Fire Teachers?

Idea: simply cut the worst teachers to solve systemic education woes.

Andrew Biggs uses this logic in his recent article for the National Review Online.  He believes the ills of our current education system may be remedied by the mass-release of the bottom performing five-percent of teachers.

Terminate their employment. Don’t replace them. Simply reallocate their students to other classrooms … [this] strategy may in fact be the optimal way to improve education, a first-choice approach rather than a last resort.

While I share his frustration with the ineffectiveness of modern education, I presently find myself disagreeing with his method.  Such shock treatment, per se, seems quite the blunt tool for an utterly complex issue.

For instance, Biggs discusses how massive teacher firings would affect class sizes upon student reallocation.

According to the NCES, the student-teacher ratio declined from over 22 in 1970 to around 16 today  … Teacher unions understandably favor small classes but, as Education Secretary Arne Duncan has noted, you’d much prefer your child to be in a large class with a good teacher than a small class with a bad one.

Yet this point leaves several factors unanswered.  He fails to mention the more pertinent NCES figure of average class sizes across the country.  Namely, that “the average class size in 2007–08 was 20.0 pupils for public elementary schools and 23.4 pupils for public secondary schools.”  [emphasis added]

As education students, we learn that teaching is most effective with 22 or less students per class.  With classes larger than 22, it becomes much more difficult for a teacher to differentiate his approach and tailor the materials to his students’ individual learning needs.  Per Biggs’ recommendation, already-large classes would bulge to ever greater numbers, while even the best teachers would struggle to manage lessons.  High performance, then, would find resistance from yet another front.

So if firing teachers is not enough, what can we do?

Beyond firing poor performers, we need to train better educators with higher standards.  As a profession, education must be reinvigorated, elevated.  Moreover, we are in desperate need of decentralization, in which families and communities gain a renewed sense of ownership over their children’s formative years.

Surely, Biggs presents many valuable, pertinent insights into the education debate.  Yet rather than such stopgap measures, a truly holistic approach is necessary.