Should teachers be so important?

10-19-2010

Guest blog by Daniel Willingham/Washington Post

Teacher quality is the most important in-school factor that influences kids’ schooling. I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. Let’s be clear about what we’re talking about. There are characteristics of a child (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity), characteristics of a family (e.g., income, education level), characteristics of a school (e.g., leadership quality, funding, teacher quality), and characteristics of a neighborhood (e.g., average income, crime rate) and any of these characteristics might be associated with how much a child learns. Within the group of school characteristics, the teacher is the most important, at least among the characteristics that we’ve thought to measure. That’s important because it’s pretty hard to change characteristics of the child, the family or the neighborhood, whereas educators and politicians can more readily change characteristics of schools. (more…)

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