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Some additional context from TFA, which is actually pretty insightful. > One preliminary explanation from the New Jersey study was that the emergency licensed teachers were working in schools that had a record of helping students make strong academic gains. It’s possible that the schools had supports in place, such as teacher coaching, a strong curriculum or something else that compensated for less training... Another recent study, out of Oakland, California, backs up this theory. > There’s some evidence that teacher licensure tests are mildly accurate predictors of who will be a good educator. All else equal, a school would be better off selecting candidates with a higher test score, especially if they’re going to be teaching math or science. But that general rule would mischaracterize a lot of teachers — some test well but don’t have great classroom management or interpersonal skills, while others may not test well but are effective at working with children. I'm not an expert, but my impression of modern classrooms is that teachers don't have as much leeway to choose what or how they teach, compared to, say 50 years ago. They have a strictly defined curriculum to get through, and they're generally spending a lot of their classroom hours teaching to standardized tests. Might the difference in "classroom management" skill, which is evidently untested in teacher licensing, be the most significant thing left that can make one teacher better than another? That is, if we make teachers (essentially) read from the same script, maybe it's all in the delivery? And if this is untested in teacher licensing, maybe it's somewhat evenly distributed between licensed and unlicensed teachers? |