Journal of Teacher Education
http://jte.sagepub.com/
A Systemic Approach to Enhancing Teacher Quality : The Ohio Model
Thomas J. Lasley II, Daryl Siedentop and Robert Yinger
Journal of Teacher Education 2006 57: 13
DOI: 10.1177/0022487105284455
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://jte.sagepub.com/content/57/1/13
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE)
Additional services and information for Journal of Teacher Education can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://jte.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://jte.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations: http://jte.sagepub.com/content/57/1/13.refs.html
Downloaded from jte.sagepub.com at SAINT CLOUD STATE UNIV on October 25, 2010
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. 1, January/February 2006
10.1177/0022487105284455
A SYSTEMIC APPROACH TO
ENHANCING TEACHER QUALITY
THE OHIO MODEL
Thomas J. Lasley II
University of Dayton
Daryl Siedentop
The Ohio State University
Robert Yinger
University of Cincinnati
All those responsible for the preparation of teachers agree that having a highly qualified teacher in every classroom is essential to student academic achievement. The research of the past decade by William Sanders and others clearly demonstrates the significance of the teacher in fostering student
growth and academic achievement. What researchers and practitioners are having difficulty agreeing on is the essential characteristics of the teachers who create value-added learning and the ways in
which professional development experiences need to be structured in order to foster and develop those
critical teacher characteristics. The Ohio Teacher Quality Partnership represents one state’s approach to better understand the relationship between teacher behaviors and student achievement and
how a wide variety of stakeholders are collaborating to create a more vital educational system for P-12
students.
Keywords: teacher preparation; Ohio Teacher Quality Partnership; professional development
When the search for truth is confused with political
advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the
quest for power.
—Alston Chase
The focus on teacher quality and teacher education has never been more evident in the rhetoric of policy makers. Everyone now understands that teachers make a difference. The
unanswered question is how best to ensure that
more high-quality teachers enter and stay in
American classrooms. Because few evidencebased answers exist that shed light on how best
to prepare (Viadero, 2005), retain, and use effective teachers, ideological battle lines are being
drawn between traditionalists who assert the
efficacy of current approaches and neoconserv-
Authors’ Note: The Teacher Quality Partnership principal investigators for the respective studies are, in alphabetical order,
Stephanie Gilbertson (University of Cincinnati), Patricia Hart (University of Dayton), William Loadman (Ohio State University), Sandra Stroot (Ohio State University), Judith Wahrman (University of Findlay), and Kent Seidel (University of
Cincinnati). The chief executive officer for the Teacher Quality Partnership is Larry Johnson (University of Cincinnati); Sonja
Smith (Mount Vernon Nazarene University) is the director for the Teacher Quality Partnership.
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. 1, January/February 2006 13-21
DOI: 10.1177/0022487105284455
© 2006 by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education
13
Downloaded from jte.sagepub.com at SAINT CLOUD STATE UNIV on October 25, 2010
ative critics who view the education monopoly
as staid and antiquality in its efforts to protect
the education establishment.
The goal of everyone is or should be similar—
a highly qualified and highly effective teacher
in every classroom. That is, we all tacitly agree
that the goal is the preparation of teachers who
make a difference in the classroom. The real
debate begins when different means to that
common end are explored. Critics of traditional
education want options, lots of them: Let the
market operate, allow administrators to decide
(within certain parameters, such as no criminal
record for the teacher) who should teach, and
then track student performance to assess
teacher success. Kanstoroom and Finn (1999)
captured the argument succinctly:
The teaching profession should be deregulated, entry into it should be widened, and personnel decisions should be decentralized to the school level, the
teacher’s actual workplace. Freeing up those decisions only makes sense, however, when schools are
held accountable for their performance—truly accountable, with real consequences for success and
failure. The proper incentives are created by resultsbased accountability systems in which states independently measure pupil achievement, issue public
report cards on schools, reward successful schools,
and intervene in or use sanctions against failing
schools. In private schools today—and in most charter school programs—schools are held accountable
by the marketplace while hiring decisions are made
at the building level. Public schools, too, should be
accountable in this manner. (p. 8)
The emphasis for neoconservatives is on content, with high school teachers securing at least
an academic major (of 30 credit hours) and elementary teachers a liberal arts major, with
course work evidencing some relevance to K-5
content areas (Walsh & Snyder, 2004). The critics
are especially critical of teacher preparation
practices for elementary teachers. Walsh and
Snyder (2004) observed,
Not surprisingly, regulations for elementary teachers have been the least rigorous and least consistent
from state to state. Ten years ago, a quarter of all
states failed to articulate any academic requirements
for elementary teachers. . . . Many states left it up to
teacher preparation programs to decide what, if any,
content courses prospective teachers ought to take.
This disinterested position suggests an inappropri-
14
ate abdication of public responsibility, since there is
little incentive for teacher preparation fees by sending students outside the department to take courses.
Where states did impose academic requirements,
they were minimal and ambiguous, such as Iowa’s
former requirement of “a field of specialization in a
single discipline or a formal interdisciplinary
program of at least twelve semester hours.” (p. 6)
Advocates for traditional approaches contend that the current practices have been improved and are working. Although many
would agree with the critics that weaknesses exist in the extant preparation approaches, few
would suggest that “their” programs evidence
serious problems. For traditionalists, programs
could be improved, but they require only
tweaking, not restructuring. Pedagogical understandings related to how to teach content
and how to understand the students’ learning
needs are requisite for any highly qualified,
highly effective teacher, and traditionalists assert that such pedagogical skills and developmental understandings are being acquired by
prospective teachers.
What is really missing is systematic evidence
to support that the approaches being advocated, whether neoconservative or traditional,
are appropriate for achieving defined social and
educational goals. True, there is some evidence
to support the different positions, but it is spotty
at best, flawed at worst, and often grounded
on ideology. Indeed, the available evidence is
such that those with almost any view can likely
make the case that their view is right or at least
practically and politically expedient (DarlingHammond, 2000; Darling-Hammond &
Bransford, 2005; Vergari & Hess, 2002; Viadero,
2005).
CONTEXTUALIZING THE OHIO RESEARCH
It is within this political context that the
Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) research
effort emerged. Ohio legislation has mandated
that by 2007, the state’s achievement tests,
aligned with Ohio standards, will be analyzed
through value-added methodologies. A phasein will begin in fiscal year 2006. Nonetheless, for
several years, a sufficient number of Ohio districts have had their achievement scores ana-
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. 1, January/February 2006
Downloaded from jte.sagepub.com at SAINT CLOUD STATE UNIV on October 25, 2010
lyzed through value-added modeling (VAM)
assessment so that TQP could begin its observational studies of teacher quality in the fall of
2005. This approach explicitly assumes what so
many current educational researchers assert;
namely, teaching variables outweigh student
socioeconomic status in terms of student
achievement (Darling-Hammond & Bransford,
2005). The TQP studies not only will shed light
on the profiles of practice of high-value–added
teachers but also will examine closely the
validity of this assertion.
Until recently, teacher education research of
the type undertaken in Ohio largely has been
conducted based on the interests of individual
researchers or on efforts to examine teaching
practices in relationship to extant databases
such as the National Assessment of Education
Progress data (see Wenglinsky, 2002). There is,
in essence, no shortage of research in teacher
education, but there is a paucity of research
explicitly connecting how teachers are prepared
and whether such preparation is making a difference in student learning.
Teacher preparation has been viewed from a
variety of perspectives during the past several
decades. Educators and researchers have
approached the teacher preparation issue as,
first, a training problem, then a learning problem, and most recently, a policy problem
(Cochran-Smith, 2004). As a training problem
(1950s to 1980s), the emphasis for teachers and
educators was on training program graduates
who could demonstrate the behaviors of effective teachers. Teaching was viewed in technical,
behavioral terms, and “the point of research on
teacher education was the identification or the
invention of transportable teacher-training procedures that produced the desired behaviors in
prospective teachers” (Cochran-Smith, 2004, p.
295). One major problem with the training
approach was the limited body of research
regarding what constituted “effectiveness.” In
that period, effectiveness was often definitionally
elusive and represented a focus on techniques
that could not be connected adequately to student achievement.
During the 1980 to 2000 time period, teacher
preparation focused on the education of profes-
sionals; that is, the preparation of individuals
who both understood content and knew how to
teach it. Again, in Cochran-Smith’s (2004)
words, “the goal of teacher preparation programs was to design the social organizational
and intellectual contexts wherein prospective
teachers could develop the knowledge, skills,
and dispositions needed to function as decision
makers” (p. 296). It is not surprising that this
research focuses on how teachers manage classrooms and how they use time to organize and
supervise student instructional activities. More
important, this body of research began to illustrate how teacher effectiveness was related to
and varied according to context. As a result, the
appropriateness of different instructional
approaches and teacher behaviors would be
influenced by school and classroom context
(Brophy & Good, 1986).
Although students in teacher education programs were sometimes made aware of the
emerging research base, teacher education in far
too many places clung to theoretical or ideological perspectives for which there was little
school-based confirmatory evidence. Equally
true, few programs could really connect in any
direct way the processes they used to prepare
teachers with evidence of how much learning
their teacher candidates actually fostered once
they had classroom responsibilities.
The stakes and realities of the teacher education “game” began to change with the emergence of William Sanders’s (1998) VAM in the
1990s and the reasonably clear evidence that
good teachers do exist and do make a clear positive difference in student learning. VAM (a
growth model) was quickly viewed as preferable to the achievement model that had dominated education policy for a generation. Policy
makers quickly grasped the potential significance of Sanders’s work and could see that in
some instances, schools could be low in achievement but high in student growth or equally
troubling, high in achievement but low in student growth.
Sanders also emerged as an icon for many
neoconservatives who used his work to demonstrate why policy makers should adopt policies
that provide administrators with more power
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. 1, January/February 2006
Downloaded from jte.sagepub.com at SAINT CLOUD STATE UNIV on October 25, 2010
15
not only to hire “effective” teachers and fire
ineffective ones but also to be able to do so without the encumbrances of teacher licensure
(granted through traditional teacher education
programs) and complex union agreements
(resulting from the unionization of education).
In essence, these individuals argued for results
based on accountability systems where schools
and administrators could be held accountable
for the hiring decisions that they make without
worrying about the licensure credential the
teacher might possess (Kanstoroom & Finn,
1999). The neoconservatives used Sanders’s
work to fire a series of rhetorical salvos at the
educational establishment or as some would
argue, to directly attack the teacher education
monopoly that controls entry into the profession and, their argument goes, that protects its
self-interests in efforts to continue to offer
meaningless, empty (but revenue-producing)
courses.
The VAM research emerged in the 1990s,
which coincidentally parallels the time in which
teacher education began to be defined as a policy problem. Policy makers had for years relied
heavily on anecdotal justification for what
worked and did not work in terms of dictating
teacher education program requirements. And
although policy-by-anecdote is still clearly evident in many states, the emergence of the No
Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and VAM
research engendered a new focus on ensuring
that higher education institutional policies and
practices and state policies and mandates were
more firmly grounded on connecting teacher
performance with student learning. With the
policy approach, student achievement (usually
narrowly defined as high student test scores)
became the key educational outcome.
Ohio, like other states, was (in early 2000) in
the midst of the policy reform debate stimulated
by a perceived statewide “education deficit”
problem. Indeed, based on the 2000 census,
some projections suggested that Ohio evidenced a 100,000 “degree K-12 deficit” for persons with college degrees (Belcher, 2004). That
is, in comparison with other states, Ohio evidenced a shortage of persons with college
16
degrees. Ohio Governor Taft convened two
commissions (the Commission for Student Success and the Commission on Teaching Success)
that focused on how Ohio could create more
educationally enhanced classroom environments. The two commissions came to the same
overall conclusion: Teachers make a difference.
Both focused on ways to use standards as a
means of fostering quality, and one of those
means focused on creating improved teacher
education practices through the use of
grounded data. Specifically, one of the recommendations of the Governor’s Commission on
Teaching Success refers to the need to collect
better data about the performance of new and
practicing teachers to inform policy recommendations about teacher preparation.
That recommendation served as a mandate
for the Ohio Partnership of Accountability (now
referred to as the Ohio Teacher Quality Partnership). With support from the Ohio Board of
Regents and Ohio Department of Education
and selected private corporations (e.g., Proctor
and Gamble), all of Ohio’s colleges and universities joined together to begin to explore a series
of questions concerning how teacher preparation practices influence student achievement
and how experienced teachers add value and
foster student achievement and learning within
the classroom context.
THE OHIO TQP
The Ohio TQP has embarked on a series of research studies to learn more about the characteristics of effective teachers and to identify the
patterns of teacher performance in both novice
and experienced teachers that commingle to enhance student achievement at different grade
levels, in different subjects, and with different
types of students. The information generated
through the research would then be used to
· Examine the degree to which students entering
teacher preparation programs reflect the qualities
and characteristics associated with teachers who
add value to student achievement;
· Improve teacher education course work and clinical
experiences so they better contribute to the development of quality teachers;
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. 1, January/February 2006
Downloaded from jte.sagepub.com at SAINT CLOUD STATE UNIV on October 25, 2010
· Compare the characteristics and effectiveness of
teachers who earned regular licenses and alternate
licenses;
· Inform school professional development programs
to better enable them to continue to improve the
quality of their teachers specific to the subjects they
teach and the students in their classes;
· Enable school districts to better understand how
their assessment and accountability data could be
used to enhance teacher quality within their districts; and
· Enable school leadership to use knowledge of student performance and teacher quality data to devise
a more strategic use of teachers within districts,
buildings, subjects, and grade levels.
TQP is a P-16 partnership, using the resources of the P-12 sector along with those of the
college and university sector in a joint effort to
better understand teacher quality and to use
such understandings to improve both the quality within and equity of Ohio’s 612 school
districts.
Systematic research on teacher education
and teacher quality practices is not new. The
Educational Testing Service’s studies of teacher
quality and teacher education (see www.ets.org
.research/), the American Educational Research
Association’s Panel on Research and Teacher
Education and its Studying Teacher Education:
The Report of the AERA Panel and Research on
Teacher Education (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner,
2005), and the Committee on Teacher Education
of the National Academy of Education (see
www.nae.nyu.edu.cte) are but a few of the
many recent efforts to more fully understand
and enhance the quality of teacher education.
What makes TQP unique is the statewide,
comprehensive nature of the research endeavor.
Many researchers have studied issues concerning certification, experience, and teacher education level. Their research has occurred in myriad
contexts; but never has any state attempted in a
comprehensive fashion to bring together all of
the stakeholders for the purpose of systematically focusing on research related to teacher
quality and its impact on student achievement.
By placing student success at the center of the
Ohio model, the researchers understand that
they will necessarily have to address the historic
debates about the goals of education and the
numerous ways student success is being
defined. In Ohio, a standards-based curriculum
closely aligned with yearly state-level assessments provides a data set that can be analyzed
with value-added methods to provide researchers with essential definitions of both student
success and teacher quality. That said, the TQP
researchers will search for other achievement
“marker” variables for student success and will
attempt to link those with extant teacher and
school practices. Teachers do not directly cause
student learning; rather, what teachers do is to
create time for learning, foster a climate for
learning, engage students in worthwhile activities, and help them be successful in that engagement process. Students do the work through
which they learn; teachers create the opportunities and structures for that work. The work of
the teacher is further shaped by the work of
school and district leadership and by a school’s
climate, community and parental support, and
other sociocultural factors. It is against this multilevel contextual backdrop that the varied TQP
studies of teacher quality unfold.
The Ohio TQP research has four main aims:
1. To determine and document how variables of
teacher attributes, teacher preparation, induction
experiences, and professional development relate
to P-12 student learning;
2. To identify the salient features of differently configured teacher education programs and to determine
how they affect teacher development longitudinally along the continuum of teacher preparation;
3. To identify how teachers’ work relates to features of
teacher preparation programs and student achievement as measured by VAM, to assess novice teacher
performance through VAM, and to then track
strengths and weaknesses back to the initial preparation programs; and
4. To understand the unique elements of effective
teaching for experienced teachers who are clearly
adding value in terms of student achievement and
to compare the achievement level of teachers licensed through both alternative and traditional
pathways.
THE PROPOSED OHIO TQP STUDIES
Student success is the criterion variable on
which TQP studies are being conceptualized.
As a result of the studies, the researchers
hope to provide Ohio’s higher education insti-
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. 1, January/February 2006
Downloaded from jte.sagepub.com at SAINT CLOUD STATE UNIV on October 25, 2010
17
tutions and policy makers with the following
types of information:
1. A better understanding of the link between
preservice teacher preparation experiences and student achievement in Ohio’s P-12 classrooms;
2. A better, more complete understanding of what
teachers who “add value” do in classrooms;
3. An enhanced understanding of the relationship between instructional practice and student achievement; and
4. A better understanding of the impact on student
achievement by teachers licensed through alternative and traditional licensure pathways.
There are currently five interrelated studies
being undertaken as part of TQP. These studies
are still in the design and instrument development stage, although some data collection and
piloting has begun. All five studies are guided
by the same conceptual framework that allows
multiple measures of key independent and dependent variables. Most of the survey research
instrumentation used in the preservice teacher
study and the alternative licensure study has
been developed specifically for the TQP work.
Specific efforts are being made in the studies of
novice and experienced teachers to use observation, interview, and survey instrumentation validated in other large-scale studies of instructional
practice, classroom environments, and school
climate and support. A goal of the TQP research
design is to provide opportunities to compare
the Ohio data to similar data collected in other
contexts. To this end, there have been special efforts to open the research process to multiple
forms of audit and critique by the research community and to work collaboratively with other
researchers pursuing similar questions.
Study 1: Preservice Teacher Study
Study 1 is a 5-year study that follows students who will become K-12 mathematics and
English/language arts teachers through their
beginning years of teaching. Program characteristics of graduates will be collected and comparisons will be made vis-à-vis the student
achievement for alternate program teachers as
compared to traditional program graduates.
This study will collect information on teacher
education programs related to candidates’ aca18
demic performance (ACT/SAT and grade point
average), demographic characteristics, and
Praxis II and III performance. On a preservice
survey, there are 17 subscales that cover candidate perceptions of their teacher education programs, teachers’ sense of efficacy, teachers’
instructional orientation, and teachers’ concerns. The preservice surveys are administered
prior to candidate graduation, and in-service
surveys are subsequently administered to track
longitudinally the candidates’ perceptions.
That is, parallel data are collected at the
preservice and inservice levels for the same candidates. In addition, the in-service survey collects information on 27 additional subscales
that include such things as classroom activity
and classroom materials, organizational climate, trust, mentoring and induction, and
school working conditions.
Study 2: Novice Teacher Study
Study 2 is a multifaceted study that focuses
on student learning for new teacher education
graduates as measured by VAM, as well as other
measures of student achievement. A cohort of
approximately 50 new teachers will be followed
for 3 years to assess the various contributions of
preservice education, induction and mentoring,
and school climate and leadership to teaching
performance and student learning. Attention
will also be paid to pathways and contributors
to professional development and learning. Data
collection for this study began in October 2005.
Study 3: Alternative Licensure Study
Study 3 examines how teachers licensed
through alternative as opposed to traditional
pathways perform in terms of affecting the
achievement of Ohio’s K-12 students. Teachers
who have been prepared through the Ohio
Framework for Alternative Educational
Licensure (a little more than 500 as of June 2004)
will be studied to better understand their pathway into teaching, the quality of their professional training, and their classroom performance and effectiveness. Surveys of these
teachers were conducted during the 2004-2005
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. 1, January/February 2006
Downloaded from jte.sagepub.com at SAINT CLOUD STATE UNIV on October 25, 2010
school year, and these teachers will be sampled
as part of the novice teacher study that commenced in September 2005.
Study 4: Experienced Teacher Study
The goal of Study 4 is to better understand the
elements of quality teaching practices, K-12
school climate and leadership, and the support
that experienced teachers receive who clearly
add value in terms of student achievement. Special attention will be paid to collect detailed data
on the classroom practices of these teachers (as
well as the novice teachers) to determine if there
are discernable differences in the classroom
practices of high-value–added teachers. A sample of 100 to 200 teachers is anticipated. Data
collection for this study began in September
2005.
particular context: VAM and teacher education
restructuring.
Substantial debate is occurring currently regarding the efficacy of Sanders’s VAM. Critics
have argued, for example, that VAM does not
adequately control for student or school characteristics that influence student learning rates.
Without such controls, it is impossible to accurately isolate the particular contributions of
teachers or schools (Olsen, 2004). We agree that
VAM has “issues,” and we concur with many of
the critics’ concerns and with the recent RAND
Corporation (2004) policy paper regarding the
limits of VAM, especially as it relates to highstakes decisions about teachers:
The current research base is insufficient to support
the use of VAM for high-stakes decisions, and applications of VAM must be informed by an understanding of the potential sources of errors in teacher
effects. . . . If teachers are to be held accountable for
the performance of their students, they deserve the
best measurement of their effects on students that
we can provide. (p. 4)
Study 5: Structural Equation
Modeling Study
Study 5 examines the interaction between
and among identified variables to better predict
models of teacher development through P-12
contexts by analyzing changes from program
entry through the first 3 years of teaching.
Descriptive data have already been collected on
the 50 partner teacher education programs
through state data systems and through the Professional Education Data System administered
by the American Association of Colleges for
Teacher Education. Data collection with the initial partner districts began in September 2005
and will be scaled up in 2006. This study will
allow linking of the Sanders VAM data collected
by the state to key variables in the other TQP
studies. This study will also provide additional
data to study various strategies for structural
equation modeling in relation to VAM methods.
ISSUES CONFRONTING THE RESEARCHERS
A variety of complex issues has emerged as a
result of the TQP studies. It is clear that the politics of any set of studies such as this make
systematic data collection “interesting.” We
conclude with two issues that transcend our
Ohio is a high-end user of VAM and particularly Sanders’s VAM approach. State policy
makers actively argued for its use, and Battelle
for Kids, a privately financed organization in
Columbus, Ohio, worked with Sanders to identify a variety of schools and school districts that
could and would use Sanders’s approach to
measure student achievement growth.
The Sanders model clearly represents a methodological black box; there are, admittedly, different perspectives associated with its use.
From one perspective, state policy leaders
embraced the model because of its “apparent”
transparency and utility. The TQP researchers,
by embracing it, made it possible to work
together with political and educational entities
(e.g., state education agencies) that have often
been extraordinarily critical of teacher education practices. By voluntarily embracing the
Sanders VAM model, the researchers were able
to engender the practical support of many who
viewed the “education monopoly” of teacher
preparation as defensive and even fearful of
using “real data” to assess program quality.
From a different perspective, the proprietary
nature of the Sanders methodology and the
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. 1, January/February 2006
Downloaded from jte.sagepub.com at SAINT CLOUD STATE UNIV on October 25, 2010
19
myriad legitimate questions being asked about
its efficacy made it essential for the TQP
researchers to use mixed methodological
approaches that would make it possible to collect other types of data that would begin to
suggest whether the VAM model truly measures what it putatively measures.
The TQP studies are heavily grounded on
VAM. Although VAM most certainly does not
have everything right, it is still a potentially
powerful tool and especially so if used with
other markers of student achievement. Fallon,
we would suggest, had it essentially right when
he asserted, “We should not let the desire to be
absolutely right interfere with the progress we
can make with this [VAM] promising new technology” (as quoted in Olsen, 2004, p. 14). That is,
because it may not be efficacious to use VAM for
high-stakes decisions does not mean that the
approach should not be used to inform researchers and others about teacher performance.
The second issue is whether researchers and
policy makers will use the results of the TQP
studies as a tool and not a weapon. The goal is to
generate data and information that can be used
to enhance Ohio’s classroom workforce of professional teachers: Prepare more teachers who
can positively affect student learning. The No
Child Left Behind Act of 2001 places a demand
on states to have a highly qualified teacher in
every classroom. Much of the debate about
what highly qualified means concerns matters
related to the credentialing process. It is clear
that the black box of the school classroom has
produced more than a few problems for teacher
educators and for educational researchers. Far
too many teacher preparation institutions are
still structured on ideological perspectives as
opposed to grounding preparation practices on
empirical studies. Given the limited number of
truly high-quality research studies in education, such a circumstance is understandable, but
it is imperative that those interested in both student achievement and teacher preparation
begin to undertake more seriously responsibility for studying what good teachers do to influence student learning. Indeed, if the TQP
research is successful, it will provide clear, indepth descriptions of Ohio’s teacher education
20
practices; create a model that assesses the effectiveness of different aspects of teacher
preparation programs; and use the findings in a
way that improves teacher preparation by linking, where possible, specific program characteristics with subsequent student learning in the
classroom. The TQP studies are not intended to
make institutional comparisons or to reach conclusions about whether alternate or traditional
pathways are more efficacious. The studies are
intended to become part of a systematic process
for collecting information about what types of
programs and program elements, regardless of
the provider, are evidencing a positive impact
on student academic success.
The Ohio TQP studies are ambitious. They
represent a new way of thinking systematically
about how to inform preparation programs in
ways that rely more on data and less on ideology. Although the efforts will likely never fully
satisfy teacher education critics, they are
intended to challenge the way teacher educators structure and restructure programs. If successful, the initiative should ensure that there
are more highly qualified, highly effective
teachers in Ohio’s classrooms. Furthermore,
given that Ohio is an exporter of teachers, many
of those individuals will practice in the classrooms of other states across the country.
Much of the current search for truth relative
to teacher preparation has been set within the
context of political advocacy. That is most
regrettable. Once that occurs, the pursuit of
knowledge is compromised, with the real losers
being the young people in Ohio’s classrooms.
The challenge for the TQP researchers is to
search for the truth without worrying about
whether it supports or challenges the status
quo. If the TQP researchers can accomplish that,
the true beneficiaries will be the P-12 students in
Ohio’s classrooms.
REFERENCES
Belcher, E. (2004, December 12). Among kids, Ohio doesn’t
compare. Dayton Daily News, p. B6.
Brophy, J., & Good, T. L. (1986). Teacher behavior and student achievement. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of
research on teaching (pp. 328-375). New York: Macmillan.
Cochran-Smith, M. (2004). The problem of teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 55(4), 295-299.
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. 1, January/February 2006
Downloaded from jte.sagepub.com at SAINT CLOUD STATE UNIV on October 25, 2010
Cochran-Smith, M., & Zeichner, K. (2005). Studying teacher
education: The report of the AERA Panel on Research on
Teacher Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2000). Teacher quality and student
achievement: A review of state policy evidence. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 8(1). Retrieved July 18,
2005, from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n1/2000
Darling-Hammond, L., & Bransford, J. (2005). Preparing
teachers for a changing world. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Kanstoroom, M., & Finn, C. E., Jr. (1999). Better teachers,
better schools. Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham
Foundation.
No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-110, 115
Stat. 1425 (2002).
Olsen, L. (2004, November 17). Researchers debate merits
of “value-added” measures. Education Week, pp. 14-15.
RAND Corporation. (2004). The promise and peril of using
value-added modeling to measure teacher effectiveness (Education Research Brief No. RB-9050-EDU). Santa Monica,
CA: Author.
Sanders, W. L. (1998). Value-added assessment. The School
Administrator, 55(11), 24-27.
Vergari, S., & Hess, F. M. (2002). The accreditation game.
Education Next, 2(3), 48-57.
Viadero, D. (2005, June 22). Review panel turns up little
evidence to back teacher ed. practices. Education Week,
pp. 1, 20.
Walsh K., & Snyder, E. (2004). NCTQ reports. Washington,
DC: National Council on Teacher Quality.
Wenglinsky, H. (2002). The link between teacher classroom
practices and student academic performance. Education
Policy Analysis Archives, 10(12). Retrieved July 18, 2005,
from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n12/
Thomas J. Lasley II is Dean and a professor of the
School of Education and Allied Professions at the University of Dayton.
Daryl Siedentop is professor emeritus of the College of
Education at The Ohio State University.
Robert Yinger is Research Director with the Teacher
Quality Partnership at the University of Cincinnati.
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. 1, January/February 2006
Downloaded from jte.sagepub.com at SAINT CLOUD STATE UNIV on October 25, 2010
21