Thursday, May 05, 2016
The New Home of the NCTE Blog
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Teacher Ed Makes a Difference
Study: Teaching Credentials Still Matter
If you listen to a lot of policy discussions on education, chances are that you've heard one scholar or another stand up to talk about how teacher credentials, such as holding a traditional license or having earned a master's degree, don't seem to matter much when it comes to improving student achievement.
Duke University researcher Helen F. Ladd says that there are two problems with those studies. The studies are: 1) old, and 2) focused mostly on elementary school children.
To gather newer data on the impact of teacher credentials and characteristics on high school students' achievement, Ladd and her research partners took a look at scores from the end-of-course exams that all high school students are required to take in North Carolina. They looked in particular at statewide data for four cohorts of 9th and 10th graders for whom they could find and match up data on their teachers. (The final sample included tens of thousands of students.)The bottom line, the researchers found, was that at the high school level, most measurable teacher credentials do indeed matter. And they have a large enough impact on student achievement, Ladd and her colleagues say, to suggest that they ought to figure into policymakers' decisions on how to raise the quality of instruction in schools.
Read the rest here.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tests, Arizona, and IFTE
There's a frightening post today on Diane Ravitch's Education Week blog. Apparently the view inside the Obama administration is that we need even more tests.
NCTE has published a statement opposing the policy of the Arizona department of education which targets teachers with "accents."
And, on a more positive note, a reminder that the call for proposals for the April 2011 IFTE conference in New Zealand is now available.
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Testing Teachers and National Standards
Also, the final draft of the Common Core Standards is now available.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
April in Auckland
Much Ado About English: IFTE Conference 2011
Please plan to attend the 2011 International Federation for the Teaching of English (IFTE) conference at the University of Auckland, April 18-21. The conference promises to deliver something special for all teachers and teacher educators who attend. The conference will have four key strands: Literacies and Literatures, Diversity and Voice, English Teachers @ Work, and New Technologies, New Practices.
For more information and details about how to register, please see http://www.ifte.net/ConferenceFront.htm (when you get there, click on OPEN).
Note that proposals are due September 1.
Monday, May 24, 2010
If Only Every School was a Charter School . . .
More enlightening is this exchange between Diane Ravitch and Mike Rose.