A、Scores can slightly reflect a teacher’s performance. B、Students of a good teacher are more likely to succeed. C、Good teachers

W: The debate over whether students’ scores adequately reflect a teacher’s performance, has been raging for well over a decade. Now a new study has tracked more than two-and-a-half million students over two decades. It found that the quality of teachers can make a huge difference for a student’s academic performance. We welcome Dan, one of the three authors of the new study to join us. Professor, how do you determine it’s the teachers who made the difference?
M: We measure teacher quality by looking at the average impacts that teachers had on the students’ test scores. For example, if a teacher can raise his or her students’ test scores year after year, we call that teacher a high-value-added teacher. If not, then we call him or her an average- or low-value-added teacher. And then we ask questions like supposedly, if students got different value-added teacher, were they doing differently as adults? And we find remarkable impacts. Students who were assigned to high-value-added teachers are more likely to do well in school and earn more in the future.
W: If we take your study at face value, do its conclusions risk simplifying what it is that makes a good teacher, limiting it to achievements on standardized tests?
M: I think the main message of our study is that standardized test score impacts can be a useful input into evaluating teachers, but by no means are we saying that test scores are the end-all and be-all of how teachers should be evaluated. We think that they’re one aspect of what should factor into the formula.
W: But one thing that teacher unions generally have been keeping an eye on is school systems’ attempts to pay for performance, to try to create a formula around their students’ achievements that would reward them with cash. After your study, is that justified, do you think?
M: I think teachers who are high-value-added are having tremendous benefits for their students. For example, we’ve calculated that an excellent teacher, a teacher who is in the top 5 percent, can generate about $250,000 or more of additional earnings for their students over their lives in a single classroom of about 28 students. They’re providing a great service to the economy. Also, as I mentioned above, students of a high-value-added teacher are more likely to do well in school. Now, I think it makes sense to try to reward teachers who are doing extremely well. It’s important to recognize teachers who are having such great impacts. Whether the best policy to raise teacher value added is merit pay or better teacher training or some other sort of tool is less clear.
W: Could it also be concluded from your study that it ought to be easier to fire ineffective teachers?
M: Yes. I think so. Suppose you are managing a baseball team, and you’re trying to do as well as you can. You have players with different batting average. One approach you might take is raising the batting average of all the players you have. But I think it also makes a lot of sense that, on occasion, you let some of the players with lower batting average go, and get somebody else who might do better. Here, I think the stakes are even much bigger. We’re talking about the future of our children, rather than winning a baseball game. So I think it does make sense to consider those policies seriously.
W: Professor, thanks for joining us.
M: Thank you. My pleasure.
1. What is a high-value-added teacher?
2. What does Dan think might be a factor of evaluating a teacher’s performance?
3. What might be a benefit of good teachers to their students?
4. What is Dan’s opinion towards ineffective teachers?
5. What can you learn from Dan’s research?