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only 26 percent of US high school students are proficient in math.

The accountability models increasingly in fashion find their roots in the discipline of economics rather than education, and they are exemplified in the value-added metrics now gathered by large urban school districts

Value-added modeling is one example of a larger approach to improving public schools that is aimed at enhancing what economists label “human capital”—factors such as teacher experience, subject knowledge, and pedagogical skills.

enhancing teacher human capital should not be the sole or even primary focus of school reform

if students are to show measurable and sustained improvement, schools must also foster what sociologists label “social capital”—the patterns of interactions among teachers.4

In addition to targeting teacher human capital, many believe that a key to improving public schools lies in bringing in people outside the school, or even the school district, to solve problems

A natural extension of the belief in the power of outsiders is the notion that teacher tenure is the enemy of effective public education.

In many reform efforts, the principal is cast as the “instructional leader” who is responsible for developing and managing pedagogical practice.

These three beliefs—in the power of teacher human capital, the value of outsiders, and the centrality of the principal in instructional practice—form the implicit or explicit core of many reform efforts today

Unfortunately, all three beliefs are rooted more in conventional wisdom and political sloganeering than in strong empirical research.

results provide much support for the centrality of social capital—the relationships among teachers—for improving public schools.

our findings strongly suggest that in trying to improve public schools we are overselling the role of human capital and innovation from the top, while greatly undervaluing the benefits of social capital and stability at the bottom.

teacher tenure can have significant positive effects on student achievement.

In the context of schools, human capital is a teacher’s cumulative abilities, knowledge, and skills developed through formal education and on-the-job experience.

several studies conducted largely by economists have shown little relationship between a teacher’s accumulation of formal education and actual student learning

Social capital, by comparison, is not a characteristic of the individual teacher but instead resides in the relationships among teachers.

ideology of school reform

When a teacher needs information or advice about how to do her job more effectively, she goes to other teachers.

when the relationships among teachers in a school are characterized by high trust and frequent interaction—that is, when social capital is strong—student achievement scores improve.

Teachers were almost twice as likely to turn to their peers as to the experts designated by the school district, and four times more likely to seek advice from one another than from the principal.

We found that the students of high-ability teachers outperformed those of low-ability teachers, as proponents of human capital approaches to school improvement would predict.

Students whose teachers were more able (high human capital) and also had stronger ties with their peers (strong social capital) showed the highest gains in math achievement.

Conversely, students of teachers with lower teaching ability (low human capital) and weaker ties with their peers (weak social capital) showed the lowest achievement gains

even low-ability teachers can perform as well as teachers of average ability if they have strong social capital

According to Ms. Rhee, “cooperation, collaboration, and consensus building are way overrated.”7

When teacher turnover resulted in high losses of either human or social capital, student achievement declined. But when turnover resulted in high losses of both human and social capital, students were particularly disadvantaged.

A social capital perspective would answer the same question by looking not just at what a teacher knows, but also where she gets that knowledge

But it is this latter class of activities—which can be conceived of as building external social capital—that made the difference both for teachers and for students.

When principals spent more time building external social capital, the quality of instruction in the school was higher and students’ scores on standardized tests in both reading and math were higher.

The more effective principals were those who defined their roles as facilitators of teacher success rather than instructional leaders.

the current focus on building teacher human capital—and the paper credentials often associated with it—will not yield the qualified teaching staff so desperately needed in urban districts.

olicymakers must also invest in measures that enhance collaboration and information sharing among teachers.

there is not enough emphasis on the value of teacher stability

We found direct, positive relationships between student achievement gains in mathematics and teacher tenure at grade level and teacher social capital.

principals who spent more of their time on collaborating with people and organizations outside the school delivered gains to teachers and students alike.