Check out the new documentary, Testing Teachers, by Emily Hanford at American RadioWorks. You can download the 53-minute audio documentary as an MP3 audio file, listen online, or read the transcript. Here’s a summary from their site:

Teachers matter. A lot. Studies show that students with the best teachers learn three times as much as students with the worst teachers. Researchers say the achievement gap between poor children and their higher-income peers could disappear if poor kids got better teachers.

Politicians and education reformers are calling for big changes in how teachers are trained and evaluated – and in the way teachers are hired and fired too.