Growing Professional Capacity From Within: Educators as Leaders of Learning

• In Event: Designing Systems of Support and Accountability for Meaningful Learning: Early Lessons From State Efforts

Abstract

The teaching force is changing, with a larger proportion of teachers with five or fewer years of experience and a high concentration of inexperienced teachers in high-poverty schools (Ingersoll & Merrill, 2010). Some educational reformers have viewed the “greening” of the teaching force as a positive development and focused on policies that have eased entrance requirements to quickly get new teachers into classrooms. However, recent research indicates that teachers who work in supportive school environments continue to become more effective long after their first few years in the classroom (Kraft & Papay, 2014; Ladd & Sorensen, 2014), challenging previous claims that teachers reach a plateau of effectiveness early in their career (e.g., Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2005; Rockoff, 2004). In addition, efforts to prepare all students for success in college, career, and life have brought attention to the advanced pedagogical, content, and social-emotional knowledge and skills needed for teachers to be successful in meeting these ambitious goals. This paper draws on emerging research and policy initiatives to provide guidance and examples of how states could redesign their systems of support and accountability to more effectively develop, retain, and leverage the expertise of experienced teachers to grow the capacity of the teaching force.

This paper reviews current state policies designed to grow professional capacity and analyzes these efforts against recent research on professional teaching standards, teacher effectiveness, and professional learning. We know that the process of requiring teachers to meet professional standards for accomplished teaching can serve as a meaningful professional learning experience (Dean & Jaquith, 2015; Sato, Wei, & Darling-Hammond, 2008) and is an effective approach for differentiating more capable teachers from their less capable peers who fail to meet these standards (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2010; Cowan & Goldhaber, 2015; Goldhaber & Anthony, 2007). Furthermore, research on teacher effectiveness indicates that teachers become more effective at supporting student learning with increased experience (Ladd & Sorensen, 2014) and have opportunities to work in supportive school environments (Kraft & Papay, 2014) and with effective colleagues (Jackson & Bruegmann, 2009). Similarly, research suggests that professional learning opportunities are more effective at growing the capacity of teachers to support meaningful learning when they include sustained opportunities for collaborative learning in schools (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009).

We conduct a review of policies in 11 states designed to grow educator capacity. Reports for each state are generated based on reviews of publicly available documents, and key administrators from each state are interviewed to refine and enhance the reported findings. Overall, we identify five policy entry points that states have used to develop educator capacity: standards for accomplished teaching, professional learning opportunities, educator evaluation and growth, school assistance and review, and principal recruitment and preparation. We analyze these approaches against evidence from research on professional standards, teacher effectiveness, and professional learning opportunities to identify the strengths and potential limitations of each approach. In doing so, we aim to activate current scholarship on educator capacity to influence decisions about policy and practice in ways that advance high quality and equitable opportunities for learning.

Authors

• Elizabeth Leisy Stosich, Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education

• Travis Bristol, Stanford University