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State's bad teachers rarely get fired

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Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#11

Post by philwelch »

patio11 wrote: post #8
sgk284 wrote: post #4

Our startup (based in Seattle) was looking at ways to help analyze the performance of teachers. It turns out that the unions lobbied for legislation in Washington that forbids such software from being installed in the schools. The unions don't want mediocre teachers to be found out. It's really a crappy situation and really took us by surprise.

If the unions didn't zealously represent mediocre members, there wouldn't be any point to having them. (There might have been decades ago when management quite literally hired private armies to beat down their employees. Taking a look at the private sector, we can see that non-unionized employees are largely not beaten down by private armies and also don't come to class falling down drunk. Unions have and will contin…

That was my dad's conclusion decades ago, funny enough. Before he joined the Marines towards the end of WWII he was a laborer and union member, and as far as he could tell the union offered virtually no benefit to young and talented workers. Mediocre workers who were loyal to the union long enough to gain seniority did well, but ability got you nowhere.

In the wartime Marine Corps he wasn't promoted quickly but he was still given the duties and responsibilities he was capable of as soon as he proved himself.

The private armies and so forth were mostly a 19th century phenomenon.

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#12

Post by jseliger »

patio11 wrote: post #8
sgk284 wrote: post #4

Our startup (based in Seattle) was looking at ways to help analyze the performance of teachers. It turns out that the unions lobbied for legislation in Washington that forbids such software from being installed in the schools. The unions don't want mediocre teachers to be found out. It's really a crappy situation and really took us by surprise.

If the unions didn't zealously represent mediocre members, there wouldn't be any point to having them. (There might have been decades ago when management quite literally hired private armies to beat down their employees. Taking a look at the private sector, we can see that non-unionized employees are largely not beaten down by private armies and also don't come to class falling down drunk. Unions have and will contin…

This is fairly true, and for more on it, see Megan McArdle's typically interesting take on the theory and practice of unions: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/02/how-unio... .

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#13

Post by ryanhuff »

Its in vogue to bash the teachers these days. In California, the teachers unions have been more prominent in recent years in state-wide political debates, and that seems to have had an impact on public opinion, which is unfortunate.

Regarding Bill Gates TED-talk, he compares US and Asia test scores. I don't see how having cheerleader style teachers can mitigate the challenges that many children from under-performing areas are faced with nationwide. These under-performing schools are often in poor areas, where the family educational expectations are low, and the home-life is not conducive to educational success. If US society placed as much emphasis on education as do Japan and other Asian countries, US performance would be much improved. Bill Gates' proposals are a band-aid over the more significant issue.

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#14

Post by deadmansshoes »

sgk284 wrote: post #4

Our startup (based in Seattle) was looking at ways to help analyze the performance of teachers. It turns out that the unions lobbied for legislation in Washington that forbids such software from being installed in the schools. The unions don't want mediocre teachers to be found out. It's really a crappy situation and really took us by surprise.

Are you going to analyze teachers performance based on their students results? If so you will be penalizing those in worse areas.

And you will make teachers teach to your performance criteria.

Besides how many programmers would like their value to be assessed by a piece of software?

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#16

Post by derefr »

deadmansshoes wrote: post #14
sgk284 wrote: post #4

Our startup (based in Seattle) was looking at ways to help analyze the performance of teachers. It turns out that the unions lobbied for legislation in Washington that forbids such software from being installed in the schools. The unions don't want mediocre teachers to be found out. It's really a crappy situation and really took us by surprise.

Are you going to analyze teachers performance based on their students results? If so you will be penalizing those in worse areas. And you will make teachers teach to your performance criteria. Besides how many programmers would like their value to be assessed by a piece of software?

> Are you going to analyze teachers performance based on their students results? If so you will be penalizing those in worse areas.

I would assume you'd analyze based on the first and second derivatives of the students' results—good teachers leave kids better off than when they started, and great teachers teach kids how to learn faster and better. The important prerequisite to this, though, would be to test kids both before and after each lesson, with tests of equivalent questions and equal difficulty—otherwise, you have no idea how much of their learning was because of the class, and how much they already knew.

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#17

Post by sgk284 »

deadmansshoes wrote: post #14
sgk284 wrote: post #4

Our startup (based in Seattle) was looking at ways to help analyze the performance of teachers. It turns out that the unions lobbied for legislation in Washington that forbids such software from being installed in the schools. The unions don't want mediocre teachers to be found out. It's really a crappy situation and really took us by surprise.

Are you going to analyze teachers performance based on their students results? If so you will be penalizing those in worse areas. And you will make teachers teach to your performance criteria. Besides how many programmers would like their value to be assessed by a piece of software?

The software was actually an early warning system for students (software that detects anomalies in a student's progress). For instance, if a student suddenly started doing bad in three courses it signals different things than if a student starts doing bad in only one course.

You could normalize data to get relative values across teachers and classes. The intent was to find individual students or classes that needed more resources or attention. It was never to get people fired, but the unions fear that's how it will be used.

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#18

Post by uuilly »

rmorrison wrote: post #2

If you want to see an interesting perspective on education in America, I highly recommend watching Bill Gate's TED talk (start at the 8 minute mark): http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bill_gates_unplugged.html In summary, currently teachers are not held accountable for the quality of their teaching due to the way their contracts are structured. Also, formulas for teacher's pay reward experience and extra education, e…

Looks like he's also in an upcoming documentary about the broken US public school system:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount_vantage/waiting...

Some of those scenes are from the lottery to get into the DC voucher program. DC is my hometown and the public schools are Cuisinarts for kids. Recently all future funding for the DC voucher program was pulled.

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#19

Post by tokipin »

sgk284 wrote: post #4

Our startup (based in Seattle) was looking at ways to help analyze the performance of teachers. It turns out that the unions lobbied for legislation in Washington that forbids such software from being installed in the schools. The unions don't want mediocre teachers to be found out. It's really a crappy situation and really took us by surprise.

yea it's unfortunate. the good thing is the current administration's Race to the Top requires states to remove protectionist laws before even being considered for the grants

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNbDv0zPBV4#t=12m

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