The Effects of Cognitive Ability on Teacher Effectiveness
Given the large effects of teachers on student achievement there is considerable interest from researchers and policymakers to identify teacher credentials that predict effectiveness. One often-studied characteristic are indicators of teachers’ cognitive ability, such as SAT/ACT scores, selectivity of the undergraduate institution attended, or licensure exam scores. Here, longitudinal data show that when measured by IQ scores or campus selectivity the cognitive ability of the teacher workforce has declined over the
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last several decades, largely in response to greater labor market opportunities for women (Bacolod, 2007; Corcoran, 2007).
However, research evinces that greater levels of cognitive ability exert small, but significant effects on student achievement. Findings from the Coleman Report indicated that teacher verbal ability was significantly associated with student achievement, and despite issues with data aggregation to the school level, early meta-analyses returned positive effects for teacher cognitive ability (Coleman, Campbell, Hobson, McPartland, Mood, Weinfeld, et al., 1966; Greenwald, Hedges, & Laine, 1996; Wayne & Youngs, 2003). More recent analyses with teachers directly linked to students have shown that teachers: (1) graduating from highly competitive undergraduate institutions generate more student test score growth than peers from less competitive universities (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2006); (2) scoring higher on all exams or on licensure-specific content and pedagogical exams (e.g. Praxis tests) are more effective than lower scoring peers— this effect is stronger at the tails of the test score distribution (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2007, 2010; Goldhaber, 2007); and (3) rating higher in a latent cognitive ability index produce larger student achievement gains than peers with a lower index score (Rockoff, Jacob, Kane, & Staiger, 2011). Furthermore, analyses of academically competitive teacher selection programs in North Carolina and New York indicate that (1) program graduates are more effective than other novice teachers due to selection on cognitive ability (Henry, Bastian, & Smith, 2012) and (2) individuals who receive higher admissions rankings by the teacher selection program generate larger student achievement gains than peers who receive lower rankings (Rockoff & Speroni, 2011).
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Overall, the research evidence suggests that recruiting and selecting/hiring prospective teachers with higher levels of cognitive ability may modestly improve the effectiveness of the teacher workforce. The small portion of variance in teacher effectiveness explained by such credentials, however, helps motivate a greater focus on non-cognitive skills and traits.
What are Non-Cognitive Characteristics?
Broadly defined, non-cognitive characteristics are those academically and occupationally relevant skills and traits that, while not specifically intellectual or analytical in nature, influence behavior and facilitate achievement (Rosen, Glennie, Dalton, Leonnon, & Bozick, 2010). Examples of such attributes include perseverance, motivation, and self-control. Importantly, the term non-cognitive should not imply a complete absence of cognitive ability, as cognition is present in almost all aspects of human behavior. Rather, cognition can be conceptualized across a spectrum, with certain skills/abilities more readily identified as cognitive and other traits more readily identified as non-cognitive. Despite this lack of a sharp contrast, cognitive ability can be conceptually and empirically separated from non-cognitive traits (Borghans, Duckworth, Heckman, and ter Weel, 2008).
The research disciplines most focused on non-cognitive characteristics are psychology and economics. In psychology, non-cognitive attributes are often referred to as personality traits, and most prominent among these are the “Big Five.” Specifically, the Big Five personality traits, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, are the five factors that consistently emerge from personality assessments (Digman, 1990). These factors represent personality at the
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highest level, with each factor summarizing a host of distinct, specific personality characteristics. For instance, within the conscientiousness factor are personality facets such as order, dutifulness, competence, and self-discipline. Issues with the Big Five include: (1) the exclusion of certain traits, especially individual motivation and (2) controversy concerning to which factor certain personality facets belong (Borghans, Duckworth, Heckman, & ter Weel, 2008). While both psychologists and economists study the relationship between non-cognitive characteristics and later outcomes of interest—academic and occupational—studies in economics lack the unifying structure of the Big Five. Instead, economists tend to examine a single or small group of traits, focusing on effects and their implications for policy—for example, Heckman has focused on the Perry Preschool Program in studies assessing the cost-effectiveness of policymakers investing in programs that develop the non-cognitive characteristics of children (Heckman, 2006). Overall, the present study is more aligned with this economics tradition, asking how these eight teacher traits influence teacher quality and what the findings mean for research and policy.
The Effects of Non-Cognitive Skills and Traits
Beyond cognitive ability, researchers in economics and psychology have long been interested in the relationships between outcomes of interest (academic achievement, labor market success) and individuals’ non-cognitive skills and traits. Overall, a rich body of research evidence clearly supports both the significance and malleability of these characteristics. Below, I highlight the results of a few noteworthy studies.
Regarding the effects of non-cognitive skills and traits on students’ academic achievement, research finds that: (1) the cognitive ability of low-IQ students is not fixed,
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but rather, increases significantly with motivation—the introduction of a performance incentive (candy) (Clingman & Fowler, 1976); (2) measures of self-control, indicated by whether a four year-old child is able to delay gratification and not consume a marshmallow, significantly predict higher SAT scores and enrollment at higher ranked colleges (Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989); and (3) measures of grittiness and perseverance explain success in National Spelling Bee competitions (Duckworth, Kirby, Tsukayama, Berstein, & Ericsson, 2011). Non-cognitive characteristics continue to influence outcomes of interest for adults, as research also shows that: (1) non-cognitive measures, not cognitive ability, explain the wage differentials between high school graduates and GED holders (Heckman & Rubinstein, 2001); (2) in the workplace, conscientiousness, one of the Big Five personality traits, consistently predicts job proficiency for five different occupational groups (Barrick & Mount, 1991); and (3) measures of childhood self-control significantly predict physical health, substance dependence, personal finances, and criminal offense outcomes at age 32 (Moffitt et al., 2011). Finally, research evidence indicates that these non-cognitive traits are not fixed, but rather, can respond to intervention as: (1) children coached in self-control strategies were better able to delay gratification in the marshmallow experiment (by 7-18 minutes depending on strategy) (Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989) and (2) high-school students participating in mental contrasting activities—concentrating on both a positive outcome and steps needed to overcome the obstacles in the way—more diligently prepared for the SAT exam (Duckworth, Grant, Loew, Oettingen, & Gollwitzer, 2011).
Turning to teaching, efforts to measure the non-cognitive skills and traits of prospective teachers is not new. For example, many school districts employ scripted
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questionnaires or interview protocols, such as the Haberman Star Teacher Pre-Screener or the Teacher Perceiver Interview, to identify prospective teachers’ non-cognitive traits and make hiring decisions. Likewise, many teacher preparation programs measure and cultivate the dispositions of pre-service teachers. A primary reason that districts and teacher education programs engage in such activities is the belief that these traits directly influence the quality of teacher practices, and then indirectly, impact student academic outcomes. For instance: (1) higher levels of perseverance may cause teachers to work harder and try multiple instructional strategies to make an academic concept clear to a struggling student or (2) greater motivational ability may enable teachers to first invest their students in the academic goals of the class and then push students to exert the effort required to reach those goals.
With the increasing prevalence of student achievement data, a nascent research agenda is now able to investigate whether non-cognitive skills and traits produce the hypothesized effects on teachers’ effectiveness. Here, initial studies have returned promising findings. For example, Rockoff and colleagues find that a one standard deviation increase in a latent non-cognitive construct—extraversion, conscientiousness, personal efficacy, general efficacy, and the Haberman Star Index total score—led to a significant improvement of 0.033 standard deviations in student math achievement and of 0.272 standard deviations in teachers’ subjective evaluations (Rockoff, Jacob, Kane, & Staiger, 2011). In work with TFA corps members, Duckworth et al. show that a one standard deviation increase in measures of teachers’ grittiness and life satisfaction are associated with a twenty-three and thirty-six percent increased probability, respectively, of students making significant academic gains (Duckworth, Quinn, & Seligman, 2009).
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While this work represents an important advance, the results should be interpreted cautiously, as the measure of academic gains used did not come from state or district criterion-referenced exams, but rather, was teacher reported. In research focused on New York City TFA corps members, Dobbie finds that a one standard deviation increase in corps members’ leadership and perseverance predict achievement gains in math of 0.054 and 0.040 standard deviations, respectively (Dobbie, 2011). In comparison to Dobbie’s analysis, an advantage of the present study is a more comprehensive examination of teacher quality—both teacher value-added and evaluation ratings—and a more heterogeneous sample of school environments—schools in both urban and rural communities across North Carolina.
Overall, evidence suggests that non-cognitive characteristics may help explain what makes teachers effective, and longer-term, facilitate results-aligned selection/hiring practices for school districts and preparation programs. The present study contributes to this nascent research agenda by examining the effects of non-cognitive skills and traits on two teacher quality outcomes—value-added effectiveness and evaluation ratings of teacher competencies. Below, I provide background information regarding Teach For America and describe the eight pre-teaching measures that are the focus of this work.