Study suggests teacher certification is ineffective
The teacher accreditations and certifications set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act are ineffective at increasing teacher efficacy, according to a new paper from the Brookings Institution co-authored by Dartmouth economics professor Douglas Staiger. Some schools also use accreditations as a structure for pay increases, but teachers with these qualifications are no better at increasing test scores than those who have not been certified. Staiger, who has worked on similar education policy-related questions before, used data from the Los Angeles school district to determine that students with accredited teachers did not receive higher test scores than students whose teachers lacked accreditation. "The answer to all of those comparisons," Staiger said, "is that certification is essentially unrelated to their effectiveness in the classroom." Staiger has also compared scores from students of certified teachers to scores of students whose teachers are in the Teach For America program, which places recent college graduates as teachers in low-income schools without going through a certification process.
