at the risk of pissing off a lot of people - especially as we already have an - uncomfortable - relationship -
they also recruit the TOP STUDENTS to be teachers. It's an unfortunate truth that teachers in the US do not come from top tier students - probably because of the pay and lack of respect.
"The McKinsey report, “Closing the talent gap: Attracting and retaining top-third graduates to careers in teaching,” compares how we recruit, develop and retain teachers with how that is done in Singapore, Finland and South Korea. Those countries were selected as benchmarks because 100 percent of their teachers come from the top third of their academic cohorts, while only 23 percent of new teachers in the United States, and just 14 percent of those in high-poverty schools, are in that category.
The McKinsey researchers admit that research on whether a teacher’s high grades and test scores predict classroom effectiveness is “very mixed.” But school systems in the three comparison countries usually score far ahead of American students on international tests. The report provides a good starting point for seeing what else we can do to make better teachers.
The report looks not only at how the countries that hire only top-third people as teachers recruit them, but the way they train them and compensate them. It culminates with an series of scenarios -- what the McKinsey computers predict would happen if we adopted several practices that seem to work in the three comparison countries."
. . . Singapore, Finland and South Korea do other things we don’t do. They make admissions to rigorous teacher-training programs very selective. They tie the number of teachers they train to the number of available teaching positions so jobs are guaranteed. They offer opportunities for advancement and growth. They offer great social prestige.
As many comments on the previous blog post note, teachers tend not to be motivated by money as strongly as many of the rest of us. So perhaps it would be worth trying some of these non-salary incentives. At the center of any new recruiting scheme would have to be better methods of teacher training. Anyone who has spent any time in an urban school knows that getting on the dean’s list at Enormous State University does not guarantee you know how to survive in a classroom.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/09/post_7.htmlHere's a link to the information -
http://www.oecd.org/document/52/0,3343,en_2649_39263238_45897844_1_1_1_1,00.htmlscroll down to: Chapter 3/ Indicator D
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