Teachers’ “Actual” Impacts on Tests: A Reality that Defies VAMs
Drs. Gene Glass and David Berliner (both Regents’ Professors Emeriti from Arizona State University) recently published a book with 15 doctoral students titled the 50 Myths & Lies that Threaten America’s Public Schools (published by Teachers College Press). In one of its chapters, as it pertains to VAMs, they deconstruct the myth that “Teachers are the most important thing in the world (so we should fire them if their kids’ scores don’t go up.”
Glass, recently highlighted this chapter on his Education in Two Worlds blog, and I’ve included his highlights from this entry for you all here. Glass writes:
Myth 9. Teachers are the most important influence in a child’s education.
The full statement of Myth 9 might take the following form: “Dear Teachers, you are so overwhelmingly important in the education of our children, you are the be-all and the end-all, the Alpha and the Omega, that when the children aren’t learning, it has to be your fault, that’s why we are going to fire you if the test scores don’t go up.”
As obvious as it is to note the importance of good teachers, research makes it clear that teachers are not the most important influence in a child’s education. Most research shows that less than 30% of a student’s academic success in school is attributable to schools, and teachers are only a part of that overall school effect, perhaps not even the most important part. Student achievement is most strongly associated with socioeconomic status of the child’s family. Outside-of-school factors having nothing to do with teacher ability appear to have at least twice the weight in predicting student achievement as inside-of-school factors. Schools can’t supply all of what society fails to give children.
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