New teachers and teacher applicants have significantly higher SAT scores than they did a few decades ago, says a paper published last week in the online edition of Education Next.
That’s good news for proponents of being more choosy with teacher selections, and it seems to argue against the conventional wisdom that accountability policies are deterring good candidates from the profession, the paper concludes.
“What is less clear is whether this improvement reflects a temporary response to the economic downturn, or a more permanent shift,” write authors Daniel Goldhaber and Joe Walsh, both of the Center for Education Data and Research at the University of Washington.
The analysis notes, for instance, that teachers’ SAT scores in 2008-09 averaged 5 percentile points higher than in 1993-94. And, in a reversal of previous cohorts, graduates with high SAT scores were just as likely to teach as those with lower SAT scores.
