The Core Knowledge Blog

The magic bullet for raising tests scores is….constant assessment? Tracking the progress of individual students? Parental involvement? All of the above?  An AP story quotes Colorado educators who have discovered — mirabile dictu! – there is no single magic bullet.

Apropos of that, the best post I’ve read this week comes from Fordham’s Mike Petrilli, who asks on the Gadfly, “Are we sure that “improving teacher quality” is the panacea that so many have suggested? Is it possible that our current fascination with ‘human capital development’ is misguided? That both presidential campaigns’ embrace of this issue is ill-considered?”

Yes, the research is quite clear that the quality of a student’s teacher has a greater impact on that student’s achievement than anything else that schools can control. It’s also clear that low-income and minority children are much less likely to be taught by “high quality teachers” (however defined) than are affluent and white children. So reformers make the jump: If we could just fill every classroom with society’s “best and brightest,” we’d have our education problems licked. Or, they continue, if we could just get our most talented teachers to serve in our neediest schools, we’d have our achievement gap beat.

The problem obviously, is that we’re unlikley to fill every classroom with the best and the brightest–the numbers are simply too great–and other favored solutions like merit pay are equally unlikely to work at scale.  “Shouldn’t we be thinking about how to make average teachers more effective, too, and augmenting them via technology and other stratagems, rather than putting all our eggs in the “superstar teacher” basket?” asks Petrilli.

Petrilli’s measured and thoughtful post offers a useful roadmap.  As Donald Rumsfeld did not say, “You go to school with the teachers you have.  Not the teachers you wish you had.” 

Forgive the inelegant analogy, but raising student achievement may not be a disease we’re going to cure, but rather a chronic condition we can manage with a cocktail of interventions and strategies.  One of those strategies ought to be a national core curriculum and common standards. It would certainly be a great help (not a magic bullet) in improving teacher quality, since it would enable teachers and staff developers on improving the craft of teaching–focus on the “how” of teaching, instead of what to teach.

More: Joanne Jacobs agrees with Petrilli on the relative lack of superstar teachers, but has questions about the efficacy of technology