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It goes without saying, as Nicholas D. Kristof makes clear in "The Value of Teachers" (column, Jan. 12), that good teachers make a lasting difference in the lives of students. And there is no question that education and the economy are intertwined; one can't be strong if the other is weak. But it is not the case, despite what he asserts, that teachers' unions resist a focus on teacher quality.

In the long-simmering debate over how to judge the quality of New York State school employees, there is one thing all sides agree on: a system should be in place. The sticking point has been agreeing about how to do it. There is the fight between New York City and its teachers' union over the parameters of an evaluation system that must be put in place in 33 struggling schools. And there is the fight waged in court by the state teachers' union, which sued the Board of Regents last year over its interpretation of a law on teacher evaluations.

How does the DOE decide which high schools to close? For the third straight year, and all claims to a nuanced review of quality aside, the schools the DOE chooses to shut are simply those that dare to teach the students with the city's highest needs. There's nothing terribly nuanced about it at all. (For previous years, see here and here).

In 2008, the Louisiana Legislature passed the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program to provide tuition vouchers to low-income students in Orleans Parish to attend private and parochial schools or public schools outside of Orleans Parish.  The purpose was to give parents better, higher quality school options other than attending a failing school. Educate Now! analyzed the test scores for students in voucher schools and compared them to students in Recovery School District schools.

I had a few thoughts about the big teacher quality and VAM study that came out today that I wanted to share before they float away. My thoughts are less about the methods of the study itself and more about how it moves so quickly from the econometrics to the policy, and how the journalist presents it in the New York Times. Bruce Baker (@schlfinance101) says that there is a lot of interesting data here, and I look forward to reading his take on it, but I didn't feel this article fairly presented the context and limitations of any study of this sort.

And so it begins: one working paper comes out - a study that hasn't even been published yet in an academic journal - and we're supposed drop all the previous high-quality research about the unreliability of using test scores to evaluate teachers and embrace Value-Added Modeling (VAM).

Ensuring that all students in America's public schools are taught by good teachers is an educational and moral imperative. The teacher is the most important school-based influence on student achievement, and poor children and those of color are less likely to be taught by well-qualified, experienced, and effective teachers than other students. Yet teacher incentive proposals - including those promoted by President Obama's Race to the Top program - are rarely grounded on what high-quality research indicates are the kinds of teacher incentives that lead to school excellence and equity. Few of the current approaches to creating teacher incentives take into account how specific conditions influence whether or not effective teachers will work in high-need schools and will be able to teach effectively in them. This review of research finds little support for a simplistic system of measuring value-added growth, evaluating teachers more "rigorously", and granting bonuses. Instead, the brief supports four recommendations: use the current federal Teacher Incentive Fund to attract qualified, effective teachers to high-needs schools, expand incentives by creating strategic compensation, create working conditions that allow teachers to teach effectively, and more aggressively promote the best practices and policies that spur school excellence and equity. The accompanying legal brief offers legislative language to implement these recommendations.

As teacher evaluations are becoming more prevalent in schools across the country amid a growing debate on how best to grade teachers, a new report out today adds to the growing number of studies concluding that student test scores should be one of several determinants in measuring student effectiveness. Instead, teachers should be assessed based on a combination of classroom observations, student feedback and value-added student achievement gains, according to the Measures of Effective Teaching project's paper, "Gathering Feedback for Teaching." Educators should be observed by certified raters through multiple, high-quality observations with clear standards.

The answer to the often-debated question - Does money matter in providing a quality education? - is yes, according to a new report that reviewed research on the subject.

Contrary to the canned rhetoric flying around public discourse on education finance, high-quality research like that discussed in Baker's review does not lend itself to broad, sweeping conclusions. Some things work and others don't, and so the strength and consistency of the money/results relationship varies by how it's spent, the students on whom it spent, and other factors. Sometimes effects are small, and sometimes they're larger. Nevertheless, on the whole, Baker's review shows that there is a consistently positive effect of higher spending on achievement. Moreover, interventions that cost money, such as higher teacher salaries, have a proven track record of getting results, while state-level policies to increase the adequacy and equitability of school finance have also been shown to improve the level and distribution of student performance. Finally, and most relevant to the current budget context, the common argument that we can reduce education funding without any harm to (and, some argue, actual improvement of) achievement outcomes has no basis in empirical evidence.

A meta-analysis of charter school studies revealed that about 75 percent of them do not meet rigorous research standards because they don't account for the differences in academic background and academic histories of students attending charters, when comparing them with those attending traditional public schools, according to the review, published in the renowned journal Science. Those studies typically fail to "disentangle school quality from the preexisting achievement level," or student self-selection of schools, the article says.

There's horrific news in today's Daily News: that NY State Education Commissioner King is likely to approve the mayor's proposal to fire half of all of  teachers at 33 struggling schools:"That's a pretty aggressive teacher evaluation system," the state insider said. "We believe the switch meets all the federal requirements." Firing a fixed and arbitrary quota of  at least half of all teachers, regardless of their ability, is not a real teacher evaluation system; it's a meat cleaver approach. This proposal reveals Bloomberg's phony hypocrisy and any supporter who  claims to care about the importance of "teacher quality."

After scoring a legislative win with a recently-enacted state law limiting teacher tenure and strike rights, the well-heeled education advocacy group Stand for Children is turning its attention to issues specific to Chicago-including school turnarounds. On Wednesday, the group announced that it is launching a radio campaign to "educate Chicagoans about the value of public turnaround schools." Group leaders also plan to host "telephone town hall meetings" where CPS officials and community leaders can discuss with residents of the South and West sides the "need for quality schools."

When asked to identify the qualities that lead to success in life, experts often list the ability to overcome obstacles. Pushing past adversity, through determination and persistence, is the hallmark of the greatest leaders, the most successful parents, the most prized employees, we are told. Those who make no excuses, who do whatever it takes to get something done, are the ones who have the capacity to achieve greatness.

Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer's new study of 35 New York City charter schools attempts to find a preliminary answer to the question of how different practices within charters are correlated with student progress on math and ELA tests. In general, this study's premise and methods represent a promising shift away from just looking at test scores to measure school quality; it acknowledges variations between charters and gets to the issue of what policies and practices are actually happening inside these schools.

Parents may have important effects on their children, but little work in economics explores how children's schooling opportunities impact parents' investment in children. We analyze data from the Head Start Impact Study, in which a lottery granted randomly-chosen preschool-aged children the opportunity to attend Head Start. We find that Head Start causes a substantial and significant increase in parents' involvement with their children-such as time spent reading to children, math activities, or days spent with children by fathers who do not live with their children-both during and after the period when their children are potentially enrolled in Head Start. We discuss a variety of mechanisms that are consistent with our findings, including a simple model we present in which Head Start impacts parent involvement in part because parents perceive their involvement to be complementary with child schooling in the production of child qualities.

The Tea Party dominated New Hampshire Legislature on Wednesday overrode the governor's veto to enact a new law allowing parents to object to any part of the school curriculum. The state House voted 255-112 and Senate 17-5 to enact H.B. 542, which will allow parents to request an alternative school curriculum for any subject to which they register an objection. Gov. John Lynch (D) vetoed the measure in July, saying the bill would harm education quality and give parents control over lesson plans.

What King and Duncan don't realize is that forcing a haphazard evaluation plan will not fix anything. It instead will result in an ineffective evaluation process, thrown together in the interest of dollars, rather than students. A story all too familiar in America's schools. New York's education system is an entrenched bureaucracy that requires a complete overhaul. Improving teacher quality is a piece of the puzzle, but not the silver bullet.

My four children have all attended public schools in our middle-class suburban district. When my oldest was in fourth grade, in 1998, he took the state tests, and I was not even aware of it. Later, he said the tests were kind of fun; he got to miss his regular classes. Six years later, in 2004, our daughter was in fourth grade. Long before the state tests, a letter came home. Prep classes were being offered before and after school. While the sessions were not mandatory, students were strongly urged to attend. Eventually the results were printed in our local newspaper. The news was grim; the nearby districts, in wealthier towns, had creamed us. The following year, our middle school added a mandatory course to prep for the state English test. That 1998/2004 divide - what happened in the interim was the 2002 No Child Left Behind law - should be kept in mind when analyzing a new, widely publicized study that closely tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years to determine whether teachers who helped raise children's test scores have a lasting effect on their lives. The researchers conclude that having such a teacher improved students' odds of going to a good college, the quality of the neighborhoods where they lived and their lifetime earnings.

What [the Chetty, Friedman and Rockoff] paper shows - using an extremely detailed dataset and sophisticated, thoroughly-documented methods - is that teachers matter, perhaps in ways that some didn't realize. What it does not show is how to measure and improve teacher quality, which are still open questions. This is a crucial distinction, one which has been discussed on this blog numerous times (also here and here), as it is frequently obscured or outright ignored in discussions of how research findings should inform concrete education policy.