Picking the right teachers?

Interesting article that basically says we really don't know in advance what will make someone effective in the classroom. An education degree, a master's degree in education, National Board Certification, etc., all appear to have little or no predictive value. As with undergraduate admissions applications, the best predictor appears to be previous track record. If a student had a high GPA in high school, they're likely to have a high GPA in college. If a teacher helped increase test scores in the past, they are likely to help increase test scores in the future. Whether high GPAs and test scores really matter is another question entirely.

Since we're so bad at predicting good teaching, this article's conclusion is that those schools that do well do it mostly by giving a set time line for determining who has performed well, offering lots of support and supervision during that timeline, and then making a real "up or out" decision at that point (after two years, in this case). Hmmm . . . sounds somewhat like we've ended up with our 3-year contract system where most up or out decisions are made after year two.

http://www.slate.com/id/2195147