Thursday, January 19, 2012

Rotherham on Choosing Teachers

Andy Rotherham's article on the importance of parents playing an active role in choosing their children's teachers within a school is a perfect example of the macro/micro dissonance which plagues ed reform. If you really care about equity, you can't allow this. If you really care about the precision of teacher evaluation, particularly value-added calculations, you can't have systematic selection bias.

Of course, the obvious explanation is that Andy Rotherham does not care about either of those issues.

As I've said before, increasing market efficiency for teacher quality will only ensure those teachers will go to the highest bidders. The more you demonstrate the importance of teacher quality, the more those that can pay more for it will do so. Can these people really not think more than one step ahead?

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