Grad school paper (teacher quality)

A REVIEW OF HANUSHEK AND RIVKIN’S ARTICLE

“PAY, WORKING CONDITIONS AND TEACHER QUALITY”

Summary

By interpreting time-series data and employing regression analyses, Professors Hanushek and Rivkin’s paper analyzes how teacher’s salary, working conditions and teacher quality in Texas public schools affect the quality of instruction in the classroom. The paper made use of aspects of the teacher labor market in order to explain how the given variables affect the value of education imparted and to identify implications for teacher policies.

The study’s methodology involved a survey of variations of salaries and working conditions of United States’ public schools by regions and by community type. An inquiry on teachers’ working conditions, choices, education and turnover extend the discussion as to how these factors contribute to student achievement.

Salary differences were charted over time and revealed that variation in urban and suburban teacher salaries is far less systematic and that there is weak evidence that more highly paid teachers are more effective. As expected, school working conditions in urban districts stand apart from all others in almost all respects and, not surprisingly, urban teachers are less likely to report general satisfaction with their jobs. The data manifests that any causality between varying salary rates and job conditions with the quality of teaching are likely to be complex. Although teachers’ education and experiences are what primarily determines their salary, they do not have a strong effect on student achievement.

Believing that quality teachers could help offset the deficit of home environment or help students with good school preparations, policy implications points to lifting entry limits to the teaching profession while focusing on student performance and administrator accountability.

The paper puts forward that overall salary increases for teacher would be both expensive and ineffective. From a policy perspective, it is wise for quality of instruction to be improved, for barriers to becoming a teacher to be lowered (such as certification) and for teacher’s ability to raise student performance to be linked with compensation and career advancement.

Review Proper

Hanushek and Revkin’s analyzed issues in teachers’ pay, working condition and quality using economics and econometric methods. They reviewed time-series data or observed data collated over time composing of teacher salary which gauged teachers’ pay including their incomes from other sources; teachers working condition through administrator and parental support, commuting to work, and student demographics as proxy variables; and student test scores as a measure of teacher quality. Said variables were studied to see whether there are salary, and working condition effects when teachers move from one place to another and whether turnover affects teacher quality and student achievement. Said information was estimated by regression analysis using econometric models. After the examination of the evidences, the paper enumerates some policy implications.

Salaries and Working Conditions

Salary primarily determines teacher supply; higher salaries should attract more able teachers. The data used in the study pertaining to teacher salary reveals variations in teacher salaries by region that potentially contribute to unequal instructional quality. The study reveals that “The complexity of variations in salary and other job characteristics . . . suggest that any links . . . are likely to be complex.” It should be noted that unlike in the Philippines, there are teacher salary differences according to region and district in the United States where they are paid according to the various geographical locations they are in. In imposing varying salary scales in the US, Chambers and Fowler (1995), in a survey of more than 40,000 public school teachers, supported the same saying that such differences in ”teachers’ salaries reflect not only the cost of living in a geographic labor market, but also a school district’s preference for teachers who are better educated or more experienced.”

Public school teachers in the Philippines are among the lowest paid, they even received salaries lower than those in professions of comparable qualifications. Similarly in the US, the relative pay of teachers has slipped over the past half-century and many observers have begun to call for increasing teachers’ overall pay. Improving teacher quality, they assert, requires making salaries competitive (Hanuskek et al., 2008: 81).

Salary scales for civil servants, public school teachers included are governed by the Salary Standardization Law, which promoted a series of salary adjustments. While the increases in salary improved teacher’s welfare, they also resulted in some unintended effects. For example, by 1997, salaries of public school teachers were found to be almost 70 percent higher than the salaries of private school teachers (Catanyag, 2001: 8).

In the Philippine setting, new entrants to the public school system are given salary grade that corresponds to the entry level pay despite of possessing an advanced education, several years of teaching experience and any other qualification. A probationary period is in necessary prior to regularization and a salary raise commensurate a teacher’s qualifications.

Hanushek et al. (1999) believe that salaries may affect teacher quality in a number of ways. Although from a policy perspective, there is no analysis that suggests that student achievement would improve from simply raising the salaries of all teachers across the board. It maybe is plausible that increasing the average teacher salary would expand the pool of applicants, its impact on student achievement would depend on two factors.

First, an increase in salaries likely enlarges the pool of applicants, but, even an expansion that raises average quality does not guarantee a positive relationship between teacher quality and salaries. Evidence suggests that teacher quality depends on the ability of the school districts to identify the best teachers out of the pool of applicants without observing them in the classroom. Past evidence suggests that this is difficult and very imprecisely done (Hanushek, 2006).

Second, higher salaries might raise achievement by raising the effort of current teachers. It depends on the number of new, higher quality teachers that would be hired as a result. Increasing compensation of all teachers would provide incentives for both high and low quality teachers to enter and remain in the profession and would cut down teacher turnover – but this also lessens the possibilities to bring in newer, and better, teachers.

As to school working conditions as reported by teachers, urban districts stand apart from all others in almost all respects. Hanushek et al. found out that the relatively small average salary difference between urban and suburban schools does not imply that the typical urban school is able to attract as large a pool of teacher applicants as the typical suburban school.

As it is obvious and showing, the article has linked teachers’ (or any other profession) negative perceptions of working conditions with their exit from schools, but makes a qualification that poor working conditions is not closely tied to the quality of teachers in the classroom. An important agenda item, both for research and for policy, is to learn which working conditions are most important for teachers.

Generalizing it, as in all occupations, teachers value working conditions as well as salary. Examining differences in working conditions gives a more complete picture of differences in the average attractiveness of different types of districts.

Teacher Quality and Student Achievement

Whenever teacher quality is talked about and what makes a good description of teacher quality creates, the discussions is dominated by “widely held views on the characteristics that are needed – deep subject matter knowledge, love of children, knowledge of child psychology, pedagogical training, and the like.” The items intuitively make sense and seem reasonable, however, there is virtually no evidence that links these strongly to student achievement and performance in the classroom (Hanushek, 2006). A more measurable teacher experience and level of knowledge given their graduate education and in-service training may be attractive enough to commensurate it with teacher quality but research has found nothing to prove the same.

In the hope of a much more precise estimate of school scores and test gains, Hanushek et al. (1998: 3) surveyed about 500,000 students, 200,000 teachers and 3,000 schools and recorded large differences among schools in their impact on student achievement. These differences are centered on the differential impact of teachers, rather than the overall school organization, leadership or even financial condition.

Hanushek and associates (1998: 24) estimate suggest that the first, and to a lesser extent, the second year of experience significantly improve teacher quality, but that additional years rarely have a significant impact. Goe and Stickler (2008: 5) even expanded the period by five years. During these first few years, they say, teachers appear to gain incrementally in their contribution to student learning. After five year, however, the contribution of experience to student learning appears to level off. In economic terms, their production function when it comes to teacher experience is one of those diminishing marginal utility, a concave function in a graphical representation.

The effect associated with a teacher’s possession of an advanced degree are strikingly counterintuitive, especially given the salary incentives offered to encourage teachers to pursue graduate degrees. The study found out that there is no significant evidence that post-graduate degree education improves the quality of teaching; the point estimates for the effects of a master’s degrees are generally negative and always statistically insignificant from zero (Goe and Stickler, 2008; Hanushek, 2008). Not only do recent empirical studies not find a substantial benefit for students of teachers with advanced degrees, but the majority of such studies also indicate that teachers with master’s degrees and beyond may negatively influence their students’ achievement. Betts, Zau and Rice in 2003 (Goe and Stickler, 2008) find marginal benefits for middle school mathematics achievement when teachers hold master’s degrees though this effect is not practically significant. Rowan et al. (1997 in Goe and Stickler, 2008) speculate that graduate-level study may produce teachers who cannot simplify their advanced understanding of the subject matter, at least for students at the elementary and middle school levels.

Given this alarming find, Goe and Stickler even raised questions about the prevalence of teacher pay scales that reward these characteristic of having graduate degrees. At a minimum, they say, these results raise doubts about policies that require or strongly encourage graduate education for teachers.

Especially that the position taken by the article is that teacher experience and graduate education explain much of the overall variation in teacher compensation. Hanushek cites Ballou and Podgursky’s estimate that on average 17 percent of the teacher wage bill reflects extra payments for experience and an additional 5 percent reflects payments for a master’s degree, though the premium for a postgraduate degree varies substantially.

Quality Issues Across Countries

In the experience of South Korea (Kim, 2001: 4), the quality of teacher candidates has fallen significantly since many bright young people are now lured into other occupations and new industries. Problems in teacher remuneration, working conditions and poor conditions of teacher training institutions seem to hinder quality control in teacher training. Even if the supply-demand balance of teachers at the primary level has been controlled by the Korean government more than 8,000 vacancies could not be filled because the supply of elementary school teachers was inadequate and is anticipated to continue for several more years.

In India, Indiriyanto (2001: 7) has emphasized that teacher quality has remained to be an unfinished item of India’s educational agenda. The most prominent of which is the declining quality of teachers at the basic education level who still lack teaching skills and mastery levels. A survey conducted by the Centre for Policy Research (May, 2001 in Indiriyanto, 2001: 7) shows that more than 70% of teachers do not consider that they lack teaching skills or have low mastery levels. Most of the teachers expressed, instead, that the lack of teaching materials and other education facilities affect their teaching competencies.

Pay, Conditions and Quality: Relationships and Causalities

In an earlier study in 1999, Hanushek et al. said that the empirical evidence on the link between teacher quality and pay is decidedly mixed—raising doubts that there is a strong relationship between the two.

Two explanations have emerged in response to this evidence. On the one hand, some argue that the true relationship between teacher quality and salaries is quite strong, but methodological and data problems have impeded the identification of salary effects. Although weak, the evidence is quite strong on one point, that teacher quality is an important determinant of achievement.

Methodology Issues

Similar to the position of Hanushek et al., Goe and Stickler (2008: 3) validates the claim to further enhance methodology problem in teacher education stating that “while many studies attest that some teachers contribute more to their students’ academic growth than other teachers, research has not been very successful at identifying the specific teacher qualifications, characteristics and classroom practices that are most likely to improve student learning.”

The current US research agenda on have been fixated with the use of student achievement as a barometer of the effects of teaching. Goe and Stickler remind that while there may be important reasons to value teacher experience, above and beyond it impact on student achievement, teachers’ character, classroom management skills, stability and leadership qualities may contribute to smooth school and classroom functioning. However this may not be reflected in significantly higher student achievement because they simply are not directly measurable. They continue:

Researchers have not yet developed the tools that measures, and data sources that allow them to state with a strong degree of certainty and consistency, which aspects of teacher quality matter most for student learning. This does not mean that no relationships exists among other measures of teacher quality and student achievement; in fact, studies that show positive relationships between particular indicators of teacher quality and student achievement are numerous in literature (Goe and Stickler, 2008: 10).

A lot of important outcomes besides performance in standardized tests may be strongly and consistently related with improved student achievement such as students’ self-esteem, student attendance, teacher collaboration and collegiality and school culture.

Many of the studies that Goe analyzed find no significant relationship between teacher experience and student achievement, but they do not focus on traditional public schools. This situation suggests that the evidence supporting the relationship between teacher experience and student achievement may be more relevant to current US policy concerns than the evidence that finds little or no relationship. Hiring teachers with more than five years of experience may not result in improved student achievement, but there are other ways that teachers’s experience benefits schools. Thus, experience is one of many factors that should be taken into consideration when hiring teachers and determining assignments.

We have to remember that the study was viewed from an economic perspective and that the setting is within a competitive labor markets. Such assumes that people will sort across occupations and industries according to their skills, the salaries being offered, and working conditions because a rational consumer would want to maximize utility absent asymmetric information; And that as long as working conditions are roughly comparable, higher salaries should attract more able people as a primary microeconomic consideration. Justifiably “if the relative attractiveness of working conditions in teaching and in other occupations changes little over time, salary changes in teaching should provide a good measure of changes in average teacher quality and should therefore provide an important benchmark for considering policies related to teacher quality” (Hanuskek, et al. 2008: 72-73).

Research Agenda

Hanushek and Rivkin's paper engages educational institutions and scholars in the Philippines to either vindicate their findings or to rebuff it taking that condition in the Philippines are very different with the United States. The methodological underpinnings on the data (student achievement test scores) they have used, as Goe observes, is a variable in play that could have affected its result. The non-experimental nature of the data itself can very well be substituted by other data that would otherwise determine student achievement viz-a-viz teacher pay, working conditions and pay.

This brings about a new research agenda for the academic community especially the counterintuitive findings on obtaining a master's degree by teachers and yet having only marginal effects on their achievement.

References

Chambers, Jay and Fowler, William, Jr. J. (1995) Public School Teacher Cost Differences Across the United States: An Analysis and Methodology Report, Washington D.C.: American Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences.

Goe, Laura and Stickler, Leslie M. (2008) “Teacher Quality and Student Achievement: Making the Most of Recent Research” TQ Research and Policy Brief, “Washington D.C.: National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality.”

Hanushek, Eric A. (2006) The single salary schedule and other issues of teacher pay, Paper prepared for the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform Technical Board of Advisors Conference Agenda, October 19-21, 2006, Kauffman Conference Center

Hanushek, Eric A. and Rivkin, Steven G., 2007. “Pay, working conditions and teacher quality,” The future of children, Vol. 17 (Spring 2007), New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Available: www.jstor.org/stable/4150020, [Date accessed: 9 December 2008].

Hanushek, Eric A., John F, Kain and Steven F. Rivkin (1999) “Do Higher Salaries Buy Better Teachers?” NBER Working Series Paper, Working Paper 7082, Cambridge, Massachusetts: National Bureau of Economic Research, Available: www.nber.org/papers/w7082 [Accessed: 27 December 2008].

__________________ (1998) “Teachers, Schools and Academic Achievement”, NBER Working Series Paper, Working Paper 6691, Cambridge, Massachusetts: National Bureau of Economic Research, Available: www.nber.org/papers/w6691 [Accessed: 27 December 2008].

Indiriyanto, Bambang (2001) “Management of Teachers in Basic Education in Indonesia, Issues and Innovations”, ANTRIEP Newsletter, Vol. 6, No. 1, January - June 2001, Indonesia: Asian Network of Training and Research Institutions in Educational Planning.

Kim, Hye-Sook (2001) “Management of Teachers: Efforts and Issues in Korea”, ANTRIEP Newsletter, Vol. 6, No. 1, January - June 2001, Seoul, South Korea: Asian Network of Training and Research Institutions in Educational Planning.

Wooldridge, Jeffrey (2000). Introductory econometrics: A modern approach, 2nd ed.