Comment by elzbardico
21 days ago
No. Actually the elephant in the room is the dismal quality of most teachers. But teachers are kind of a sacred cow of discourse, and nobody can state the screaming obvious.
21 days ago
No. Actually the elephant in the room is the dismal quality of most teachers. But teachers are kind of a sacred cow of discourse, and nobody can state the screaming obvious.
The quality of the teacher is less predictive than the quality of the student by far. A teachable student will be more successful with a mediocre teacher than a bad student with an excellent teacher.
Seems to me like bad and mediocre teachers can make students less teachable as they mentally check out of the education system.
I think there's room for improvement on both sides; supporting families and students to create space and safety for them to learn and to improve teaching quality with evidence based training.
Teacher quality really does suck. The average school teacher may have a credential from an "Education" department but isn't even close to having the equivalent of an undergrad degree in the actual subject they're supposed to teach. We can hardly expect teachers to provide a good education when they don't even know their subject to a reasonable standard.
On top of teacher quality - we hire the cheapest, not the best - what students know when they enter school appears to be one of the better predictors of future behavior[1].
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-common-core-failed/
That is what happens when their pay is crap. People that can make 4x as much in the private sector rarely choose to live in near poverty just to teach instead.