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ERIC ED543664: Teachers' Knowledge about Early Reading: Effects on Students' Gains in Reading Achievement PDF

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This article was downloaded by: [Joanne F. Carlisle] On: 29 September 2011, At: 02:35 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uree20 Teachers’ Knowledge About Early Reading: Effects on Students’ Gains in Reading Achievement Joanne F. Carlisle a , Ben Kelcey b , Brian Rowan a & Geoffrey Phelps c a University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA b Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA c Educational Testing Service, Princeton, New Jersey, USA Available online: 28 Sep 2011 To cite this article: Joanne F. Carlisle, Ben Kelcey, Brian Rowan & Geoffrey Phelps (2011): Teachers’ Knowledge About Early Reading: Effects on Students’ Gains in Reading Achievement, Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 4:4, 289-321 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2010.539297 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. JournalofResearchonEducationalEffectiveness,4:289–321,2011 Copyright©Taylor&FrancisGroup,LLC ISSN:1934-5747print/1934-5739online DOI:10.1080/19345747.2010.539297 INTERVENTION,EVALUATION,ANDPOLICYSTUDIES Teachers’ Knowledge About Early Reading: Effects on Students’ Gains in Reading Achievement JoanneF.Carlisle 1 UniversityofMichigan,AnnArbor,Michigan,USA 1 0 2 r BenKelcey e b WayneStateUniversity,Detroit,Michigan,USA m e pt e BrianRowan S 9 UniversityofMichigan,AnnArbor,Michigan,USA 2 5 2:3 GeoffreyPhelps 0 EducationalTestingService,Princeton,NewJersey,USA at ] e sl rli a C Abstract: This study developed a new survey of teachers’ knowledge about early reading and F. examinedtheeffectsofteachers’knowledgeonstudents’readingachievementinGrades1to3in e n alargesampleofMichiganschools.Usingstatisticalmodelsthatcontrolledforteachers’personal n a and professional characteristics, students’ prior reading achievement, and the clustering of high- o [J knowledge teachers in schools and school districts with particular demographic composition, we y b foundthattheeffectsofteachers’knowledgeaboutearlyreadingonstudents’readingachievement ed weresmall.In1stgrade,studentsinclassroomsheadedbyhigherknowledgeteachersperformedbetter d a onyear-endtestsofreadingcomprehensionbutnotwordanalysis.In2ndand3rdgrades,theeffects o nl of teachers’ knowledge on either measure of students’ reading achievement were not statistically w significant.Althoughthestudysuggestsnewformsofstatisticalanalysisthatmightproducebetter o D estimatesoftheeffectsofteachers’knowledgeonstudents’readingachievement,furtherresearchis neededtoimprovetheconceptualandpsychometricpropertiesofmeasuresofteachers’knowledge ofreadingandtoinvestigatetherelationoftheirknowledgeandtheirinstructionalpractices. Keywords: Teachers’knowledge,earlyreading,studentachievement Researchshowsthataftercontrollingfordifferencesinstudents’previouslearningandhome background,studentachievementvarieswidelyfromclassroomtoclassroomatthesame gradelevelwithinaschool(e.g.,Scheerens&Bosker,1997).Mountingevidencesuggests that at least part of this variation in student achievement results from stable “teacher effects,” commonly defined as the fixed or random effects of specific teachers on their students’achievementgainsacrossseveralyearsofobservation(Nye,Konstantopoulos,& AddresscorrespondencetoJoanneF.Carlisle,UniversityofMichigan,SchoolofEducation,610 EastUniversityAvenue,AnnArbor,MI48109-1259,USA.E-mail:[email protected] 290 J.F.Carlisleetal. Hedges,2004;Rivkin,Hanushek,&Kain,2005;Rowan,Correnti,&Miller,2002;Sanders & Horn, 1994). Of current interest to education researchers is the extent to which these teachereffectsonstudentachievementarisebecauseofvariationinteachers’pedagogical andcontentknowledgeinthesubjectareatheyareteaching(e.g.,Hill,Ball,&Schilling, 2008).Thisquestionisofparticularimportancebecauseresearchshowsthatotherindices ofteachers’professionalknowledge(e.g.,degreeattainment,certificationstatus)areonly weakly related to student achievement (e.g., Croninger, Rice, Rathbun, & Nishio, 2003; Wayne&Youngs,2003). Thestudyreportedherecontributestothislineofworkbydiscussinganewmeasure of teachers’ knowledge about early reading and by reporting on an empirical study that used this measure to examine the effects of teachers’ knowledge on students’ reading achievementinabout900first-throughthird-gradeclassroomsinMichigan.Aswediscuss ingreaterdetailnext,thestudywasdesignedtoresolveanumberofuncertaintiesarising 1 from previous research on the effects of teachers’ knowledge on students’ early grades 1 0 2 readingachievement.Asweshallsee,theseuncertaintiesrevolvearoundhowtomeasure r e teachers’ knowledge for teaching early grades reading and how to estimate the effects of b m suchknowledgeonstudents’readingachievementinlightofvariousconfoundingfactors e pt inthematchingofstudentstoteacherswithinandbetweenschools. e S 9 2 5 3 THEPROBLEM 2: 0 at Formorethanadecade,researchershavearguedthattobeeffective,earlygradesreading ] sle teachersneedarelativelyhighlevelofknowledgeabout“thelinguisticfoundations”ofearly rli reading(Moats,2009b).Moats(1994,1999)developedanearlyandinfluentialapproachto a C measuringteachers’knowledgeinthisdomainknownastheInformalSurveyofLinguistic e F. Knowledge.Thissurveyincludeditemsdesignedtomeasureteachers’contentknowledge nn about the relations between the spoken and written aspects of language; about the sound a o structureofwords;andaboutrelatedtopicsingrammar,morphology,andorthography.A J y [ decade after Moats (1994) introduced this measure, many of the items from her original b d survey continue to be used in studies of teachers’ knowledge of early reading—and for e d good reason. As Piasta, Connor, Fishman, and Morrison (2009) noted in justifying their a o use of items from Moats’s survey, “Current theories of reading emphasize the necessity nl w of the alphabetic principle to link phonological, orthographic, and semantic knowledge, o D particularlyinthebeginningstagesofliteracy”(p.225).Thus,theyreasonedthatteachers’ knowledge of the alphabetic principle and of mappings between language and print was essentialforeffectiveearlyreadinginstruction. ResearchershaveuseditemsfromMoats’s(1994)surveytoaddressseveralinterrelated researchquestionsabouttheteachingofearlygradesreading.Somestudieshaveexamined theextenttowhichteachersactuallyknowaboutthelinguisticfoundationsofearlyreading; othershaveinvestigatedwhetherspecificprofessionaldevelopmentprogramscanincrease teachers’ knowledge in this domain; still others have asked whether increasing teachers’ linguisticknowledgeleadstomoreemphasisonexplicitinstructioninphonemicawareness, phonics,orothercode-relatedaspectsofreading;andafewstudieshaveexaminedwhether teachers with greater knowledge in this area have a more positive impact on students’ readingachievementthandoteacherswithlessknowledgeinthisarea. Thefindingsfromthisbodyofresearchaddress(butleaveopen)anumberofimportant questions about the nature of teachers’ knowledge about teaching early grades reading, abouthowtomeasurethisconstruct,andaboutwhetherteachers’knowledgeinthisdomain Teachers’KnowledgeAboutEarlyReading 291 isrelatedtoteachingeffectiveness,asmeasuredbygainsinstudents’readingachievement. Forexample,severalstudieshaveshownthattheaverageteacherofearly-gradesreading lacks strong knowledge about the linguistic foundations of reading (e.g., Bos, Mather, Dickson, Podhajski, & Chard, 2001; McCutchen, Abbott, et al., 2002; Moats, 1994). In addition, a growing body of evidence has shown that teachers can be taught linguistic knowledge through programs of professional development (e.g., Bos, Mather, Narr, & Babur,1999;Foorman&Moats,2004;Garetetal.,2008;McCutchen,Abbott,etal.,2002; Spear-Swerling & Brucker, 2003, 2004). Additional evidence suggests that professional developmentcanaffectteachingpractice,withresearchtendingtoshowthatteacherswho participateinprofessionaldevelopmentaimedatincreasingknowledgeaboutthelinguistic foundations of reading also provide students with more explicit instruction in phonemic awareness,phonics,andothercode-relatedareasofreading(Bosetal.,1999;McCutchen, Abbott,etal.,2002;Garetetal.,2008). 1 Whatislessclearfromresearchistheextenttowhichteachers’knowledgeaboutthe 1 0 2 linguisticfoundationsofreadinghasaneffectonstudents’readingachievementintheearly r e grades.Infact,theaccumulatedevidence,acrossdifferentstudies,suggeststhattheeffects b m on students’ reading achievement of teachers’ knowledge in this area might be limited e pt tocertain domains ofreading performance (e.g.,Moats,2009b). Positiveevidence ofthe e S effects of teachers’ knowledge on students’ reading achievement can be inferred from a 9 2 studybyBosetal.(1999),whichfoundthatstudentsofteacherswhoreceivedprofessional 5 3 developmentaimedatincreasingtheirknowledgeofthelinguisticfoundationsofreading 2: 0 showed greater achievement gains in some of these areas (e.g., phonemic awareness) at than did students whose teachers did not receive this same professional development. ] sle It is important to recognize, however, that this study estimated the effect of teachers’ rli participationinaprofessionaldevelopmentprogramonstudents’readingachievement,not a C theeffectoftheirknowledgeaboutreading.Thesameistrueofotherstudies.Forexample, F. Garet et al. (2008) conducted a large randomized field trial of professional development e n program emphasizing (in part) the linguistic foundations of reading. These researchers n a o foundthatteacherswhoparticipatedintheprogramscoredhigheronatestoftheir“code- J y [ related” knowledge of reading than did teachers who did not participate in the program, b d although the students of participating teachers did not show statistically greater gains in e d reading achievement compared to students of teachers who did not attend the program. a o Thisstudyalsodidnotexaminetheeffectsofteachers’knowledgeaboutreadingontheir nl w students’outcomes. o D Inaddition,studiesoftherelationshipbetweenteachers’knowledgeofthelinguistic foundations of reading and students’ achievement have shown inconsistent results. For example, in contrast to Bos et al. (1999), Spear-Swerling and Brucker (2004) found that studentswhoweretutoredbyteacherswithhigherknowledgeofthelinguisticfoundations ofreadingachievedhigherwordreadingscoresthandidstudentstutoredbyteacherswith lower scores, but this effect did not occur on students’ test scores in the areas of letter- soundcorrespondence,readingofirregularwords,orspelling.Inanotherstudy,McCutchen, Harry,andcolleagues(2002)reportedpositivecorrelationsbetweenmeasuresofteachers’ linguisticknowledgeandkindergarteners’word-readingachievement,buttheseresearchers did not find a relationship between teachers’ linguistic knowledge and first and second graders’ achievement in the domains of vocabulary, reading comprehension, spelling, or writingfluency. Insummary,theresultsofthesevariousstudiespresentaquandary.Researchsuggests thatearly-gradesreadingteachershavelimitedknowledgeofthelinguisticfoundationsof readingandthatprofessionaldevelopmentcanincreaseteachers’knowledgeinthisdomain. 292 J.F.Carlisleetal. The open question, however, is whether increasing teachers’ knowledge in this domain will improve students’ reading achievement. The pattern of uneven (and modest) effects previouslydescribedledFoormanandMoats(2004)tosuggesttheneedforfurtherresearch into the measurement and effects of teachers’ knowledge for early grades reading—an area of research that we also see as important. The study reported here was designed to developanewmeasureofteachers’knowledgeofearly-gradesreadingandtodevelopan empirical approach to estimating the causal effects of teachers’ knowledge on students’ reading achievement using nonexperimental data. In the sections that follow, we explain ourapproachtoinvestigatingtheseissues. APPROACHTOMEASUREMENTISSUES 1 1 Weconcludedfromourreviewofresearchonteachers’knowledgeaboutearly-gradesread- 0 2 ingthatasomewhatdifferentapproachtomeasuringteachers’knowledgewaswarranted. r be As discussed next, this entailed addressing three interrelated problems: (a) the domains m e ofknowledgetobeassessedinmeasuresofteachers’knowledgeofearly-gradesreading, pt (b) the types of knowledge to be assessed within these domains, and (c) the resulting e S 9 psychometricpropertiesofanymeasureswedeveloped. 2 5 3 2: 0 at DomainsandTypesofTeacherKnowledge ] e sl Webeginbydiscussingthedomainsandtypesofknowledgetobeassessedinourstudy. arli Ourreviewoftheliteraturesuggestedthatexistingmeasuresofteachers’knowledgeabout C F. earlyreadinghadtwomainproperties.First,mostreportedmeasuresfocusedonjustone e of several domains of specialized knowledge that teachers might need in order to teach n n early-gradesreadingeffectively,namely,teachers’knowledgeofthelinguisticfoundations a o J ofearlyreading.Inourview,itmakessensetoassumelinguisticknowledgeisanimportant [ y component of teachers’ knowledge for teaching reading in the early grades. However, b d knowledge in this particular domain would seem to be relevant mainly to code-related e d a instruction. There is good reason to focus on teachers’ knowledge beyond this limited o nl domain(Snow,Burns,&Griffin,1998).Forexample,mostbalancedreadingprogramsin w o the early grades recognize the need to build students’ oral language, not only to develop D phonemicawarenessanddecodingskillsbutalsotopromotevocabulary,fluencyinword recognitionandtextprocessing,andreadingcomprehension(Pressleyetal.,2001;Snow, Griffin,&Burns,2005).Forthisreason,wewouldarguethatreadingresearchersneedto expandtheirmeasuresofteachers’knowledgeforreadinginstructionbeyondanexclusive focusonlinguisticfoundations.1 Asecondproblemwithmostcurrentapproachestomeasuringreadingteachers’knowl- edge is the focus on a particular type of knowledge: teachers’ content knowledge, de- finedhereasknowledgeofaparticularacademicbodyofwork—inthiscase,linguistics. 1Notallmeasuresofteachers’knowledgeforteachingearly-gradesreadingreviewedinthisarticle have focused only on the linguistic foundations of reading, although this is true of most of the measuresusedinthepublicationscitedinourliteraturereview.Inparticular,itisworthnotingthat themeasureofteachers’knowledgedevelopedbyGaretetal.(2008)wascarefully(andmoreorless evenly)balancedacrossthefiveareasofreadingdiscussedinSnowetal.(1998).Themeasureused byFoormanandMoats(2004)wasalsoreportedtofocusonallfiveoftheseareas. Teachers’KnowledgeAboutEarlyReading 293 McCutchen, Harry, et al. (2002), for example, described the academic nature of items in Moats’s (1994) original Informal Survey of Linguistic Knowledge when they noted that “aperfectscoreonthe[Moats]surveyisdifficulttoachievewithoutconsiderablelinguis- tic training” (p. 214). An important question for reading research, however, is whether academic knowledge of this sort is the only form of knowledge needed to teach early- gradesreadingeffectively.Tobesure,teachersneedcontentknowledgetoteacheffectively (Shulman,1986),butthepossessionofacademicknowledgedoesnotassurethatteachers willbeeffectiveinteachingtheirassignedsubjects.Inreading,forexample,teachersmight be able answer a number of difficult questions about English phonology correctly and stillnotknowhowtoeffectivelyteachchildrenwhoarehavingrealproblemsgraspingthe conceptofphonemesinwords.AsShulman(1986,1987)pointedoutinhisseminaldiscus- sionsofpedagogicalcontentknowledge,morethancontentknowledgeisneededtoteach effectively.Snowetal.(2005)referredtothisknowledgeas“usable”knowledge,knowl- 1 edgethatis“embeddedinpractice”(p.11).Hill,Rowan,andBall(2005)referredtosuch 1 0 2 knowledge as a “specialized” form of content knowledge—that is, a deep understanding r e ofbothdisciplinaryknowledgeandwaysthatsuchknowledgecanberepresentedtofoster b m studentlearning.Fromthisperspective,wearguethatmeasuresofteachers’knowledgein e pt anyacademicdomainshouldassessnotonlyteachers’academicknowledgebutalsotheir e S understandingofhowthatknowledgemightbeusedeffectivelyinpractice. 9 2 5 3 2: at 0 AnAlternativeApproachtoMeasurement ] e sl Theworkreportedinthisarticlebuildsontwoadditionalinsightsfromresearchconducted arli by others. One comes from prior research showing that the knowledge of early-grades C F. readingteacherscanbemeasuredalongtwoprimarydimensions—knowledgerelevantto e the teaching of word reading and knowledge relevant to the teaching of reading compre- n n hension. In particular, research conducted by Phelps and Schilling (2004) and by Garet a Jo etal.(2008)providedevidencethatknowledgeinthedomainsofwordreadingandread- [ y ingcomprehensiondefinetwomeasurabledomainsofteachers’knowledgeaboutreading. b d Based on this insight, the work reported here aimed at developing a measure of reading e d teachers’ knowledge that included questions focused on both word reading and reading a o nl comprehension.2 w Another key insight comes from efforts to measure teachers’ knowledge in fields of o D researchotherthanreading.Inparticular,thelineofworkonmathematicsteachers’knowl- edgeconductedbyHeatherHillandcolleagues(e.g.,Hill&Ball,2004;Hill,Schilling,& Ball,2004)demonstratestwoimportantpointsthatweattemptedtobuildoninthework reportedhere.Theirworkshowsthatinadditiontomeasuringteachers’academiccontent knowledge,itispossibletomeasureteachers’knowledgeofpedagogyandstudentlearning in specific areas of the school curriculum. Further, it is possible to develop assessment itemsthatsituateteachers’knowledgeforteachingininstructionalcontexts.Thus,inour study, rather than asking teachers how many phonemes are in certain words (as is done inmanystudiesofteachers’readingknowledge),wedevelopeditemsthataskedteachers 2Otherresearchershaveproposedmeasuringadditionalaspectsofteachers’knowledge.Forex- ample,PalincsarandDuke(2004)arguedthatknowledgeoftextsandgenresisessentialforteachers ofreading,andCunningham,Perry,Stanovich,andStanovich(2004)includednotonlyameasureof phonologyandphonicsbutalsoameasureofteachers’knowledgeofchildren’sliterature,although thelatterdidnotaccountforstudents’readingperformance. 294 J.F.Carlisleetal. to determine whether a student’s spelling errors indicate difficulty identifying sounds in words.Itemsofthissortsituateteachers’contentknowledgeininstructionalcontexts. Finally,ourcurrentapproachgrewoutofourpreviousresearchonreadingteachers’ knowledgeandreflectsanevolutioninourmeasurementefforts.Inaninitialstudyofthe connection between reading teachers’ knowledge for teaching and student achievement (Carlisle et al., 2009), we developed a measure to assess teacher’s knowledge of the lin- guistic foundations of reading as disseminated at professional development seminars on Moats’s (2003) Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling that were at- tendedbyteachersinReadingFirstschoolsinMichigan.Thatmeasure,whichwecalled Language and Reading Concepts, included twice as many items focused on phonology, phonics,andgrammarasitdiditemsfocusedonreadingcomprehensionandvocabulary. Moreover, like many teacher assessments in the field of reading, the items in this initial measure assessed academic content knowledge (e.g., “Which of the following words has 1 a prefix?”) without situating that knowledge in instructional contexts. In this study, we 1 0 2 estimatedtheeffectofteachers’knowledgeofreadingonstudents’readingachievement, r e controlling for the sociodemographic characteristics of students in a classroom and for b m severalcharacteristicsofteachers’professionalpreparationforteaching(e.g.,certification e pt status,educationalattainment).Thestudentoutcomesweretheperformancesoffirst,sec- e S ond, and third graders on two subtests of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS): word 9 2 analysisandreadingcomprehension.Theresultsshowednostatisticallysignificanteffects 5 3 ofteachers’knowledgemeasuredinthiswayonstudents’covariateadjustedachievement 2: 0 inwordanalysisorreadingcomprehension. at Ininterpretingtheresultsofthisfirststudy,wehypothesizedthatthelackofstatistically ] sle significanteffectsofourmeasureonstudents’readingachievementmightbeattributable rli (in part) to the approach we had taken to measuring teachers’ knowledge, in particular, a C thefocusinourmeasureonassessingteachers’decontextualized,academiccontentknowl- F. edgeandtheoverrepresentationofitemsassessingteachers’knowledgeofthealphabetic e n code and aspects of teaching word reading. As a result, in a subsequent study, we devel- n a o opedameasureofteachers’knowledgethatdifferedfromthisinitialmeasureinthreeways J y [ (Carlisle et al., 2008). First, we included items designed to situate teachers’ knowledge b d in classroom practices. Second, the new measure had a better balance of items focused e d on word reading and comprehension. Finally, the measure was based not on the contents a o of a particular program of professional development but rather on experts’ judgments of nl w theknowledgethatteachersneededtoteachbeginningreadingeffectively.Usingpropen- o D sity score matching (Rosenbaum & Rubin, 1983) to identify and contrast comparable classrooms and teachers, we estimated the effects of this new measure on classroom-to- classroom variation in students’ reading achievement. The results of this second study indicated the presence of a small, positive effect on students’ ITBS reading achievement scoresinGrades1and2(withstandardizedregressioncoefficientsofb=.05),butnoeffect ofteachers’knowledgeonthismeasureofstudents’readingachievementinGrade3.This result suggested that the measure of teachers’ knowledge that we developed emphasized knowledge likely to have relevance for teaching reading effectively in first and second gradesbutnotinthirdgrade. THECURRENTSTUDY Thepresentstudywasdesignedtoaddresswhatwesawastwoshortcomingsinthestudies that we (and others) have carried out. First, we again revised our measure of teachers’ knowledge for early-grades reading so that items focused less on measuring teachers’ Teachers’KnowledgeAboutEarlyReading 295 academic content knowledge and more on teachers’ use of their content knowledge to make decisions about instruction or to analyze students’ performance on reading/writing tasks. Second, because teachers with extensive knowledge about reading might not be distributedequallyacrossschools,wealsoadjustedthepropensityscoremethodsweused to statistically control for the clustering of high-knowledge teachers in certain schools and to control for the potential influence that schools might have on students’ academic achievement.Wethenusedthisanalyticstrategytoestimatetheeffectofteachers’reading knowledgeonstudents’readingachievement. Thecurrentstudyhastworesearchquestions:Whatisthereliabilityanddimensionality ofthemeasureofteachers’knowledgethatwedeveloped(Teachers’KnowledgeofReading andReadingPractices,orTKRRP)?Towhatextentdoesteachers’knowledgeaboutreading, asdemonstratedonthismeasure,affectstudents’gainsinreadingachievementoveraschool year?Ourfirstquestionfocusedonthepsychometriccharacteristicsofournewlydeveloped 1 testofteachers’knowledge.Wesawthisasacriticalfirststepinourresearch,especially 1 0 2 because so few prior studies examined the psychometric properties of the measures they r e used, a problem that could affect study outcomes. The second step involved developing b m an empirical strategy to estimate the effects of teachers’ knowledge on students’ reading e pt achievement more directly than has been done in experimental studies of professional e S developmentprogramswhileaddressingthecomplexissuesofcausalinferencethatarise 9 2 innonexperimentalstudies. 5 3 With respect to this second problem, several issues are critical. The first is that in 2: 0 Americanschools,studentswhofacethegreatestchallengesinlearningtoread(i.e.,poor at and minority students with lower levels of entry-level achievement) are also taught by ] sle theleastqualifiedteachers(Darling-Hammond,2004).Inthissituation,wecanexpectto rli find that teachers’ knowledge is related to students’ achievement simply because more a C knowledgeable teachers are clustered within schools that serve students who generally F. make larger gains in reading achievement. This clustering of particular types of teachers e n and students in particular types of schools motivated our use of a multilevel approach to n a o propensityscorematching.Thisapproachisdiscussedinmoredetailnext. J y [ Asecondissueconcernshowtoestimatetheeffectofteachers’knowledgeinlightof b d findings that teachers’ knowledge affects their instructional practices in ways that could e d improvestudents’readingachievement(e.g.,Bosetal.,2001).Ourapproachtoestimatinga a o teacherknowledgeeffectinlightofthisendogenousprocessistocarefullymatchteachers nl w on a large number of student, classroom, and school covariates known from previous o D researchtoaffectstudents’readingachievementbutnottomatchteachersintermsoftheir instruction. Afinalissuearisesbecauseouranalyticmethodsrelyonobservational(i.e.,nonexper- imental)data.Inthissituation,itcanalwaysbearguedthatourestimatedeffectofteachers’ knowledgeonstudents’achievementissubjecttoomittedvariablesbias.Forthisreason,we examinedtherobustnessofourcausalinferencesabouttheeffectsofteachers’knowledge onstudents’achievementbyconductingasensitivityanalysis.Thisanalysisaddressedthe question of the extent to which our estimates of the effects of teachers’ knowledge on students’achievementmightbealteredinlightofanyfailuretoincludeparticularkindsof unmeasuredvariablesinourstatisticalmodel. SAMPLE,DATASOURCES,ANDMEASURES The current study examines these issues by studying a sample of teachers who worked in Reading First schools in Michigan during the 2006–2007 school year. Reading First 296 J.F.Carlisleetal. (Part B of No Child Left Behind Act of 2001) was specifically designed to improve the readingachievementofkindergartenthroughthird-gradestudentsinhigh-povertyschools withchronicunderachievementinreading(U.S.DepartmentofEducation,2002). ResearchSample Theparticipantsinthisstudywerevolunteersfromthepopulationofteachersworkingin Michigan’s Reading First schools during the 2006–2007 school year.3 About 72% of the Grade1throughGrade3teachersintheseschoolsvolunteeredtoallowresearcherstouse surveyresultsinresearchstudies.Collectively,the1,101volunteerteacherstaughtin138 1 schoolsandinstructed16,439students.Oftheteacherswhoagreedtoparticipate,297first- 01 grade,275second-grade,and292third-gradeteachershadsufficientstudentachievement 2 r data to be included in the study. Although we were unable to conduct this study with e b the full population of Michigan Reading First teachers, we did have available data from m e both the population of Reading First teachers and the research sample. This allowed us pt e to compare the characteristics of the two groups and determine the extent to which the S 9 volunteer sample differed from the larger population of teachers. On nearly all measures 2 5 we used to assess differences across the groups, the two groups showed no statistically 3 2: significant differences (see Tables 1 & 2). An exception, however, was that the research 0 at samplehadahigheraveragescore(of+.25SD)onourmeasureofteachers’knowledge. ] Table1presentsdemographicinformationonthestudentstaughtbyteachersincludedinthe e rlisl researchsampleandstudentstaughtbyteachersinthelargerpopulation.Table2presents a informationabouttheteachersintheresearchsampleandinthislargerpopulation. C F. e n n a o J y [ SourcesofData b d e d Two types of student achievement data were used in this study: a classroom reading as- a o sessmentthatwasusedasapretestmeasureofstudents’achievementandastandardized nl w achievement test that was used as both a pre- and a posttest measure of achievement. o D We also included measures of students’ sociodemographic characteristics in our statis- tical models. Data on students came from Michigan’s Single Record Student Database (http://www.michigan.gov/cepi). Data on teachers included teacher scores on our mea- sureofteachers’knowledgeanddataonteachers’professionalandpersonalbackground. Thesedatawerecollectedfromasurveyinstrumentcalled“Teacher’sQuest”administered threetimesayeartoReadingFirstteachersinMichigan.Finally,schoolanddistrictdemo- graphicandorganizationaldataweregatheredfromtheMichiganDepartmentofEducation website(http://www.michigan.gov/mde).Thesesourcesofdataaredescribednext. 3ToqualifyforReadingFirstfundinginMichigan,districtshadtomeeteligibilityrequirementsof lowreadingachievement(i.e.,40%ormoreoffourth-gradestudentsscoringbelowtheproficiency cutpointonthestateassessment,MichiganEvaluationofAcademicPerformance,Reading)for2of thepreceding3yearsandlowincome(e.g.,1,000ormorestudentsfromfamiliesbelowthepoverty line). fe of pl s m st Sa 131407731439003801011351077959 Te ch .0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.63.0.09.79.77 wa 3 ear 111 Io s d ade Re an Gr ge, a en s, ulatio .013.012.006.074.012.036.000.420.001.000.6216.051.0912.7908.7750 score op 111 S) P L E B DI de ( 1 pl s 01 am 145212081162415 kill 2 S 110714030065989 S mber 2 earch .0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.38.0.96.167.163 eracy pte de Res Lit 9 Se Gra Early d by [Joanne F. Carlisle] at 02:35 2 andpopulation Grade1 bcResearchSamplePopulation ..010011..011013..004005..071075..012011..040036..000000..039043..001001..001001..23733690..050051..84679704..1498516659..1491416286 ptionofDynamicIndicatorsofBasic=y;ORFOralReadingFluency.=fN8,719.5,488. Downloade earchsample aPopulation .009.012.004.073.011.036.000.042.001.001.2256.051.8456.14958.14872 withtheexceWordFluenc=eN5,231. ntsintheres RFscore proportions=Nonsense=dN8,904. Table1.Characteristicsofstude DisabilityLimitedEnglishproficiencySpecialeducationFreeorreducedlunchHispanicWhiteHawaiianAfricanAmericanAsianAmericanIndianDIBELSfallgrade1/2/3NWF/OMaleAverageage(inmonths)ITBS–ReadingcomprehensionITBS–Wordanalysis Note.CharacteristicsrepresentBasicSkills(ITBS)scores.NWF===abcNNN9,187.5,720. 297

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