Study of the Impact of Instructional Coaches on Middle School Teachers and Student Achievement

Authors: Tom Corcoran, Henry May, Marian Robinson

The MSP instructional coaches, or staff developers, were asked to do challenging work during a difficult period when there was heavy accountability pressure on the schools and teachers were focused on preparation for the state tests. The El Paso MSP, in cooperation with the three large districts and the Education Service Center-Region19, made a heavy investment in professional development for the coaches.  Professional development for the coaches focused on strategies and tools that were closely related to their work, and most of them appreciated the training they received and made use of it.  Even though their work situations differed in important ways and these differences combined with philosophical and style differences resulted in quite different approaches to the work, most of the coaches made use of the core set of skills, tools, and procedures that were provided through the El Paso MSP support.

What are the lessons learned from the El Paso experience with coaches?  First, almost all of the staff developers praised those aspects of the professional development that were closely related to their work. But they were critical of things perceived as too theoretical or that seemed to be redundant or offer mere practice of skills they already possessed. The coaches' desire for more opportunity to learn from one another and to address common problems reflects their recognition of the problematic nature of their work and their desire to learn from their collective experience. Second, district and school contexts were strong influences on the work of coaches, either facilitating or inhibiting their work.  With regard to district contexts, among the factors that influenced coaches effectiveness were the level of alignment between district initiatives and the MSP goals; the ways in which coaches' work was structured; and, the nature and intensity of extra district duties.  At the school level, context factors included the extent to which the principal shaped and authorized the work of coaches; the culture of the school; the extent to which teacher/coach interaction was facilitated; and the characteristics of individual teachers. Third, a variety of strategies utilized by the coaches were linked to improved student performance.  The work of science coaches with individual teachers, including classroom observation, co-lesson planning, and co-teaching, were all positively related to improved student performance. Work with groups of teachers including content training and classroom observation/debriefing in science was also positively related to higher student performance. Significant positive relationships with math performance were associated with providing feedback on a lesson (for 2005-06 only), reviewing the cognitive demand of a lesson (both years), and arranging for a teacher to observe another class (2006-07 only).

The analysis of the impact of the coaches' work on student performance produced noteworthy findings.  As was mentioned previously, students taught by a science teacher, who worked intensively with a coach, performed significantly better on the TAKS than their peers in other classrooms.  These results are especially encouraging given that teachers who were targeted for intensive staff development may have been the teachers who were less experienced or less effective to begin with.  Another interesting finding is related to teachers' pedagogical content knowledge.   Results reveal that MSP work with teachers produced significant growth in their pedagogical content knowledge.  That growth, however, was not related to improvements in mathematics student achievement on TAKS. 

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