The Key to Improving School Performance (and Business, Too!)

The Key to Improving School Performance (and Business, Too!)

Election Day, 2012. Candidates for office at all levels of government have points of view on multitudes of issues and how they will address each issue if elected. Improving our schools is one such issue. In recent years, research has increasingly pointed to teacher quality as a primary driver of top quality schools. A Harvard University study revealed that, on average, having a “top 5% value added teacher for one year raises a child’s cumulative lifetime income by $50,000.” A 2010 McKinsey study reported that top performing nations “recruit 100% of their new teachers from the top third (of college graduates), whereas in the U.S. it is 23% overall and 14% in high poverty schools.”

So we know that teacher quality matters and we know that recruiting top college graduates for teacher positions is important. With this information, we should have a clear path to improving our schools. Yet getting the right teachers in the classroom seems more often the exception than the rule. Enter Scott E. Barron, Chief Reinvention Officer & Managing Partner, School Growth, LLC. (www.schoolgrowth.com). An experienced educator and administrator, Scott has a real passion for reinventing schools, both private and public. Emphatic on the importance of a talent strategy to a successful school, Scott shared several elements of a talent strategy for a school turnaround or improvement: > More…