Video blogger Kate Cohen discusses the “bad teachers” phenomenon. While teacher assessment is a hot debate, it is a fact that there are low performing teachers. Must ineffective teachers be fired? What can be done to improve their performance? Current research shows that it is possible for low performing teachers to improve through methods such as coaching programs! Watch the video to learn more!
Resources to learn more:
Low-Performing Teachers Have High Costs by Eric A. Hanushek:
http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/low-performing-teachers-have-high-costs
How to Build a Better Teacher by Ray Fisman:
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2012/07/how_to_improve_teaching_new_evidence_that_poor_teachers_can_learn_to_be_good_ones_.html]
Gates Puts the Focus on Teaching by Joe Nocera:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/opinion/nocera-gates-puts-the-focus-on-teaching.html?_r=0
Lifting a Barrier of Mistrust: Wise Critical Feedback to Racial Minorities:
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/group/YeagerLAB/ADRG/Pdfs/Yeager%20Cohen%20-%20Wise%20feedback%20-%207-8-12.pdf
The Effect of Evaluation on Performance: Evidence from Longitudinal Student Achievement Data of Mid-career Teachers:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16877
Identifying Effective Classroom Practices Using Student Achievement Data:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15803
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/
Both the wise feedback and pay-for-loss-avoidance studies should be seen as promising, yet preliminary there s a lot that can go wrong in scaling up such small trials to a nationwide rollout. But they represent exactly the sort of experimentation, built on well-founded insights, that can help to get better teachers in front of America s students and maybe even help to bring the warring factions in the education debate a bit closer together.