It Cost a Fortune NOT to Grade Teachers by Their Students’ Test

Grading Teachers by the Test – NYTimes.com.

Raj Chetty coauthored an important paper cited in this article, but, apparently not completely believed.  I commented.

“Professors Rockoff, Chetty and Friedman, found something more than that “…teachers who improved students’ scores…raised the students’ chances of going to college as well as their salaries later in life…”

They found that,

“…From a purely financial perspective, high income parents should be willing to pay about $6,500/yr to get [a teacher in the 84th percentile vs. one at the 50th percentile]…” (from the executive summary)

In other words, for a class of 30 students, the outstanding teacher is worth almost $200,000 a year more.

Of course, that would reduce salaries of the other teachers UNLESS we reduce the ability gap for teachers. Since I have spent decades as a math professor, it is obvious where that gap comes from.

It comes from the many colleges (both “elite” and otherwise) that do such a rotten (even immoral) job of teaching our future teachers, or, their future professors that teach future teachers. (There is no room here to detail how this system works, but it is on my non-commercial blog inside-higher-ed )

Here is what I suggest we do that I think might work without far less union, or parent, resistance.

We should test our teachers for knowledge – anonymously. Anonymously, that is, by individual teacher, but not by college. We should collect and publish the data by college. I believe that could be a win for everyone – except for the colleges that are unscrupulous.”