[Vision2020] The Value of Teachers

Thu Jan 12 10:40:29 PST 2012

So... looking at the outcome of a person (income, pregnancy, college
attendance), and then tracing it back to early education... 

I didn't see the mention of the criteria for  "good" teacher and "bad"
teacher?  (Unless it was in the link to the paper itself, which
admittedly I didn't read).

Interesting questions of "cause and effect"... was the determination of
a "good/bad teacher" made from the outcome data itself?  Or was the
establishment of  "good/bad teacher" criteria made before studying the
outcome data?

Jay

From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com
[mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com] On Behalf Of Art Deco
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2012 8:29 AM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] The Value of Teachers

<http://www.nytimes.com/> The New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/>
<http://www.nytimes.com/> 

*  

Reprints
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/opinion/kristof-the-value-of-teachers
.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212&pagewanted=print> 

________________________________

January 11, 2012

The Value of Teachers

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists
/nicholasdkristof/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 

Suppose your child is about to enter the fourth grade and has been
assigned to an excellent teacher. Then the teacher decides to quit. What
should you do? 

The correct answer? Panic! 

Well, not exactly. But a landmark new research paper
<http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/value_added.html>  underscores
that the difference between a strong teacher and a weak teacher lasts a
lifetime. Having a good fourth-grade teacher makes a student 1.25
percent more likely to go to college, the research suggests, and 1.25
percent less likely to get pregnant as a teenager. Each of the students
will go on as an adult to earn, on average, $25,000 more over a lifetime
- or about $700,000 in gains for an average size class - all
attributable to that ace teacher back in the fourth grade. That's right:
A great teacher is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to each year's
students, just in the extra income they will earn. 

The study, by economists at Harvard and Columbia universities, finds
that if a great teacher is leaving, parents should hold bake sales or
pass the hat around in hopes of collectively offering the teacher as
much as a $100,000 bonus to stay for an extra year. Sure, that's
implausible  - but their children would gain a benefit that far exceeds
even that sum. 

Conversely, a very poor teacher has the same effect as a pupil missing
40 percent of the school year. We don't allow that kind of truancy, so
it's not clear why we should put up with such poor teaching. In fact,
the study shows that parents should pay a bad teacher $100,000 to retire
(assuming the replacement is of average quality) because a weak teacher
holds children back so much. 

Our faltering education system may be the most important long-term
threat to America's economy and national well-being, so it's frustrating
that the presidential campaign is mostly ignoring the issue. Candidates
are bloviating about all kinds of imaginary or exaggerated threats,
while ignoring the most crucial one. 

Mitt Romney
<http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/candidates/mitt-romney?inli
ne=nyt-per> , who after his victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday seems
increasingly likely to be the Republican nominee, refers to education
only in passing on his Web site. The topic receives no substantive
discussion in his 160-page "Believe in America" economic plan
<http://mittromney.com/blogs/mitts-view/2011/09/believe-america-mitt-rom
neys-plan-jobs-and-economic-growth> . 

This latest study should elevate the issue on the national agenda,
because it not only underscores the importance of education but also
illuminates how we might improve schools. 

An essential answer: more good teachers. Or, to put it another way,
fewer bad teachers. The obvious policy solution is more pay for good
teachers, more dismissals for weak teachers. 

One of the paradoxes of the school reform debate is that teachers'
unions have resisted a focus on teacher quality; instead, they emphasize
that the home is the foremost influence and that teachers can only do so
much. 

That's all true, and (as I've often written
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-poverty-solu
tion-that-starts-with-a-hug.html> ) we need an array of other
antipoverty measures as well, especially early childhood programs. But
the evidence is now overwhelming that even in a grim high-poverty
school, some teachers have far more impact on their students than those
in the classroom next door. Three consecutive years of data from student
tests - the "value added" between student scores at the beginning and
end of each year - reveal a great deal about whether a teacher is
working out, the researchers found. 

This study, by Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard University and
Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia University, was influential because it
involved a huge database of one million students followed from fourth
grade to adulthood. 

The blog of the Albert Shanker Institute
<http://shankerblog.org/?p=4708> , endowed by the American Federation of
Teachers <http://www.aft.org/> , praised the study as "one of the most
dense, important and interesting analyses on this topic in a very long
time" - although it cautioned against policy conclusions (of the kind
that I'm reaching). 

What shone through the study was the variation among teachers. Great
teachers not only raised test scores significantly - an effect that
mostly faded within a few years - but also left their students with
better life outcomes. A great teacher (defined as one better than 84
percent of peers) for a single year between fourth and eighth grades
resulted in students earning almost 1 percent more at age 28. 

Suppose that the bottom 5 percent of teachers could be replaced by
teachers of average quality. The three economists found that each
student in the classroom would have extra cumulative lifetime earnings
of more than $52,000. That's more than $1.4 million in gains for the
classroom. 

Some Republicans worry that a federal role in education smacks of
socialism. On the contrary, schools represent a tough-minded business
investment in our economic future. And, increasingly, we're getting
solid evidence of what reforms may help: teacher evaluations based on
student performance, higher pay and prestige for good teachers,
dismissals for weak teachers. 

That, and not most of the fireworks that passes for politics these days,
is the debate we should be having on a national stage. 

*

I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground
<http://www.nytimes.com/ontheground> . Please also join me on Facebook
<http://www.facebook.com/kristof>  and Google+
<https://plus.google.com/102839963139173448834/posts?hl=en> , watch my
YouTube videos <http://www.youtube.com/nicholaskristof>  and follow me
on Twitter <http://twitter.com/nickkristof> . 

DCSIMG<http://wt.o.nytimes.com/dcsym57yw10000s1s8g0boozt_9t1x/njs.gif?dc
suri=/nojavascript&WT.js=No&WT.tv=1.0.7> 

-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com

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