There’s a bit more commentary around today responding to my teacher aptitude study with Chris Ryan. Here’s a sampling:
- An oped by former headmistress Judith Wheeldon in the Australian.
- Some commentary on merit pay in the Courier Mail.
- Reader feedback in the Age.
- Some data on recent trends in Sydney University teacher education courses in the Australian.
- An editorial in the Herald Sun.
- Some support from Federal Labor for performance pay in the Age.
Andrew Leigh's Archived Blog 2004-2010 
Andrew,
I liked the piece on teacher education. Quick question: do we know with any degree of certainty or precision what the effect of teaching quality is on student performance? And how do you even measure teacher quality?
Shaun, one way is to use student test score gains. I have a paper on that too (using data from all Qld kids tested in the last 5 years). It’ll be out shortly.
Thanks Andrew. That’s interesting – I assume your Qld data links scores to teachers then. If so, if you had more data on the teachers you could link this to your initial proposition about the decline of teacher aptitudes and see whether it was true. I’ll be following your blog closely to see what the results are.
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