Abstract
Highly effective teachers can affect the work of other teachers — especially novice teachers — when they work together on teaching teams, and that can result in improved student achievement.
Researchers C. Kirabo Jackson and Elias Bruegmann found that student achievement increases when a “high-quality teacher” joins a grade-level team of teachers. When four teachers are teamed to teach one grade level of students, replacing one of those teachers with a more effective teacher had a spillover effect of .86% of a standard deviation on student test scores.
Jackson and Bruegmann analyzed 11 years of data on North Carolina students, focusing on math and reading test scores for students in 3rd through 5th grades. Most of the students had the same teachers for their core academic subjects. The study was published in the October issue of American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, a peer-reviewed journal.
The study has implications for the continuing conversations about performance pay. “If it's true that teachers are learning from their peers, and the effects are not small, then we want to make sure that any incentive system we put in place is going to be fostering that and not preventing it,” said Jackson, an assistant professor of labor economics at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., in an Education Week article (“Effective Teachers Found to Improve Peers' Performance,” by Debra Viadero. Education Week, Sept. 15, 2009: 12–13). “If you give the reward at the individual level, all of a sudden my peers are no longer my colleagues — they're my competitors. If you give it at the school level, then you're going to foster feelings of team membership, and that increases the incentive to work together and help each other out.”
Jackson, C. Kirabo, and Elias Bruegmann. “Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1, no. 4 (2009).
Hostile Environment for Gay Students
Middle school LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) students are significantly more likely to face hostile school climates than high school LGBT students, but they have less access to school resources and support, according to a research brief from the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).
GLSEN's research brief is the first national research report to look specifically at the experiences of LGBT students in middle school. The report is based on data from 626 LGBT middle school students who participated in GLSEN's 2007 National School Climate Survey of 6,209 secondary school students.
Among the findings in the GLSEN report:
91% of LGBT middle school students said they had been harassed at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation — 59% had been physically harassed, and 39% said they had been physically assaulted, nearly twice as many as in high school (20%).
82% of LGBT middle school students reported hearing homophobic epithets (for example, “faggot” or “dyke”) frequently or often from other students in school, a higher percentage than high school students (73%).
50% of LGBT middle school students had skipped at least one day of school in the past month because they felt unsafe. Their grade point average was half a grade point lower than students who had not missed school because of safety concerns.
www.glsen.org/binary-data/GLSEN_ATTACHMENTS/file/000/001/1475-1.pdf.
The Learned Word/Kathleen Taylor
Rubric
These days, a rubric is generally understood as a scoring guide or checklist that outlines the criteria by which a paper or project is assessed. Educators rate rubrics high for their objectivity; students value them for their direction (“a paper gets a top score in Mechanics when it has fewer than 10 errors of spelling, punctuation, and grammar”).
But where does the word rubric come from? Check your Latin; rubric has a Latin ancestor in ruber, meaning red. History teachers may recognize the role establishing the place of rubric played by the ancient Romans, who highlighted important messages in red. During the Middle Ages, rubric referred to the heading of a chapter or other part of a manuscript that stood out from other sections of the text, commonly by outlining or coloring it red. Churches found plenty of applications for rubric, ranging from a rule governing the conduct of a liturgical service to a calendar of saints (remember, a red-letter day originally referred to a saint's Feast Day, outlined in red on the calendar). For centuries, rubric — colored red or not — has meant name, title, category, or gloss. Most recently, after educators sharpened their red pencils, our modern grading rubric was born.
Less Language Study
Six percent fewer elementary schools and 17% fewer middle schools are teaching foreign languages than a decade ago, citing budget cuts, a shortage of teachers, and constraints from NCLB due to math and reading testing priorities.
