7How to Improve the Supply of High-Quality Teachers

When considering schools, one must pay attention to teachers.After all, teachers are the largest single budget item of schools, and many believe that they are the most important determinant of school quality. Yet research does not find a systematic link between teacher characteristics and student outcomes, leading to doubts about many current policy thrusts that are keyed to measurable attributes of teachers and their background. The relevant research follows four distinct lines that relate in varying ways to teacher quality. At the most aggregate level and possibly the most influential, a variety of studies have traced changes over time in the salaries of teachers relative to those in other occupations. Going beyond that, a sec-ond level of studies relates pay and other characteristics of teaching jobs to the characteristics of teachers in different schools and districts and teacher turnover. A third line of research, following naturally from these, relates teacher characteristics to student performance. The failure to find a strong relationship between the contributions of teachers to student achievemen