Should a master's degree be required for teachers?

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08/06/2024 16:14

Subject: Should a master's degree be required for teachers?

quote

Anonymous

Continued from above:

Here's a slightly more positive view, using further Florida data. They think maybe a master's degree isn't worthless in conjunction with middle school math, though the degree causes a negative impact for MS & HS reading, and do caution that there's further potential for negative effects while the teacher is obtaining the degree, as it takes time and energy away from the classroom. On the other hand, what they do not seem to mention in the text were the results in table 12 showing slight negative impact of master's degree on elementary school math performance and the huge negative impact on HS math performance, which was twice the size of the positive impact seen in MS. This suggests to me that the middle school result isn't actually real.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED509656.pdf

"We consider the impact of advanced degrees in Table 12. Since our model includes
teacher fixed effects, post-baccalaureate degrees earned prior to the period of analysis wash out when we demean the data. Thus our approach measures the impact of changes in the possession of an advanced degree (for a given teacher) during the period of study.20

[Note 20 The estimated coefficient on the advanced-degree variable measures the average productivity differential between
the time before and the time after receipt of the degree. Before the degree is received some knowledge may have already been acquired through coursework already completed, thus biasing the estimated effect toward zero.

However, work toward an advanced degree may take away from time available for class preparation and other teaching-related activities, which would tend to lower productivity before receipt of the degree and upwardly bias the estimated impact of the degree.]

Our results indicate that obtaining an advanced degree during one’s teaching career is positively correlated with teacher productivity only in the case of middle school math. For elementary teachers there is no
correlation between receipt of an advanced degree and performance. For middle school reading teachers and both math and reading high school teachers there is actually a significant negative association between attainment of an advanced degree and measured productivity. This may be because graduate degrees include a combination of pedagogy and content and our other evidence suggests that only the latter has a positive influence on teacher productivity.
Other explanations for the graduate degree results arise from issues of methodology.
Most previous studies suffer from selection bias, as noted earlier, and our solution is to study the effects of graduate degree attainment within teachers using teacher fixed effects. However, this approach imposes the implicit assumption that the receipt of the graduate degree reflects a sudden infusion of new preparation. In reality, the receipt of the degree is the culmination of several years of graduate courses whose influence may already be reflected in the teacher effects, especially for those teachers who take graduate courses over many years before receiving a graduate degree. Another possibility is that teachers load up on courses in the academic year preceding the receipt of the degree and therefore have less time to devote to their students. We found evidence above of such a contemporaneous decline in productivity when we considered the effects of other forms of professional development"

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Anyway, I think it's also worth pointing out that the various 'higher education is worthless at best when it comes to teacher effectiveness' papers should be regarded as an admission against interest. Professors are typically strongly biased towards higher education.