[josephg]

Both exist. Teachers make a huge difference, and there is absolutely a range of ability amongst students. (For dozens of reasons)

When I was teaching programming I realised that by best students were going to become excellent programmers regardless of what I did. Like, if I literally didn’t teach them anything and left them to just goof around quietly on their computer on their own, they’ll still end up great. Teaching still matters. (Maybe more). But the difference is 10/10 meets expectations and 20/10 exceeds them.

Weaker students essentially could not learn the material without both of us working really hard to get them over the line. For the weaker students, the default is failure unless a lot of things go right.

And so as a classroom teacher you have the devil’s choice - who do you pay attention to? In a large classroom some people inevitably get ignored or fall through the cracks. And in school the problem compounds year on year. Learning issues tend to take a lot longer to fix than they do to create. Didn’t learn calculus last year with everyone else because your home life is a mess? Now the only way you’ll learn it is with 1-on-1 time with an overworked teacher. That didn’t happen? Now you have panic attacks when you think about it. And home life is probably still a mess.

I’m not apologising or excusing anything. But it is a hard problem. I don’t believe the same philosophy of teaching which created this problem is equal to the task of solving it.

[dataviz1000]

You taught in a classroom and, I assume, you have taught people you have hired at a company in your position as a manager or senior engineer. There is a very significant difference in accountability. If in the classroom, a student falls through the cracks, it isn't your fault and you are not held accountable. Whereas, if you are leading a software engineering team, you hired the best qualified applicants available at the time, you are under pressure to be the best in the world and those people you hired will always fall short of that, the accountability to get those employees up to speed falls on you -- you can't say they are disabled, fire them, and hire new employees since they were the best qualified applicants available when you hired them, you can't do better. If your team fails, it isn't because the people you choose to hire, it is because of you. It is impossible to devise a system where teachers are held accountable for student performance in a classroom. I wouldn't even start to suggest that it is something we should do. What could go wrong?