The impact of teacher preparation on student achievement in algebra in a “hard-to-staff” urban PreK-12-university partnership

Abstract

Debate about teacher supply, demand, retention, and attrition has been renewed in recent years by an increased concern about the reduced numbers of prospective teachers entering teacher education programs, the high attrition rate of beginning teachers, and the resulting teacher shortages. U.S. schools are experiencing teacher shortages, especially in low-income urban areas, because of increased school enrollment, teacher retirement, reduction in class size, teacher attrition, and turnover related to low salaries, job dissatisfaction, and lack of administrative support and influence over decision-making. Recently, the increased interest in teacher quality has been the topic of debate for policy-makers, the public, and the educational community. The purpose of this study was to determine if a nontraditional teacher preparation program, the Transition To Teaching program, was a viable way to ease the teacher shortages in a high poverty, urban U.S. school district, and at the same time, to evaluate the impact of teacher training on students' academic achievement. The results of this study afford evidence that the students taught by 1st-year, alternatively prepared teachers achieved as well as or better than their peers taught by traditionally certified 1st-year teachers, according to student achievement in mathematics, specifically Algebra I.

Acknowledgement

This publication is supported by the Transition To Teaching federal grant funded through the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Education, and no official endorsement by the U.S Department of Education should be inferred.

Notes

1. In their study, Goldhaber and Brewer (2000) analyzed individual teacher-level data from NELS: 88, to explore 10th- and 12th-grade students' gains in mathematics and science. The researchers controlled for state licensing requirements, teacher undergraduate and graduate major, teacher experience, and the student's family background.

2. Through their reanalysis of the same dataset, NELS: 88, Darling-Hammond et al. (2001) refuted claims by Goldhaber and Brewer (2000). Darling-Hammond et al. disputed the claims based on the small sample size (only 24 science teachers and 34 mathematics teachers), and highlighted the nonsignificance of the regression coefficients for emergency and temporary certification in Goldhaber and Brewer's model.

3. The present analysis did not include students' class as a factor. Although teachers were matched, classes were not, nor were the students. That is, if a teacher taught 35 students in two Algebra I sections, the 35 students were combined into one group. Thus, although the study's design does not examine differences between individual classes of students, it does examine the changes across these students over time and multiple dependent measures.