely different ways to advance very different solutions, confusion results. Principals who understand the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 know how to create and maintain a positive work and learning environment for teachers and students.

Standards, Retention, and Social Promotion.

Student retention and social promotion are failed strategies that are also expensive. Although public support for high standards in schools is increasing, educators are concerned that students who cannot meet academic criteria may instead choose to drop out of school. Failure-prevention approaches are crucial to ensure that all students succeed.

Introduction to Special Issue: Teacher Effectiveness

Leslie S. Kaplan is the assistant principal of instruction at Dozier Middle School, Newport News, VA. William A. Owings is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Old Dominion University. Correspondence concerning this issue may be sent to leslie-kaplan@nn.k12.va.us. Improving teacher effectiveness has become the center of educational reform. Increasingly, research confirms that teacher and teaching quality are the most powerful predictors of student success. The more years that students work with effective teachers, the higher their measured achievement, far outpacing their peers who start with comparable achievement but who spend consecutive years studying with less effective teachers. Teacher effectiveness is one of the most decisive factors in student achievement.

The Effects of Troops to Teachers on Student Achievement: One State’s Study

This study examined approximately 6,500 Florida students’ reading and mathematics performance when taught by a sample of teachers who obtained their teaching credentials through the Troops to Teachers program. Results indicated that students served by Troops teachers performed about equally well in reading and achieved a small but statistically significant advantage in mathematics when compared with all teachers but achieved substantially and statistically significantly higher in both reading and mathematics when compared with teachers matched by subject and teaching experience.

Troops to Teachers as School Administrators: A National Study of Principal Quality

The United States has a scarcity of capable principals ready to successfully lead schools in an era of outcome-based accountability. This is especially true in high-poverty, high-minority schools. Policy makers welcome opening the principal pipeline to untraditional leaders. Research finds that teachers who have entered education through Troops to Teachers funding make a measurable impact on student learning and tend to work in high-poverty schools. This study suggests that they also may be highly effective principals.

School Finance as Investment in Human Capital

Education improves an individuals and a communitys standard of living. In a time when education funding is insufficient for schools to meet high quality standards, principals are in a unique position to influence their community to fully support state and local school budgets. By using data to show educations positive influence on human capital as seen in income, employability, safety, and community lifestyle, as well as how education decreases other social service costs, principals can make a persuasive argu ment for school funding.

Troops to Teachers Update: Changing, but Still Pleasing Principals with High Teaching Quality.

Prior research on Troops to Teachers (TTT) affirms that TTTs are effective instructors likely to work in high-poverty, high-minority schools, teach high-demand subjects, use research-based instructional and classroom management practices linked with student achievement, and plan to stay in the profession. A nonexperimental, mixed method design incorporating quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis was used. A total of 4,157 TTT completers and 517 administrators responded to surveys. The 2012-2013 follow-up study finds that TTTs are meeting most—but not all—the same high benchmarks. In addition, 92% of principals rate their TTTs as well-prepared to meet the needs of diverse learners in varied learning environments.