"Teacher Effectiveness in Urban Schools"

Richard Buddin
Senior Economist
RAND Corporation

Richard Buddin, senior labor economist, education policy expert, and professor at the RAND Corporation and visiting professor of economics at UCLA, was the featured speaker at the March 28th Department of Education Brownbag.

Speaking to the issue of teacher effectiveness in urban schools, Dr. Buddin summarized his findings from research on measuring teacher effectiveness at improving student achievement in Los Angeles Unified School District elementary schools.

Major points of Dr. Buddin's presentation included the following:

• Teachers with better nominal teaching tools (e.g., experience, education, licensure scores) perform no better than teachers with weaker qualifications, but the current system provides little reward or recognition for better classroom performance.
• Current policies emphasizing teacher qualifications that are inputs to student learning are costly to produce and sustain in terms of hiring and salary costs, but they have little consequence on student achievement outcomes.
• Districts should develop policies that place importance on output measures of teacher performance.
• Although estimated teacher effects as measured by value-methods are imprecise and important modeling issues remain, teacher value-added offers a valuable step forward compared to current modest efforts to measure teacher effectiveness through classroom observation.
• Value-added scores, which are likely to be useful feedback for teachers and school administrators in assessing teacher performance, could be used in tandem with other measures while better measures are developed in the future.

UCI Distinguished Professor Greg Duncan, Professor Richard Buddin, UCI Professor George Farkas