[Vision2020] The Value of Teachers

[keely emerinemix]

I don't doubt any of this -- and all the way to the actual 4th-grade example given.   My fourth-grade teacher, Army Sgt. Dan Summers, just died about three years ago.  I remember him -- no, I considered him part of my life -- from the 1969-1970 school year, when he shepherded about 25 other kids at Tucson's Mary Lynn Elementary School as one of two fourth-grade teachers.  He was the single most important non-family member in my life during that time and was one of two teachers I adored, people who opened my eyes, straightened my back, lifted my head and made that pencil in my hand sing.  I loved him, and so did every other kid in that class, most of whom saw their lives go far better because of him than they would've gone without him. 

Thus my anger at those, locally and nationally, who belittle the mission of public education, disregard teachers, and shower contempt on their work.  Shame on them.  Because as far as I'm concerned, it's the public school teachers (and the nurses) who are the rock-solid heroes in our world, and they deserve the very best we can offer them.

Keely
www.keely-prevailingwinds.com


Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:29:00 -0800
From: art.deco.studios at gmail.com
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] The Value of Teachers




   
   


			









Reprints


January 11, 2012

The Value of Teachers
    By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


 


 

    
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
 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,
 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.        


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)
 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, endowed by the American Federation of Teachers,
 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. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my  YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter. 
	


	















			
		
		
		
	
		
        
        
        
          
        
   









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


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