By Esther Quintero
Debates about how to improve educational outcomes for students often involve two “camps” – those who focus on the impact of “in-school factors” on student achievement and those who focus on “out-of-school factors.” There are many in-school factors discussed but improving the quality of individual teachers (or teachers’ human capital) is almost always touted as the main strategy for school improvement. Out-of-school factors are also numerous but proponents of this view tend toward addressing broad systemic problems such as poverty and inequality.
