More Than Just Good Teachers
by Dorothy Siegel
“A good teacher is the most important factor in a child’s academic learning”
Every time I hear this statement, my blood pressure goes up. I usually respond by saying that yes, a child’s teacher is very important. But teachers have a relatively small effect on children’s academic success when compared to the effect of out-of-school factors like economic insecurity, poor health care, unhealthy diet, homelessness and all the other ills of society. Educational “reforms” that ignore these factors are tarnished silver bullets, doomed to fail. Years of this type of wishful thinking has diverted Americans from having the undistorted, fact-based conversation we must have before educational outcomes can improve.
There are three sets of factors that predict a child’s academic success: the child’s teacher, peers and other aspects of the school environment; the human and financial resources expended on behalf of the child; and the
