White House
Peggy Aw, Grade 8
Research shows that teacher and school leader effectiveness is directly correlated to student success. A 2003 analysis of 70 studies from over three decades of research on teacher and school leader impacts on student learning found a consistent correlation. One study showed a 39% difference in student achievement between students with “most effective” and “least effective” teachers. This study also found as much as a 20% difference in student achievement among students with “average” versus “above average” principals.*
It is imperative that public school systems recruit and retain high quality individuals into the teaching profession. In 2006, CEI-PEA formed a partnership with Teach For America (TFA) to develop strategies to achieve this goal. TFA has been recruiting top college graduates into teaching for poor urban and rural school systems since 1990. In New York City, TFA currently has approximately 1,000 corps members teaching in 300 public schools. However, like many new teachers, TFA corps members face extraordinary challenges when entering the profession, and many find it difficult to implement their ideals in real classrooms.
During the 2006-2007 school year, TFA placed 50 new corps members into 30 elementary and middle schools that are members of the CEI-PEA School Network. CEI-PEA is providing these corps members with intense, one-on-one mentoring and training to help them build the skills necessary to become successful teachers. Among the areas that CEI-PEA provides the new teachers with support are:
In addition, CEI-PEA consultants arrange intervisitations among schools (or within a school) to expose the TFA corps members to exemplary instruction in the classrooms of veteran teachers. Such contacts often lead to additional, informal mentoring of the struggling young teachers by their more experienced colleagues.
For more information, please contact CEI-PEA Senior Fellow Bill Colavito.
*Waters, J. T., Marzano, R. J., & McNulty, B. A. (2003). Balanced leadership: What 30 years of research tells us about the effect of leadership on student achievement. Aurora, CO: Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning.