Teacher Credentials Unrelated To Student Achievement

From "Measuring Teacher Effectiveness: Credentials Unrelated to Student Achievement" [Updated weblink] by Marcus Winters, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Issue Brief No. 10, September 2011:

In the U.S. public school system today, the method used to determine teacher effectiveness—and thus to drive salary, promotion, and tenure decisions—is based on a few external credentials: certification, advanced degrees, and years of experience in the classroom. Yet according to a new analysis of student performance in Florida that two colleagues and I conducted, little to no relationship exists between these credentials and the gains that a teacher’s students make on standardized math and reading exams. Our expansive study included all test-taking public elementary school students in the state of Florida over a period of four years.