THE RESEARCH BASIS FOR PERFORMANCE-BASED TEACHER EDUCATION.

This article presents the analysis of a study on the empirical basis for performance-based teacher education. The analysis lead to three conclusions: (1) The research literature in the correlation between teacher behavior and student achievement does not offer an empirical basis for the prescription of teacher-training objectives (2) The research literature fails to provide such a basis, not because of minor flaws in the statistical analyses, but because of sterile operational definitions of both teaching and achievement and because of fundamentally weak research designs (3) The well-documented, strong association between student achievement and variables such as socioeconomic status and ethnic status.