Teacher Quality, Teaching Quality and School Improvement

School Administrator, August, 2004 by Jerry Horgen

Leslie S. Kaplan and William A. Owings provide an excellent body of research in Teacher Quality, Teaching Quality and School Improvement that reveals a path to better qualified teachers and better student achievement.

The authors document research showing teacher preparation programs have a far greater influence on student achievement than other factors such as class size, overall spending and teacher salaries. To assure high quality in teacher preparation, Kaplan and Owings recommend that schools incorporate testing programs, such as the Praxis II, into their teaching training.

Mentorship programs have reduced the attrition rate of teachers who leave the field within their first five years of teaching from 30 percent to 5 percent in several major school districts, according to the authors. These mentors provide dayto-day support for the mechanics of teaching, moral support in adjusting to the school culture, and collegial dialogue on how to improve student performance. Mentorship programs provide administrators with a significant avenue of opportunity to retain good teachers.

Kaplan and Owings provide examples of successful programs that can be replicated and adjusted to school districts that are also concerned about retaining good teachers.

(Teacher Quality, Teaching Quality, and School Improvement by Leslie S. Kaplan and William A. Owings, Phi Delta Kappa International, Bloomington, Ind., 2003, 72 pp., $12.95 softcover)

Jerry Horgen

Adjunct Professor, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minn.