America’s Teachers Are Dumb, And They’re Making Students Dumber
By: Daniel Coupland
No law, executive edict, funding package, or curriculum restriction will fix the teacher quality problem.
More than three years after Covid-19 began, explanations abound for ongoing “learning loss” in schools. But these discussions often miss one of the most obvious explanations: outdated and ineffective instruction.
It’s been repeatedly shown that teacher quality is the primary thing affecting student achievement. Shouldn’t teacher quality be our primary concern? Given how far behind we’ve fallen in teacher quality, you would think so.
If you aren’t convinced that teacher quality has gone down, I would ask you to “briefly state the result and effect of the battle of Waterloo.” If you’re anything like me, you could say something, right? It just wouldn’t be amazing. What is amazing, though, is that the question above was taken from Michigan’s public grammar schoolteacher-licensing exam in history from 1900. In other words, a competent high school graduate in 1900 was expected to know the answer and to teach the answer to eighth graders. In other words, teachers back in the day knew their stuff.
Teaching Without Studying
By 1997, the Department of Education was forced to admit that a staggering 59 percent of social studies teachers were teaching subjects they hadn’t even studied. Not surprisingly, that year 57 percent of high school seniors scored “below basic” in U.S. history, according to Diane Ravitch’s NAEP report. It’s like the blind leading the blind.
Fast forward to 2006: 62 percent of teachers agreed that their training didn’t prepare them well for their jobs. Teacher training programs have not only been a waste, but they may actually make teachers less competent at their jobs. That’s why no matter how much money you throw at them, modern teacher certification programs still do not improve teacher quality and student achievement.
So if teacher quality is so important, then why isn’t it at the forefront of every conversation about learning loss? Because, unlike calls to abolish the Department of Education, improving teacher quality is remarkably practical — but not easy.