Fitzsimon File

State lawmakers heard a mixed evaluation of the university system’s performance in training teachers Tuesday from the director of a massive study of teacher development and performance. The report also gave generally positive reviews to the National Board Certification, much to the chagrin of the anti-everything right that has been trying to abolish state support for national certification for years.

The study, presented by Dr. Gary Henry from UNC-CH, considered almost half a million test scores from the 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 school years along with the backgrounds of the teachers to reach conclusions about what works and what doesn’t in improving student performance, as judged by the test scores.

Even the summary of the findings was a blizzard of data, but Henry repeatedly stressed a few themes, some of which lawmakers have heard before.

Students with teachers teaching a subject out of their field did worse than students with in-field teachers.  First-year teachers are less effective and even second and third-year teachers are less effective in high school and the elementary grades.

The study found that the “equality of educational opportunity” is affected by the make-up of the class. Students do better if they are in a class with high-achieving classmates. Let’s hope the researchers send a copy of the study to the gang of five on the Wake County School Board.

Students with teachers with masters’ degrees do better in middle school and the elementary grades than students with teachers with a bachelor’s degree. They do about the same in high school.

North Carolina rewards teachers who get masters with 10 percent higher pay. Teachers who complete the requirements for National Board Certification earn 12 percent more.  Lawmakers did not give teachers a raise this session, a fact that seemed lost on at least one lawmaker, judging from his questions.

The lack of a pay raise was cited as one reason applications for the certification process are way up. Folks on the right have long disputed the effectiveness of the national certification, which involves as many as 400 hours of work outside the classroom, a demonstration of teaching technique, and an evaluation of how well a teacher knows the subject he or she is teaching.

The Lockers continue to claim that certification is a meaningless waste of time and money that does nothing to make a teacher better. The study presented Tuesday found otherwise, that students in high school and the elementary grades did better with a teacher with National Board Certification.  Students in middle school performed the same.

But researchers found that helping kids improve in middle school as the biggest problem. The transition into middle school is where many of the problems begin as the gains between the fifth and sixth grades are smaller than any other increases.

The study found that middle school students with a math teacher out of his or her field did much worse than students with a teacher trained in math.  Henry said the effect was so significant that it was the equivalent of those students missing 40 days of instructional time.

The information presented Tuesday is just the first stage of the report.  Lawmakers will have even more data to use as they consider how to help develop more teachers that will help more kids succeed. 

There are plenty of things the study doesn’t address of course, most notably the dramatic effect of poverty on education, poverty made worse by the economic downturn and cuts to state safety net services.

But it’s a useful look at how variables in a teacher’s background or education translate into student performance. And though the right doesn’t want to hear it, it also confirms that National Board Certification and diverse classes are important too.

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