Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

I am pleased to appear before you today to discuss the programs and activities administered through the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) that focus on the critically important area of teacher recruitment, preparation, and development. Several weeks ago at the White House Conference on Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers, I had the opportunity to examine and report on a similar topic—the large body of existing research related to the preparation and professional development of teachers. While today's subject is more limited in scope, my comments are grounded in a thorough review of existing research on this topic.

The shared understanding of Congress and the Administration about the importance of teachers in helping to ensure that no child is left behind is evidenced vividly in the recently reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Beginning next year, Title I of ESEA requires states to report on the quality of teachers and the percentage of classes taught by "highly qualified" teachers in every public school. Title II addresses the goal of placing a highly qualified teacher in every classroom by funding in-service professional development for teachers. Nearly $3 billion is targeted to the goal of "improving teacher quality" under the Title II Improving Teacher Quality State grants program during the current fiscal year.

Despite the importance of teachers in ensuring that no child gets left behind, the research base in this area is relatively thin. We do not yet have research to answer dozens of fundamental policy questions about how to best train and support teachers to improve student learning. Several approaches to studying the topic are used, and each generates a different perspective. Conflicting studies and interpretations often spur the next round of investigations, and over time evidence converges and generates consensus. Nevertheless, research on teacher preparation and development is a long way from this stage of professional consensus. For instance, while existing research demonstrates persuasively that the potential effect of teacher quality on academic achievement is quite high—i.e., we know that teachers matter—we do not yet sufficiently understand which strategic changes can be most effectively implemented in schools to consistently improve teacher practice and raise student achievement.

The President's commitment to raising the quality and relevance of education research is reflected in the $175 million requested for research and $95 million for statistics. This is $53.2 million, or 44 percent more than is available for research in fiscal year 2002; and $10 million, or 12 percent more than is available for statistics. Such increases will allow the Department to implement substantial changes in its research activities and processes. The 2003 request would allow us to fund several new research activities, while simultaneously enhancing the methodological rigor and relevance of all funded projects. Every area of research and dissemination, including teacher recruitment, preparation, and development, will benefit tremendously from this effort to increase rigor and relevance. As the Department works with States to develop and implement curricula that are aligned with standards and assessments, and as the Department moves forward in implementing the goal of ensuring that a highly qualified teacher is in every classroom, it will become increasingly important to inform policy decisions with better research.

The Federal investment in research through OERI has generated positive initial steps in the direction of building a persuasive research base in this area. Today I will describe our major research accomplishments and upcoming initiatives focusing on the topic of teacher recruitment, preparation, and development.

Characteristics of Effective Teachers

As increased emphasis is placed on improving student achievement, effective teacher practice in the classroom will unavoidably serve as the cornerstone upon which implementation of current education reform efforts will rest. Research has persuasively demonstrated the essential link between teacher quality and academic achievement for all students. Given that teachers matter, the next important research task is to identify those characteristics that distinguish quality teachers and to determine how such characteristics can be enhanced. Existing policies, such as those in Titles I and II of ESEA, approach the goal of improving teacher quality by focusing on a variety of characteristics assumed to be important in accomplishing this goal. Such characteristics include teacher certification and licensure, subject matter knowledge, general knowledge and ability, alignment between teacher training and standards-based reforms, and intensively focused in-service training.

OERI's current portfolio of research activities supports investigation into many of these areas. The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) recently conducted an extensive study of mathematics reforms in California and found strong evidence linking instructional policy, classroom practice, and student achievement. This study, entitled State Instructional Policy, Teaching Practice and Learning in Elementary Schools, concludes that more rigorous standards, assessments, and accountability are more likely to succeed when three conditions are met. First, policy must be embodied in the student curriculum, not just in standards and assessments that are remote from classrooms. Second, teachers must be offered substantial opportunities to learn the content of new curriculum and assessments, and how students respond to them. Third, there must be consistency between the curriculum, State standards, and assessments. This study suggests that fragmented professional development activities that fail to focus on the student curriculum are not a constructive agent in implementing policy. CPRE's conclusions from this study have been widely used by the National Science Foundation and other organizations to shape professional development initiatives, and such conclusions have significant implications for the implementation of Title II's Improving Teacher Quality State grants program.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) sponsors regular and special data collections that provide essential data on teachers. Within the wide range of data collection and dissemination activities conducted by NCES, the program most relevant to teacher recruitment, preparation, and development is the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). SASS is the Nation's largest sample survey of the characteristics and conditions of America's public and private schools, including the teachers and principals who work in them. SASS provides data on characteristics and qualifications of teachers and principals, teacher hiring practices, professional development, and other conditions in public (including charter) and private schools. Through SASS we can begin to examine such critical issues as the differences in qualifications between teachers in urban and rural areas, or low- and high-poverty schools. SASS was last conducted in the 1999-2000 school year. FY 2003 funding will support the 2003-2004 school year survey, and further analysis of existing data—such as school staffing, teacher qualifications, and salaries over time.

Addressing the Need for More and Better Qualified Teachers

The most robust finding in current research literature is the effect of teacher verbal and cognitive ability on student achievement. Every study that has included a valid measure of teacher verbal or cognitive ability has found that it accounts for more variance in student achievement than any other measured characteristic of teachers. This is troubling when joined with the finding that college students majoring in education have lower SAT and ACT scores than students in the arts and sciences. Moreover, as a result of demographic trends, America's schools will need to hire an estimated 2.2 million teachers over the next decade. One key challenge now facing the education community is balancing the need to be more selective in the cognitive abilities required for entry into the teaching profession with the need for more teachers.

A wide variety of strategies may be used to approach this difficult challenge, including changing the current structure of teacher compensation, attracting individuals from other professions into the classroom, and conducting further research on the dynamics of teacher labor markets. OERI currently supports research within each of these areas. One such study, the Changing Teacher Compensation project, which was conducted at the University of Wisconsin through CPRE, helped the Cincinnati Public Schools develop a two-part, restructured teacher compensation system. Through this new system, base pay in Cincinnati is established by measuring individual teachers' knowledge and skills. The district has adopted standards for teaching practice and a performance evaluation system that assesses teachers against five levels of performance. Major salary increases occur only when the teacher's clinical classroom practice (or the school as a whole) meets the next highest performance level. A recent value-added analysis of student test score gains showed that higher teacher evaluation scores translate directly into greater student achievement. This important finding suggests that revised compensation structures may be an effective vehicle for improving teacher quality—which, in turn, boosts student academic achievement.

Applying the Lessons of Research in the Classroom

The American system of public education is built on what Richard Elmore has called the ethic of atomized teaching: autonomous teachers who close the doors to their classrooms and teach what they wish, as they wish. Although research has not yet produced reliable information on which strategies most effectively bridge this gap between knowledge and practice, OERI sponsors a variety of research activities designed to generate mechanisms that will empower practitioners to apply the lessons of research within the classroom. The Quality School Portfolio (QSP) project at the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) is a strong example of such work. CRESST has created a software product (also called QSP) that assists teachers, principals, and district officials in understanding and using data to improve student learning. QSP enables schools to import information from a variety of databases and puts the information in a longitudinal form, so that the progress of individuals and groups of students can be monitored. With a user-friendly interface, educators can ask the system questions about the status and progress of students and get answers to queries about the relationship between other students and instructional variables and student performance. Results are displayed in formats that are understandable to educators, parents, and the community. Over 80 districts, hundreds of individual schools and one State have now adopted the desktop system.

In 1999, the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development launched the Interagency Education Research Initiative (IERI) to accelerate the translation of research findings into concrete lessons and tools for raising student achievement. IERI supports rigorous, interdisciplinary research on large-scale implementations of promising educational practices. In order to be funded under this program, proposals must meet high standards of methodological rigor, be of sufficient scale, integrate technology, and be conducted by interdisciplinary research teams. IERI research projects focus on issues of immediate importance for the recruitment and preparation of teachers, including the use of technology to support professional development, inquiry-based approaches to professional development, and classroom practice that supports high achievement in reading and science.

Other Research on Teacher Recruitment, Development, and Qualifications

In addition to the programs I have already mentioned, OERI supports research on teacher recruitment and preparation through our diverse portfolio of directed research, field-initiated studies, and cooperative agreements. Through each of these mechanisms, research is being conducted on critical issues, such as the graduation rate and initial employment of teachers prepared through alternative certification programs, the relationship between teacher preparation and the quality of teaching, the dynamics of teacher labor markets, strategies to attract and retain high quality teachers in low-performing schools, the teacher licensure system, the impact of standards-based curricula on the classroom learning environment, and the sources and consequences of out-of-field teaching in schools.

The 2003 budget request reflects our commitment to support research through each of these funding mechanisms without the constraints of the funding requirements under current law. The reauthorization proposal recently introduced as H.R. 3801 provides the flexibility to fund programs of sustained research based on core problems in which research has the potential to generate breakthroughs in teaching, learning, and management.

Conclusion

We are at the beginning of an exciting new period in teaching, one in which previous assumptions and ways of doing business will be questioned. As we build a solid research base on this topic, one that is more specific and experimental than we have currently, we should be much better able to provide instruction for all children. My hope and expectation is that when my sons have children in school they will not experience the anxieties nor engage in the machinations my wife and I went through each year as we tried to get our children assigned to what we believed were the best teachers in the next grade. Individual differences in teachers will never go away, but powerful instructional systems and new, effective forms of professional development should reduce those differences to the point that every teacher should be good enough so that no child is left behind.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, my colleagues and I will be happy to respond to any questions you may have regarding OERI's activities in the area of teacher recruitment, preparation, and development. Thank you.

This page last modified—August 2, 2006.