2011 - Teacher Effects on Minority and Disadvantaged Students' Grade Four Achievement

Attribution: Konstantopoulos, Spyros, & Chung, Vicki
Researchers: Spyros KonstantopoulosVicki Chung
University Affiliation: Michigan State University
Email: spyros@msu.edu
Research Question:
Examines the differential effects of teachers on female, minority, and low-socioeconomic status (SES) students' achievement in Grade 4.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: The Journal of Educational Research
Journal Entry: Vol. 104, No. 2, Pp. 73-86
Year: 2011
Findings:
  • Teacher effects in Grade 3 affect positively Grade 4 achievement in mathematics, reading, and science for all students, net of the effects of Grade 4 teachers.
  • In reading and science in particular the teacher effects were larger than the gender gap and similar in magnitude to the race gap which is typically nontrivial.
  • All interactions between Grade 3 teacher effects or cumulative teacher effects and gender, race, or SES were very small in magnitude and insignificant. Our results suggest that, overall, all student groups benefit equally from effective teachers.
  • Teacher effects are more pronounced in high-minority schools, or in high-minority schools there is an additional benefit in mathematics from having effective teachers.
  • Given that results suggest that all students benefit equally from effective teachers, which demonstrates that effective teachers can make a difference, and that the teacher effects are more pronounced in high-minority schools (in mathematics), it is important to mandate policies within the NCLB framework that encourage effective teachers to teach in schools with high proportions of minority and disadvantaged students.
Keywords: Academic AchievementMathMinoritiesRacial CompositionReadingScienceTeachersRegions: SouthMethodologies: QuantitativeAnalysis Methods: Multilevel Models Sampling Frame:Tennessee elementary students
Sampling Types: RandomAnalysis Units: ClassroomSchoolStudentData Types: Qualitative-Longitudinal
Data Description:
  • Data are from the Tennessee class size experiment, or Project STAR, a large-scale randomized experiment that was conducted in the State of Tennessee in the mid-1980s.
  • Over a 4-year period more than 11,000 students in 79 elementary schools in 42 districts in Tennessee participated in the experiment.
  • In the first year of the study, within each school, kindergarten students were assigned randomly to classrooms in one of three treatment conditions: small classes (with 13-17 students), larger classes (with 22-26 students), or larger classes with a full-time classroom aide. Teachers were also assigned randomly to classes of different types.
  • DV: Academic achievement (measured as grade three reading, math, and science scores)
  • IV: Teacher effect in grade three, high minority school (i.e., top 50%), high female school, low SES, minority status
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:
Archives: K-12 Integration, Desegregation, and Segregation Abstracts