How do you know teachers will be successful before you’ve seen them teach? Malcolm Gladwell, author of the best sellers Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, delves into this question in his article, “Most Likely to Succeed.” He points to the “quarterback problem” -neither the NFL nor a school district knows for sure how their recruits will perform until they see them in action.
Isn’t that the truth? And as schools struggle, it becomes increasingly important for school districts to hire quality teachers. In fact, research identifies the teacher as the most important school-related factor in raising student achievement. Gladwell emphasizes that students in a “bad” school with an “excellent” teacher are better off than students in an “excellent” school with a “bad” teacher. He highlights qualities of excellent teachers like making the lessons understandable and energizing the class. Conversely, the school system harps on certification and advanced degrees, indicators that research has proven unreliable.
What does a good teacher look like? They are smart. According to research from the National Council on Teacher Quality, teachers with strong literacy skills as identified by high SAT, ACT, or GRE verbal scores are more likely to produce large gains in student achievement. In addition, the selectivity of a teacher’s college is also significant as “students make greater learning gains if their teachers attended a selective college.”
To find these great teachers, Gladwell recommends that the teaching field “throw the door wide open” to all college-educated candidates. From this large pool, schools could select candidates and send them to a training camp. They could offer positions only to the most successful. Tenure wouldn’t be rewarded, and teachers would be paid competitively.
While these suggestions may sound revolutionary, they are just plain common sense. Shouldn’t schools want to select the best candidates and observe the teachers’ work before putting them in the classroom? Injecting the teaching profession with some competition might not only encourage “good” teachers to stay in the profession, but it would also likely improve student performance, a result that everyone can agree is “excellent.”
– Paige Perez