How to Build a Better Teacher.

• Author: Holland, Robert

"Instead of screening candidates according to courses taken and degrees earned, school administrators should free principals to hire the most-intellectually promising people ..."

AMERICAN SCHOOLS need more teachers. They especially need better ones. Practically everyone with a stake in the education debate agrees with those two premises. However, there is sharp disagreement as to whether more regulation or less is the way to go.

The differences of perspective begin over how vital to transmitting knowledge teachers are. No one is more certain about their overriding importance in a youngster's academic progress than statistician William Sanders, who has developed a value-added instrument that might revolutionize the way good teachers are found and subsequently rewarded for productive careers. Speaking before the Metro School Board in Nashville in January, 2001, he risked friendly fire when he disputed the connection much of the education world makes between poverty and low student performance, stating that, "Of all the factors we study--class size, ethnicity, location, poverty--they all pale to triviality in the face of teacher effectiveness."

That flies in the face of a widespread conviction in the education community that poverty is a powerful depressant on learning that even the greatest teachers may only partially overcome. As Diane Ravitch documents in her book, Left Back, educational "progressives" long have believed that many children shouldn't be pushed to absorb knowledge beyond their limited innate capacities, and that they are better off with teachers who help them get in touch with their feelings and find a socially useful niche.

Sanders has volumes of data to back up his contention, though. While at the University of Tennessee, he developed a sophisticated longitudinal measurement called value-added assessment that pinpoints how effective each district, school, and teacher has been in raising individual students' achievement over time. His complex formula factors out demographic variables that often make comparisons problematic. Among other things, he found that students unlucky enough to have a succession of poor teachers are virtually doomed to the education cellar. Three consecutive years of first quintile (least-effective) teachers in grades three-five yield math scores from the 35th to 45th percentile. Conversely, three straight years of fifth quintile (most-effective) teachers result in scores at the 85th to 95th percentile.

Tennessee began using value-added assessment in its public schools in 1992, and Sanders (who now works for a private software company in Cary, N.C.) is in demand in many other states where legislators are considering importing the system. The "No Excuses" schools identified by an ongoing Heritage Foundation project--high-poverty institutions where outstanding pupil achievement defies stereotypes about race and poverty--buttress his contention that teaching matters. Consider. for instance, Frederick Douglass Academy, a New York City public school in central Harlem that has a student population 80% black and 19% Hispanic. The New York Trines reported that all of Frederick Douglass' students passed a new, rigorous English Regents exam in 2000, and 96% passed the math Regents. Serving grades six-12, the school ranks among the top 10 in New York in reading and math, despite having class sizes of 30 to 34.

What makes the difference? "Committed teachers" who come to work early, stay late, and call parents if children don't show up for extra tutoring, says principal Gregory M. Hodge. The disciplined, yet caring, climate for learning set by Hodge and principals of other No Excuses schools also is due much credit.

Those who believe in deregulation of teacher licensing see a potential breakthrough in value-added assessment. Principals (like Hodge) could hire and evaluate their teachers not necessarily on the basis of credit-hours amassed in professional schools of education, but in terms of objective differences instructors make when actually placed before classrooms. The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation...