I believe a troubled community creates a troubled school and I tip my hat to the teachers who care enough to teach there.
A lot of studies now show that bad teachers dwarf all other inputs from an educational perspective. I think the Finnish experience bears this out.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell?printable=true#ixzz0g9OQf42EEric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year�s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half�s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year�s worth of learning in a single year. Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a �bad� school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher. Teacher effects are also much stronger than class-size effects. You�d have to cut the average class almost in half to get the same boost that you�d get if you switched from an average teacher to a teacher in the eighty-fifth percentile. And remember that a good teacher costs as much as an average one, whereas halving class size would require that you build twice as many classrooms and hire twice as many teachers.�
We have a limited amount of money and a limited amount of time. How is the money spent to get the most out of it for the kids and our communities? What are the trade-offs the the various approaches?
For schools - the easiest and most cost-neutral approach is:
1. Find, hire, and train the best teachers.
2. Remove the bottom 5% of the teachers.
3. Hold principals and school superintendents accountable for performance and costs. Bonus them or fire them just like we do business leaders in the private sector.
I think there are other ways, too. But very, very few districts take the time to research all options and do a full cost analysis of their options and then look at the impacts. They decide how much they want to spend then spend it letting their budget cycle drive their spending rather than looking at lifecycle costs.
