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April 17, 2017

Where Teacher Prep Meets Behavior Management

Last week, the Center for American Progress and the Hope Street Group held a forum to discuss the future of teacher preparation following the recent repeal of regulations which required states to rate their programs.

During this event, panelists repeatedly argued that teacher training should include a behavior management component. One panelist shared that she felt she was not adequately prepared to teach children with social and emotional problems when she began teaching. Another stressed the importance of training new teachers to understand and respond to the social, behavioral matters of children.

There are good reasons for this. As CPE found in its report on teacher shortages, good working conditions and support play a large role in teachers’ decisions about where to work. If student outbursts impede a teacher’s ability to manage the classroom, that says a lot about the working conditions. Accordingly, another panelist spoke about the need for teachers-in-training to have a “back-up” for assistance with behavioral management situations when they arise, which speaks to support. CPE also reports that student discipline problems are another factor in low teacher retention, more so than even salary.

Up to 30 percent of children and adolescents have mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders, and as many as 1 in 10 students have disorders severe enough to interfere with their ability to function properly in class, including exhibiting proper classroom behavior.

Research shows that the achievement levels of students who have behavior problems are significantly lower than students who do not. In addition, while the dropout rate for all public-school students is 7 percent, among students with behavior problems, the dropout rate is even higher, 38.7 percent, higher than most categories of disabilities (Porowski, A., et al., 2014).

Being equipped to provide behavior management isn’t a new concern; a 2011 study showed that teachers surveyed reported a lack of experience and training for supporting children’s mental health needs (Reinke, W. et al., 2011).

Some families are able to access behavioral health services for their students on their own, but an almost equal amount rely on schools to provide those services for them. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, in 2007, 3.1 million youth (12.7 percent) received treatment or counseling for emotional or behavior problems outside of school, where an additional 11.8 percent of youth received mental health services inside school facilities. This may be why teachers report that they believe they hold the primary responsibility of implementing behavioral interventions in the classroom.

According a report by the Hope Street Group, teachers should be trained to become aware of students’ emotional triggers. Since many students exhibit signs prior to a sudden outburst, knowing these signs could be helpful in preventing them. Teachers can further be better positioned to refer students to necessary treatment, whether through community mental health providers, family organizations outside of the school, or school-based services.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has provided a list of warning signs for mental health problems, among other advice for consulting a school counselor, nurse, administrator or the student’s parents if certain behaviors are observed. HHS also has provided a list of actions teacher can take in their classrooms to promote the mental health of students.

Research shows that parents want to be involved and prefer to seek advice or referrals from teachers, but they might not know how to communicate with professionals regarding their child’s behavioral needs. If teachers initiate communication, facilitating parental engagement, that’s a positive step towards solving the problem. Training teachers in parent engagement strategies focused on expressing support and establishing partnership with parents is therefore another important piece.

Teacher training also needs district support, as research shows that even when teachers receive effective training, certain programs tend to dissolve when they aren’t supported by school districts.

Behavioral healthcare has its place in the classroom. Given the educational impact emotional disturbances hold on students with special needs, behavioral health should be part of their educational experience, which means teachers must be supported and trained to facilitate it. Teachers, however, are not mental health professionals. Nor are they case managers. Training teachers to recognize signs of potential behavioral outbursts; making sure teachers are familiar with the community in which they are teaching so that they can more easily identify resources for referrals to trained behavioral health specialists; and providing them with support and guidance when they may enable them to feel better prepared to manage student behavior.

Filed under: CPE,Student support,teachers — Tags: — Katharine Carter @ 2:26 pm




August 22, 2016

The “Soft” Side of Teacher Supply

Our last blog post talked about the “hard” side of teacher supply – the money.  However, we also alluded to non-monetary factors that are even more important in recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers: respect, job satisfaction, and autonomy.  Very little research has focused on why individuals choose to become teachers, but we do have a plethora of information from teachers about why they choose to stay or leave the profession, which we can use to make assumptions about recruiting new teachers, as well.

A recent Center on Education Policy (CEP) survey highlights teachers’ views on why they entered the profession (mostly altruistic) and their greatest challenges (mostly policy-related).  Teachers, like most professionals, want to feel successful in their jobs (Moore Johnson & Birkeland, 2003), which is supported by evidence that teachers with higher value-added test scores are less likely to request transfers between schools (Boyd, et al., 2011).  35% of teachers who leave the profession cite dissatisfaction with their job as at least one of the reasons for leaving (Ingersoll & May, 2011).

How do we tap into teachers’ altruistic motives to create policies that may keep more high-quality teachers in the field?  Here are just a few ideas:

  1. Help novice teachers be more successful. The National Center for Education Statistics found that beginning teachers were more likely to stay if they had a mentor, with 86% of teachers with mentors staying in teaching for five years, as compared with 71% without mentors.
  2. Give teachers time to collaborate and be creative by reducing the number of hours they are instructing students. Forty-nine percent of teachers in CEP’s survey reported that their day-to-day teaching would improve with additional planning time and 34% reported that additional collaboration time would help them in teaching. U.S. teachers spend significantly more time in the direct instruction of students than their peers in other countries:

    Hours

    Source: http://www.oecd.org/edu/EAG2014-Indicator%20D4%20(eng).pdf

 

  1. Build effective systems around student discipline. Each student has unique behavioral needs, which must be addressed through individualized strategies. Students should not be allowed to disrupt their peers’ learning, nor should they be suspended for minor infractions.  Schools and principals need to support teachers and by providing behavioral supports, both positive and punitive.  Teachers in CEP’s survey reported “managing student behavior” as their greatest school-level challenge.
  2. Include teachers in decision-making. CEP’s teacher survey clearly showed that teachers do not feel that their opinions were taken into account by policy makers. Teachers are on the ground every day with students, and thus know more than any other level of decision maker how policies translate into practice.  Involving teachers in policy making may have better outcomes for students, as well as improved perceptions of teacher professionalism.

Teacher Decisions

Filed under: CPE,instruction,International Comparisons,Public education,school organization,teachers — Tags: , , , — Chandi Wagner @ 3:04 pm




August 15, 2016

The Supply and Demand of Teacher Pay

We know that teachers are the most important school-level factor that contributes to student achievement.  And we’ve all heard that teacher pay is low.  But how low is it, exactly?  And does that really affect the supply of people entering the teaching profession?

First and foremost, teachers don’t teach for the money.  A recent Center on Education Policy survey found that only 1% of teachers listed “earning potential” as a significant factor for entering the teaching field, compared with 68% of teachers who said they taught to “make a difference in students’ lives.”  However, the number of high school graduates who are interested in a career in education has dropped since 2010 to only 5%, according to ACT, despite an anticipated increase in demand for new teachers.

If we want to attract the best and brightest minds into teaching, though, improved salaries might help.  Teacher salaries lag 23% below those of all college graduates, and 17% below those of similar individuals, when comparing weekly salaries (some of this difference is explained by the gender gap – over 80% of teachers are female).  Even when accounting for additional compensation, such as pensions and insurance, teacher salaries are 11% less than their peers.  This is significantly different from the 1970s, at which point teachers actually earned more than the average of their peers.

Wage Gap

Other countries with successful education systems treat their teachers as professionals.  A recent report from the National Conference of State Legislatures found that these countries recruit teachers from the best and brightest students, often provide free university-level training, and give teachers the autonomy to make decisions that lead to their students’ success.  Teachers have career ladders in which they can mentor novice teachers and take leadership roles.  Teachers in these systems often earn similar salaries as accountants and engineers.

Even if we don’t like to admit it, higher-earning professions are often more respected and revered.  While the cause and effect in this scenario may be muddled, we assume that doctors deserve the pay they receive because they are smart and well-educated.  Could we also assume that smart people enter the medical profession because they know they will be well-compensated and challenged in their professional life?  Sure, they also want to help people be healthy, but I haven’t heard that argument come up in discussing doctors’ wages.

Teaching is not all about the money, but Economics 101 should have taught us that the world often boils down to supply and demand.  If we want to increase the supply of high-quality teachers, we also have to increase their pay and respect.  We need a system in which our teachers are well-trained, competent professionals for which they are fairly compensated so that our students are provided with the educations they deserve.

Filed under: CPE,International Comparisons,teachers — Tags: , , , — Chandi Wagner @ 11:20 am




July 27, 2016

Elementary Teacher Specialization

We have all bemoaned the high rate of teacher turnover in the U.S. and wondered how to increase teacher quality.  Most proposed solutions are costly, though: increased pay, smaller classes, merit-based pay, housing for teachers in urban areas.  The National Center on Education and the Economy released a report last week that examines the training, hiring, and work practices of elementary school teachers in four high-performing nations, with implications for how the U.S. could improve its elementary teacher workforce.  The easiest to implement? Specialization.

Elementary classrooms typically are “self-contained,” meaning that one teacher has the same class of students all day and teaches Reading, Writing, Math, Science, and Social Studies.  However, some schools have a “departmentalized” structure, which looks more like middle school or high school.  Typically, 2-4 teachers will work as a team with the same group of students who rotate through the classes.  This allows teachers to focus their lesson planning on only one or two subjects.

Capture

Departmentalized teaching provides multiple benefits:

  1. Reduced workload for teachers, which improves job satisfaction.
  2. Teachers have a deeper knowledge of the subject that they teach, which results in increased confidence and student performance.
  3. Students have the opportunity to know multiple adults and improve their organizational skills.
  4. Teachers collaborate more due to sharing students.

Even if elementary schools are concerned about changing their schedules, they can still ask teachers to specialize in a particular subject, making them the expert on their grade level team.  Doing so would still provide for deeper teacher knowledge and increased collaboration.

As a former teacher who started in a self-contained classroom and then was in a departmentalized structure for two years, I can attest to the shorter work hours, improved student achievement, and stronger collaborations provided by only teaching one or two subjects.  In fact, one of the reasons I left the elementary classroom was because my principal decided to return to self-contained classrooms.  Research tells me I’m not alone.

Filed under: CPE,elementary education,teachers — Tags: , , , , , , — Chandi Wagner @ 12:56 pm




October 1, 2015

Diversifying the teaching force

We know many of the qualities that define “good” teachers: subject matter knowledge, credentials, experience, and impact on learning. But according to a growing body of research, this list is incomplete without also assuring the teaching staff resembles the demographic make up of the students they serve. Let’s just say, we have a long way to go.

Our current public-school enrollment is very close to being majority-minority. In 2011-12, 51 percent of public K-12 students were white down from 59 percent 10 years before. In contrast, 82 percent of their teachers were white (see chart). In American cities, where students of color comprise a two-thirds majority, 71 percent of their teachers were white.  A full three-quarters were female.

diversity

Across the country, districts are facing teacher shortages, especially in key areas like special education and mathematics. The additional effort to increase the diversity of their staff may seem like making an already difficult job even harder. In its recent report on the subject, the Albert Shanker Institute acknowledged as much, stating that “our first priority must be to ensure that every student has the benefit of being taught by skilled, knowledgeable and caring teachers – of whatever race and ethnicity.” Nonetheless, they further maintain that diversity “should be a factor, and an important one at that.” This is especially so for the education of minority students.

Among the reasons cited by the Shanker Institute authors is that teachers who share a cultural experience with their students are better able to motivate and inspire them, and are less likely to “confuse cultural difference with cultural or intellectual disadvantage.”  The authors also refer to research suggesting that a demographic match between teachers and students improves students’ academic performance.

Evidence for this latter statement received a big boost earlier this year by researchers Anna Egalite, Brain Kisida and Marcus Winters who analyzed the relationship of what they call “own-race teachers” to student achievement. The authors had access to a huge database enabling them to link 92,000 Florida teachers to 3 million students over a seven year period. They tracked the performance of individual students while in classrooms with different teachers by race and ethnicity over several grades, and compared the impact of same-race to different-race assignments. In this way they have produced perhaps the most rigorous study to date of the effect of minority teachers on minority student achievement.

Here’s what they found: students perform higher in math and reading when they are assigned to teachers of the same race. The overall results are small, but statistically significant. There are differences by race, however. The performance of black, white and Asian students were significantly positive in math, but the effects were highest for black and Asian students.

Hispanic students were the exception. For this group of students, having an Hispanic teacher actually produced a negative effect. The researchers conjectured that this finding could be due to limitations in the data. They explain, the Florida Hispanic population is quite large and culturally diverse, including self-described Caribbeans, Mexicans, Central and South Americans. Grouping them into one ethnicity could therefore be masking important differences among them.

As virtually every researcher does, Egalite and her team call for more research to better understand the relationship between teachers and students by race. But for us lay people, the evidence is pretty clear that school districts should pay attention to recruiting a teaching force that is demographically representative of the community alongside their professional qualities.

 

Filed under: Achievement Gaps,Demographics,teachers — Tags: , — Patte Barth @ 12:42 pm




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