Students, parents and policymakers may want to invest in some apples before heading back to school this year and be sure they’re nice and shiny before handing them to teachers on the first day.
Teachers, more than most other aspects of a child’s classroom experience, are key to determining a child’s educational outcomes, said Brendan O’Grady, senior vice president of corporate and financial communication at Pearson, an international education publishing firm. When it comes to predicting success in school, more important than class size, mandated instruction time and other measurable factors is a “culture of education in which the teaching profession is held in very high regard,” he said.
A panel of experts noticed the connection between qualitative societal attitudes toward education and quantitative performance when consulting with Pearson on The Learning Curve, an international study of education systems done in conjunction with The Economist’s Intelligence Unit.
Dirk Van Damme at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, agrees. Small class sizes can be comfortable, he said, but are not necessarily linked to better class outcomes.
The OECD benchmarks scholastic performance of students around the world through the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, a mathematics, science and reading test given to 15-year-old pupils every three years.
School systems can be assessed on their efficiency, or the quality of instruction provided relative to the budget and resources available, said Van Damme, who heads the OECD’s Innovation and Measuring Progress Division.
[READ: Public spending may be better suited going toward public education to keep citizens healthy.]
“Countries with good PISA scores are not always a result of financial investment,” he said, but above all else, “the OECD would argue more for increasing teacher salaries than decreasing class size.”
Across the U.S. and Europe, increasing income inequality seems to minimize education’s promise of a path to a better future, said Van Damme.
But in consistently top performing school systems, such as those in Singapore, South Korea and others in East Asia, the concept of “inherited smartness,” or a fixed level of talent in an individual, is a myth, O’Grady said, and it is the role of the teacher to be accountable for the success of all students, not just the top tier.
That responsibility is most critical in elementary school, according a report from the National Center on Education and the Economy, “Not so elementary: primary school teacher quality in top-performing systems.” According to researcher Ben Jensen, countries with the most successful school systems ensure the development of a strong teacher corps through four “policy levers”: rigorous selection of teachers, robust teacher training, subject specialization during training and significant in-school support and ongoing professional development.
[READ: Worldwide, public education is up for sale.]
In the U.S., the emphasis on teacher accountability has gone off course, said Van Damme. The livelihood of teachers has become tied to a high stakes testing system that serves to punish teachers more than guide better learning.
“It is very important to professionalize teachers and make them accountable,” he said. “But teachers also need to be trusted and invested in.”
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Teach the Teacher originally appeared on usnews.com
