The goal the Bush Foundation established for increasing educational achievement is ambitious: By 2020, the percentage of students in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, from pre-kindergarten through college who are on track to earn a degree after high school, increases by 50% and disparities among diverse student groups are eliminated.
Focusing on education is critically important to the future of our communities and the vibrancy of our local economies. We cannot compete in the national or global economy by falling behind in educational achievement. According to data from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, only about 25 percent of students in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota earn a degree after high school.
In addition, the disparities in educational achievement across different ethnic groups and income levels are significant. For example, in 2007, less than 40 percent of fourth-grade children in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota were proficient in reading at the fourth-grade level, and the proficiency percentages were even lower for students in minority groups, highlighting disparities that currently exist. (See Table 1 and Table 2)
Opportunities to improve educational achievement extend from preschool readiness through elementary, junior high and high schools, in preparation for students to pursue college or a vocational degree after high school. Measures in each of these critical stages show that we’re falling short. Only 50 percent of children in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota are ready for kindergarten, and while 84 percent graduate from high school, only 25 percent go on to earn an advanced degree. As with reading proficiency, disparities exist in each of these categories for minority students.
Focus on Teachers
While many factors play a role in educational success, the Bush Foundation has chosen to focus on teachers. We believe that effective teaching can make a bigger difference than any other variable.
Increasing the number of teachers and reducing class size has been tried, but the academic benefits of smaller classes are negligible. In fact, according to a report by Eric Hanushek, The Evidence of Class Size, and other studies that have examined the effects of class size on student achievement, there was no significant effect of reduced class sizes. Rather, Hanushek found that variations in teacher quality completely dominate any effect of altered class size.
Further, researchers Heather Jordan, Robert Mendro and Dash Weerasinghe in their study The Effects of Teachers on Longitudinal Student Achievement found that effective teaching works in improving student performance and ineffective teaching hurts. (See Table 3) What’s more, Hanushek, reporting on a study of the effect of teacher quality on student performance, concluded that “…having an above-average teacher for five years running can completely close the average gap between low-income students and others.”1
In England , for example, a strategic approach focusing on the effectiveness of teachers led to significant improvement in just three years. This dramatic improvement came as a direct result of strategies implemented to improve the quality of teachers. Prior to these initiatives, there had been no improvement in literacy levels in England for 50 years.2
Strategies implemented in Boston yielded similar results. Over a period of six years the Boston educational system implemented a number of key reforms to improve its schools. Among other methods, they:
| |
 |
Established the Boston Teaching Residency Program to attract new talent; |
| |
|
Used student-performance data to focus teacher training; and |
| |
|
Built corps of coaches to train teachers. |
The results speak for themselves. (See Table 4)
A report by McKinsey states that “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of is teachers.”3 If we can develop mechanisms to recruit the right people to become teachers, then support and develop these individuals into effective instructors and finally put systems in place to ensure that every child is able to benefit from excellent instruction, schools systems can improve outcomes and raise the standards and achievement of every student.
|
