June 04, 2010
Probably not the medical profession either. In discussing school reform today he applauded the fact that the Obama administration was making it easier to fire teachers, telling readers: “in every other job in this country, people are measured by whether they produce results.” How many economists suffered any career consequences after failing to foresee the largest economic crisis in 70 years? You can’t mess up more than Chairman Bernanke and company. Yet, they all still have high-paying jobs — they probably didn’t even miss a scheduled promotion.
The same obviously applies to many of those Wall Street high-rollers who would have sank their companies had it not been for the bailout from the nanny state. (I will refrain from commenting on reporters and columnists.) So, insofar as teachers are not evaluated based on their performance, they are clearly not alone.
It is also worth noting that it is not as easy to measure teacher quality as Brooks and many others seem to believe. Berkeley economist Jesse Rothstein found that “good” 5th grade teachers improved the scores of their students in 4th grade. The issue here is obviously one of selection. Parents who are very involved in their kids education make sure that their kids are taught by a teacher who is considered to be good. This means that part of the explanation for their better student test scores is that they are getting better students.
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