Opinion: Yes, Teachers Keep Improving with Time

Like many people, when I entered the world of education policy, I encountered a trove of education research that was new to me but that largely tracked with my prior experiences as a teacher. 

Working in high schools, for example, I had never heard of “three-cueing,” or the body of evidence against teaching young readers to use “contextual and syntactic clues” instead of phonics. But this research explained why the 17-year-old student who read “indignant” as “indifferent” continued to struggle when I instructed him to look at the letters in the word again.

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 It also made sense that excessive teacher turnover was harmful and that having a master’s degree in a random subject didn’t necessarily make someone a better teacher. I was glad to learn that researchers cared about these issues and that educational leaders could rely on serious evidence to inform their policies. 

I was also open to being persuaded by the evidence. As an English language arts teacher, I’d repeatedly been told that it didn’t really matter what books students were reading as long as they were learning the right skills. Research demonstrating the crucial role of content knowledge, however, cast my classroom experiences in a new light. I don’t regret introducing my students to engaging young adult novels, but I do wish we had spent more time on “classic” texts. 

But what never sat right with me was the research community’s prevalent view that a teacher’s experience didn’t make much difference after the first few years. Some decades ago, several empirical studies failed to detect significant gains after three to five years of teaching. What emerged from these findings was an oversimplified narrative that teachers’ abilities simply plateau after the initial learning curve. “Once somebody has taught for three years,” Bill Gates declared in 2009, “their teaching quality does not change thereafter.” 

Of course, some teachers stop improving. That’s true of professionals in any field. But the idea that most teachers are as effective after 15 years on the job as they are after three to five is entirely at odds with my experience. 

During my six years as a high school teacher — with a backdrop of six years teaching college undergrads — I felt myself improve in myriad ways. Some of the biggest changes were indeed during the first few years. Early feedback from supervisors helped me foster more substantive discussions and better align my end-of-class assessments to the learning objectives. 

But other things took more time. I developed organizational systems that worked for me. I continued to refine my approach with students, finding that balance between approachable and serious. I got better at anticipating student misconceptions and knowing which explanations would be most likely to land. 

The most experienced teachers whom I observed also did these things — and many more that are tough to reduce to a single sentence. Having been in the classroom longer, they had simply encountered more situations to inform their decision-making in the present. 

Students getting heated arguing in class? Based on what had (and hadn’t) worked before, highly experienced teachers smoothly de-escalated. Revisiting related ideas across course units? Years of familiarity with the curriculum helped them notice patterns, understand student perceptions, and weave together content. Possible red flags around new behaviors or trends? These teachers had longstanding relationships with staff and faculty across the school, equipping them to communicate questions and concerns efficiently and often nipping problems in the bud as a result. 

Reflecting these realities, recent empirical research complicates the longstanding three-to-five-year-plateau narrative. As detailed in a new policy brief from the Learning Policy Institute and my own organization, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, teachers improve most quickly in their first few years, but they continue to improve for up to two decades into their careers. 

This doesn’t mean that every experienced teacher will be better than every new-ish colleague, but rather that teachers tend to improve compared to their own prior performance. All this is especially true when teachers work in collaborative environments (can confirm!) and have consistent teaching assignments (sounds dreamy!). 

So what does that mean in practical terms? 

For administrators and policymakers, the biggest takeaway is that it’s worthwhile to ensure quality mentorships, professional learning and opportunities for collaboration. Where feasible, it makes sense to keep teachers with the same course assignments. Rotating grade levels might give teachers a breadth of knowledge, for example, but they’re going to be better equipped to educate students if they have a depth of course-specific knowledge. 

Perhaps most challenging to address is the unfortunate reality that the highest-need schools tend to have the least-experienced teachers. There’s no silver bullet to address this complex phenomenon, but evidence suggests that improving working conditions, offering significantly higher pay and creating career ladders can each help. 

Schools are complex places, and ultimately, no single study or perspective is adequate to guide policymaking. In the new year, education leaders should use insights from both research and practice to support teacher growth and retention and, in turn, improve student outcomes.