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- The report analyses strategies that can improve teacher performance and so impact the outcomes of their students
The Barcelona Institute of Economics (IEB) has published a new edition of its IEB Report, entitled “Impact of teacher quality on students’ academic performance”. The Report analyses the impact of teachers on student outcomes and considers which strategies are most efficient in seeking to promote teacher development. In his introduction, IEB researcher and Vice-Rector of Economic Affairs at the University of Barcelona (UB), Oriol Escardíbul, says that in Spain, “a teacher from among the top 5% of the most skilled has a 15% impact on the results of his primary school students”. These results are comparable to those obtained in other countries analysed, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
But, how do we define the best teachers? “They are the ones that have the ability to increase the cognitive competences of their students, as typically measured in the fields of mathematics and reading comprehension”, reports Escardíbul. The researcher also identifies the factors analysed in the literature as attesting to teacher quality: training, qualifications, work experience, salaries and teacher gender. In a study undertaken by Calero and Escardíbul in Spain, the authors also stress the importance of continuous training, the type of training received by the teacher (which should be related to the subject taught) and work experience.
Finally, Dr. Escardíbul highlights “the overrepresentation” in Spain of the best teachers in private schools and in schools “where families have a greater level of economic and socio-cultural resources. This distribution of resources has a regressive effect on student outcomes”, he concludes.
Experience and student quality
In their paper, researchers Helen F. Ladd (Duke University) and Lucy Sorensen (University of Albany) investigate two factors that have an impact in terms of enhancing teacher quality: teaching experience and having a master’s degree. Their analysis reports a greater effect of experience than that found in other studies. Thus, it is usually reported that teaching experience only affects the initial years of teaching (from 1 to 5 at most). However, here, the authors indicate that the improvement in teacher quality occurs during the first 12 years of a teacher’s career. For example, a student with a mathematics or reading comprehension teacher with eight years of experience would learn in a year what it would take them a year and a half with a teacher without experience. A teacher with eight years’ experience would also achieve an absenteeism rate that is 6% lower than that of a rookie colleague. However, any differences are eliminated once this second teacher has accumulated 12 years of experience.
The authors call into question pay incentives for teachers with postgraduate qualifications, such as master’s. “We observe that having a master’s degree does not generate positive effects in the results obtained by the students, indicating that this over-qualification per se does not make the teachers any more efficient in the classroom and, therefore, the pay incentives to which they are often tied are not justified”.
Retention and dismissal of teaching staff
In his paper, Professor Simon Burgess (University of Bristol) analyses what policies help boost the effectiveness of teachers, and he examines school’s recruitment and dismissal strategies. “If we focus solely on performance, schools should retain less than half their teachers after their first year of teaching. This is an extreme measure, but the replacement costs would eventually see schools come out ahead, because it prevents an inefficient teacher from occupying a post for the length of his career”.
Based on this argument, Burgess returns to several studies that emphasise the influence of dismissal programs on teacher effectiveness, and his conclusion is that the threat of finding themselves out of work increases the performance of teachers with the worst results by 27%.
Burgess’s article also analyses the factors that make teachers better, and these are related to the school’s human resources policy. The first is simply for teachers to learn from the other teachers with whom they share their classrooms. “Significant improvements in the productivity of the least efficient teachers are observed when they are surrounded by colleagues with greater pedagogical skills”, says the researcher. The second is the creation of a system for the control and evaluation of performance, with feedback and training sessions that improve teachers’ results by up to 10%.
Salary and performance
Finally, Professor Óscar D. Marcenaro (University of Malaga) analyses the influence of pay incentives on teacher performance, and he does so by considering two paradigmatic models, from Finland and South Korea, respectively. Both countries have a recruitment policy based on the incorporation of teaching staff from among the best graduates, specifically, the best 5 to 10%. This selection criterion leads to a high degree of competitiveness that is compensated by good working conditions.
“A better salary improves the status of teaching as a profession, and at the same time facilitates the recruitment of more skilled people”, explains Marcerano. However, there is no evidence that, once contracted, a wage increase is a guarantee of better performance. “Paying higher salaries to certain teaching staff does not lead to a short-term improvement in quality, but it can attract individuals with a better skills profile in the long term.”
Wage increases aimed at improving student performance have mixed results: some initiatives are successful, others not.