By identifying, empowering and incentivizing the best classroom teachers, schools can revive stagnant student achievement, according to an article in Education Next by Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and a prior member of the National Assessment Governing Board.
The learning loss impact of the closure of schools in March 2020 due to Covid was compounded by the substantial duration of those closures, and shaky restart of in-person school exacerbated the initial losses.
The latest data on performance from NWEA, a nationally recognized testing firm, indicate that the rate of learning during the 2023–24 school year was lower than rates before the pandemic.
Two popular approaches to addressing pandemic learning problems have been widely relied upon: intensive tutoring and extended learning time, delivered through longer days or summer school. Existing evidence indicates these measures did not reverse the learning losses.
Schools should be looking to mobilize high-quality instructors to teach more intensively.
How?
- Provide monetary incentives to better-performing teachers to take on more students.
- Change their jobs to make working conditions more attractive and to maximize their teaching talents.
- Spare teachers’ ancillary duties such as grading, monitoring students, serving on committees, and so on.
- Give less able teachers fewer students, increasing the effective quality of the current teacher force to meet learning challenges.
What prevents these moves?
The teachers’ unions do not want to set a precedent by recognizing and rewarding excellent teachers. Their response: “How would we know the good teachers?” Of course, principals know, teachers know, parents know, and students know. Evaluation information in most instances backs up this awareness.
Political forces impacting education, in some cases restricting learning opportunities, are also at play. But educators cannot stand by as students fall short of their potential, producing a less skilled workforce that will diminish economic growth.
Forget more federal funds. Focus on effective ways to rectify learning loss by leveraging the best teaching skills.
Education Next
