Ask your child how the school day is organized. Ask your child what he or she is working on and why. Ask the teacher what measures are used to evaluate your child s performance. Your child needs, and deserves, the right kind of teaching. Now is the time to ensure that he or she gets it.
Good teaching has a measurable impact on the performance of students.
A growing number of studies prove it. In a 1997 Texas study, students in grades 4 through 6 showed a nearly 20-point improvement in reading scores when they were assigned to highly effective teachers three years in a row, while similar students assigned to ineffective teachers declined by 18 points. Schools often require teachers to teach subjects for which they have little or no preparation. We know that strong content knowledge is a key to effective teaching. But, nationally, more than 25 percent of secondary school teachers do not have college majors or minors in the subjects they teach.