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The review of related literature will focus on the need for effective teachers, what

qualities make a teacher effective, and finally, how effective teachers conduct lesson

planning. The chapter will include major reviews of the following key topics related to

the qualities of effective teachers and, more specifically, will examine aspects of lesson

planning that have been noted as used by effective teachers.

Importance of Teacher Effectiveness

The report “A Nation at Risk” by the National Commission on Excellence in

Education (1983) highlighted the need for accountability within the educational system

and started the nation’s movement to high standards. The report ushered in a new era in

education, the Age of Accountability (Stronge et al., 2007). In 2001 the No Child Left

Behind Act was signed into law, and established requirements for the standards and

assessment systems of states (United States Department of Education, 2001). As a result

of the accountability movement, the past three decades of reform have focused on the

development of standards, assessments to measure student achievement, and school

reporting to explain results (Stronge et al., 2007). Due to the focus on standards and

assessment practices, it has become apparent that many policy makers and funding

agencies, both public and private, believe that test scores are directly related to teaching

quality (Ding & Sherman, 2006; Kupermintz, 2003; Newton, Darling-Hammond, Haertel,

& Thomas, 2010). The public has also come to believe that in order to improve

education the quality of teachers must be upgraded (Johnson, 1997). Therefore, a lot of

pressure has been put on university Schools o f Education and school districts to ensure

teachers are effective.

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The research on teaching, and the urgency to upgrade teacher quality, first began

as a reaction to the reports by Coleman (1966) and Jencks (1972) which were interpreted

to say that neither schools nor teachers made a difference in student achievement (Porter

& Brophy, 1988). As a result of these reports, efforts were made to try and “teacher

proof’ the curriculums (Porter & Brophy, 1988, p. 74). The failed attempts at “teacher

proofing” the curriculum led to the discovery that in order to achieve true gains in

education, the system would need to work through teachers instead of trying to work

around them (Porter & Brophy, 1988). Nuthall (2005) said that research should first

“find out what kind of knowledge would be most useful for informing teachers thinking

and guiding their practice” (p. 900). By discovering this information, it is possible to

work through teachers in a meaningful manner to promote student achievement. This

sentiment also acknowledges what research has shown on the impact of teachers on

student achievement.

Variety of Teacher Effectiveness

As Darling-Hammond and Youngs (2002) stated there is a wide degree of variety

when it comes to effectiveness level in teachers. To elaborate on that statement, Nye,

Konstantopoulos, and Hedges (2004) found in their study that there are substantial

differences among teachers’ abilities to produce achievement gains in students.

Likewise, Hanushek, Kain, O’Brien, and Rivkin (2005) found variation in teacher

effectiveness, most of which was within a school as opposed to between schools. It is

clear that some teachers are more effective than others. The differences in effectiveness,

however, can have a startling impact on students. Determining a teacher’s effectiveness

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can be a difficult proposition with the school culture being a nested system and the

extraordinarily large number of variables that impact students on a daily basis.

Impact of an Effective Teacher

Since the inception of accountability and testing in the world of education began,

efforts to evaluate teachers based on student achievement have become a primary focus

(Kuppermintz, 2003). This move has resulted in the growth of educational outcome

indicators (Meyer, 1996). While most schools and districts have yet to develop and

implement viable performance indicators (Meyer, 1996), value-added models have begun

to be used. Of the various value-added models used in the literature, a common

characteristic is that they measure the school performance or the school inputs using a

statistical regression model which includes many variables as possible in order to isolate

the contribution of schools from other sources of student achievement (Meyer, 1996).

One of the most talked about value added models is the Tennessee Value Added

Assessment System (TVAAS). A study using TVAAS, which uses a “statistical mixed

model methodology to enable multivariate, longitudinal analysis of student achievement

data” (Wright, Horn & Sanders, 1997, p 58), found that the most important factor

affecting student learning is the teacher. Specifically, the study by Wright et. al (1997)

examined the 1994-1995 Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) scores

across 5 subjects for students in grades 3-5. TCAP tests are given to students in grades 2-

8 each spring. Therefore student academic gain can be seen from year to year (Wright, et

al., 2007). This study conducted 30 analyses, 15 subject-grade analyses were done in two

different sets of school systems in Tennessee. Of the two sets o f school systems, one
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consisted of 30 East Tennessee school systems and the other had 24 Middle Tennessee

school systems. The results from the analysis showed that the teacher and the

achievement level for the student had the biggest impact on student achievement. In fact,

the teacher effect was highly significant in every analysis and has a “larger effect-size

than any other factor in 20 of 30 analyses” (p 61). The results of this large scale analysis

show that teachers make a difference.

Using the TVAAS, Sanders, Wright, and Langeuin (2008) conducted a study of

the impact of teacher effectiveness. They found that highly effective teachers are capable

of producing nearly three times the student achievement gains of low-performing

teachers. They also found that five above average teachers can overcome the deficit

reported for low socio-economic status. The study which looked at 5,300 math teachers

from Tennessee for grades 4-8 during the school year 2002-2003 through 2006-2007 used

a 2-way ANOVA to find that the differences among classrooms are primarily attributable

to the individual teacher. The study also found a significant positive effect in teacher

effectiveness when teachers moved from high poverty to lower poverty schools. This

result demonstrates that an effective teacher can be effective in multiple settings.

Another value-added study by Hanushek, Kain, O’Brien, and Rivkin in 2005

looked at the impact of teachers on student achievement. Using data from the Texas

Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) from the 1995-1996 school year to the 2000-

2001 school year, on students in grades 4-8 in Texas, they found that if a student is

placed with a teacher who is in the 85th percentile in their skill then students can be

expected to achieve 0.22 standard deviations above the achievement gains of those placed
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with a median teacher. In order to try and circumvent problems with reliability and

validity, the researchers matched teachers and students using data from Texas Schools

Micropanel Data (TSMD). These data show that having an effective teacher has a

positive impact on student achievement. The results also show the possibility of an

achievement gap between students who consistently have effective teachers and those

who consistently do not have effective teachers.

Hattie (2003) provided a pie chart (Figure 1) which shows the variance attributed

to various influences on student achievement. This chart mimics what was found by

Wright et al. (1997) in that the student and the teacher have the biggest influence over

student achievement. The chart is a compilation of many studies on the subject of student

achievement variance using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM).

Figure 1- The major sources of variance in a student’s achievement. Adapted from

Hattie 2003