Linda Ribary (pictured above) has been teaching first grade for 17 years. The classroom veteran knows that all children learn in their own way and that to ensure each child’s success, teachers need to take advantage of every instructional tool and technique at their disposal. “We get a variety of kids at Minter Creek Elementary School,” she says. “Some come into first grade reading at a second- or third-grade level, while others come in not knowing their ABCs.”

 

Since earning her M.S. in Education from Walden University in 2003, Ribary is armed with additional strategies and tools to help make literacy a reality for each student. “I wanted specifics on how to help all readers, especially struggling readers,” Ribary says, referring to her expectations of the master’s program. “For example, now I know what to do if they’re having trouble with decoding or comprehension, and I can tell a student’s parents exactly how to help.”

 

Ribary can also tell parents that there’s research to support her teaching strategies. She and her colleagues at the school and district participated in a study that compared the impact of an M.S. in Education from Walden to that of an M.S. in Education from other universities on teacher strategies and the performance of their students. (See the “Measuring the Walden Impact” sidebar below.)

 

Among the 14 elementary schools in the study, Minter Creek Elementary, where Ribary teaches, stood out from the rest because nearly 80 percent of its faculty (14 of 17) was enrolled in Walden’s master’s program at the same time. The teachers split into two cohorts of seven and met for lively discussions each week to review readings and group assignments. With so many teachers in the program, principal Steve Leitz even nicknamed Minter Creek Elementary, in Gig Harbor, Wash., “Walden West.”

 

Before they began the program, many Minter Creek teachers said they had well-defined ways of teaching. Some characterized these as “by the book.” Once they started the program, however, they adopted a new outlook and were more likely to evaluate older approaches.

 

“When I started the program, I had only recently returned to the classroom from my special education program,” says Jan Hein, Class of 2003, a special education teacher who now teaches first grade at Minter Creek. “The program freed me to push the walls out of the box a little more and not limit myself.

 

“I still use some of the assessment tools I learned at Walden,” adds Hein. “I can look at a group of children and say, ‘Oh, this group missed that phonetic rule. I’m going to work with them on that again.’”

 

Fifth-grade teacher Andrea Mitchell, Class of 2003, says the program gave her the tools to critically evaluate the curriculum she currently uses as well as curricula that come across her desk. “I am now more aware of how certain curricula are better for some learners than others,” she says. “I look at them with a clearer eye and ask myself, ‘Who is the curriculum speaking to? Is it touching on all learning styles?’”

 

Mitchell believes her colleagues feel the same way. “As a school, I think we are now more cohesive in assessing the programs we currently use and more comfortable replacing lessons, units, and programs that are not highly effective,” she says.

 

Walden’s alumni at Minter Creek say that the program had one additional, unforeseen benefit: It changed the way they interact as colleagues. “Teachers with opposite teaching philosophies are now more open to sharing with each other about reading instruction, assessment results, or what their students are doing with an activity,” principal Leitz concurs.

 

Leitz says that Walden has helped turn Minter Creek into an “ongoing professional learning community.” He adds, “That’s the lasting impact of the Walden experience.”

 

The Minter Creek teachers also credit Walden’s program with helping them create a common vocabulary for talking about their students. “The concept of a shared vocabulary had been discussed around here for years,” Hein notes, “but Walden helped us accomplish this goal.”

 

The new teaching strategies, school camaraderie, and shared vocabulary are all impressive, but Ribary says the true measure of the Walden program is in her student’s enthusiasm for reading.

 

“My kids are now ‘pumped’ about reading. Even those who were once struggling,” says Ribary. “Now their confidence has just soared.”

 

	Student achievement is the ultimate demonstration of effective teaching, and it is the ultimate goal of Walden’s education programs. In 2002, Walden University contracted with an educational consultant to study the impact of its M.S. in Education program on teacher effectiveness and student achievement.   The yearlong study involved 46 teachers and 805 students at 14 elementary schools in two Washington state school districts. For the study, the teachers were divided into two groups. The Walden group comprised 32 teachers enrolled in Walden’s M.S. in Education program with a specialization in Elementary Reading and Literacy. The control group consisted of 14 teachers who had already earned master’s degrees in education from other institutions. The study measured teachers’ use of best practices and their students’ gains in reading achievement.     All of the teachers who completed Walden’s master’s program indicated that their reading instruction and assessment skills had improved, as did their confidence that they could help every student be a more successful reader.   Teachers in the Walden group also rated their master’s program an average of 8.3 (on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest) for its impact on their classroom practices (compared with the control group’s 6.2 rating of their master’s programs). In addition 90.6 percent of teachers in the Walden group (compared with 50 percent in the control group) reported that they had increased their use of strategies in phonics, fluency, guided reading, vocabulary, and comprehension—areas the National Reading Panel identifies as important to the effective teaching of reading.   As part of the research, students in classes taught by teachers in the Walden and control groups took the Degrees of Reading Power test at the beginning and end of the 2002–2003 school year. Students in both groups made gains, but the Walden group improved significantly more. This was especially evident with first-graders, whose scores in the control group moved from the 36th national percentile to the 65th, while scores in the Walden group improved from the 21st national percentile to the 69th.   Two school years after their teachers earned master’s degrees from Walden, Minter Creek students are continuing to score well on standardized tests. In Washington, all fourth-graders take the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, which measures achievement in core areas like reading. “Ninety percent of Minter’s fourth-grade students exceeded the state standards in reading on the 2005 test,” principal Steve Leitz says.   “These scores rank Minter Creek among the top 5 percent of schools in the state with similar demographics. Those are the highest literacy scores we’ve achieved over the eight years of the test.”           For more information about the study, download     Linking Teacher Learning to Student Success (pdf)

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