This study in the Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis Journal examines the role of the school environment in relation to teacher effectiveness over time. On average, we know that teachers tend to make rapid gains in effectiveness in their early years—and that this growth rate tapers off with additional experience. But this finding is too broad. Thus, analysts explored the differences that exist across individual teachers working in different schools to uncover the role that school culture might play in their varied effectiveness over time. They use administrative records from third to eighth grade for years 2000–2010 in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, which include more than 280,000 student records and roughly 3,200 teachers. They combine these data with responses from a state teacher survey that gauges working conditions, such as whether the school is safe, orderly, and characterized by mutual trust and respect; whether teachers collaborate on teaching practices; whether the principal supports teachers; and so on. After controlling for numerous student-, peer-, school-, and teacher-level variables, analysts find that the variation in returns to teaching experience is explained in part by differences in schools’ professional environments. Findings show that working in a more supportive environment is related to improvement that actually accumulates throughout the first ten years of a teacher’s career. (The gift that keeps on giving!) Specifically, after ten years, teachers working at a school with a more supportive environment moved up in the distribution of overall teacher effectiveness by roughly one-fifth of a standard deviation more than teachers who work in less supportive environments. The bottom line: Paying attention to what schools can do to create more supportive teaching and learning environments may be just as important as recruiting the right people to work in them.
SOURCE: Matthew A. Kraft and John P. Papay, “Can Professional Environments in Schools Promote Teacher Development? Explaining Heterogeneity in Returns to Teaching Experience,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Vol. 36, No. 4 (December 2014).
