University of Washington

Interact, communicate and collaborate directly with your audience to get the results you need. Let our experienced creative team help you design and build a site or campaign that exceeds your expectations. s p o n s o r e d b y The Department of English, UW Creative Writing Program, and the Theodore Roethke Endowment Thursday, May 17, 2012 8:00 p.m. Roethke Auditorium (130 Kane Hall) University of Washington Free Admission 5 0 t h A n n i v e r sA ry o f t h e t h eo d o r e r o e t h k e M E M o R i A l P o E T R y R E A D i n g 50 resea rch t h at m at t ers 1 POWERFUL PARTNERSHIPS: WORKING TOGETHER TO TRANSFORM OUR SCHOOLS Research That Matters What Is the measure of a good teacher? With pressing demands to improve teacher quality, it's a fair question to ask. Obvious answers revolve around credentials, advanced degrees, professional training, years on the job, and classroom scores on high-stakes achievement tests. But the question — posed against a challenging educational landscape — is not so simple nor so easily quantified, as the work of two tenacious University of Washington researchers illustrates. College of Education colleagues Marge Plecki and Ana Elfers began to systematically probe the broader "quality" question more than half a decade ago. Rather than looking at individual teachers at work in their classrooms, Plecki and Elfers set out to get a big picture of the teaching force across the state. Who, exactly, was teaching in Washington state classrooms? What and whom they were teaching? How well prepared were they, and did they feel equipped to deal with the increasingly diverse populations in their classrooms? They posed layers upon layers of questions: What kind of degrees did teachers hold? Did the degrees match assigned subject matter? Did teacher skills match the student needs? What factors played into students' performances on that high- stakes test, and what weight should be given to scores? Education Researchers Fill In Missing Links the The UW researchers also wanted to examine what kind of support teachers received, how equity issues played into the big picture, and how colleges could reshape teacher education programs to address emerging challenges. Answering those questions was not easy. "Our state has lacked key data to answer even basic questions about teacher quality," says Plecki, associate professor in educational leadership and policy studies. DATA CHALLENGES Plecki and Elfers describe assembling the data as a tedious and time-consuming task. They started with state datasets, using available material never intended to answer the kinds of questions they were asking. As they tried to link personnel and other state information to districts and schools, they kept running up against "silos" of data. "These datasets had no way of talking to each other," says re- search assistant professor Elfers. The UW researchers kept at it, digging, untangling, reconfiguring, double-checking as they began to compile a portrait of the state's teaching workforce. Even after years of work, Elfers and Plecki say there are limita- tions to the types of questions that state level data can answer. Yet emerging patterns from their research bear serious atten- tion from teacher educators and policy makers, particularly when framed with questions of teacher quality and equity. RESEARCH THAT MATTERS 25 92.5% Age in 2007 NUMBER PERCENT NUMBER PERCENT NUMBER PERCENT 21-30 8,820 15.5% 6,858 54.8% 1,735 64.0% 31-40 14,162 24.9% 3,055 24.4% 490 18.1% 41-50 14,190 25.0% 1,808 14.4% 329 12.1% 51-60 16,531 29.1% 745 6.0% 137 5.1% 61+ 3,097 5.5% 55 0.4% 19 0.7% Ethnicity Asian/Pacific Islander 1,485 2.6% 407 3.3% 102 3.8% African American 800 1.4% 186 1.5% 40 1.5% Hispanic 1,509 2.7% 474 3.8% 102 3.8% Native American 436 0.8% 83 0.7% 17 0.6% White 52,553 92.5% 11,357 90.7% 2,446 90.3% Not reported 17 0 14 0.1% 3 0.1% Experience Less than one year NA NA NA NA 2,710 4.8% 0-4 years 12,521 22.0% 12,521 22.0% NA NA 5-14 years 21,353 37.6% NA NA NA NA 15-24 years 13,933 24.5% NA NA NA NA 25 yrs or more 8,993 15.8% NA NA NA NA All Teachers (n = 56,800) Novice Teachers 0 - 4 years experience (n = 12,521) Beginning Teachers Less than 1 yr exp (n = 2,710) 18.1% TA B L E 1 : CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WASHINGTON TEACHER WORKFORCE IN 2007/08 the dilemma 57.1% 29.1% TA B L E 1 : 2.6% & Web

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