More bullcrap education deform [View all]

Academic underperformance
The biggest sticking point in education reform in California is the push to link academic performance of the students to the evaluation of the teachers. Reformers, including Michelle Rhee and her Students First organization, have focused on the need for better teacher evaluations. Teachers unions have resisted, and movement toward changing the rules has stalled.

Yet it has been known for decades that teachers are the best predictor of student academic performance. There’s anecdotal evidence that poorly performing educators stay on the job because the legal and administrative hurdles to move them out of the classroom seem overwhelming (Rhee refers to the shuffling of poor quality teachers as “the dance of the lemons.”) But no one knew the size of the problem.

Now a trio of public policy graduate students at Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research have published a paper that puts a number on the size of the problem of under-performing teachers in California public school classrooms. You can read the Open Forum written by students Michael Kent, Dennis Li and Chris Frank here. You can read their full paper, written for the Education Trust-West, here.

Teachers are on the front line of preparing our state for the future, for educating our children to thrive in the changing economy. Please chime in on this discussion. We welcome your Letter to the Editor, which you can submit here.

http://blog.sfgate.com/opinionshop/2013/05/08/academic-underperformance/

more crap, beginning with the 'bad teachers are the cause of student problems' fallacy. An interesting comment from the readers:

This is a very interesting report. Thank you for sharing. Page 12 of the PDF states the following:

"Rural schools and schools with higher percentages of African American and Native American students are likely to have increased proportions of underperforming teachers, controlling for other demographic factors. By contrast, as the percentage of white students in a school increase, the number of underperforming teachers decreases."

Gee, almost sounds like there is another, controlling, variable (could it be parental involvement or the economic status of the parents?) not being accounted for here.....