Is a Good Teacher a Good Teacher for All? Comparing Value-Added of Teachers With Their English Learners and Non-English Learners

Abstract

Districts, states, and researchers are using value-added models with increasing frequency to evaluate educational policies and programs, as well as teachers and other educators individually. Despite their prevalence, little research assesses whether value-added measures (VAM) are consistent across student subgroups. Are teachers who are effective with one group of students also effective with others? If they are not, then it may be worthwhile to develop separate measures of teacher effectiveness for different student groups; if they are, a single average measure will likely suffice. Our article uses data from a large urban district with a considerable English learner (EL) population to compare teachers' VAM with ELs to the same teachers' VAM with non-ELs. We find that teachers who are effective with ELs also tend to be effective with their non-ELs and vice versa. We also, however, find evidence that some teachers are relatively more effective with ELs than with non-ELs, and that this increased efficacy is predicted by a teacher's fluency in students' home language and whether he or she possesses a bilingual teaching certification.

English language learner teacher effectiveness and the Common Core

“…Master, Loeb, Whitney, and Wyckoff (2012) discovered that prior experience teaching ELLs predict significantly higher gains in mathematics achievement for ELLs; this effect was much higher for ELLs than non-ELLs. Loeb, Soland, and Fox (2014) found that teachers who are effective with non-ELLs tend to be effective with ELLs as well; however, some teachers are more effective with ELLs than with non-ELLs. This increase in effectiveness seems to be associated with the teacher's fluency in the students' home language and possession of a bilingual teaching certificate.…”

The Construction of English Teaching Model Combining Teacher's Leadership with Student's Subject

“…Incentive mechanism, competition mechanism and cooperation mechanism are brought into classroom teaching to creat a harmonious and democratic teaching environment. This model composed of the school curriculum objectives, multi-version of the teaching content, reasonable teaching process, effective operation steps and scientific evaluation system structure [7]. All of the methods and mechansims will help to forming a teacher-student interaction process and each student has the desire to seek knowledge and even find satisfaction and success.…”

Playing to Teachers’ Strengths: Using Multiple Measures of Teacher Effectiveness to Improve Teacher Assignments

“…In addition to the studies cited above, a few studies look at the idea of differential effectiveness in a value-added framework. Four studies address heterogeneity of teacher effects by student subgroups: Aaronson, Barrow, and Sanders (2007), Lockwood andMcCaffrey (2009), Condie, Lefgren, andSims (2014), and Loeb, Soland, and Fox (2014). In the first study, the authors construct separate value-added measures for teachers with a variety of different subgroups and generally find no evidence of differential effectiveness.…”

“…Accordingly, much research is devoted to understanding and describing variation in teacher performance; however, few studies have examined whether teachers have different effects with different students or subjects. It is not difficult to imagine that one teacher may be more effective at raising achievement for one type of student than another, and, in fact, such differences have been empirically documented (e.g., Dee 2004;Loeb, Soland, and Fox 2014). Similarly, elementary school teachers, who typically teach all subjects, may be more effective in one subject than another.…”