ABSTRACT
For most, it comes as no surprise that research has consistently shown that teachers can have profound effects on their students. Hanushek (1992), for instance, fi nds that the quality of a teacher can make the difference of a full year’s learning growth. Research dating all the way back to the “Coleman Report” (Coleman, 1966) has shown teacher quality to be the most important schooling factor infl uencing student achievement.1 Recent fi ndings, based on better data and more rigorous statistical methods, have confi rmed that the quality of the teacher in the classroom remains the most important schooling factor predicting student outcomes, and have furthermore shown that there is considerable variation in quality between teachers (Goldhaber, 2007; Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2005; Rockoff, 2004; Sanders & Horn, 1998; Sanders & Rivers, 1996; Wright, Horn, & Sanders, 1997).2
