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from the those-who-can,-do,-those-who-can't,-teach dept.
In the US: this article presents an analysis how a person's chosen college major corresponds to their IQ. The interesting thing is that the relationship has remained essentially stable over the past 70 years. At the top of the list are math, science and engineering. At the absolute bottom of the list: education.
These data show that US students who choose to major in education, essentially the bulk of people who become teachers, have for at least the last seven decades been selected from students at the lower end of the academic aptitude pool. A 2010 McKinsey report (pdf) by Byron Auguste, Paul Kihn, and Matt Miller noted that top performing school systems, such as those in Singapore, Finland, and South Korea, "recruit 100% of their teacher corps from the top third of the academic cohort."
The article points out that it isn't quite this simple: Top schools place high requirements on all of their students; poor schools generally attract lower quality students in all of their programs. Still, the national averages are clear: overall, the least intelligent students go on to teach. This is an odd priority.
Educational organizations, of course, have a different view. This article claims that teacher quality declined from the 1960s through the 1990s, but has since recovered, with teachers being barely below average (48th percentile) among college graduates.
On a related note, there is a strong international correlation between teacher pay and student outcomes. The (rather obvious) theory is that higher pay attracts better candidates to the teaching profession.
No conclusions - just thought this might spark an interesting discussion...
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Saturday July 02 2016, @06:07AM
Yes and no. In the US, "Middle class" is generally defined by income level (while elsewhere it is generally defined by the type of job or source of income).
The unfortunate fact is that teachers should be middle class, but in many states, young teachers don't earn enough to be included in the middle class. They don't earn enough to have an income that is much greater than the waitress you are worried about. This despite having a bachelor's degree plus about half way to a master's. This despite taking on a lot of debt in the form of student loans.
Yet, people think that teachers should be better, despite the fact that they are not paid sufficiently well.
Now there are many examples of bad teachers who are overpaid. But school districts can't hire better teachers simply because few people who would be good teachers are prepared to dedicate their lives to a profession that suffers from chronically low pay.
Many teachers last no more than 5 years in the profession: not enough time to get to a tolerable salary level.