In Ed Week, Madeline Will reports on a new study finding that teachers’ impact on non-cognitive skills, like adaptability, motivation, and self-restraint, is 10 times more predictive of students’ long-term success than teachers’ impact on student test scores. She continues:

“Test scores are certainly a measure of a set of skills students need to be successful in school and perhaps later in life,” said C. Kirabo Jackson, a professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University and the author of the study. 

But test scores don’t measure social-emotional and non-cognitive skills, he said. And the way that policymakers measure teacher quality is rooted in how their students perform on standardized tests. 

The study, “The Full Measure of a Teacher” by C. Kirabo Jackson, appears in the Winter 2019 issue of EdNext.