Chapter 2: How to Determine who is a Quality Teacher

Welcome to the panel that will answer this question once and for all: What is a quality teacher? Now actually Bill Bennett just alluded to the same quote that I had planned to start with. But I’ll start with it anyway. The quality teacher is like Potter Stewart’s explanation of pornography. In 1964, just as Stewart tried to explain hard-core pornography by saying in part, “I shall not attempt to further define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description. And perhaps I could never succeed in intelligently doing so. But I know it when I see it.” Everyone, teachers and the principal at a particular school, parents and even the kids themselves, know who the quality teachers are when they see them even if they cannot be specific about what makes excellent teachers.