America’s Teachers Are Dumb, And They’re Making Students Dumber

More than three years after Covid-19 began, explanations abound for ongoing “learning loss” in schools. But these discussions often miss one of the most obvious explanations: outdated and ineffective instruction.

It’s been repeatedly shown that teacher quality is the primary thing affecting student achievement. Shouldn’t teacher quality be our primary concern? Given how far behind we’ve fallen in teacher quality, you would think so.

If you aren’t convinced that teacher quality has gone down, I would ask you to “briefly state the result and effect of the battle of Waterloo.” If you’re anything like me, you could say something, right? It just wouldn’t be amazing. What is amazing, though, is that the question above was taken from Michigan’s public grammar schoolteacher-licensing exam in history from

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