re: I am the Department of Education: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

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Victim blaming. How pathetic.

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You can largely reduce the explanatory factors school achievement into three broad categories: the student characteristics (IQ, emotional regulation, intrinsic motivation, etc.), environmental factors (family, community, peers, etc.), and the school factors (teachers, curriculum, intervention, etc.).

When you look at it it's entirety, the school is only a small percentage of the equation, and teachers have a proportion (although probably the largest) of that. In addition, the student characteristics are unlikely to change much.

The outside environmental factors (mainly home) and school factors are the only ones that that really controllable. And there is a lot reseach that supports the home factors are more signicant.

HOWEVER, even if less than we hope, teachers do have a signicant impact on student achievement, about 0.15-0.17 standard deviation difference between good and poor teachers in a single year.

So the 100% on parents remark is ridiculous from a teacher. And that external locus of control isn't typically associated with good performance.

Overall though, the problems are poor family environments and poor teachers. There are probably fewer poor teachers though; however, there impact is significant. Pm the other hand, once those factors get to average, the gains are diminishing.

In other words, good teaching and parenting isn't much more effective than average teaching and parenting, BUT both are signicantly more effective than poor teaching and parenting.