A mere 23% of U.S. first-grade classrooms can be described as “high overall quality” based on a study of teacher observations in over 800 classrooms.
Robert Pianta, dean of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, led a study of data collected from direct observations of first-grade classrooms in nearly 700 private and public schools in 32 states. Based upon those observations, classrooms were divided into four major categories. Teachers who worked to both create a positive social climate and strong instructional support–23 percent of classrooms–were given the score of “high overall quality.” Twenty-eight percent of classrooms were labeled “mediocre.” Seventeen percent of the classrooms were “low overall quality.” The largest category, “positive emotional climate, low academic demand,” accounted for 31% of all first-grade classrooms in the study. The study found class size and teacher credentials had little influence on classroom quality.
“We found that quality, particularly instructional features of teacher behavior, was rather low across the sample,” said Pianta, whose system for evaluating student-teacher interactions was prominently featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s much-discussed recent piece about teacher quality in the New Yorker.
“Most American first-grade classrooms are pretty happy places to be,” A news release about the study notes. “But that doesn’t mean that all of the students are getting the academic content they need.”
Sadly, this is not a surprise to me. Primary grade teachers are typically very nice and great with kids. Unfortunately, they often are much more concerned with students’ social and emotional development than their intellectual development. Too many can be not so charitably described as glorified babysitters.
I’d be curious to know if the researchers found any different in quality between private and government-run schools.
I can’t remember the last time I heard an elementary/middle school teacher, or prospective teacher, include transmission of knowledge among his/her reasons for that career choice. Sigh
The only thing I can contribute to this is the words of my students. We had an important speaker who followed my suggestion and asked the 80 plus high schools students to each tell us something about elementary school. Every student who went to elementary schools on the more affluent side of the districts had great things to say about elementary school. At least half of the kids from the poorer side had horror stories and anecdotes about how badly they hated elementary school.
Its clear to me that we should have followed a course along the lines of Pianta’s approach rather than NCLB.
I’d be interested to find out if this suggests that first-grade teachers are of lower “quality” than other teachers, or even other elementary teachers. Or whether Pianta’s tool would find low quality among teachers across the board.
Is there something about teachers that select elementary education that make them more likely to be less effective? Is it a result of inadequate training? Is the tool measuring the right things?
Without further detail I’m left feeling rather helpless. What action we take other than feel bad that first-grade teachers generally aren’t very good?
The ETS did a study where they looked at the academic qualifications of prospective teachers taking the PRAXIS exams between 2002-2005. Those taking the elementary ed exam had SAT scores significantly lower than those taking single-subject exams in math, science, English, and social studies. Given that the median salary is higher for secondary school teachers ($49,420) than elementary ones ($47,330), I’d say that part of the problem is may be the higher salaries are attracting the smarter ones of the teacher candidates to teach at the secondary rather than elementary level. There are I’m sure other reasons such as the greater intellectual stimulation of teaching more challenging material. But that can’t be easily changed, unlike pay scales.
CW–are the median salaries actually indicating a different pay scale, or a difference in longevity? Not certain how it goes in my state, but I thought that elementary and secondary were the same. I have seen the study that you talk about, however. It’s embarrassing, not only are the el ed (and phys ed and special ed) teachers below the single subject teachers, they are also below the mean of college students in general.
In the town where I live, the elementary & middle schools are part of one school district while the high school is part of a different regionalized district. Each district independently negotiates with its respective teachers’ union so there winds up being two different pay scales. For the elementary/middle district, the median salary is $62,536, and the range (lowest to highest possible) is $43,458 to $81,727. For the high school district, the median is $74,785, and the range is $46,987 to $89,275. So the secondary teachers start out higher and top out higher as well as having a higher median than the elementary teachers.
I don’t think that’s a particularly unusual situation.
My observations suggest that there’s a chicken and egg situation here. Not-very-academic college students choose el ed because they like kids, like arts and crafts and like the social and emotional side of the spectrum, as opposed to the academic. The ed school focus is on process, social/emotional development, creativity and all of the romantic beliefs (Rousseau, Dewey etc), with the preferred teacher model as “the guide on the side”, not the “sage on the stage.” Academic content is not emphasized and direct instruction doesn’t even seem to be part of the discussion. The student and the program reinforce the least academic aspects of each other.
Arts and crafts? I don’t think many non-elementary teachers realize that our elementary schools are losing fine arts programs, as well as other “non-academic” activities like recess. In other elementary schools, not just mine, arts and crafts have to be directly tied to academic standards to be permitted in the classroom. It is sad to hear that so many elementary schools were found to be inadequate, and something should be done about that. Please don’t suggest that the “smarter ones” are being drawn to high schools because of the pay. This high school valedictorian and magna cum laude college graduate chose to teach first grade. My students are given material that is above their developmental level, expected to have it mastered, and to have it done in a timely manner because of our demanding standards… all this with no recess. They do a great job at it, too!
Oh, and I teach in the hood… Title 1, 96% free and reduced lunch, not 1 white kid in the school.