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October 5, 2009

An article co-written by Zach Williams ’09 and Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education Dr. Debra Lee has been accepted for publication. “Teacher Education and Student Achievement in High Poverty Schools: What Makes a Difference?” will be published in the fall issue of the Teacher Education Journal of South Carolina.

Williams, who graduated in May, researched the topic as part of his honors graduate requirements. He became interested when he and Lee discussed the effects that poverty had on the students he taught while student teaching in Clinton his senior year.

“I wanted to know how I could better address students whom mainstream society has given up on,” Williams said. “To do this, I needed to research teachers who have successfully combated this high poverty situation.”

Williams and Lee focused on the No Child Left Behind legislation, which emphasizes student learning outcomes, according to Lee.

“Test score data indicate a large gap between students in high poverty schools and low poverty schools,” Lee said. “Yet there are some high poverty schools where student learning shows greater gains. The question becomes, ‘What’s happening at those schools, and can it be replicated?’”

Since teacher quality has also been shown to be one of the most significant variables affecting student achievement, Williams was interested in finding out if the characteristics identified by No Child Left Behind for “highly qualified” teachers was evidenced in the high poverty schools that showed greater gains in student learning.

“I found out that the terms under which No child Left Behind identifies ‘highly qualified’ teachers does not seem to really matter when addressing measurable characteristics of effective teachers,” Williams said.

“When comparing schools with high and low poverty, the teacher make-up was almost identical, which means that these qualifiers are not what truly count when looking for effective teachers,” he added. “They don't hurt to have, but also don't make that much of a difference when looked at through this research.”

Williams develops and runs an afterschool and summer camp program in Horry County. In his junior year at PC, Williams, along with classmate Jessie King ’09, researched the effects of parent involvement in children’s development. They presented at a National Association for the Education of Young Children conference in the fall of 2008.