By Joe Williams, DFER Executive Director
Over at the Shanker Blog, Matthew Di Carlo has a thoughtful post looking at (and to some degree challenging) the conventional wisdom that teachers are coming from the “bottom third” of college graduates.
Di Carlo traces the origins of the claim to two different McKinsey and Co. reports (one from 2007, which cited another 2007 report by the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, which was issued by the National Center on Education and Economy-NCEE, and one from a 2010 report, which cited the U.S. Department of Education, NCES, 2001 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Survey).
He makes some interesting points about how reliable these two sources turned out to be, and suggests there is a rather weak foundation under the “ubiquity” of the claim that the bulk of our nation’s teachers are coming from the lower levels of college graduates.