Why are public schools so bad at hiring good teachers? - By Ray Fisman - Slate Magazine
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Posted Friday, July 11, 2008, at 7:50 AM ET
● DISCUSS
● E-MAIL PS 49 in Queens used to be an average school in New York
● RECOMMEND City's decidedly below-average school system. That was ● NEWSLETTERS
● PODCASTS before Anthony Lombardi moved into the principal's office.
● RSS When Lombardi took charge in 1997, 37 percent of fourth
graders read at grade level, compared with nearly 90 percent
today; there have also been double-digit improvements in
Is it possible to predict who math scores. By 2002, PS 49 made the state's list of most http://www.slate.com/id/2195147/ (1 of 11)7/29/2008 12:02:21 PM Why are public schools so bad at hiring good teachers? - By Ray Fisman - Slate Magazine
will teach well? improved schools. If you ask Lombardi how it happened, he'll
launch into a well-practiced monologue on the many changes
that he brought to PS 49 (an arts program, a new curriculum from Columbia's
Teachers College). But he keeps coming back to one highly controversial element
of the school's turnaround: getting rid of incompetent teachers.
Firing bad teachers may seem like a rather obvious solution, but it requires some
gumption to take on a teachers union. And cleaning house isn't necessarily the
only answer. There are three basic ways to improve a school's faculty: take
greater care in selecting good teachers upfront, throw out the bad ones who are
already teaching, and provide training to make current teachers better. In
theory, the first two should have more or less the same effect, and it might seem
preferable to focus on never hiring unpromising instructors—once entrenched, it's
nearly impossible in most places to remove teachers from their union-protected
jobs. But that's assuming we're good at predicting who will teach well in the first
place.
More
the dismal science It turns out we aren't. For instance, in 1997, Los Angeles tripled its hiring of columns
elementary-school teachers following a state-mandated reduction in class size. If
● Hot for the Wrong L.A. schools had been doing a good job of picking the best teachers among their
Teachers applicants, then the average quality of new recruits should have gone down when Why are public schools so they expanded their ranks—they were hiring from the same pool of applicants, bad at hiring good
but accepting candidates who would have been rejected in prior years. But as instructors? http://www.slate.com/id/2195147/ (2 of 11)7/29/2008 12:02:21 PM Why are public schools so bad at hiring good teachers? - By Ray Fisman - Slate Magazine
Ray Fisman researchers Thomas Kane and Douglas Staiger found, the crop of new teachers
posted July 11, 2008 didn't perform any worse than the teachers the school had hired in more
● The $100 Distraction selective years.
Device
Why giving poor kids
laptops doesn't improve
their scholastic
performance. This unexpected result is consistent with the findings from dozens of studies
Ray Fisman analyzing the predictors of teacher quality. Researchers have looked at just about
posted June 5, 2008 every possible determinant of teaching success, and it seems there's nothing on
● The Pilgrim's a prospective teacher's résumé that indicates how he or she will do in the Progressiveness classroom. While some qualifications boost performance a little bit—National Does going to Mecca make Board certification seems to help, though a master's degree in education does not Muslims more moderate?
Ray Fisman —they just don't improve it very much.
posted April 25, 2008
It's worth keeping in mind that economists study changes in test scores, not love ● Going Down Swinging
What if three-strikes laws of learning or comprehension of course material—it's possible that some of the
make criminals less likely teachers who look good to researchers are just good at teaching to the test.
to repeat offend—but more Needing some measure of success in the classroom, economists mostly rely on
violent when they do? "value added" in test scores—that is, how much students' scores improve as a Ray Fisman
posted March 20, 2008 result of a year in a teacher's classroom. Since researchers study entire school
systems over many years, they're able to separate out how much of an individual ● Skinflint
student's improvement is due to personal circumstance and how much is the Did Eliot Spitzer get caught
because he didn't spend result of inspirational teachers. If a student's test scores increase year after year, http://www.slate.com/id/2195147/ (3 of 11)7/29/2008 12:02:21 PM Why are public schools so bad at hiring good teachers? - By Ray Fisman - Slate Magazine
enough on prostitutes? then no teacher gets any credit for it; similarly, no one's on the hook for a bad
Sudhir Venkatesh student's repeated failure to progress. posted March 12, 2008
● Search for more the What economists have found is that only one thing tells us how much a teacher
dismal science will boost his students' test scores next year: the amount he raised test scores in articles previous years. A good teacher this year will very likely be a good teacher next
● Subscribe to the the year. Unfortunately, when making hiring decisions, principals rarely have that
dismal science RSS information at their fingertips. Most hiring decisions are made before applicants feed have a teaching record. And an individual school has neither the necessary data
● View our complete nor the ability to run the complicated regression analyses needed to discern
the dismal science whether an experienced teacher has had a positive effect on his students in the archive past.
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Related in Slate
Jim Ryan proposed several remedies to education policy in America. Sara Mosle explained
what No Child Left Behind can learn from Teach for America. Mickey Kaus weighed in on http://www.slate.com/id/2195147/ (4 of 11)7/29/2008 12:02:21 PM Why are public schools so bad at hiring good teachers? - By Ray Fisman - Slate Magazine
teachers unions. Judith Shulevitz discussed the portrayal of teachers on David E. Kelley's
Boston Public. In 1999, Jacob Weisberg commented on Al Gore's proposal for a "21st
Century National Teachers Corps" and John McCain's plan to provide income-tax cuts for
the nation's best teachers.
Ray Fisman is the Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and research director of the Social Enterprise
Program at the Columbia Business School. His book with Ted Miguel, Economic Gangsters, is forthcoming in October
2008.
Photograph of blackboard by Digital Vision.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES
Notes from the Fray Editor
This was an excellent, full Fray with many many great posts and arguments. Although people disagreed with one another
and with the article, often very strongly, the threads mostly stayed calm and polite: an object lesson in online posting.
Almost everyone wanted to contribute to the discussion, to make useful points, to make suggestions or to relate personal
experiences – to the benefit of anyone reading. Posts below are just to whet the appetite: read the full Fray to get the full
experience.
Comments from the Fray
I have been a public school educator for 13 years. Firing bad teachers would improve my morale immensely. It's very
frustrating to know that the lazy/racist/apathetic/clueless idiot down the hall is getting paid to be a marginal-at-best http://www.slate.com/id/2195147/ (5 of 11)7/29/2008 12:02:21 PM Why are public schools so bad at hiring good teachers? - By Ray Fisman - Slate Magazine
babysitter. Bad teachers do inordinate damage to our profession as well as students and make everyone's job even more
difficult. To paraphrase something I read in Harper's many years ago, no one works harder than a good, conscientious,
caring teacher, but there's no one lazier than a bad one. (This is probably true in many other fields as well.)
I would love it if good principals with common sense (another kettle of fish) spent more time in all of our classrooms.
Many do not out of a fear of being accused of micro-managing, time constraints, and/or an "ignorance is bliss" mentality.
Conscientious teachers welcome observation, professional guidance, and constructive criticism if they know they are truly
valued for their hard work, being treated fairly, and given real power to do what is best for their students and their school.
Under these more ideal conditions, average teachers also become better, and ambivalent or stumbling teachers emerge
from the gray areas with the skill and motivation they need to continually improve their classrooms.
--herdbird
(To reply, click here)
The obvious, sensible, tried-and-true method of educating pupils and students well is to provide a wide variety of
subjects, from rigorously academic to useful trade to the esoteric and artistic, taught in a variety of styles and methods, in
small classes, in secure schools without distractions and have the students live in stable, economically secure households.
Doing that would require considerably more money than we want to spend and demand a restructuring of our economy to
provide the stable and economically secure homes. I don't see us willing to do that for our children…
The canard about the difficulty of firing a tenured teacher was once again repeated. Any principal who can't successfully
go through the steps to fire a truly bad teacher should themselves be fired. It is neither that onerous, nor particularly
lengthy. It happens every year in most school districts in the land. I've seen several fired over the years, more often for
teaching in a way that annoyed the principal than actual bad teaching, but fired nonetheless. Firing does involve more
than at private industry, but that protection is well-founded and ever more necessary. Often, the teachers principals want
to fire the most are the ones the school and the students need most for those teachers are the one asking questions
instead merely following orders, the ones trying new ways and ideas, instead of trodden the well-travelled path.
We can fiddle with details, but until the military is holding bake sales to buy needed battle ships and schools are funded
enough that underpaid teachers aren't buying pencils and paper, we aren't really committed.
--MacAdviser
(To reply, click here) http://www.slate.com/id/2195147/ (6 of 11)7/29/2008 12:02:21 PM Why are public schools so bad at hiring good teachers? - By Ray Fisman - Slate Magazine
(7/11)
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Just Rude?
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