Searching for Effective Teachers with Imperfect Information

摘要

In the ongoing debate over how to improve teaching quality in public schools, there have been conflicting claims regarding the usefulness of currently available measures of teacher effectiveness. For example, in reference to a proposed initiative to measure teacher effectiveness using student test scores, the head of the New York City teachers' union Randi Weingarten stated: "There is no way that any of this current data could actually, fairly, honestly or with any integrity be used to isolate the contributions of an individual teacher" (as reported by Medina, 2008).