Comments on: Do Teachers REALLY Come From The Bottom Third Of Colleges? Or Is That Statistic A Bunch Of Baloney?

By: Is it true that the dumbest become teachers? « drwilda

Is it true that the dumbest become teachers? « drwilda — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:04:22 +0000

[...] and Economy (NCEE). The full report is not freely available online, but it turns out (thanks to the work of California teacher Larry Ferlazzo) that its source is the National Center for Education [...]

By: Shanker Blog » Do Teachers Really Come From The "Bottom Third" Of College Graduates?

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 14:09:47 +0000

By: BlogWalker - Do Teachers Really Come from the Bottom Third of Colleges?

BlogWalker - Do Teachers Really Come from the Bottom Third of Colleges? — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 23:51:35 +0000

[...] a year ago, Larry Ferlazzo challenged the same data, researched its sources, and concluded: “This bottom-third thing does seem to me to be a [...]

By: Stephen Lazar

Stephen Lazar — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 22:57:38 +0000

You’re definitely right about the fourth point, which might be the most important. Even the McKinsey report that argues for teachers coming from the top third suggests there’s nothing to back that up.

I had a really long conversation about this last week with someone. This person, who was a public defender in the Bronx for 10 years before getting into education, couldn’t believe this, because it flew in the face of everything she had ever we experienced. And while she was willing to work through the cognitive dissidence she experienced, many cannot or will not do this. It’s why so many current myths (class size doesn’t matter, testing tells you something of value, competition is good, merit pay works) in education are so powerful: they appeal to the relatively small percentage of people who benefitted from traditional education structures and capitalist economic structures.

By: Professional blog | 21st Century Educator

Professional blog | 21st Century Educator — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 18:58:58 +0000

[...] must be stupid, and hence part of the reason why the US public system is struggling. According to Larry Ferlazzo, this quote comes from a McKinsey report to which he links on this blog. Larry has a good argument [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:22:48 +0000

Page 91 of the report appears, by all accounts, to be a standard data exploration which has been heavily simplified for a lay audience. I’m no statistical expert myself — I only ever got to the second semester of it in college — but even I’m a little horrified that you’d characterize it as “a lot of mathematical discussions of this topic, little of which I could understand.”

1.) Sidwell’s Mr. Stewart’s claim probably comes across too strong, but *is* consistent with the COE 2002 report.

2.) The COE report (your “page 91″) is already heavily simplified, but let me try further: it explains essentially that students from the bottom 25% of college students (as measured by SAT scores) are somewhat more likely to become teachers than college students from the top 25%. The difference is noticeable, but not staggeringly so.

3.) The NY Times analysis you link to is discussing another part of the NCTQ report and *definitely does not apply* to the COE analysis on the report’s page 91 (page 115 of the *.pdf). I can explain more if you like.

4.) The fact that something isn’t a *perfect* predictor of teacher effectiveness doesn’t mean it’s not useful. In general, people who play in the NBA tend to be taller than those who don’t. Similarly, in general, students with higher SAT scores tend to be better teachers than students with low SAT scores.

Are there exceptions? Definitely. There are many excellent teachers with low SAT scores, and many poor ones with high SAT scores.

But the fact that we’re pulling teachers disproportionately from the bottom 25% means that, on balance, we’re doing worse than we would if we drew them from the top 25%.

By: LARRY FERLAZZO: Did You Know That THE Key To Saving American Education Is Firing Bad Teachers? « Christa Allan

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:04:50 +0000

[...] And it might be helpful if the writers didn’t say that teaching doesn’t attract “the best and the brightest.” Questioning the overall intelligence of teachers is not only insulting, it’s wrong (see Do Teachers REALLY Come From The Bottom Third Of Colleges? Or Is That Statistic A Bunch Of Baloney?) [...]

By: Rhalmi Mohammed

Rhalmi Mohammed — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:30:40 +0000

I’ve always been doubtful of statistics!! Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to anything. Keep working and don’t bother about numbers!!!!

By: Katie Sawrey

Katie Sawrey — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:27:05 +0000

Hi, Larry –
I am a math tutal in a 3-5 elementary school, so I thought I’d peek at the report and see if I could discern anything from the data discussion.
The first thing that struck me is the phrase “Using SAT and ACT scores as a proxy for academic caliber…” This indicates to me that the authors knew this is kind of a first cut on how to objectively rank teachers’ academic skill. As Kate W. indicates, I don’t think they meant it to be a definitive judgement on teachers’ intelligence.
The problem has been what the greater audience has done with that information. They’ve turned it into a definitive “Teacher’s Intelligence”, completely negating the fact that teachers’ skill is not about succeeding on the SAT or ACT. I’ve had very intelligent, terrible teachers and inspiring teachers who were not the sharpest knife in the block, as I’m sure most of us have.
That said, they do make general statements about how SAT scores are more likely to appear – elementary v. secondary, free lunch v. private. They don’t make any judgement on how significant that is to teaching ability.
Finally, that last paragraph of data jargon has to be an over-boiled account of what was first written. It’s too condensed to make meaningful sense, as far as I could tell. They seem to say that secondary school teachers in the top half of SAT scores mirror the general college graduate population, but that doesn’t make sense. If they are in the top half, they can’t mirror the whole population.
I do think it’s OK to work through the concept of where our teachers fall academically, and does that have an impact on student learning. It’s just a shame that they looked at one numerical indicator to make these judgements, especially considering the populations out there willing to skewer the teachers.
I had a family member who used to complain about the “liberal school environment and all those liberal teachers”. My jibe back was, “Well, [Nameless], what self-respecting, conservative capitalist do you know that would be willing to work in those rougher schools for so little money? Maybe if we paid teachers more, we’d have more Republicans and you’d have nothing to complain about.” He’d just laugh and we’d go on to other discussions.

By: kmfullerton

kmfullerton — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:36:47 +0000

I saw this episode of Meet the Press and was so worked up I changed an entire grad class paper to address it. In my view it falls in line with all the other elitist memes for privatization of schools with teachers coming only from the Ivy League Teach for America corps. It also puts at odds their case for alternative paths to teaching. Surely some of the second career teachers didn’t have such hot SAT/ACT scores or even great grade point averages. Yet through the power of a life well lived and varied and interesting world experiences they are the prized teacher candidate, as they should be. We might as well all leave the classrooms now. How can I continue to encourage the high school and middle school students who, for whatever reason, have let their grades tank yet are capable, creative, and often brilliant students in unconventional ways? How can I teach them there is time for redemption with hard work? What about the students whose learning differences made school that much more difficult and the perfect grade and high SAT/ACT scores elusive yet have persevered against many obstacles to graduate from high school and go on to get their college degree? Many of these students are intuitive teachers and having worked closely with amazing and excellent teachers chose to give back and become teachers – dedicated, brilliant teachers. What quoting this statistic really means is that we don’t want to spend too much time looking at the whole student, the whole experience they might bring. It is easier to look at pedigree and scores. I would like our teacher corps to reflect the diversity and experiences in our student populations and that will include very high performing individuals as well as those who know intimately the struggle many of our students are facing. To quote the statistic is really a reflection of not having been in a classroom in a public school for any meaningful amount of time or experience. SAT/ACT scores are not a measure of “intelligence”; maybe of “smart”. How does this “smart” measure up to the actual “knowledge” your students have and need to know to navigate in their world?