No, Firing Bad Teachers Doesn't Help

Funny how whenever anybody starts talking about the practical, proven ways to improve public education - reducing class size, repairing buildings, providing materials, ensuring poor children are fed and clothed - the charter fanatics start hysterically demanding the one thing that doesn't work: firing teachers.

Kevin Drum demolishes the latest anti-teacher lies:

Even if you assume these results are correct, they struck me not as optimistic, but as shockingly low. We're not talking about a small change in teacher quality here. We're talking about a huge change: an entire year spent with a perfectly acceptable teacher instead of one who's the worst of the worst. And even at that, it only made a difference of 1 percent in future income. That's it?

Now, you could argue that the effect would be bigger if we got rid of bad teachers in all the grades. Wouldn't that make a bigger difference? Sure, except that about half of all students never get any bottom-5-percent teachers in the first place; a little less than half get a bottom-five-percent teacher once in their school careers; and only a handful of the very unluckiest students get one for more than one year. So you're stuck with the basic result: averaged across all students, the value of firing all the terrible teachers will probably be a future income increase of less than 1 percent. For an average person, that's a few hundred dollars per year.

Am I the only one who finds that surprisingly meager? I'm all for getting rid of horrible teachers, but if anything, this study makes me put a lower priority on this than I used to—especially considering how difficult it would be to carry out a policy like this. I was surprised that this study got such a euphoric reception when it was published, and I still am.

No, it's not funny. It's a fucking crime.