Also, any plan to fix education that doesn't address class size is categorically not serious. Anyone who tells you that we can cut our way to excellence is selling magic beans.

My SO is a teacher in a high-needs grade school, and the kids with the biggest problems are also the kids with the worst attendance, the worst record of completed assignments and the parents who take the least action when she informs them of their child's poor performance. Even if every teacher you put in front of a student is Jaime Escalante, a child who doesn't do the homework is going to have problems.

No teacher can make you appreciate the opportunity afforded by education. No teacher can make you come to school ready to learn or make you complete the assignments on time. Those are things that have to be learned and rigorously encouraged in the home if they are to take root at all. The idea that a teacher can somehow be so good that they can override that bad habits of the student and the indifference of the parents is silly on its face. It's at least as silly as the idea that there is a quantifiable link between teacher output and the performance of a particular student that is somehow independent of all that child's other variables. Even when it's measuring change from year to year, that solution ignores the fact that poorer students are also more transient, making it difficult to have comparable samples year on year.

My SO teaches in high-needs school because she wants put in work where it's most needed. She works hard to make contact with every single student's family, and to give ample warning when a child is beginning to struggle. Punishing her because several of her kids are homeless, many of them are ESL, and the district can't afford the staff to work with some of the educationally and behaviorally challenged students seems perverse.

Politicians can't get elected saying it, so they pretend it isn't true, but the real issue is that some parents take no responsibility at all for the success or failure of their children. You don't have to worry about the kids whose parents are involved - the won't be derailed by the occasional mediocre teacher. For students whose parents aren't involved (and it doesn't matter why - too busy isn't a valid excuse) even a Dream Team of teachers might not be enough.