Teachers are the major instructional resource in Alabama’s public schools, measured in terms either of employee numbers or dollars expended, yet until recently very little effort has been expended on finding ways of enabling teachers to improve professionally within the school environment.   In the three years of its existence, the Governor’s Task Force on Teacher Quality has focused on this key issue, seeking ways to foster and support good teaching.   

A major research study sponsored by the Task Force followed all novice teachers hired in the 1998-99 school year, looking at their evaluation scores and turnover for the first three years of their teaching careers.  The results showed that too many teachers leave the public schools after one or two years, and that those who leave often are deficient in the skills necessary for success in the teaching profession.  Those in the study who departed after one year had markedly lower ratings in classroom management than their colleagues who remained in teaching, and those who left after two years were less able to use assessment data to gauge and improve student learning.  The Task Force also has developed pilot mentoring programs for new teachers, sponsored creation of a self-assessment instrument to enhance professional learning and sharing among the school faculty, and looked at ways to enhance the evaluation process as a tool for teacher improvement. 

 

The Teamwork Strategy for Improving Teacher Quality

and Student Achievement

 

One way to characterize the improvement strategy on which the Task Force has worked is to say that it is focused on increasing the ability of the school faculty to work together as a team toward improving the achievement of all students.  While it is not unusual for a school to operate as a set of individual classrooms in which teachers carry out their professional duties more or less in isolation from one another, common sense suggests that a cohesive faculty working together as a team has the potential to be much more successful than a number of independent teachers working alone.  When a faculty works together as a team, its potential rises because individual teachers are enabled to share what they know and can do, to learn from the knowledge and skills of others, and to study common issues related to student performance.  Properly led and professionally advised, a faculty that harnesses the energies and talents of its teacher-members to improve instructional practices should be far more capable than a faculty that does not make full use of these assets.  To take the examples mentioned earlier, a cohesive faculty team is much better able to carry out an effective mentoring program to ensure that new teachers develop effective classroom management techniques, and to pinpoint performance issues from analysis of student assessment data.

Faculty teamwork of this type cannot occur unless there is mutual trust among faculty members.  It requires an environment in which teachers are open to change that will benefit student learning, and in which administrators allow teachers to try new approaches and learn from their mistakes.  It requires scheduling that allows time for faculty interaction, job-embedded professional development that takes advantage of the time available, and a reward structure that recognizes the schoolwide nature of contributions to student learning.

While the quality of teamwork itself is an intangible attribute of a school faculty, and therefore difficult to measure, there are measurable conditions that favor the development of teamwork among a school faculty.

 

Conditions that Favor Teamwork

 

            True teamwork is not very likely among a large group of total strangers.  It is much more likely among faculty members who have worked with one another personally for a sufficient time to develop mutual trust and professional respect.  In other words, there are likely to be limits to the amount of turnover and faculty size that are compatible with the development of teamwork among faculty members.  All other things being equal, a stable faculty should have an advantage over a faculty characterized by high turnover; the same kind of advantage should accrue to a faculty group small enough to allow meaningful personal interaction; and a faculty group that is both stable and small should be particularly advantaged.  These, and perhaps other, conditions favoring the development of faculty teamwork are measurable. 

Even though programs to promote faculty teamwork in a systematic way are not yet widespread, it is reasonable to hypothesize that schools with low faculty turnover and small size are more likely to have a high level of teamwork among teachers, and as a result they should be more successful in raising student performance to levels that meet or exceed statewide norms on standardized tests.  We have looked at these relationships among Alabama public schools with students in grades 3 through 8. 

To measure faculty turnover and school size, we have focused on the following data:

 

            -- The percent of teachers who were teaching in the same school in the prior year.  Studies of teacher turnover often use a terminal definition of turnover -- whether a teacher leaves or remains employed in the public schools of a particular state.  This definition is useful for certain kinds of analyses, but in terms of school performance it is much more meaningful to measure site-specific turnover -- whether a teacher leaves or remains employed in a particular public school.  If the school faculty is a team that can be improved by shared knowledge and experience, then it is irrelevant whether a departing teacher goes to another school in the same system, to another system, or elsewhere; the point is that this teacher will not be a part of the same faculty team in the future.  Thus, the percent of teachers who were teaching in the same school in the prior year is a minimal measure of the teamwork potential present within the faculty.

            Using the Local Education Agency Personnel System (LEAPS) database, which contains information on every teacher in the Alabama public schools in a given year, we developed a measure of site-specific turnover for every school with students in grades 3 through 8, counting the faculty in 2001 and those who were present in the school during 2000.  The LEAPS database tracks teachers in every instructional period, and some teachers work in multiple schools.  We counted each teacher in the school where he or she was first encountered in the analysis, and did not distinguish between full- and part-time teachers because of the complications that would have been involved in trying to invent a full-time-equivalent definition.  Thus, all teachers present in the school were counted equally in creating totals.    

            Table 1 shows the distribution of 1,054 Alabama public schools by the percent of 2001 faculty present in the same school during 2000.  The schools included in the study were those that had students in one or more of the grade levels from 3 to 8 and had Stanford Achievement Test data available for the relevant grade levels in that year.  As the table shows, 85.4% of the faculty members in the average school studied had been in the same school during the prior year.  The 1,054 schools were differentiated further by separating them into five groups based on standard deviation units.  The highest group, Group 1, included 136 schools that were higher than one standard deviation above the average for all schools in the study; the percent of returning teachers in this group averaged 94.6%.  The lowest group, Group 5, included 130 schools that were more than one standard deviation below the average; the percent of returning teachers in this group averaged only 76.1%.

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            In Group 5, about one of every four teachers in 2001 was new to the school, while in Group 1 only one of every twenty teachers was new.  Obviously, the highest group was in the best position to enjoy the benefits of faculty teamwork, and vice versa.  If the ability of a faculty to work together is important to student performance, this situational advantage should be associated with higher student test results. 

 

            -- The number of teachers arriving in the past five years as a percent of the current faculty number.  Comparing the number of teachers joining the school across a series of years with the current size of the faculty provides a longer-term measure of faculty stability.  We have looked at the number of teachers arriving in the school during 1997-2001 as a percent of the faculty size in 2001.  Since even new teachers may not stay long, and since all faculty members are new when a school is started, this measure can exceed 100%.  On the other hand, this fraction should be low in a school with a cohesive faculty team, where new teachers are being integrated into a faculty that is cohesive and supportive.  In theory, a low fraction on this measure should lead to improved student performance.

Table 2 shows that the number of teachers arriving during the past five years was, on average, 80.4% of the current faculty size in the 1,054 schools included in the study.  When these schools were grouped according to standard deviation units, Group 1 (the best-situated) included 112 schools in which the average number of arrivals was only 46.7% of the current faculty size, while Group 5 (the worst-situated) included 162 schools in which the average number of arrivals was 114.0% of the current faculty size.  Thus, the long-term turnover was more than twice as great among Group 5 schools as among Group 1 schools.

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            The two charts on the following page show a school with high turnover (Clayton Elementary School in Barbour County) and a school with low turnover (Faine Elementary School in the City of Dothan).  In each chart, the bars provide a picture of the number of teachers present in the school each year from 1996 through 2001.  The blue segment in each bar tracks the teachers present in 1996 who remain in succeeding years.  Beginning in 1997, the bar shows the number of teachers added each year and tracks those who remain in succeeding years.  The result is a chart that graphically portrays the impact of teacher turnover during the period from 1996 through 2001. Click here to view the data for your school or school system.

            It is clear from comparing the two charts that teacher turnover has a substantial impact on Clayton Elementary, and that Faine Elementary has a substantial advantage in terms of the stability of its faculty.  For example, teachers present in Faine School since 1996 made up two-thirds of that school’s 2001 faculty, but only one-third of the Clayton faculty in 2001 had been present in that school during 1996.  Clayton’s 2001 faculty, in fact, included 9 new teachers as well as 9 teachers present since 1996, and the prior two years also had seen the arrival of large numbers of new teachers.  Obviously, assimilation of new teachers into the faculty team is a much more demanding task at Clayton than it is at Faine.  These charts vividly picture the turnover variations present in Alabama’s public schools.  It seems certain that differences in faculty stability this large affect the ability of schools to succeed in providing high-quality instruction to their students.

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- The size of the school.  Personal interaction among faculty is limited by group size, which means that very large schools have a disadvantage in creating teamwork.  This is a disadvantage that may be overcome by creating structures within a large school, but doing so requires a higher level of coordination and leadership than is necessary in smaller schools.  School size can be measured either by the number of students or the number of faculty; since the faculty measures available are not based on full-time-equivalents, we have used the number of students enrolled.  (A check of the data available showed little difference between this measure and one based on unadjusted faculty numbers.)

            Table 3 shows that the average school size in the study was 510 students.  The distribution by standard deviation units revealed a range from 206 students in Group 1, the best-situated group, to 952 students in Group 5, the worst-situated group.  In theory, this variation should be related to test-score performance in the schools.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            -- An index based on the three variables.  Some schools are included in Group 1, the best-situated group, for all three of the variables listed above; others are included in Group 5 for all three variables.  If each of these variables is an important and independent indicator of teamwork potential, then any school’s situation on all three measures should be a more powerful indicator of performance than its position on any one or two of them.  To measure the impact of all three variables together, we created an index in the following way:

            1.  Each school received 4 points for inclusion in Group 1 on any of the three measures.  Inclusion in Group 1 on two measures thus earned 8 points, and inclusion in Group 1 on three measures earned 12 points, the highest possible score on the index.    

2.  Each school received 3 points for inclusion in Group 2 on any of the three measures, 2 points for inclusion in Group 3, and 1 point for inclusion in Group 4; inclusion in Group 5 earned no points.

Table 4 shows the distribution of schools in the study according to the index thus created.  Because the index is not continuous, but rather has only a small number of possible values, we have not divided the schools by standard deviation units in this table, but rather by equal segments of index values.  The schools are evenly distributed, with an average index value of 6.4, and with 139 schools in the top group and 157 in the bottom group. 

The expectation, of course, is that the index will be related to student performance.  If these foundational measures of teamwork potential are valid indicators, then schools with the highest index scores should exhibit the highest levels of student performance on average, and vice versa. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At this point, it is important to focus on what these variables measure, which is the potential for teamwork.  The Alabama Reading Initiative is Alabama’s first professional development program that attempts to promote teamwork among the school faculty in a systematic way.  It is highly successful and well regarded across the nation, but it has not yet achieved either statewide coverage or the support necessary to create full implementation even in the schools that are participating.  Following in its footsteps is the Professional Development Self-Assessment of the Alabama Best Practices Center, an effort supported by the Task Force to help school faculties assess their teamwork practices and improve on them.  This program too shows great promise, and is achieving recognition beyond Alabama; but it is in its infancy, having been tried in fewer than 50 schools thus far.  Since no program to promote teamwork among faculty in the schools has yet been fully implemented statewide, it is very unlikely that all schools, or even most schools, in any group actually practice the kind of teamwork that will maximize student performance.  Ironically, this is what makes measures of teamwork potential into valuable predictors:  the odds of success are with those who have favorable situations.  Those who have unfavorable situations suffer the poor performance that goes along with their status. 

If there is a relationship between the variables described above and student test scores in Alabama’s public schools, the implication is that student performance throughout the state would be improved by efforts that reduce faculty turnover and deal with the disadvantages of large school size.  The most cost-effective methods for achieving these results are to invest in the kinds of professional development efforts that would promote faculty teamwork, such as the Alabama Reading Initiative and the Professional Development Self-Assessment.  These and related efforts focused on increasing faculty teamwork provide the surest route to improving the working environment for teachers and increasing their professional effectiveness, which in turn will reduce teacher turnover and enhance student performance.

 

The Measure of Student Performance

 

            Alabama public school students between grades 3 and 8 took the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) in 2001, and the State Department of Education published the composite average score for each grade in every school, reflecting overall performance on the reading, math, language, and science portions of the test.  The SAT is a norm-referenced test that compares the performance of Alabama students against a national sample; scores are published as national percentile ranks varying from 0 to 99, with a score of 50 representing the “national average.”  These data provide the basis for a comparison of performance among 1,054 Alabama public schools with published scores for students in grades 3 through 8.

Direct comparison of these percentile-rank scores would not be appropriate for this study.  It is well known that student performance on standardized tests is heavily influenced by socioeconomic factors that reflect the educational disadvantages of some students.  These factors include such conditions as lack of parental education, family instability, and neighborhood environment.  Studies of Alabama’s public schools have shown that the percentage of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunches (FRL) explains upwards of three-fourths of the variance in SAT scores at the school system level.  At the grade level within a particular school, the relationship is more volatile but still explains about half the variance in SAT scores.

To neutralize the impact of these socioeconomic conditions on test score results, we have created an expected score for every grade level using linear least-squares analysis, where the independent variable is the percent of students in the school eligible for FRL and the dependent variable is the SAT score for that grade level.  The least-squares analysis for each grade level produces a trend line representing the best estimate of an expected score for a school at any given percentage of FRL eligibility.  This expected score is higher for schools with small FRL percentages and lower for schools with large FRL percentages.  It can be compared to the actual score for that grade level in a particular school, allowing the identification of schools performing at or above expectation.  (A more detailed explanation, with graphs for every grade level and performance comparisons for all schools in the state, can be found at “Performance Comparisons for Alabama Schools, 2001.”

            Since we are interested in the performance of the entire school, we have created a dependent variable for this study by simply calculating the percentage of grade levels in the school at or above the expected SAT score in 2001.  For example, assume an elementary school with test scores in grades 3, 4, and 5.  If all three grades earned SAT scores that were at or above expectation, the school would be deemed to be at 100% for purposes of this study; if only grade 3 was at or above expectation, the school would be at 33%; and so on.  Because the expected score rises as FRL percentage declines, an elementary school in Mountain Brook (0% FRL eligibility) has to achieve a national percentile rank of around 75 in all grades to receive this 100% score, while a school in Perry County (about 95% FRL eligibility) has to achieve a national percentile rank of around 40 in all grades.  Although the raw scores in these two cases are dramatically different, they represent equal levels of accomplishment in terms of actual performance in Alabama’s public schools in 2001. 

            Table 5 shows the distribution of the 1,054 schools in the study according to this performance measure.  Because schools were given equal credit for attaining and exceeding the expected performance level, there is a positive bias in the distribution, with 49.0% of schools at or above expectation in two-thirds or more of their grade levels and only 38.9% at or above expectation in a third or less of their grade levels. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Results of the Analysis

 

            When Alabama schools are analyzed in terms of faculty turnover, school size, and expected student performance, the results confirm our theoretical perspective.  Schools with lower percentages of new teachers, lower turnover during the past 5 years, and smaller size achieve greater success in elevating student performance to expected levels or above.

             Chart 1 graphs the relationship between the percentage of current teachers who were employed in the same school in the prior year and school success on the SAT in 2001.  Group 5, with the lowest percentage of returning faculty, met or exceeded student performance expectations in only 40% of grade levels, on average.  Group 1, with the highest percentage of returning faculty, met or exceeded student performance expectations in 64% of grade levels, on average.  The intermediate groups of schools showed results that fell between these extremes.  These results, to reiterate, are not dependent on socioeconomic differences among the schools, since the expected score for any school was developed by holding socioeconomic factors constant.  Another way to state this point is to say that when socioeconomic factors are taken into account, increased faculty stability from year to year enables a school to achieve a substantially higher success rate in student performance on the SAT.  This advantage is not realized in every school with a stable faculty, nor does every school with greater turnover achieve poor test results.  Nevertheless, the success rate for Group 5 is 24 points or 60% higher than that for Group 1 (24 / 40 = 60%). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chart 2 shows how school success on the SAT is related to the 5-year arrival rate of teachers in the school.  Group 5, with the highest rate of arriving teachers, met or exceeded student performance expectations in only 44% of grade levels, on average.  Group 1, with the lowest rate of faculty arrivals, met or exceeded student performance expectations in 69% of grade levels.  The 25-point gap between these two groups indicates an SAT success-rate advantage comparable to the one found in Chart 1 (25 / 44 = 57%).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

            Chart 3 shows the relationship between school size and success on the SAT.  Here the relationship, while conforming to our expectation, is smaller (16 points between the extreme groups, a success-rate advantage of 36% (16 / 44 = 36%)).  Furthermore, there appears to be little effect except among the largest two groups of schools; from about 500 students on downward, school success is relatively constant.  Still, the falloff in student performance among very large schools appears substantial. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             

           

 

 

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chart 4 combines the three variables described above into one index number for each school, with values that range from 0 to 12 (as explained earlier).  The chart shows the SAT success rate for schools with index scores of 0-3, 4-6, 7-9, and 10-12.  Schools with index scores of 10-12 succeeded, on average, with 69% of their grade-level groups; schools with index scores of 0-3 succeeded, on average, with only 38% of their grade-level groups.  The gap between these two sets of schools is 31 points, meaning that the average school with an index score of 10-12 has been able to succeed with its grade-level groups at a rate about 82% higher than the average school with an index score of 0-3 (that is, 31 / 38 = 82%).  Again, the relationship does not hold for every school, but these results show consistent explanatory power for student performance that is independent of socioeconomic status.

 

Conclusions

 

The results of this analysis confirm the wisdom of the faculty teamwork strategy pursued by the Governor’s Task Force on Teacher Quality.  They demonstrate that there is a relationship between faculty turnover, school size, and school success on a standardized test of student performance.  There is a simple, straightforward explanation for these relationships:  Lower faculty turnover and smaller school size increase the capability of the school faculty to work together, and greater faculty teamwork leads to the creation of a learning community among teachers that in turn leads to successful student performance.  The resulting working environment is also the best possible attraction for teachers to remain in the school as well as to grow professionally. 

If these premises are sound, it follows that the path that leads to lower faculty turnover also leads to greater teacher professional growth and higher student performance.  Investing in the kinds of professional development efforts that would promote faculty teamwork, such as the Alabama Reading Initiative and the Professional Development Self-Assessment, promises to achieve all of these results.  These and related efforts focused on increasing faculty teamwork provide what is almost certainly the surest route to improving the working environment for teachers and increasing their professional effectiveness, which in turn will reduce teacher turnover and enhance student performance.  An added attraction is that these are relatively inexpensive investments, compared with other approaches to educational improvement.  Alabama has become a leader in developing this teamwork strategy, and has a chance to leapfrog other states by pursuing it aggressively.  This assumes, of course, that Alabamians can make the strategy pay off by using faculty teamwork to increase student performance.

The first step in realizing the benefits of a teamwork strategy is for all schools and school systems to recognize where they stand in terms of faculty stability, and to take steps that are intended to improve their standing.  To assist in this process, the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama intends to place on its web site graphs for all Alabama public schools similar to those shown on page 5 of this report, and to update these graphs annually.  We hope that this tool for self-analysis and comparison will encourage school faculties to engage in the process of teamwork development focused on improved student learning.  

Finally, it is important for research on this subject to continue.  Other explanations for the relationships shown in this paper are possible, though they seem less plausible at this point, and educational researchers should continue to pursue the associations among faculty turnover, school size, and student performance and to explore the foundations on which they are based.