Teaching is 'hard work', it requires educated, dedicated people, and it's very important work.

But it's not rocket science. Doing it is not risky - especially if you're teaching something that's been taught a million times before. Most well educated people I think could teach at least one subject, though they may not have the wherewithal or stamina to stick it out, or may not have the empathy/social skills to do it well.

I think this is something that many well educated people think, right up until they are placed alone in a class-room of 30 children who aren't desperately interested in what they have to say.

Granted, that's not the first time these people have been in a classroom, but collage Education degrees don't see high attrition either. Also, "97 percent of teachers who earned more than $40,000 their first year returned the next year, compared with 87 percent who earned less than $40,000."

The idea that one only needs to be good at a subject to teach it well is bunkum.

It's not rocket surgery, it's potentially far more important.

And in essence you have hit on the problem. Everybody thinks they can be a teacher. And for some value of $teacher they can, but it's hard to be really good.

You might watch LeBron James play basketball and think "I can do that," go out on the court and take a few shots, and think you're pretty good. But you're likely not.

This is why assessing teachers is soooooo important. We need reliable, verifiable ways to separate the good from the bad.

As a teacher, the moment that a reliable assessment method is introduced there will be significant push back; however, it will also be the key to broad improvements in the education system and the further professionalisation of teaching (and, by extension, teacher retention/compensation).

I also believe that this starts by enabling classroom teachers to assess their students with the reliability of standardized tests but within their individualized curriculum. That's not an easily ask - but it is an exciting concept that I return to every few months.

It's so easy for us to blame teachers, or to wishfully think they could turn it around on their own, but the approach has to extend beyond the classroom. Non-school factors are estimated to have 4-8 times the impact as teacher quality. [2]

We should work on removing vocational program stigma and drop the illusion that everyone should aspire to a 4 year degree, even if in disciplines with terrible job markets, to "succeed".

I really wish there was some way of incentivizing parents to be more involved, or moving to year round all day education to mitigate their impact.

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/02/high_sc...

[2] https://www.rand.org/education/projects/measuring-teacher-ef...

This is a red herring - to the point where it is misleading.

A) Start with US 'students students' are behind maybe instead of schools. Because the comparison scores are PISA and they measure people not institutions.

But more importantly:

B) It's ethnicity. (And I'm not attributing anything to race here).

'European Americans' have been doing the same for the last 40 years. They are doing a little bit better than Europeans from Europe.

'Asian Americans' have been doing the same since we've measured them as a group, they do a little bit better than European Americans, and tend to do a little bit better than Asians from Asia.

African Americans fare the worst, Latino Americans fare better, but both groups have been doing a little bit better over time. They do a little bit better respectively than Latinos from South America and Africans from Africa.

Demographically, there are considerably more Latinos, and a few more Asian and African Americans in the country - which tilts the data.

So you see: any group from anywhere in the world actually fares better in America than they would in their place of origin. Which is really a different way of looking at it, no?

Because of the social and economic disparity between these groups, it lends well to the notion that it's about the students and not the schools.

Small but slightly less relevant note: the top American students tie the top UK students as being among the best in the world. The US/UK have a little bit of an elitist function going on.

So consider this: I'm Canadian, always proud that 'we fare better than the US' on PISA testing, but really, once you normalize for ethnicity (we don't have large groups of Latinos and African Americans) - then we do about the same.

And of course I should add I don't think this is racial issue at all, however I do think that the social + economic status of any group is tied to things like outlook on education, history of literacy in the family yada yada.

All of this is based on PISA scoring which is available on their site and other places.

That said, educators are the tip of the spear - and I do believe that there is opportunity for additional technological mediation in improving the teacher's professional practice. It could also obsolete significant chunks of our multi-billion dollar standardized testing industry (a benefit to both the operating enterprise and the budgets of school districts).

The whole basis of 'US is doing worse than OECD or Greece' or whatever is based on PISA scores.

It's very crude, but it's what we have.

In other words, it's much more about soft skills than hard skills. Think of a good speaker. Two people can talk about the same subject, but one leaves you with the inspiration and curiosity to learn more, the other makes you want to break for lunch.

Of course, you have to get rid of the disruptive kids. US schools are so scared of getting sued, the principles just bounce them back to the classrooms. When I was growing up, they had a school for bad kids so they wouldn't disrupt the ones that were there to learn. They closed that program down. My state is in the lower half of the school system.

Money also matters. You can't each in a classroom full of 30-40 kids at the high school level. Teachers can't be spending their money on school supplies the state won't budget for. Earning a college degree for a profession that doesn't pay very well isn't a great option, so fewer people do it.

For something so critical to our civilization, it seems many states treat education as a cost center.

Disclaimer: Both my parents were teachers as were many in the family. I am not, but if things were better, I certainly would consider it. I'm a programmer by trade.

Teaching children in poverty is a specialization. Teachers can excel at teaching children at upper middle class schools but fail miserably at an inner city school. People complain about privilege on teacher quality difference between inner city and good schools. The truth is that the "good" teachers at an upper middle class school wouldn't be much of an improvement over the "bad" teachers at inner city schools. The "good" teachers only know how to teach well-behaved, studious students!

That is why integration failed. The environment at good schools are good for children with familial support and low behavioral issues. It is not good for children with behavioral issues without familial support.