Proposed fixes are a probationary period for new teachers and removing the fixed pay scale that dominates the teaching profession.
I think you'll find that the impact of teacher quality on student achievement is dwarfed by the impact of student quality.
http://www.rajchetty.com/chettyfiles/value_added.pdf
If you scroll to table 3, you'll see how huge an effect non-teacher quality factors have. Table 5 shows huge specific roles for parent income and minority vs non-minority status.
Perhaps a simpler way to think of it: if teacher quality dominated everything else, then a teacher getting poor scores out of a class of poor black kids, relative to another teacher getting great scores out of a class of rich asian kids, would be entirely to blame. Do you really believe this?
Well, using the weaker-but-still-absurd claim that teacher quality matters more than student quality (but isn't necessarily the only thing that matters at all), that teacher would only be almost entirely to blame.
However, switching the teachers around should cause the poor black kids to start outscoring the rich asian kids.
There are two paragraphs, early on, that address or interestingly fail to address student quality. The first fails to address it:
> The quality of the teachers in our schools is paramount: no other measured aspect of schools is nearly as important in determining student achievement. The initiatives we have emphasized in policy discussions—class-size reduction, curriculum revamping, reorganization of school schedule, investment in technology—all fall far short of the impact that good teachers can have in the classroom. Moreover, many of these interventions can be very costly.
Replacing the students with better students is an easy and effective way to see much larger gains in student achievement. It is not proposed as a policy reform for the obvious reason that it doesn't do anything to help current students; it serves the needs of the school, not the students. (Imagine giving some parents who are trying to get their son to pass calculus the advice "toss out your son and get a better one". This works if "your son" refers to "whoever happens to be the son of this fixed couple, which may vary day-to-day", but not if "your son" itself refers to a fixed person.)
The following paragraph reports the range of teacher-to-teacher variation in quality (emphasis added):
> Indeed, the magnitude of variation in the quality of teachers, even within each school, is startling. Teachers who work in a given school, and therefore teach students with similar demographic characteristics, can be responsible for increases in math and reading levels that range from a low of one-half year to a high of one and a half years of learning each academic year.
That clause I've emphasized is an admission that the impact of student quality is high enough to make measuring the effect of a teacher difficult.
Anyway, according to this article, the difference between getting the worst teacher at a school (-0.5 grade levels) and the best (+0.5 grade levels) is one grade level of achievement. Fifth graders differ among themselves by much more than five grade levels of achievement.
> his claim, with evidence shown, is that teacher quality matters more [than student quality]
What evidence are you referring to? I see several estimates of the size of the impact of teacher quality, and not even a mention of the size of the impact of student quality.
In small school districts like the one I grew up in, your district can bounce from A+ in the test score rankings with one class of above average intelligence students, to failing the next year when you have a class full of SPED kids, then back again the next year. I've seen it happen, it is what it is. Try as hard as you may, you can't make chicken salad from chicken shit...
-- time to run around every hour for littler kids
-- hearty lunch cooked from scratch at school every day
-- social services that ensure your family has health care no matter the parental job situation
-- a school social worker and psychologist who will help you and your family.
Examples: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/nov/21/finland-edu... http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/the-joy...
[0]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html...
[1]http://smile.amazon.com/Teach-Like-Champion-2-0-Techniques/d...