Article Summary: Does Professor Quality Matter by Scott Carrell and James West - Essay Example

The moot question then remains how the teacher evaluation measures can impact the desired outcomes of student learning. Various studies have been conducted from time to time to find the relationship between student achievements at the secondary and elementary levels vis. a vis. teacher contribution and the evidence available in this respect are somewhat mixed. The clarity is much lesser when the question comes of measuring student outcomes at the postsecondary level concerning the quality of instruction provided by the teachers.

The reason is that standardized tests are not used at the postsecondary level and students select their professors and their course work so they are not assessed at the common platform to judge the real outcome. Thus, measuring teacher quality has been an issue at the postsecondary level. To address the issue, researchers resort to a unique panel data set from the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA). The relevant data are gathered through the random assignment of students to professors across a wide variety of standardized courses.

Researchers select USAFA for their evaluation study because it is a fully accredited undergraduate institute and offers a large number of courses including basic science, humanities, engineering, and social sciences. Selection is done based on academic and sporting potential. Students get a 100 percent scholarship and a decent sum to cover their other expenses. After passing out they need to serve a 5-year term in the US Air Force. Students who study at USAFA are good at math and rank high at the national level on aptitude tests

They enter USAFA through a competitive process and the selected students testify a fair geographic and ethnic representation. Students are supposed to take 30 courses in all that include math, science, and engineering disciplines. The study involved collecting relevant data from 421 faculty members who taught 10,534 students across 2,820-course sections for the 10-year periods. For the study, an introductory calculus course was selected and then those follow-on courses were selected where the introductory calculus was a prerequisite.

Researchers employed an empirical model called the professor value-added model to study the effects. The primary focus of the study was to find how introductory professors impact student achievement but the data did allow us to find how follow-on course teachers impacted student achievement in the Calculus I and II courses. The results so found indicate that there are noticeable differences in student achievement. The key findings indicate that the professors who achieved good scores on contemporaneous student achievement are left behind in achieving similar performances in the advanced classes.

Surprisingly, students who are tutored by less qualified teachers perform better in the contemporaneous course but not so well or rather worse in the follow-on course. The finding certainly raises several questions on how teacher quality should be measured. The study concludes that introductory calculus professors do create an impact on student achievement whether they are measured in contemporaneous courses or on their follow-on curriculum. This simply means that the very basis of student evaluation as a teaching quality in many US colleges and universities is erroneous.

The results also explain that the more experienced teacher tend to broaden the curriculum to enhance the understanding of students in the subject but unfortunately, less experienced teachers prefer to stick to the set curriculum being tested in the introductory course. However, the fact remains that tadeeper understanding leads to better achievements in the follow-on courses. Moreover, when the introductory teacher limits the teaching effort just to cover up the test then students also tend to put less effort into the follow-on curriculum.

As such, this restricts students ifromexploiting their full potential because they are molded in a certain way; further, they also expect that they will be provided with the same teaching pattern in the follow-on curriculum too. The pertinent question that arises according to the researchers is how far the practice of rewarding professors based on student achievement in contemporaneous courses is encouraging and worthy of credit. This is important because many US colleges and institutions measure teaching quality to promote and ascertain the tenure of their teachers purely obased onstudent evaluation.