An incentive system would have to take into account the kinds of students - gifted vs the opposite.
Who's the we that has looked at it and decided it doesn't work?
Studies have shown that some teachers are dramatically better than others and that having such good teachers makes a big difference.
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Are Our Teachers Good Enough? by Geoff Camphire
A few years ago, Dallas Independent School District's Robert Mendro started comparing the test scores of elementary school students. He had a hunch that the teachers a student had made a difference in that student's test scores. But Mendro, the district's chief evaluation officer, says even he was startled at the size of the achievement gap he uncovered.
After three years with very effective teachers, students were able to raise their test scores by 16 percentile points in both reading and math. By contrast, classmates who started out performing at the same level but had been assigned to very ineffective teachers for three years in a row saw their scores drop dramatically - by 18 percentile points in reading and 33 percentile points in math (see chart).
The lesson learned in Dallas was obvious: Teacher quality counts. At about the same time, other researchers were reaching similar conclusions. In a recent analysis, the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy asserted that the percentage of well-qualified teachers in a state is the most powerful and consistent predictor of its average achievement level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). And in Educating Teachers: The Academy's Greatest Failure or Its Most Important Future? (1999), Stanford University researcher Linda Darling-Hammond showed that teacher ability is a stronger determinant of student achievement than poverty, race, or parents' educational attainment.
Teacher Effectiveness
In the mid-1990s, the Dallas Independent School District conducted a mathematics study that examined student testing data and associated teacher effectiveness data. The math study found effective teachers
are knowledgeable about content and able to provide better in-depth explanations to students,
cover the entire curriculum, including higher-order skills and concepts,
assess student learning frequently and through multiple means, and
engage in deep instruction - they go beyond the printed curriculum to help students gain insights into the subject matter.
Source: Karen L. Bembry, Heather R. Jordan, Elvia Gomez, Mark C. Anderson, Robert L. Mendro, Policy Implications of Long-Term Teacher Effects on Student Achievements. Dallas, TX: Dallas Independent School District. Retrieved September 12, 2001, at dallasisd.org.
The expanding body of research on the topic, amplified by the past decade's increasingly urgent calls for improving student achievement, has made teacher quality arguably the hottest issue in education today. But the challenge of improving teacher quality is greater than ever.
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Haycock and others have recommended several promising strategies for strengthening teacher quality and raising the status of the field, including:
Explore new approaches to recruit and retain capable candidates. For example, many districts are encouraging candidates from nontraditional backgrounds, such as business or the military, to enter teaching while ensuring that they meet high professional standards.
Require teachers to demonstrate classroom ability through rigorous evaluations. "Personality traits tend to dominate people's conception of what good teaching is rather than knowledge and skill," says Elmore. "Everybody has opinions of who the good teachers are, but in point of fact there is no way, in most school systems, to deliver any evidence about whether they are or not."
Strengthen collaborations between K-12 schools and teacher education programs. "One of the things that superintendents and principals can bring to teacher preparation is reality of everyday classroom life," says Margaret Gaston, co-director of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, based in California. "Teacher candidates who have a familiarity with the campus are more comfortable with taking a job there. Principals and superintendents should shop early and begin their guidance and support for these teachers, not when they enter the classroom as employees, but when they're in teacher education programs."
Provide meaningful induction programs for teachers. "The extent to which teachers feel they are supported regularly and substantially, especially in the first year of teaching, impacts their persistence rate - whether they stay in a profession," says Gaston. "High-quality induction programs really make a difference."
Tap experienced teachers to mentor their novice colleagues. "You have to look at the pool of people who are actually doing this work, and you have to begin to use the people who are good at it in different ways," says Elmore. "People who are good at this work can't continue to be full-time classroom teachers. They have to actually start to be mentor teachers and professional developers."
Provide professional development that is ongoing, interactive, and focused to a large extent on academic content, not just technique. Federal 1998 survey data show that a U.S. teacher typically receives less than eight hours of professional development per year. Yet, according to an October 2000 study by the Educational Testing Service, students whose teachers receive professional development score better on assessments than peers who do not have the benefit of such teacher practices.
Increase pay for teachers who demonstrate high performance to levels comparable with other professions. "Teaching must compete more aggressively than ever before for a competent workforce," Darling-Hammond observes, "but the incentives offered in many communities simply are not enough to attract and keep capable individuals in education."
sedl.org
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A 1991 study of student performance in Texas (Ferguson, 1991) found that the teacher's ability was the single most influential determinant, outside of home and family circumstances, of student success. A more recent study in Tennessee (Sanders & Rivers, 1996) found that students who had good teachers three years in a row showed a significant increase in their percentile rankings on state examinations – regardless of socioeconomic factors. On the other hand, students who began at exactly the same percentile and had a series of ineffective teachers during that same period showed a significant decrease in rankings. Still another recent study (Darling-Hammond, 2000) identified comprehensive, focused efforts to improve the quality of teaching as a primary reason for the strong, consistent gains in student reading achievement that Connecticut and North Carolina experienced over the past several years.
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In addition, efforts to address the broad range of issues relevant to teaching quality must recognize and take into account several important emerging ideas and trends. These trends include the following:
The entry of private-sector providers into the quality teaching arena. The impact of these providers on state and district efforts to improve the quality of teaching needs to be monitored and evaluated.
The development of sophisticated technology applications and delivery systems as tools for teachers. These systems can place at a teacher's fingertips information on standards, curriculum materials, lesson plans, examples of refereed student work and alternative assessment tools. The adoption of these technology tools, coupled with an electronic means of delivery, could quickly increase the capacity of today's teachers and redefine notions of evaluation and professional development.
Alternative routes into the teaching profession. Though current information certainly does not support a full endorsement of every alternative program, many such programs have proved successful and challenge current thinking about the content and structure of teacher preparation and licensure. Close attention to existing alternatives, plus additional experimentation and research, will yield better information on how to use alternative strategies to increase the quality and quantity of teachers entering the profession and respond to the needs of schools and districts not well-served by more traditional routes.
The increasing penetration of private-sector practices into the institutional environment of education. The influence of such practices on the business of education is increasing and has fundamental implications for education policy. With regard to the quality of teaching, the most significant practices include: the emphasis on performance and accountability; the turn toward data-driven decisionmaking; the reliance on market-like strategies in teacher recruitment and compensation, including pay-for-performance; the increasing flexibility and the openness to nontraditional providers – including for-profit companies – in teacher education and training; and the growing call for devolution of authority and responsibility to the local building level.
Greater flexibility and experimentation in union contracts and collective bargaining. Many of the newer ideas and trends – recruitment incentives, market-driven salaries, pay and promotion based on demonstrated skill and performance, and alternative routes into the teaching profession – cannot be readily accommodated by present union contracts and collective-bargaining practices. In addition, many union contracts make it difficult to adjust teachers' work schedules and calendars to allow for more innovative approaches to professional development. Likewise, traditional seniority structures thwart efforts to improve hiring and placement and ensure that hard-to-staff schools have experienced, well-qualified teachers and administrators. Districts such as Seattle, Rochester, New York, Cincinnati and Denver have taken the lead in negotiating innovative union contacts, and others are beginning to follow.
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