U.S. Teachers Have Middling Literacy and Numeracy Skills: Report

When compared to both their peers internationally and fellow American college graduates, U.S. teachers have middling math and literacy skills, finds a group of international researchers, who conclude that boosting salaries would be one way to attract higher-skilled individuals into teaching.

The trio of researchers found that in terms of literacy skills, American educators score just about as well as other American college graduates and outscore teachers in 13 of the 23 developed countries analyzed using data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), which tested the cognitive skills of more than 160,000 adults across 24 developed countries.

The report compares teachers using PIAAC scores, which are on a 500-point scale. They were able to isolate teachers' scores because results were linked with occupations. Teachers' median scores are compared to their nation's college-educated populace and fellow educators across the 23 countries.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2016/07/us_teachers_have_middling_skills.html