Good Student-Teacher Matches

 

            Q. Our daughter's sixth-grade teacher was just not very intelligent. She was a very earnest and sincere person who really cared about kids, but she was a terrible speller, she didn't know much about science or history, and her ideas of how math should be taught were just totally out of the loop. Our daughter barely made it into seventh-grade algebra, she got so far behind kids in other classes that sixth-grade year. I'm afraid she actually back-slid academically that year, because she was, frankly, smarter than the teacher. But she was too "nice" to complain, and didn't want us to make a fuss, so we did nothing about it. Should we have insisted that she get another teacher? There were two other classrooms. But we didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. What do you do in a mismatch situation like that?

 

            It does seem like quite a waste of taxpayer dollars if the person who's getting paid to do the teaching isn't as advanced academically as the youngsters! But it does happen, especially in districts with a lot of college-educated, high-achieving parents.

            A smart teacher, who is well-read and competent in lots of subjects, will be better able to relate to a smart student who wants to achieve above the norm. Such a teacher will understand that student better, won't intimidate the student, and will know how to inspire higher-level learning, and on the other hand won't accept half-hearted work or laziness, and will demand correct spelling and solid research.

            Meanwhile, a less-able teacher might not be able to do those things, because that teacher's own academic skills are lacking, and probably that teacher's confidence, too. A less confident and competent teacher frankly may not know what to expect or demand from a more-able student.

            A mismatch situation gets more serious the older the student is, though it sounds like your situation was pretty extreme.

            At least one study has shown that gifted students do better in classrooms if their teachers are also gifted and well-experienced. Authors Charles Clotfelter, Helen Ladd and Jacob Vigdor examined statewide classroom data from North Carolina to see if better-qualified teachers produced higher student achievement. They looked at 3,842 fifth-grade teachers and found that there was a correlation between high scores on any given teacher's own college admissions tests and teacher licensure tests, and high ratings of classroom performance.

            The opposite is likely true, too: the lower the teacher's own test scores, the lower the effectiveness ratings in the classroom, and the lower the satisfaction of students from high-achieving families.

            The researchers found that a single standard deviation increase in teacher licensure score increased predicted math achievement by 1 to 2 percent. Students assigned to highly experienced teachers improved their math scores by about one tenth of a standard deviation, and their reading scores by slightly less than one tenth of a standard deviation.

            Researchers concluded that assigning strongly-qualified teachers to weaker students would probably reduce the students' test scores because of the mismatch situation.

            That does suggest that it might be wise for school officials to group students by ability, and assign the strongest students to the strongest teachers. It might also be a good public service to publish the SAT or ACT scores and teacher licensing exam scores of each teacher, since, after all, they are public servants and their salaries are paid by the taxpayers. That would red-flag mismatch situations for parents of strong students and help them avoid trouble.

            But politically, these might both be tough for school administrators to do.

            So how can parents cope? Network with parents of children a year older to get a heads up on the teachers in the next year's grade. If there's one in particular who's considered weak, and your child gets that teacher, get in to the principal's office just as soon as you can, and get your child reassigned.

 

Homework: See the article detailing the research on http://www.nber.org/digest/sep06/w11936.html