Another couple recommendations from my finally shrinking to-read stack.
This superb 2006 Brookings teacher quality report????from Gordon, Kane, and Staiger graphs the influence teachers have on student learning. ????The whole report is worth reading, but if nothing else, check out figures 1, 2, and 4. ????They clearly make the case that we ought to be agnostic about what type of preparation program a teacher comes from and instead focus on his/her achievement effects. ????The variation among the products of different preparation programs is much greater than the differences between the programs. ????(The very same thing can be said of school types.)
This interesting Education Next article from West and Woessmann finds that Catholic populations a century ago in various countries have a bearing on the number of Catholic schools still operating in those nations today. ????More importantly, the competitive pressure generated by these schools appears to have improved student achievement and school efficiency in both public and private schools. ????Lots of interesting implications but the one that springs to mind first is that this suggests that America's urban school systems would be even lower performing and more expensive today were it not for the influx of Catholic immigrants in the late 19th and 20th centuries.