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State's bad teachers rarely get fired

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Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#21

Post by ryanhuff »

derefr wrote: post #16
deadmansshoes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In practice, year to year, the ability of kids varies. While you might have a strong group one year, the next year things can be much different. Imagine the jockeying by teachers to get the best students if it meant their job or a raise. Do the less able kids get kicked the the curb because teachers are worried about getting fired?

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#22

Post by cabalamat »

philwelch wrote: post #11
patio11 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

> ability got you nowhere.

Sadly, this appears to be true in many walks of life.

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#24

Post by cabalamat »

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.

The new UK government plans to let groups of parents and others to set up their own "free schools" on the Swedish model. Perhaps some varient on this would solve the problem?

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#25

Post by WarDekar »

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.

For a great look at this, check out the documentary [1] The Cartel. He focuses on New Jersey for the most part, but he touches on how difficult it is to remove poor teachers because of the teachers unions (which fight for the teachers at all cost, and essentially don't give a damn about education).

One example given was of a 17-year teaching veteran- an English teacher that was illiterate! I'm not entirely sure how that happens, but anything is better than what is currently happening with our schooling system- and make no mistake, it's not an education system, but a schooling system as former NYState educator of the year John Taylor Gatto [2] argues [3-5].

[1] http://www.thecartelmovie.com/

[2] http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Sch...

[4] http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteacher...

[5] http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#26

Post by cabalamat »

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?

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

If I knew the criteria, I wouldn't mind, because then I could game the system.

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#27

Post by anamax »

ryanhuff wrote: post #13

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…

> Its in vogue to bash the teachers these days.

The popularity or lack thereof of something doesn't tell us whether it is wrong.

> 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.

How so?

Feel free to explain how CA's teachers unions have been a net positive for society over then past 10 years.

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#28

Post by derefr »

ryanhuff wrote: post #21
derefr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In practice, year to year, the ability of kids varies. While you might have a strong group one year, the next year things can be much different. Imagine the jockeying by teachers to get the best students if it meant their job or a raise. Do the less able kids get kicked the the curb because teachers are worried about getting fired?

Define "the best students." With my assumption of measurement by derivatives above, those would be the students whose knowledge changed the most during the lesson—those who knew the least before and the most after. Thus, teachers would be jockeying for the students most in need of education, not the students who already know the most (because the pretest scores would reveal that the teacher hadn't changed their knowledge very much over the year.)

Rather than the current No Child Left Behind policy of regression to the mean, this would assign the most "learning-intensive" teachers to the students most in need of learning, and assign the students who self-study or are otherwise pre-informed to teachers who are more "lenient", likely diving further into interesting sidebars and tangents. Both groups would be better off for it.

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#29

Post by deadmansshoes »

cabalamat wrote: post #26
deadmansshoes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Besides how many programmers would like their value to be assessed by a piece of software? If I knew the criteria, I wouldn't mind, because then I could game the system.

Exactly my point..it's not going to lead to better software though is it? And teachers gaming the system won't lead to better education.

Re: State's bad teachers rarely get fired

#30

Post by billswift »

cabalamat wrote: post #22
philwelch wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

> ability got you nowhere. Sadly, this appears to be true in many walks of life.

Sadly true, but it is institutionalized in unions and civil service (and even worse in unionized gov't jobs like teaching).
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