Identifying Good Teachers: Expert vs. Ordinary Knowledge

Abstract

While much has been written about the effects of standardized testing on student achievement, less work has addressed how this information is taken up by parents. Drawing on the results of a survey of 286 parents in a diverse urban school district, our research illuminates three aspects of parental response to test score information and efforts to link that information to teacher quality concerns: 1.) How parents relate various teacher traits to quality teaching; 2.) How parents know if their child has a good teacher; and 3.) How parents think teachers should be evaluated. We find that test score data are perceived as both imperfect and incomplete with regard to measuring teacher quality and that parents often rely more on “ordinary” forms of knowledge. This raises questions about the value of existing standardized test score data as an informational spur to reform.