Teacher Mentoring and Student Achievement

UPDATE (6/28/2010): "Positive Effects of Comprehensive Teacher Induction"


Friday afternoon's blog post on Education Sector's The Quick and The Ed offers a surprisingly negative take on a new teacher mentoring study, but does raise some shrewd points about the importance of a shared vision around supporting new teachers.

As I recently discussed, last week the American Enterprise Institute featured an event at which Columbia University economist Jonah Rockoff spoke about his study of teacher mentoring in New York City. One of the principal findings in Rockoff's study is that students' math and reading achievement was higher in the classrooms of new teachers who received more hours of mentoring, supporting the notion that time spent working with a mentor does improve teaching skills.

Rockoff writes:

The magnitude of these effects are substantial, with an additional ten hours of mentoring expected to raise student achievement by 0.05 standard deviations in math (0.10 in the survey sample) and 0.04 standard deviations in reading (0.06 in the survey sample). If truly causal, these effects would lend considerable support for the notion that mentoring has an impact on student achievement.

In her blog post, Laura Guarino speaks of "slight increases" in student achievement and Rockoff's overall "tepid" results. I think that understates this finding in his study. However, I think some of Guarino's other counsel is wise and her perspective as a new teacher tremendously valuable.

Guarino writes:

If the purpose of mentoring is to provide support in order to keep good teachers and make them better, then the responsibility of a mentor must be clear to both parties involved. When there are numerous goals and assorted models of mentoring, it is clear that we need to find “a best practice” in carrying out these programs. Mentoring is one of those good ideas in theory, but is far more complicated than it seems.

As a first-year TFA teacher in Charlotte, it sounds like Guarino experienced some sporadic and haphazard mentoring. It’s an experience from which we can learn. She references four different mentors giving her advice with four different visions of what their roles were. Four mentors?!?! Egads! That might sound like an embarrassment of riches, but certainly it isn't if the mentors are operating at cross-purposes and if they haven't been trained for the role.

Guarino is correct in saying that "Mentoring is more complicated than it seems." That’s a lesson that policymakers and district leaders need to learn. It is not enough simply to require mentoring. It’s not enough merely to assign a mentor to every new teacher. There’s much more that goes into designing induction and mentoring programs to produce the desired impact on teaching and learning.

A well-designed induction program pairs a carefully selected, intensively trained mentor with each first- and second-year teacher. It provides protected time for a mentor to meet regularly with a new teacher for 1.25-2.5 hours per week. Induction is not an old-fashioned buddy system that makes everyone feel good but doesn’t provide the regular, structured, contextualized and substantive support and feedback to the beginning teacher. I cannot underestimate the importance of mentor training and time in this regard. A prepared mentor is the necessary engine to ensure that the mentoring relationship focuses on improving teaching practice rather than on providing psychological and social support alone. Like it or not, that costs money, but it’s an investment that pays dividends if done right.

A strong induction program also has a clearly articulated vision shared by all stakeholders. Key stakeholders are not just the mentor and new teacher--but also the program site administrator, instructional coaches, school principal, and district superintendent. The program vision should include supporting new teacher development and strengthening student learning—not simply reducing teacher attrition and improving teacher morale.

Finally, I should note that the despite the positive results, New York City did take some shortcuts in implementing this program. Its decision to provide mentor support only during the first year of teaching may have been a fundamental flaw. It's a short cut that many states and districts take, sometimes for financial reasons and sometimes because they fail to understand that second-year teachers have unique needs as they continue to develop into veteran educators. In the Big Apple, this decision could well have depressed the potential for additional student learning gains. New Teacher Center research [see Figure 1, page 2] from California shows that greater student achievement gains are realized as a result of intensive induction sustained over two years. That's a finding that should be investigated further in different school and district contexts.

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UPDATE: Here is Alexander Russo's post on this topic.

Musical Elective of the Week

The Musical Elective of the Week is Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer.

These two folk musicians paired up in 1996 after Tracy approached Dave at one of his shows in Portland, Oregon. Carter had recorded his debut album, Snake Handlin' Man, that same year. He had already gained a reputation as a widely acclaimed folk songwriter. To the partnership, Grammer brought her own vocal skills in addition to skilled musical talents on the violin and mandolin.

The collaboration between Carter and Grammer spanned the next six years and resulted in three albums--1998's When I Go, 2000's Tanglewood Tree and 2001's Drum Hat Buddha. The All Music Guide called Tanglewood Tree "a landmark album in contemporary folk music." The partnership came to a sad and premature end when Carter died of a heart attack at the age of 49 in 2002. A web site (www.daveandtracy.com) remains dedicated to their musical partnership.

However, Tracy Grammer has continued on to make music with Carter's spirit close at hand. In 2005 she released her own debut album, Flower of Avalon. It includes nine previously- unreleased songs by Dave Carter. She also released an EP in 2004 called The Verdant Mile. Over the last two years, Grammer has been prolific with 2006's Seven Is The Number and two EPs in 2007, Book of Sparrows and the holiday album American Noel. In recent years, Tracy has collaborated and toured with Massachusetts-based musician Jim Henry. While Henry has begged off large-scale touring, he stills plays many dates in New England.

If you want an introduction to Dave and Tracy's music, I highly recommend beginning with Tanglewood Tree. For Tracy's solo work, start either with The Verdant Mile or Flower of Avalon.

If you want to check out Tracy live in concert, here is her current tour schedule.

Love is a tanglewood tree in a bower of green
In a forest at dawn
Fair while the mockingbird sings, but she soon lifts her wings
And the music is gone
-----

Extra Credit -- Past Musical Electives of the Week:
Neil Finn
Ray LaMontagne
Stuart Stotts
Dan Wilson
Kathleen Edwards

Does Mentoring Improve New Teachers?

Even though I'm sitting 1000 miles away in Madison, Wisconsin, my sources inform me that an event is happening as I write at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. It features a presentation and discussion of a new paper on urban teacher mentoring by Columbia University economist Jonah Rockoff.

Rockoff looked at teacher mentoring in New York City, including the impact on student learning and teacher retention. The New Teacher Center worked with NYC to launch the mentoring program back in 2004. The city dismantled the program after 3 years -- not due to lack of positive impact -- but as part of its effort to devolve authority and decision-making from the central office to school principals.

Some key findings in Rockoff's paper include:

• Student achievement in both reading and math were higher among teachers that received more hours of mentoring, supporting the notion that time spent working with a mentor does improve teaching skills.
• Teacher retention within a particular school is higher when a mentor has previous experience working in that school.
• Strong relationships between measures of mentoring quality and teachers’ evaluations of the impact of mentors on their classroom success.
• Additional supports for new teachers (e.g., common planning time, professional development workshops, reduced teaching loads) beyond mentoring alone helps to increase retention, consistent with the research of Tom Smith and Richard Ingersoll (2004).
  

For those interested in the impact of high-quality, robust support for new educators, Rockoff's paper is well worth a closer read.

For those of you with a specific interest in teacher mentoring in New York City, a recent policy paper from the New Teacher Center (NTC) is also worth reading.

Also, here's what the NTC has to say about high-quality mentoring and induction practices and the cost effectiveness of investments in such programs.

Poll: Education *Not* A Top Issue for Voters?

Last week I wrote this post entitled Poll: Education A Top Issue For Voters.

Oh, well.

Today, a new national poll released by the Public Education Network (PEN) suggests something slightly different, although quite honestly I don't believe it contradicts last week's title. In the PEN poll, education was ranked as the third "most important" issue, by 12 percent of respondents. Gas prices (22 percent) and jobs/economy (19 percent) led the way. Trailing education were health care (11 percent), taxes (8 percent) and crime/drugs (8 percent).

Unlike the recent Pew poll which allowed respondents to select several issues that were important to them, this question requires poll respondents to select only one issue as the most important. So, the fact that education comes out third isn't all that bad given the intensity of feeling and economic importance of issues such as employment and fuel costs.

In terms of the presidential election, today's PEN poll found that slightly less than half (48 percent) of respondents cited the candidates' positions on education as "one of the most important" issues or "very important" to how they will vote in November.

There's lots more good stuff in this poll worth checking out as well.

For more, here is pollster Celinda Lake's analysis (PPT). And here's the Education Week story.

TEACH Grants: Coming Soon....

News from ED today: Final regs on the TEACH grant were passed. It's a little better than before, since students will now apparently sign a "service agreement and promise to repay" that explains "the service obligation that students must carry out for the TEACH Grant award not to convert to a Federal Direct Unsubsidized Loan."

Just one question: Why call it a grant? Why not a loan-forgiveness program? This is a grant that for 80% of students will become a loan. And why not, at least, a subsidized loan?

Apparently, because ED isn't allowed to change the name, purpose or structure of the program, all of which were dictated by the HEA. I suppose they did the best they could....

The only other good news is that the regs include an amendment which makes institutional participation in the program voluntary. Now the burden is shifted to schools to opt out of a program that would- on the face of it- appear to provide needed money to students. A tough call, but one that schools might consider making in the interest of their students. Most won't get past the word "GRANT."

Poll: Education A Top Issue for Voters

This post may signal my emergence from a flooded Badger hole here in moist Wisconsin (as well as from nearly a week away on the East Coast celebrating our anniversary)...

A quick post for starters noting a recent Pew poll which suggests that education is among registered voters' top priorities in the 2008 elections. The poll, released in late May, shows education tied with health care and jobs as a top priority in the presidential election for 78 percent of voters. The economy came out on top with a 88 percent saying it would be "very important" to their vote.

The Optimists' Sunday Ritual

Liam and I have several TV rituals (American Idol, Top Chef, Project Runway, among others) but our son Conor has just one. For the vast majority of the Sunday mornings of his 16 months on earth, Conor has joined his mama and dada in watching Meet the Press.

While I otherwise prohibited him from any other TV, there was something I was trying to convey to Conor by putting him in front of Tim Russert's smiling face once a week. Somehow I knew that while Baby Einstein might lower a toddler's IQ, absolutely nothing bad could come from spending a little time with Tim. I know I was right, for even in the midst of playing and reading, Conor would sometimes stop and look up at Tim, and at his guests, and smile.

I've watched Tim for years and years, but for the last year I watched Conor watching Tim, and it made me happy.

Maybe it's something left over from growing up inside the Beltway, totally cynical about nearly every politician and reporter, not very impressed by anyone... Tim was the exception. I learned something every time I listened to him or read about him. Honestly I can hardly believe the number of tears I've shed tonight over a man I technically never met, especially since I can't think of another public personality I'd feel this way about losing.

I just know Sunday mornings will never been the same.