Good Teachers
Ed Schools and Teacher Quality [Robert VerBruggen]
I just got back from a Manhattan Institute event on teacher quality. Many of the comments I have mirror those I expressed regarding Charles Murray's Real Education.
I thought Murray was a little too pessimistic about raising kids' test scores, because there is a good deal of evidence that good teachers are capable of doing this (though, thanks to unions and tenure, it's hard to sort out which teachers do this before it's too late). The panelists tended to reaffirm my judgment this morning -
the event's most interesting statistic was that bad teachers might only advance their kids half a grade level in a year, while good ones might cram in a grade level and a half. That's a whole grade level each year.