I know this is very off-topic at this point, but as a K-12 teacher married to a spouse who mostly teaches college but has also taught 7th grade- graduate students, I would like to add that “being a good teacher” is also context dependent.
This year in a new position, half of my husband’s undergraduate students are men incarcerated in a medium-high security prison for violent crimes. He is an excellent humanities teacher in this context! Many outstanding teachers in other settings would absolutely be terrible with this student population and setting (not even a guard in the room with them.) It is rare to be a great teacher in such a place. In fact, another undergraduate program is now trying to poach him because “the inmates speak so highly all the time of Dr. X.” I am a very good teacher of an esoteric subject to elementary and junior high students, but I could never control the class, gain the respect, and deliver the humanities curriculum he does to the imprisoned.
I credit his ability there to growing up in pre-Giuliani New York City in the kind of family setting where telling a six year old to go alone to buy a parent’s cigarettes at the bodega on the corner was seen as normal. He demands their respect, but he gives them respect in return, particularly the respect of assuming they can function in a classroom like any other student.
Next year, it is looking increasingly likely that husband will be back to teaching uber-privileged, well educated undergraduates, at which he also excels. On the other hand, he is not great with the elementary and junior high group, students who are poorly prepared and/or overly-emotional, or those with over-involved and protective parents. (From experience!)
So, would he count as an excellent teacher, an average one, or a poor one? Depends on the context. The same teachers can be phenomenal in one setting and not in another. Teaching in six states across different types of schools, I have never known a teacher who did as well in every setting with every type of student, myself included. The qualities needed vary considerably. I completely lack the qualities to teach behind prison walls, but I am glad other people are superior teachers in those conditions and would find it surprising should the same individual be just as outstanding with, say, a class of third grade girls.
I do feel for the overwhelmed admissions officers at all but the most elite schools (original topic of post!) Also for the financial aid officers. I long ago came to the sad conclusion that in education in America, typically the more difficult the job, the worse it pays (see prison education above) and the cushier the job, the better it pays (see potential for next year in a SLAC.)