When researchers ran the numbers in dozens of different studies, every factor under a school’s control produced just a tiny impact, except for one: which teacher the student had been assigned to. Some teachers could regularly lift their students’ test scores above the average for children of the same race, class and ability level. Others’ students left with below-average results year after year. William Sanders, a statistician studying Tennessee teachers with a colleague, found that a student with a weak teacher for three straight years would score, on average, 50 percentile points behind a similar student with a strong teacher for those years. Teachers working in the same building, teaching the same grade, produced very different outcomes. And the gaps were huge.We've known this for a while. What a few people are looking at now is how to teach teachers to close that gap. Turns out, it may not just be magic.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Required Reading
It's long, but this story PZ sent me on research into what makes a good teacher good is just fascinating and worth the effort.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I saw this, too, and was hooked. Maybe because I am still trying to master the fine art of classroom management, the possibility that it is not something you are necessarily born with is quite alluring!
Ummmm...
Good teachers are good?
Yes, good teachers are good, but with factors that can be isolated, and, presumably, taught to others.
Post a Comment