Good teachers are better than average teachers and average teachers are better than bad teachers is what passes for scientific research these days and unfortunately the recent study by Ivey league economists getting more than a collective, duh, as education deformers use it to prove their preconceived notions and the authors use it to get their names in the papers.
In case you missed it two economists from Harvard and Columbia recently concluded a twenty year study which said the difference between an average teacher and a poor teacher was students in the average teachers class were one percent less likely to become pregnant, one percent more likely to go to college and may make as much as 250 more dollars a year than the students in the classroom with the poor teachers. Their conclusion after all this research was school districts should use multi variable calculus to create value added measurements which would be used to fire bad teachers quicker. Let’s ignore for a moment that often rookie teachers are the worst performing of all and if we followed the studies advice none would make it to their second year and lets also ignore the fact that they just use one measurement, test scores, to determine the quality of teachers but what’s worse of all is the authors used a baseball analogy sell their point.
Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman write: The manager of a baseball team pays attention to a player’s batting average even though it too is an imperfect statistic that bounces around over time. If a new player gets no hits in his first month, one option is waiting to see whether he is just in a temporary slump. Another is more coaching. But on occasion, the best option may be to let that player go and call up a replacement.
Yes the best option may be to let the player go and call up the replacement, more duh, but baseball like teaching should be more than just tests, is more than just batting averages. What about the power hitting first baseman that belts forty dingers, the slick fielding golden glove short stop, the rocket armed rookie filled with enthusiasm, the grizzled vet that the other players look up to and so on and on. None of their averages are setting records but a good manager knows he needs them all to make a championship team. If like Chetty and Friedman propose and batting averages are to baseball, what standardized tests are to education, then they are concentrating on just one measurement and ignoring thousands of others that also help determine success or failure.
Chetty and Friedman reduce teaching to numbers when numbers to good teachers are one of the least important things. Who do you want teaching your third grader, the teacher who constantly tests and drills which may mean a few percentage points more on the test or the teacher who teachers their students to question and think and who makes school worth going too. Would you be willing to take that one percent risk? Even using multivariable calculus I don’t think these two have a chance figuring out that teaching is infinity more complicated and nuanced than pay the best fire the rest.
Unfortunately the damage may already be done. Despite the fact the authors themselves talk about the study’s flaws and various other mathematicians, economists and education experts have debunked it, it hasn’t been peer reviewed or even printed yet. Their study has already been prominently displayed in the New York Times, PBS and numerous other news outlets. Politicians seeking to break teachers unions, privatize public education and to take the teaching profession back a hundred years are already pointing to it because to them the sound bite to fire teachers sooner rather than later has more value to them than actual evidence.
What we ultimately learned from the study isn’t that good teachers are better than average teachers and that average teachers are better than poor teachers, no, what we learned is that economists should stay away from both baseball and education.
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