| Susan Skipper
George Washington University
A cross-national study of teacher quality, its distribution and effects on math achievement
FINAL REPORT
The purpose of this study was to analyze teacher characteristics such as experience, teaching preparation, and mathematics preparation, to determine if and how these associations vary across a sample of TIMSS 2003 countries, specifically the distribution of teacher quality in relation to students' socio-economic status, and the impact teacher quality has upon mathematics achievement. This study used a non-experimental research design to answer the research questions about the relationship between teacher characteristics, students' socio-economics status and mathematics achievement in a sample of TIMSS 2003 countries.
Factor analysis was used to develop a common construct of teacher quality, which allowed for a comparison of the variance of teacher quality within and across countries. Countries which had mean teacher quality factor score above the average of all countries in the sample were: Australia, New Zealand, Palestine, Romania, and the United States. The country with the highest mean teacher quality factor score is New Zealand, while the Philippines had the lowest one. Thus, there are large differences across countries related to the level of teacher quality, as measured by the teacher quality factor score.
Correlation analysis between the teacher quality factor score and students' socio-economic status (as measured by parental level of education) indicated that teacher quality factor scores were not significantly related to students' socio-economic status in Australia, Botswana, Hong Kong, Jordan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Palestine, Philippines, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Sweden. This implies an equitable distribution of teacher quality in relation to students' socio-economic status. However, the teacher quality factor score was significantly related to students' socio-economic status in Chile, Ghana, and the United States, implying an inequitable distribution of teacher quality.
The factor score measuring teacher quality was also used in a regression equation to determine the amount of variance in student achievement explained by it. The effect of the teacher quality factor score upon mathematics achievement was modest, since it accounted for 3% to 13% of the explained variance within Chile, Jordan, Palestine, Romania, Sweden, and the United States, but was not significant in the other countries in the sample. Thus, the effect of teacher quality upon mathematics achievement was not consistent across countries.
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