I typed about 4 rational responses before I gave up. Experience is important in any field, and there are many more professions where the more experienced staff are paid higher than new staff.

A correlation between good teaching and test results? No brain buster there, but test results aren't as concrete pieces of data as we like to pretend they are.

To say we all even out after 4 years? Ha, that's laughable. There's a large difference in teaching strategies, methods of interacting with parents, lesson planning, lesson delivering, and most importantly *patience* (and more) that comes well after 4 years. I've worked with several 30+ year teachers who have the same amount of degrees that I do, but are much better teachers than my 4 years. Sounds like more teacher defamation to me, but most of these "institutes" for education strike me that way so call me biased.

Side note: Anyone who thinks we should be making less money needs to take their Stanford PhD elsewhere.

Brandon, I think that, because you're a teacher, you saw darker things in the posting than may be there.

My reading of this posting is that not all teachers level out, but that there is a higher statistical probability that they will. Seeing all or none is this is not seeing what it really is saying.

Merit pay is coming. There is no doubt of that. What I read here is that teachers need continued support in their field in order to be grow professionally and be better teachers every year. Please don't tell me that there aren't a preponderance of City Schools teachers that stop trying to get better after a few years. Urban school burnout is higher than any other area in the country. if you're burned out because you don't have support, you won't get better; you'll stay where you are or you'll get worse. I've seen too many get worse because once they're burned out, they begin disliking their jobs, then they begin disliking their students. But again, this isn't everyone. 1 is too many though.

What it says is that teachers need support. They need professional development. They need to be challenged. They need to be students in order to be better teachers. They need to walk the walk of lifelong learning. And, schools of education should take the lead on this and offer professional development in more effective way.

And, I agree. Professional development is not always very helpful in improving teaching. Too often it's not at all about teaching.

In some cases test scores indicate that a teacher was able to teach test-taking skills and test-like question analysis to students - NOT whether thier students are independent, creative, and analytical thinkers and problem-solvers.

As a teacher in a non-tested subject, I wonder how my success will be judged. Or will it. Do non-tested subjects matter?

I have taught for 6 years now, and definitely don't feel like I've hit a 'plateau'. I am constantly trying to better my teaching and my effectiveness. Reflecting on my practice. I know that I can always get better. I remember when I was training to be a teacher in my Masters program (we were student teaching at the time) and my professor told my cohort this....and I've never forgot it:

" Resign yourself to the fact that you will be a crappy teacher for at least for first 2 or 3 years. You'll get it all down eventually. It's a neverending process of mastery that takes time".

Wow - quite a different philosophy then Ms.Hannaway

Someone told me early in my teaching career that teachers don't really become effective until year five and I think it took me at least five years to really start being effective in the classroom. I've been teaching in the city for 10+ years now and I think teaching, probably like any profession, is what you make of it. I continue to read professionally, take classes and dialogue about my work. I definitely think I am a better teacher this year than I was last year. I am a far better teacher than I was in year two. At the same time, I think teachers, especially those who are good managers of behavior, can make the choice to coast.

I have heard that at many schools, because there is such high teacher turnover, that PD becomes reduced to the same presentations year after year so that people who stick around longer don't have the opportunity to grow.

Finally, I think test scores are only one small measure of a teacher's effectiveness in the classroom. For me, preparing kids for the test is something we do so we can get back to the business of real learning.

Brandon, I don't think the study was saying that teachers even out after 4 years, I think it was saying that teachers reach whatever level they individually reach around 4 years and then stay there for man years after. For some teachers, like the 30+ year veterans you've seen, that may be at a high level. For other teachers, it may be at a low level.

But I think this does touch on an excellent point: so much energy goes into helping new teachers succeed, but once they can tread water on their own, they're often ignored by the professional development world. I would guess that some of this is because teacher turnover rates are so high that we always have many new teachers in the system who need PD to have any hope of sticking around.

However, these 4-6 year "veterans" are at a crucial point in their careers. We are young, energetic folks who need to learn that we can do better than just survive day to day. Teachers at this point need to see that the rest of their careers will entail more than just using the same lesson plans for the next 25 years and the professional development opportunities need to be in place to teach these teachers how to go beyond the basic. I think this is why a lot of teachers start feeling discouraged at this point in their careers...every PD day seems wasted going over the same thing from the past 4 years and no one is helping teachers who don't "need" help push themselves to improve. Well, not no one...nice job, Linda Eberhart and the Math Works crew!

"Resign yourself" to accepting crappy teachers if they have less than four years on? Well that's fine from the perspective of the teacher - you'll get better and assuming 24 years in the career you'll be a non-crappy teacher 87.5% of the time. But what about from an individual kid's perspective? I don't have any hard data, but I'd guess that through the years we've been in BCPSS about half of my kid's teachers have had less than four years on. Am I (and are they) supposed to accept that half of their teachers are "crappy"? Luckily, I think this pronouncement was, well crap, because some (not all) of the best teachers my kids have had were new teachers. It would be wonderful if teaching was more of a stable profession and that you could count on having mainly seasoned teachers (and ones who care about their careers and their kids), but that's not reality. If new teachers need a lot of support to make those first years productive, please give it to them. It's not that I don't care about the more senior teachers, it's just that I care more about my kids' having most (if not all) of their teacher be successful.

A parent - I definitely wasn't implying that all new teachers are 'crappy' by any means!!! Some of the most amazing teachers at my school are less then 3 years into the profession. I was simply putting the quote out there to show that at an academic level there are many perspectives about the effectiveness of any teacher at any level of experience.

But, I do believe that stating that most teachers 'plateau' after 4 years, is, well, also 'crap'.

I, too, believe that professional development opportunities are truely what 'levels out' after about 4 years. If we want to create stable seasoned teachers, we need to give the new ones more support LATER as well as SOONER.

@ArtTeacherLady-
Good point and I agree. I've just heard some amount of griping on this blog about how the new teachers get laptops etc. I'm all for working to retain more seasoned teachers with better PD or raises or whatever. It just bugs me when it's phrased as an "us vs. them" type of issue. Because from the outside, you're all teachers that my kids are going to be very dependant on, and I really want all of you to be supported and successful.

Good point, a parent. Not that you needed my affirmation, but I really appreciate that perspective.