10 Percent Freeze-Out? A Debate With Eric Hanushek and Diane Ravitch
My TIME column last week was about our lousy national debate about teaching quality. But although it was toward the bottom this paragraph sparked a lot of debate:
When Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek looked at teacher performance he found that removing even the lowest five percent of performers could boost overall student achievement substantially. There are two key takeaways from this research. First, the lowest-performing teachers have a negative effect on student performance that is disproportionate to their numbers. Second, in practice this amounts to just one or two teachers per school on average. Most workplaces have similar problems.
Historian Diane Ravitch and Hanushek disagree about this point and agreed to discuss it here on Eduwonk next week. Thanks in advance to both of them for that. So addition to regular content look for that debate to start on Monday.
October 29th, 2011 at 8:57 am
I look forward to the debate. I am sure that poor teachers have a disproportionate effect on their students, but I guess the real question is how do we replace them with better ones.
October 30th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
For me I think the problem is that more of us would be on-board with dismissing poor teachers if we had some guarantee of a system that works. Beyond a few pilot efforts across the nation, a reliable system of teacher assessment remains elusive while so much reform remains in flux. Because it seems like everything is happening at once, it’s hard to focus on one problem and not have it perceived to have some disproportionate importance.
Seriously, I would doubt anyone in the teacher camp is so biased or entrenched as to not want to dismiss poor teachers but there are decades of suspicions and with the ongoing chaos of reform priorities, it simply makes us question the process.
October 31st, 2011 at 1:32 am
I look forward to hearing both sides of this issue because it’s not as simple as it seems. The whole movement to quantify student performance and teacher performance isn’t as straightforward as it may seems.
We’ve reduced student achievement to API numbers that can be compared across schools and within the state, but these numbers aren’t as reliable as we’ve begun to see as stories continue to emerge about how teachers and administrators are inflating these in unethical ways.
Intuitively, we all “know” who the poor, uncommitted teachers are. But when we start talking about eliminating the bottom 10% of them we’re opening ourselves up to legal challenges. For example, how do we DEFINITIVELY say that bad teachers in the 11th-percentile (as determined by some mathematical formula) are worthy of maintaining their teaching positions when those one percentage point lower should be fired.
Personally, I think that they should all be removed as a way of improving the lives of students. But how do we determine some arbitrary cutoff line?
This is tricky business, and I look forward to hearing the two discussants’ views on the topic.
But this is an excellent starting point in improving public education.
John
October 31st, 2011 at 6:46 am
First and foremost we should know why our students are not performing well in schools and where is the problem, if is because of teachers we should suck them and employ the new ones who will help in rising the performance of our schools. On doing this will help in improving our education sector.
November 2nd, 2011 at 10:06 am
Its difficult to argue against removing the worst 5-10% of any profession and not expect improved productivity and results. The problem is how best to determine who those teachers are. The system most advocate is one based upon factoring in student performance testing data. No evidence exists that this is the best measure of teacher effectiveness. A more comprehensive approach utilizing peer review, teacher training, principal evaluation and some student testing data seems the most appropriate course of action.
November 2nd, 2011 at 11:57 am
I’m not even sure why we’re discussing the “novel” approach of removing 5-10% of teachers — As if teachers are never dismissed or encouraged to leave their jobs otherwise. In my experience, struggling teachers often leave of their own accord (especially in the first few years). In addition, principals have the power to fire at will (i.e., for no reason at all) teachers in their probationary period (usually around 3 years) before they get tenured. Further, principals can fire tenured teachers by following the evaluation rules and documenting poor teaching.
November 2nd, 2011 at 12:00 pm
It’s interesting to see so many comments popping up here that seem to be linked to spam sites, but the comments otherwise seem relevant and on point.