Teachers matter: Measures of teacher effectiveness in low-income minority schools

Abstract

Teachers make a difference in student academic growth. Students from low-income, minority communities attend schools with less resources and less qualified teachers than students in wealthier communities. The Race to the Top (RTTT) policy by the U.S. Department of Education has attempted to address the achievement gap based on SES and the disparity in the quality of teachers between communities. The policy stipulates that teacher effectiveness be determined, in significant part, by student growth measures and supplemented with multiple observation-based assessments. The emphasis placed on student outcomes to indicate teacher effects has served to link teacher evaluations with teacher effectiveness. This review article examines the reported benefits and critical responses to the use of a prominent student growth measure, the Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS), in terms of its implementation as an evaluation tool of teacher effectiveness in low-income, minority schools. Models of observational teacher evaluations, taking into consideration common attributes of effective teachers in low-income schools, are presented as supplemental measures to provide more in-depth information to interpret value-added analyses and to minimize possible misinterpretation of student growth data or the misclassification of teachers’ effectiveness for teachers in low-income schools. Information obtained from a combination of evaluation measures can be used to identify both effective and ineffective teachers, to target areas in need of improvement to increase teacher effectiveness, and to make decisions concerning the equitable distribution of effective teachers, especially for students who are most in need.