What is the typical teacher's IQ? Reader David made an interesting comment on the post about the breadwinner family that with homeschooling your child is taught by someone with a IQ higher than that of the typical teacher (not to mention having the right politics).
What is the level of intelligence of today's high school teacher? Looking at GSS data, I calculated mean IQs for the 1980s and 1990s combined (N = 107) and for this decade (N = 68) . For the early period, the average was 107. Now it's 104. I'm not impressed.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
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12 comments:
Do you have standard deviations as well?
Someguy
No teacher left behind!
Education administrators have even lower scores.
The problem with schools is not the teachers, but the administrators. They are incompetent and drive out the best employees. Focusing on the rank and file is a poor strategic angle.
But what about IQ vs grade level? The kindergarten, preschool, and elementary teachers don't have to be smart.
But if you're teaching high school math (or even middle school math like geometry), you probably need a score over 104. I imagine HS teachers are smart enough and have the knowledge required to provide a better education than a homeschooling mom.
OneSTDV,
As near as I can tell, homeschool moms seriously outperform nearly all public educational options (a recent study done, with @10k homeschool kids involved and a number of standard issue standardized tests had homeschool kids performing in the 85-90th percentiles with respect to public schooled kids. Amusingly, a teaching certification didn't help any (kids educated where neither parent had a teaching cert averaged 88th percentile, vs 87th for families with neither parent with a cert). When you consider that homeschool kids with at least one parent with a college degree did better than those without one, and that a teaching cert is, last I checked, an actual degree, it is rather damning.
In my experience, a teacher really ought to be no more than a sigma less intelligent than their student, and no more than 2 sigmas more. The US Army's studies back this observation up fairly strongly also. It is also why the optimal IQ for major commercial or political success is in the neighborhood of 130.
A homeschool mom further has the advantage of being able to let their children run at their own pace...it is the reduction to the absurd of class size and 'streaming' arguments. All of the homeschool kids I know that have graduated have done so no later than their 16th birthday, and some sooner than that.
Ron,
What variable are you using to identify teachers? The ISCO codes, or something else?
Audacious,
I used OCC80 and googled the 1980 census code.
Given that teaching is a disproportionately female profession won't a verbal test somewhat overestimate their IQ?
Someguy: Standard deviations for both periods were 14.6.
teaching isn't something that comes intuitively. teaching any one subject requires a strong background in the core subject and understanding of pedagogical methods. the notion that you can simply read and learn how to teach and be on par with many teachers, particularly those with experience is absurd.
good point RWF. they should also break down the scores by gender as well.
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