Research
Research shows what we've known all along.... TEACHERS MATTER!
Study after study has made clear that the most important factor in closing the achievement gap is the quality of teaching.
“If education leaders want to close the achievement gap, they must focus first and foremost on developing qualified teachers.”
Kati Haycock, Good Teaching Matters
"The effect of increases in teacher quality swamps the impact of any other educational investment, such as reductions in class size."
Goldhaber, Dan (2009). “Teacher Pay Reforms: The Political Implications of Recent Research.” Center for American Progress
"More can be done to improve education by improving the effectiveness of teachers than by any other single factor."
Wright, Horn and Sanders, 1997
Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education
(quoted in Teacher Evaluation 2.0, The New Teacher Project)
"Having a top-quartile teacher rather than a bottom-quartile teacher four years in a row could be enough to close the black-white test score gap."
Gordon, Kane and Staiger, 2006
"Having a high-quality teacher throughout elementary school can substantially offset or even eliminate the disadvantage of low socio-economic background."
Steven G.Rivkin, Eric A.Hanushek, and John F. Kain
Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement
University of Texas, Dallas: Texas Schools Project, 2002
(quoted in Teacher Evaluation 2.0, The New Teacher Project)
"If teachers are so important,why do we treat them like widgets? Effective teachers are the key to student success. Yet our school systems treat all teachers as interchangeable parts, not professionals. Excellence goes unrecognized and poor performance goes unaddressed. This indifference to performance disrespects teachers and gambles with students’ lives."
The Widget Effect
"60% of DPS teachers are told on their evaluation that they don’t need to improve in any area."
The Widget Effect, Denver Public Schools Report
"What's a good teacher worth? The question is often answered sentimentally, but a recent study offers hard numbers. Good teachers improve students' cognitive abilities, as measured on tests, and cognitive abilities correlate with earnings later in life. Using conservative assumptions, the study found that a teacher at the 84th percentile of performance raised the future annual earnings of a class of 20 children by $240,000 (in current dollars). By using more generous assumptions about a teacher's effect on students, that figure can go as high as $1 million."
The Economic Value of Higher Teacher Quality, Eric A. Hanushek
"From the moment students enter a school, the most important factor in their success is not the color of their skin or the income of their parents. It's the person standing at the front of the classroom."
President Obama
"Everyone agrees that teacher evaluation is broken. Ninety-nine percent of teachers are rated satisfactory and most evaluations ignore the most important measure of a teacher's success - which is how much their students have learned."
Arne Duncan
U.S. Secretary of Education