Good teachers ... good students

"... Who the teacher is might be the best predictor of how well students will do."

That sums up the results of a two-year study of math teachers and their students in Pittsburgh: Average test scores varied as much as 59 percent from the top teacher's classroom to the bottom.

That is what we call a significant difference.

If you look at why, it has to be the teachers. The study looked at 199 classrooms, so it's unlikely that all the brightest students were stacked in a few classes.


And while the study found the saddening usual difference between black and white students' performance, racial differences did not matter.


"These ... are not random effects," according to the Robert P. Strauss, a professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and author of the study. "In Pittsburgh, the teachers who are successful are successful with black kids and white kids."


The Pittsburgh School Board got the message and asked for more study about what those teachers in high-achieving classrooms are doing differently. (I look forward to seeing that.)


But there is already evidence from the same researcher that providing teachers with skills pays off big time. In an earlier study, he found that increasing teacher knowledge and skills by 1 percent increased student performance by 10 percent.


Teachers matter. And getting effective teachers is hard, getting harder, but not hopeless. I've written about that a lot ... teacher shortages in New York ... the Denver example ... how to make performance pay work.


Let me recap: Effective teachers produce more learning. Making teachers effective pays off. So let's find the teachers, give them the skills they need and put them where they need to be ... in every American classroom.