Placed for Success: Which Teachers Benefit from High-Quality Student Teaching Placements?

Abstract

In the present study we consider whether certain pre-service teachers (PSTs) particularly benefit from high-quality student teaching experiences. To conduct these analyses, we connect student teaching and K-12 workforce data for six educator preparation programs (EPPs) and assess whether placement school and cooperating teacher characteristics predict the effectiveness of early-career teachers. Results show that high-quality student teaching placements especially benefit PSTs with lower GPAs and narrow effectiveness gaps between teachers with lower versus higher GPAs. These findings call for closer partnerships between EPPs and school districts and suggest that EPPs may wish to prioritize placements for PSTs with lower GPAs.

Front End to Back End: Teacher Preparation, Workforce Entry, and Attrition

“…Second, despite mounting evidence about the importance of cooperating teachers for future candidate effectiveness (e.g., Bastian et al, 2020; Goldhaber et al, 2020a; Ronfeldt et al, 2018), we find little evidence that characteristics of cooperating teachers (including their value added) are predictive of teacher candidates’ future career paths (either the probability of workforce entry or attrition). These null results are estimated with considerable precision due to the large sample sizes, so we can rule out even relatively modest relationships between cooperating teacher characteristics and workforce entry and retention.…”

“…There is also a growing body of evidence suggesting that the inservice teacher supervising student teaching experiences (referred to as the “cooperating” teacher) influences the inservice outcomes of those candidates who themselves become teachers. Specifically, both the effectiveness (as measured by value added) and instructional performance (as measured by inservice performance evaluations) of cooperating teachers have been found to be associated with the future effectiveness and instructional performance of their teacher candidates who themselves become teachers (Bastian et al, 2020; Goldhaber et al, 2020b; Matsko et al, 2020; Ronfeldt, Brockman, & Campbell, 2018; Ronfeldt, Matsko, et al, 2020). Three recent experimental studies build on this observational work by providing evidence that candidates randomly assigned to “better” student teacher placements (as proxied by cooperating teacher experience and value added and school value added) report better preparedness (Ronfeldt, Goldhaber, et al, 2018; Ronfeldt, Bardelli,et al, 2020) and receive better preservice clinical observation ratings (Goldhaber, Ronfeldt, Matsko et al, 2020) than candidates randomly assigned to “worse” placements.…”

“…Mounting quantitative evidence has buttressed the notion that student teaching experiences influence teachers’ inservice outcomes. Recent findings discussed in the next section suggest that characteristics of the student teaching school, the effectiveness of the cooperating teacher who supervised the student teaching placement, and the alignment between student teaching and early-career teaching experiences are all predictive of both the value added and inservice evaluations of teacher candidates once they enter the workforce (e.g., Bastian et al, 2020; Goldhaber et al, 2020a; Matsko et al, 2020; Ronfeldt, Brockman, & Campbell, 2018; Ronfeldt, Matsko, et al, 2020).…”

Disconnected Development? The Importance of Specific Human Capital in the Transition From Student Teaching to the Classroom

“…This provides some evidence that there is not nonrandom sorting to first job alignment along observed student dimensions, which is perhaps not surprising given prior evidence on the decentralized and informal process through which student teacher placements are made in Washington (St. John et al, 2018). But this of course does not rule out sorting along unobserved dimensions-including teacher evaluation scores, which have been considered in prior work (e.g., Bastian et al, 2020;Matsko et al, 2020) but are not available statewide in Washington-which may affect our results.…”

“…For example, Ronfeldt (2012Ronfeldt ( , 2015 finds that student teachers in schools with less teacher turnover, higher value added, and better teacher collaboration tend to be more effective once they enter the workforce. Bastian et al (2020); ; Matsko et al (2020); Ronfeldt, Brockman, and Campbell (2018); and Ronfeldt et al (2021) also connect the effectiveness of candidates' mentor teachers (i.e., the inservice teachers who supervise their student teaching placements) to the candidate's future feelings of preparedness (Matsko et al, 2020) and effectiveness; candidates who were mentored by teachers with higher evaluation scores (Bastian et al, 2020;Ronfeldt, Brockman, & Campbell, 2018;Ronfeldt et al, 2021) or higher value added (Bastian et al, 2020;Ronfeldt, Brockman, & Campbell, 2018) tend to be more effective according to these same measures once they enter the workforce. While all of these studies are subject to potential omitted-variable bias-for example, these findings could be explained by the nonrandom sorting of candidates to student teaching and first teaching positionstwo recent experimental studies (Ronfeldt et al, 2020;Ronfeldt, Goldhaber, et al, 2018) provide preliminary evidence that candidates randomly assigned to "better" student teacher placements according to these measures report better selfperceived preparedness than candidates randomly assigned to "worse" placements.…”