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California study links student learning to teacher learning

RESULTS - April 1998

Reforms at the state or local level can lead to improved student achievement if they are supported by quality professional development, according to a recent study by two University of Michigan researchers.

In an extensive study in several California school districts, researchers David Cohen and Heather Hill report that students who performed best on a new math assessment had teachers who had high quality professional development.

To make a difference in student learning, the researchers concluded, professional development must:

• Help teachers understand the content they're teaching as well as the content of the standards and assessments that are being used;
• Be linked to the work that students are expected to do; and
• Be continuous.

"When educational improvement is focused on teaching and learning academic content and when curriculum for improving teaching overlaps with curriculum and assessment for students, teaching practice and student performance are likely to improve,'' they said in a recently published synopsis of their work in the CPRE Policy Briefs.

"Policies that do not meet these conditions - like new assessments or curricula that do not offer teachers adequate opportunities to learn or professional development that is not grounded in academic content - are less likely to have constructive effects,'' they said.

"Professional development that is fragmented, not focused on students and does not afford teachers consequential opportunities to learn cannot be expected to be a constructive agent of state or local policy,'' they said.

The research by Cohen and Hill focused on California's introduction of a new mathematics framework and the CLAS assessment (see Page 6 for details). They followed the same schools and teachers in three California districts for four or five years. They surveyed 1,000 California teachers in grades 2nd through 5th. They asked about their opportunities to learn about the reforms, their math teaching practice, how it related to California's math reforms, and how their practice followed or varied from conventional practice. Finally, they compared student performance on the CLAS test with the professional development experiences of their teachers.

What they found was that schools where all teachers learned about the CLAS had higher student test scores than schools where no teachers learned about CLAS.

Merely participating in workshops did not lead to improved student learning, they said. What did make a difference for students was having teachers who used the test as a way to learn and reform their practice.

"Whatever improvements these workshops may bring to California's classrooms, they do not affect what many see as the bottom line of schooling - student performance,'' they said.

Teachers who used the new assessment as an opportunity to review their classroom practices were more likely to change their practices, they said.

"It looks as though many of the teachers who learned from the CLAS did so from participating in state-sponsored scoring sessions for the 1993 CLAS. These lasted a week: teachers both scored the performance items and had opportunities to learn more about the underlying math, how it might be taught, etc.,'' Cohen said.

"Instead of compelling teachers to teach the mathematics to be tested, (having a new assessment) seems to have provided teachers with occasions to observe, think about, and revise mathematics instruction. Some teachers seized the occasion while others ignored it,'' Cohen and Hill said.

Cohen and Hill identified several other findings from their work that have implications for others responsible for planning professional development.

1) Teachers had inconsistent learning opportunities.

"The breadth of these professional development opportunities was not matched by their depth,'' they said.

Most teachers reported spending nominal time in mathematics-related professional development. About half said they had spent a day or less in a math-related activity. About 35 percent reported spending two to six days on such learning; only a very small fraction attended workshops lasting a week or more.

2) Teachers who had opportunities to learn about the new math curriculum more often reported changing their practice.

Cohen and Hill suggest that teachers' learning need to go "one level deeper than mere subject specialty.''

"Providing teachers with even more concrete, topic-specific learning opportunities - in fractions, measurement, or geometry - appears to help change mathematics teaching practices,'' they said.

"Those who learned about student math curriculum were more likely to report such practices as having students discuss different ways to solve particular problems, having them work on extended individual projects, or using problems with multiple solutions,'' they said.

3) The amount of professional development influenced teachers' practice.

"Combining time and content-focus are a potent influence on learning,'' they said.

But just spending a great deal of time in less content-focused workshops did not produce the practices that reformers wanted.

Cohen and Hill concluded that well-planned state efforts to improve instruction can successfully influence not only teaching but also student learning.

"This has important bearing for the professional development system - or non-system. Professional development that is fragmented, not focused on curriculum for students, and does not afford teachers consequential learning opportunities cannot be expected to be a constructive agent of state or local policy. Yet, that seems to be the nature of most professional development in the U.S. today,'' they said.

"Our results challenge those who make policy for and practice professional development: can they design programs, policies, and requirements that focus more closely on improved teaching for improved student learning?''

A more complete look at the Cohen/Hill study is available in the January 1998 issue of the CPRE Policy Briefs, RB-23, a publication of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education. To obtain a copy, write CPRE Publications, Graduate School of Education, Univ. of Pennsylvania, 3440 Market St., Suite 560, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3325 or e-mail cpre@gse.upenn.edu. There is no charge for a single copy.

For more information about CPRE, visit its web page at www.upen.edu/gse/cpre/

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BACKGROUND

In 1985, the California Department of Education issued a new mathematics framework which called for more intellectually ambitious instruction, more engaging math work for students,encouraged teachers to talk more about math in their classes and to help students understand math and not just memorize facts and operations.

Schools were not required to abide by the math framework. But all California schools were required to participate in the state's testing program which was aligned with the framework.

Through a new testing program - the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS) - the state intended to change teaching practice. Those new tests were introduced in 1993.

But, because of a storm of protests, the math CLAS test was administered only in 1993 and 1994. A new California math test is being developed now.