Teacher vs. Sensei

I've read a lot of education policy articles, but this one really stands out. For possibly the first time, I'm reading something other than "Education is all about the parents," "Schools need to be privatized," or "Racism is the root of the problem."

Basically, a report by McKinsey indicates that the three biggest factors in good education are:

1. Hiring excellent teachers
2. Continuously retraining teachers
3. Focusing on kids who fall behind

NOT affecting educational performance are:

• Paying teachers a lot of money
• School choice
• Long school days
• Small class sizes

To me, the finding about teachers is the most remarkable. I never knew, for instance, that in Finland elementary school teachers need Master's degrees. Apparently, the countries with the best education systems - Finland, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Canada, and Australia - take the top college graduates for their teachers instead of the bottom third, as we do. And studies show - get this:

[I]f you take [American] pupils of average ability and give them to teachers deemed in the top fifth of the profession, they end up in the top 10% of student performers; if you give them to teachers from the bottom fifth, they end up at the bottom.

I never realized that good teaching was so important. Maybe this is because my teachers were so dull that I spent most of my time in elementary and middle school reading books under my desk.

The finding about focusing on students who fall behind - i.e., special ed - is also important, and very intuitive. In economics terms, the learning curve appears to be "concave" - an hour of attention improves the understanding of a bottom student a LOT more than it improves the
understanding of a top student. So focusing on the students at the bottom is just more efficient.

The article suggests that good education policies, not "values," are responsible for the top performance of places like Finland and Korea. But isn't it a kind of "value" to consider elementary school teaching an important enough profession to target the top college graduates for the job? And doesn't it signify a society's "values" that these top graduates can be attracted to teaching without high salaries?