Teacher preparation and student achievement

Authors
Donald Boyd,
Pamela Grossman,
Hamilton Lankford,
Susanna Loeb,
James Wyckoff
Year of publication
2009
Publication
Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis
Volume/Issue
31(4)
Pages
416-440
There are fierce debates over the best way to prepare teachers. Some argue that easing entry into teaching is necessary to attract strong candidates, whereas others argue that investing in high quality teacher preparation is the most promising approach. Most agree, however, that we lack a strong research basis for understanding how to prepare teachers. This article is one of the first to estimate the effects of features of teachers' preparation on teachers' value added to student test score performance. Our results indicate variation across preparation programs in the average effectiveness of the teachers they are supplying to New York City schools. In particular, preparation directly linked to practice appears to benefit teachers in their 1st year.

Suggested Citation

Boyd, D., Grossman, P., Lankford, H., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2009). Teacher preparation and student achievement. Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 31(4), 416-440