“From the moment students enter a school, the most important factor in their success is not the color of their skin or the income of their parents. It’s the person standing at the front of the classroom,” said President Obama in a recent speech. Linda Perlstein, off to a strong start on her new ed blog, talks to researchers who explain why the President is wrong.
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Perlstein’s blog is a welcome addition. We need someone within the ed journalism community who can keep reporters honest. Among her next topics: “the good-teacher-several-years-in-a-row findings and the complications of translating all this into policy.” If she can inspire conversations about these topics that shed more light than heat, she’ll do us all a great service.
As important as teachers are, they are not the single most important factor. I doubt that there is one single most important factor.
Teachers should not be singled out, scapegoated, for education’s ills. They don’t have the power. They cannot select their textbooks. I recall reading a math teacher who was in despair because his school was replacing Saxon math with texts he did not believe in. Take away a workman’s tools, give him ones he doesn’t like, and blame him if the work is not good enough!
Compare teachers to homeschoolers. That is comparing people responsible to a huge, sclerotic bureaucracy and people responsible only to their children; people who are stuck with flavor of the year policies they don’t choose vs. people who are free to respond to the behaviors of their students; people who get stuck in professional development days vs. people who . . . You get the idea.