In Texas, a study conducted by the Dallas Independent School District found that a group of beginning third graders in the city's schools scoring at the 55 percentile level in mathematics, had reached the 76th percentile level at the end of fifth grade after being assigned to three effective teachers. Students who began at the same level in the third grade had fallen to the 27th percentile after being assigned to three less competent instructors. In Boston, a study released by Bain and Company found that the top third of the city's public high school teachers was producing six times the learning seen in the bottom third. The same conditions may prevail in California, and they are likely to get worse because teaching ranks must expand. During the next 10 years, California will have to hire as many as 300,000 new teachers to accommodate the state's ever-growing population.
Current studies show that schools all over California have difficulty retaining good teachers.
Young instructors who have done well in college have many career options outside teaching. Districts have experimented with a variety of incentives, ranging from merit pay to signing bonuses, to attract and keep these smart young teachers. Peer-review programs, which are preferred by many Democrats and their union allies, do not grant sufficient flexibility to districts. Most arrangements prevent administrators from firing incompetent teachers and make it difficult to implement other performance-based accountability measures. Both Republicans and Democrats have shown a misplaced faith in class-size reduction as a principal vehicle for improving student performance.