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I don’t think the parent assumes it is random, but merely argues that you need to show that educational achievement is highly correlated with the students’ teac

I don’t think the parent assumes it is random, but merely argues that you need to show that educational achievement is highly correlated with the students’ teacher before using educational achievement as a proxy for teacher performance. Is educational achievement closely correlated with some teachers and not others? Is the correlation confounded by other variables like the student’s family income or choice of breakfast cereal?

acdha 8y ago
The environmental factors are huge - my wife used to get students who rarely slept two consecutive nights in the same place - but another challenge seems to be threshold effects. Below a certain level the teacher has little control (e.g. a hungry kid needs lunch more than the best teacher) and over a certain level the kid has so many positive influences (high functioning affluent parents, tutors, competitive peers, etc.) that they’re going to do well with all but the worst teachers. The area where a teacher has the most control seems to be in between, with the kids who could coast but will do more if pressed and may not have other encouragements. Most of the political discourse tends to treat all of those situations as the same.
- mindways 8y ago
  Insightful! (Growing up, my classmates were mostly in the "sufficient positive influences" camp, and yeah, the teachers who had big impacts tended to be the really bad ones who destroyed momentum/interest in a topic for one or more of us. There were also high-impact inspirational teachers - but they were more of an "alter the trajectory of what someone wants to do in their life" sort of thing, which isn't really measured by standardized tests.)
- LorenPechtel 8y ago
  100x this. There are bad teachers. I've encountered a few that few students could learn from. Isolating this effect from the effect of the outside factors would be very hard, though.

acdha 8y ago

The environmental factors are huge - my wife used to get students who rarely slept two consecutive nights in the same place - but another challenge seems to be threshold effects. Below a certain level the teacher has little control (e.g. a hungry kid needs lunch more than the best teacher) and over a certain level the kid has so many positive influences (high functioning affluent parents, tutors, competitive peers, etc.) that they’re going to do well with all but the worst teachers. The area where a teacher has the most control seems to be in between, with the kids who could coast but will do more if pressed and may not have other encouragements. Most of the political discourse tends to treat all of those situations as the same.

mindways 8y ago
Insightful! (Growing up, my classmates were mostly in the "sufficient positive influences" camp, and yeah, the teachers who had big impacts tended to be the really bad ones who destroyed momentum/interest in a topic for one or more of us. There were also high-impact inspirational teachers - but they were more of an "alter the trajectory of what someone wants to do in their life" sort of thing, which isn't really measured by standardized tests.)
LorenPechtel 8y ago
100x this. There are bad teachers. I've encountered a few that few students could learn from. Isolating this effect from the effect of the outside factors would be very hard, though.