Jennifer King Rice, Economic Policy Institute
2003
This neat little publication offers another summary of existing research on teacher effectiveness. While some such reviews cover only the few studies with rigorous methodologies, Rice includes some that judged teacher performance based not on student achievement but on principal interviews, observations, and even self-evaluations, noting that "the tradition of research in teacher education has long relied on a wide array of empirical approaches," so it's worth considering studies all along this "methodological continuum." Rigorous social scientists will be dismayed by this capitulation to lower research standards-and we judge that Rice's findings should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, she provides enough information about each study for readers to make up their own minds. And her main conclusions are reasonable: content knowledge and good pedagogical training matter, and experience may help. Notably, she argues that preparation is important but there are many ways to get it. Rice also demonstrates that the teaching context is critical to understanding the research; for example, the right academic degree is more important for a high school math teacher than an elementary teacher. As for her claim that the evidence argues against lowering barriers to teaching, we couldn't disagree more. Just because certification and teacher test scores might predict better teaching is no reason to absolutely prohibit candidates from outside the system. The intro and executive summary are available for free online (http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/books_teacher_quality_execsum_intro), and you can order a complete copy for $11.50 through EPI's website.
