Questioning the Teacher Quality Orthodoxy
Teachers might be the most important in-school factor in student achievement, but is that necessarily a good thing? Dan Willingham’s latest at the Washington Post Answer Sheet blog notes that when teachers are viewed as the essential ingredient in reform models, the impetus is to fire unsatisfactory teachers and hire better ones. “I’m no economist, but [...]
Edupundit Myopia
“The consensus among Edupundits is that teacher quality is the most important variable in student academic achievement,” writes Will Fitzhugh, the founder of the Concord Review. “Meanwhile, practically all of them fail to give any attention to the basic purpose of schools, which is to have students do academic work. Almost none of them seems [...]