We want to affect total school improvement. After analyzing millions of Tennessee student test scores over the past decade, Sanders has drawn several conclusions that are winning acceptance. A teacher's influence has a more profound impact on student learning than such factors as family income, ethnicity or class size, he says. And Sanders has found that, for a student who has a particularly effective or ineffective teacher, the impact on performance can still be measured years later. If a kid catches two less effective teachers in a row, that is a permanent academic handicapping.
Sanders relies on complex calculations and powerful computers to track student performance.
He uses a pencil and a yellow legal pad to explain them. He draws simple lines on a graph, yet his statistical model is complex enough to compensate for missing student scores while tracking the progress of individual students over a number of years. North Carolina gauges the performance of its schools by the yearly progress that students make. But in Tennessee, where Sanders' model was pioneered, the state does not stop at the school level. It also drills deeper to assess the performance of individual teachers.