| Marjorie Wallace
Michigan State University
Making sense of the links: From government policy to student achievement
FINAL REPORT:
Using the Beginning Teacher Preparation Study (BTPS) in Connecticut and Tennessee and the National Assessment of Education Progress in Mathematics and Reading 1999-2000 (NAEP), this study provides evidence on the strength of relationships and relative contributions of four important elements in the education system to student achievement in mathematics and reading: teacher preparation, teacher characteristics, professional development, and teacher practice. Results from structural equation modeling (SEM) indicate that teacher practices, teacher characteristics, and professional development across teachers are generally linked to teacher practice and student achievement in consistent ways. They have moderate to large direct effects on teacher practice and small but significant indirect effects on student achievement in mathematics and reading. Findings vary based on curriculum and policy context.
Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) results indicate that teacher characteristics, professional development, and teacher practices can differentially affect student achievement by ethnicity and gender. Differential effects on gain scores (estimated at the state level) portray effects on learning while effects on achievement status confound teacher effects with prior differences in achievement at the national level. Black mean achievement varies across teachers in mathematics (Connecticut, NAEP 1996) and reading (Connecticut, NAEP 1998). The mean for Black (Connecticut reading) varies across teachers but teacher variables do not account for variation. Female mean mathematics achievement varies across teachers in two data sets. Hispanic mean mathematics (NAEP 2000) and Black female mean mathematics achievement (NAEP 1996) vary across teachers in one data set each. Teacher variables exhibiting differential effects (increasing achievement for one group while simultaneously decreasing achievement for another) are teacher drill and lecture activities, sensemaking activities, knowledge, preparation, reform orientation, and professional development for mathematics. For reading, the list includes traditional activities, computer activities, reading preparation. assessment preparation, and professional development. The differential effects sometimes split by ethnicity and sometimes by gender.
In the three-level HLM for Connecticut, effects of teacher preparation programs do not vary significantly across teachers when student gains are the outcome. Using SEM, teacher preparation programs as a whole have effects on student achievement but those effects con not be attributed to individual teacher preparation programs using HLM.
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