<p>[Annals</a> of Education: Most Likely to Succeed: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker](<a href=“Most Likely To Succeed | The New Yorker”>Most Likely To Succeed | The New Yorker) </p>
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<p>Great article - thanks for highlighting…</p>
<p>I also enjoyed the article. The author’s statement above is not too meaningful in the real world, however, as you would probably have to suffer through many bad teachers in a bad school to experience the exceptional excellent teacher, whereas in an excellent school you would be more likely to have exceptional teachers while suffering the occasional bad teacher. Otherwise it would not be an excellent school.</p>
<p>I’m reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” this week, which has a great discussion of key differences between the American and Asian educational systems. One major difference…kids in Asian countries have a much longer school year.</p>
<p>Great article. Teacher dh loved it and is passing on to his principal.</p>
<p>SVMom:</p>
<p>I finshed reading the book “Outliers” last week. Although some things in the book were obvious, I liked the way the book was put together. The section on the culture and teaching methods in Asia was new to me, and quite fascinating, especially these two observations: 1) The rice growing culture and its effects on a strong (and long) work ethic; 2) Asian languages, the abbreviated words for numbers and its effects on early math learning ability.</p>
<p>I liked the way the book basically disabused the idea of a self made man (or woman) and spoke to how certain lucky events impacted the lives of outstanding people. Sure, these people had to have the brains and get go to exploit those lucky chances.</p>
<p>Also in the book ( I dont have it in front of me so I will paraphrase) he made two other points about education.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>After a certain level, IQ/tests are a predictor of future success</p></li>
<li><p>After individuals meet some specific albeit high standard… Harvard (as an example ) shoudl just a lottery for enrollment; charging that that is effectively what they are doing with numerous high scoring/high testing indivduals being rejected</p></li>
</ol>
<p>In the article he says anyone with a degree ought to be able to ‘try out’ as teacher. I have to assume that teachers do not agree with this statement.</p>
<p>More to the point, schools ought to be able to weed out the less able teachers if better ones surface over time.</p>
<p>interesting article, but I think it claims far more than it should thru a common error. By holding all other factors the same, it magnifies the importance of teaching. Read again the article and note it says
So sure, one class in this case may do better than the other and its attributable to the teacher. But what factors contributed to overall performance? How about parental involvement, adequate nutrition, influence of peers at home and in the classroom, etc? What is missing from Gladwell’s story is any estimate or even mention of the relative magnitude of these other effects; the reader is left with the impression that teaching explains all.</p>
<p>This story reminds me of a lot of the studies you read about heritability and height. Height is said to be strongly inherited. But studies of height are done at a point in time; common for members of that society are the level of medical care, prevention of epidemics, nutrition & famine, etc. These dwarf the inherited differences for a population, as anyone who’s ever visited a museum and wondered why the knights of the past (surely at the top of the food chain of their era) wore armor that is much too small for almost anyone to wear today has noticed. Even today you can notice the children of immigrants from poorer societies have taller offspring. Once your well-fed and immunized against disease, your illnesses treated, then genes explain height. And for children of similar backgrounds and abilities the teacher explains a lot; what’s more interesting (and important) before we run off and change everything to match Gladwell’s theories of the primacy of the teacher is to have a handle on the other influences. My bet is there’s a lot more bang for the buck there.</p>
<p>mike,</p>
<p>I don’t think the author fully laid out his scientific evaluation plan in the article, just the principle of it. </p>
<p>I would say though that if you randomly assigned kids of equal starting points (percentile) from the same student population (school) over years and found that one teacher outperformed the other on average over a number of years (both overall and in the majority of years samples), you’d have a solid case for for saying that one teacher is better than another.</p>
<p>Yes, when you compare students from different schools, you cannot compare results, although you might be surprised to find that it would be easier to take a group of 50th percentile kids from the inner-city and raise them to the 60th percentile than taking a bunch of kids from the prosperous suburbs of the same 50th initial percentile. Let’s just say that the inner city kids probably have more untapped potential than the optimized kids from suburbia, if what you say about the outside advantages hold true.</p>
<p>off topic – but Roger Rosenblatt’s article in the same issue is a must-read for any parent looking for perspective in these times. not easy, but very powerful.</p>