Teacher’s Total Years of Experience vs. How Much Time He Has Taught a Particular Grade

There are two paragraphs that really grabbed our attention on this post. As Barnett Berry puts it, lets get real about teacher experience and its effects on student achievement:

For your delight, this the most significant defense of experienced teachers I ever read (stressed section is ours):

Policy pundits and journalists have few qualms about calling for any seasoned teaching veteran to be put out to pasture. They aren't really interested in whether the teacher is effective, ineffective or "we don't know." These pontificators, single-minded as donkeys, tend to rely on research showing that teacher experience beyond three years does not matter much for standardized test scores. However, their interpretation of the teacher-experience data sets is rather limited, perhaps reflecting more about their ideology than any substantive understanding about teaching and learning in complex school environments.

We should pay attention to 'separated' experience. It's also important we consider the "teacher gropus:"

As we consider and design research, we need to pay attention not only to an individual teacher’s aggregate years of experience but how groups of teachers have used their combined knowledge over time to change the working culture of their team (or department or grade level), share teaching expertise among themselves and with others, and connect more closely with their students and their families.

I've learned that in America, experience is one of the most valuable assets a person can own, but it seems that when we talk about teaching that same over valued experience does not weight in!

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