Giving Students the Chaff: How to Find and Keep the Teachers We Need

Teacher Quality Ignores Contradictory Evidence

October 25, 2006

For Immediate Release

Education Research and Practice

(517) 203-2940 (e-mail) greatlakescenter@greatlakescenter.org

Raymond Pecheone, Stanford University

(650) 723-4106 (e-mail) pecheone@suse.stanford.edu

EAST LANSING, Mich. — A recently released policy analysis

from the CATO Institute which asserts that school choice, in the form of

private-school vouchers and charter schools, will improve the quality of

teachers and relies on selectively cited research and ignores many other factors

that have a bearing on teacher quality according to a Think Twice review of the

report.

The report, Giving Kids the Chaff: How to Find and Keep

the Teachers We Need, by Marie Gryphon, claims that the current educational

system is a major barrier to attracting highly qualified teachers because of

compressed pay scales and the fact that public school administrators fail to

hire and support the best applicants. School choice, she argues, will provide

the incentives necessary to change such practices.

In their review of the report, Raymond Pecheone and Ash

Vasudeva of Stanford University find that Gryphon’s initial premise – that

teacher quality plays an important role in improving educational outcomes – is

well founded in the educational research literature.

However, her subsequent conclusion – “competition and

choice induce improved hiring practices and more flexible compensation policies,

which in turn attract and retain high-qualified teachers” – lacks the same sort

of broad-based evidentiary support, the reviewers write.

“In the end, the report’s failure to consider alternative

interpretations of empirical research on hiring and compensation undermines the

validity of the findings and conclusions, as does the failure to identify

research that does not corroborate an ‘achievement effect’ for charter and

private schools.”

The CATO report contends that administrators in school

districts where there is competition, in the form of charter schools or other

school-choice programs, “gave quality higher priority in the hiring and

retention process.” Pecheone and Vasudeva note, however, that a more accurate

and compelling explanation for variation in teacher quality in these districts

may be that teachers self-select into schools with better working conditions.

“If teacher self-selection into schools (rather than

managerial hiring policies and practices) is chiefly responsible for placement,

then improving school working conditions should be the priority,” Pecheone and

Vasudeva say.

“While it may be argued that schools competing for talented

teachers will improve working conditions to attract them, this argument ignores

resource disparities between and across schools and districts as well as the

communities in which they are located.”

Find the complete review by Raymond Pecheone and Ash

Vasudeva as well as a link to the CATO Institute report at: http://www.greatlakescenter.org

About Think Twice

The Think Twice project provides the public, policy makers

and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank

publications. It is a collaboration of the Education Policy Studies laboratory

at Arizona State University and the Education and the Public Interest Center at

the University of Colorado at Boulder and is funded by the Great Lakes Center

for Education Research and Practice.

The mission of

the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice is to identify,

develop, support, publish and widely disseminate empirically sound

research on education policy and practices designed to improve the quality

of public education for all students within the Great Lakes Region.

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Center website at: http://www.greatlakescenter.or g

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