Montreal Teachers 4 Change.org

What would children gain from teachers who have the highest evaluations as measured by the metric that Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to implement for Chicago’s public school (but not charter school) teachers?  This is precisely what three Columbia and Harvard economists researched in a study that has received wide attention from the media and politicians.  According to the authors’ own interpretation—the sky.  But if you read the study itself—nothing at all.

The study examined the incomes of adults who, as children in the 4th through the 8th grades, had teachers of different “Value Added” scores, with Value Added defined as improvement in the scores of students on standardized tests.  The researchers found that the average wage and salary of a 28 year old who had an excellent teacher was $20,509 in 2010 dollars, $182 higher than the average annual pay of all 28 year olds in the study.

How does this compare to the average salary and wage of a 28 year old in this country? The authors chose not to make the comparison, but we can make it for them.  They excluded from their study people whose income was higher than $100,000. As we shall see, this exclusion is problematic; but to do the comparison we must do the same. The average salary and wage in 2010 of a 28 year old who earned less than $100,000 a year was $29,041, 42% higher than the income of a 28 year old in the Columbia-Harvard study who had an excellent teacher. In other words, even if we accept the spin the authors put on their numbers, having an excellent teacher does not pull people out of poverty.

Read more: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/14/grading-teachers-failing-kids/