How much does school choice matter? Probably less than you think, as Levitt has previously argued. Now, in an analysis of seven years of test-score data from 6,000 Los Angeles teachers, the L.A. Times, assisted by a senior Rand Corp. economist, has found teacher effectiveness to be three times more influential than school attendance on student performance. What’s more, the Times reports, “the best teachers were not concentrated in schools in the most affluent neighborhoods, nor were the weakest instructors bunched in poor areas. … The quality of instruction typically varied far more within a school than between schools.” More data from the study is here. (HT: Amanda Ripley) [%comments]
Better Schools, or Better Teachers?
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Anyone looking at the effect of good teachers on student attendance?
And you have to wonder if Harvard’s ranking (for example) is because of their “reputation”….which is due to their reputation….
Lots of things are like this. Good students go to the schools where good students go. It’s the brand.
Frankly, I still vote for bulldozing the whole thing and starting again. The USA ranks 22nd in Science, 27th in Math, and 33rd in Reading.
What I cannot understand for the life of me is why parents accept that, in a particular grade or subject, their child will receive an education that is not as good as that of the children in the next classroom.
Why can’t we identify the best teachers in the world for every grade/subject, place them on well-produced DVDs, add images, bullet points, music, etc., so that EVERY student gets the advantage of the best teachers?
The other teachers could serve to supplement the DVDs, administer tests, etc.
A child absent from school could access the course on-line (or at a later time in the library, perhaps) and stay up to date.
A brilliant child could perhaps complete the course in a shorter period of time, going on to future lessons.
The slower child could listen to the lesson again, until he/she understood it.
Lessons could be interactive.
As time goes on, it would be relatively easy to edit the DVDs so that updated material could be inserted, or problem areas could be addressed more vigorously.
Yes, I know that will replace many teachers in the classroom setting, but if we then used those teachers for security, discipline, etc., maybe our schools would do even better.
If nothing else, we could do this for just a core group of courses that are essential to further learning, etc.
ALSO, at the college level, why not create a SPECIFIC set of CORE courses–the required courses for every freshman/sophomore–and have them taught via DVD/online?
This would reduce the number of professors needed, since the students would have to study during off-hours, would ensure a more better and more standard result (since everyone is getting the same high-caliber teaching), and it could even reduce students expenses due to charging less for these courses.
Why should a freshman at one college get only a “decent” history teacher, while a freshman at another college gets a brilliant one? License the lectures of the best teachers and allow all of our students to obtain superior educations–at least in these core courses.
Just about any school has at least one incredible teacher, and at least one really terrible one–a great variance at that one school. Of course that difference is going to be a bigger difference than between the average teacher at school A and the average teacher at school B.
It’s like saying the difference in height between the tallest woman and the shortest woman is greater than the difference between the average man and the average woman, and concluding therefore that talking about height differences between men and women is meaningless.
My experience with going to “good” schools my entire life is that it is more about the schools, and specifically the intellect of the students that they attract, than about the teachers. The combination of the increase in competition due to smarter peers, the exposure to a higher level of intellect throughout every conversation throughout your day, and the cooperative nature of study sessions combine in some way that I qualitatively felt made much more of an impact on me than my teachers, who were for the most part mediocre at best.
Everyone likes the idea of paying teachers more if they have more experience or more education or a credential — but those factors are all statistically insignificant when it comes to teacher effectiveness.
No one, I presume, would like the idea of giving teachers added pay for being female or Asian — but the data show that these two attributes are associated with greater effectiveness.
Of course the best course of action is to find some way of determining who the best teachers are and to given them a pay differential — no matter what their education, gender, experience, race, etc.
Education has many players, and all have to be proactive if the system is to excel. Teachers, students, parents and ancillary staff all have a role to play. BUT teachers tend to get all the blame…Much of the time the children were not well prepared at home and in prior education years and began lagging years ago.
Kids are lazy and don’t want to do homework, with their sports interest, skate boarding, video gaming and air guitar band. We have done a poor job at parenting; too permissive and failing to make a child accountable for performance. Our education system needs to be stricter and more demanding of students. The Laid-Back California Approach has failed.
Old ineffective teachers need to be purged(FIRED). Lazy students need to be failed. Everyone has to be made responsible and accountable, right down to spelling homework assignments. Military discipline has a role as required.
School choice is merely a drop in the bucket when discussing student performance. This particular droplet gains greater emphasis due to the nature of the educational system. A system that narrows the selection of schools to choose from also limits the selection of teachers. The real question is whether it is wise to restrict students to the schools within their residential boundary or are we better off allowing the invisible hand balance the scale?