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Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

nytimes.com

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Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#71

Post by yummyfajitas »

jbooth wrote: post #48
yummyfajitas wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding 2), you do it via Value Added Modeling. You build a statistical predictor of student performance (based on standardized test scores) then measure Performance = Avg(Actual - predicted).

Statistical forward looking models proposed by a guy who works in finance? How could that ever go wrong :) EDIT: More seriously, if it's already impossible to measure, I fail to see how more complicated metrics would do anything but do an even worse job of measuring. There might be exceptions to this rule in a few cases but it's generally the way things work.

The VAM metric (which is not very complicated) measures teacher performance by excluding student quality as a causative factor.

If you have low quality students, who are only expected to score at the 25% level, and you boost them up to 35%, you win. If you have high quality students expected to reach 75%, but the only achieve 65%, you lose. Do you believe it's really that hard to predict that Asian kids in 2 parent $250k/year+ households will score higher than black kids in 1 grandparent $10-20k/year households?

If you truly believe the effects of education are immeasurable, perhaps we should stop wasting money on it. We don't spend $859 billion on homeopathy for much the same reason.

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#72

Post by tptacek »

forkandwait wrote: post #56
tptacek wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objection. The kid may have improved specifically in his ability to score well on a specific standardized test, and in no other way . And meanwhile, the process that delivered that superficial improvement could have immeasurably harmed other students who might have otherwise genuinely excelled.

Is there a study that shows that scoring well on standardized tests does NOT reflect real learning? Perhaps there is, but... There is a lot rhetoric to the effect that "scoring well on tests just means you are good at taking tests", but (1) there is nothing wrong with getting good at taking tests, and (2) are we sure? Also, the process MAY or MAY not have harmed other students -- there is no reason to believe it woul…

Yes. Numerous ones. In particular, "high-stakes" middle school standardized tests (of the NCLB variety) appear to correlate negatively with ACT/SAT performance (a test that actually matters).

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#73

Post by tptacek »

jseliger wrote: post #58
tptacek wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objection. The kid may have improved specifically in his ability to score well on a specific standardized test, and in no other way . And meanwhile, the process that delivered that superficial improvement could have immeasurably harmed other students who might have otherwise genuinely excelled.

If your point is that standardized tests have problems, then I agree. But I don't see any other way of gathering some kind of data, and, as far as I know, no proponents of using standardized tests -- including Gates -- want to use them solely to evaluate teachers. But if you had a kid, and you had two teachers, both of whom regularly got classes in the 50th percentile, and one teacher regularly had kids leave in the…

If your argument is that we should purse some kind of standardized metric for teaching effectiveness, and that it might take the form of a standardized test, I'm with you.

If your argument is "nothing could be worse than the way it is today", I strongly disagree. More than 70% of Americans are satisfied (or better) with their own local school. High-stakes testing can easily make schools worse by disrupting curricula and damaging incentives for teachers. If we're going to focus our efforts on the school systems that are in crisis, there are probably better interventions.

Measuring teacher effectiveness is a real problem that needs real work, but in the interim, primum non nocere.

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#74

Post by brg »

jws wrote: post #44
forkandwait wrote: post #43

My favorite recent quote: We all know that successful teaching beyond the infant class involves (a) wide and detailed knowledge of a difficult subject, (b) an enthusiasm for the subject which communicates itself to the class, and (c) a few simple tricks of the trade, learnt by anyone from a single volume and from about three weeks of experience. The art of the Educationalizer is to expand (c) into a mass of pretentio…

So if a class if students decides to throw the exam they can get the teacher fired? Sort of a middle school cousin of jury nullification.

There is little possibility of an entire class jeopardizing their entire future and graduation prospects in order to make one of their educators look bad. Also, you are suggesting that such malicious act would not be detected, and there would be no safe-guards against such an act?

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#75

Post by gruseom »

forkandwait wrote: post #54
gruseom wrote: post #50

This is all just fantasy sports of course, but here's my plan. I would require new teachers to work as apprentices for quite some time (several years) and not pay them very much during this period. After that, if they accede to full status, I would pay them a great deal more. The reasons for this structure: (1) to weed out people who aren't intrinsically motivated by working with children, i.e. the ones who probably…

Why don't pay them decently to start with, pay them better if they deserve it, and FIRE THEM if they don't?

Because "deserve?" and "fire" are hard functions to write. It seems easier to allow for a natural process of attrition.

Edit: I think society should ask one to earn the privilege of being a teacher (what more important asset could we entrust someone with than children?) and to compensate those who have earned it well enough to make it well worth earning.

What's a natural way to earn the right to be a teacher? By assisting those who have already earned it.

(This does raise a bootstrapping question, but that's hardly the crux of the matter.)

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#76

Post by busyant »

forkandwait wrote: post #57
jdietrich wrote: post #55

If we really cared, we could increase the quality of teaching beyond all recognition. It wouldn't be remotely difficult. Massively increase pay for teachers, tripling or quadrupling pay at every level. Mandate a specific postgraduate qualification and a statutory minimum of continuing professional development. Recruit only the best and the brightest, specifically seeking out graduates from the best universities. Adve…

We don't revolutionize teaching because TENURE AND SENIORITY RULES ARE LOCKED DOWN BY THE UNIONS. Want to revolutionize teaching (and save some money)? Break the unions and fire the worst 10% of the teaching staff. Then do it again next year. (Edit: we really DO care about teaching, and spend enormous amounts of tax payers dollars and collective worry on it.)

The Unions are only part of the problem. You want to fire the shitty teachers, right? I'm all for that. Unfortunately, this is only a PARTIAL solution. You also need to be able to fire the shitty administrators (see below). AND you need to be able to "fire" the shitty students (troublemakers).

The school administrations are often composed of transient "revolving door" bureaucrats whose only goal is to pad their resumes with bullet-points of dubious changes that they implemented. * Administrators will frequently alter programs ("we do physics in 11th grade? Well we're doing it in 9th grade now!") simply to demonstrate that they've made a difference. * They will place weak students in classes where they don't belong just to maintain the appearance that they are serving a useful function ("Sure X failed biology and he'll be lucky to get into community college, but I'm recommending that he take chemistry b/c it looks good on his transcript"). * They will protect troublesome students to the detriment of other students ("You can't keep X out of class all the time. You're just going to have to learn to control him")

Students and Parents are as much of the problem as the teachers and the administration: There is often a pervasive attitude of entitlement without any effort amongst the students and their parents. Troublesome students are allowed to ruin the learning environment for everyone else. In an ideal world, you could kick those students out of class (or school), but in reality you can't (see ADMINISTRATION).

Amusing--but not uncommon--anecdote: My cousin is a high-school teacher who had a student who continuously disrupted one of her classes. She finally phoned the student's mother to tell her about her son's attitude problem. The mother responded with:

"Look...I don't call you to complain when he misbehaves at home. So, don't call me up because he's misbehaving on YOUR time."

That's not the union's fault, is it?

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#77

Post by forkandwait »

pmb wrote: post #63
forkandwait wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't revolutionize teaching because TENURE AND SENIORITY RULES ARE LOCKED DOWN BY THE UNIONS. Want to revolutionize teaching (and save some money)? Break the unions and fire the worst 10% of the teaching staff. Then do it again next year. (Edit: we really DO care about teaching, and spend enormous amounts of tax payers dollars and collective worry on it.)

The unions? That's your bad guy here? Teachers are poorly-paid and looked-down-upon in our society and you are blaming the only organization which sticks up for them? The unions suck, certainly, but firing teachers only works if there is a ready supply of quality replacements. Plus, if you remove the perk of job security, you are going to have to significantly increase teacher pay to compensate. Even worse than this,…

Teachers aren't particularly poorly paid -- they make about 45k a year with summers off (that is the country wide salary, the median elementary school teacher salary in San Jose is 65k) and potentially have a great job (when a class is good, teaching is a joy as long as enough easy kids balance the hard ones).

The joyfulness is really important -- private school teachers make shit, but teaching there is great fun and often doesn't require the utterly ridiculous credentialling process of the public schools.

Sure, we're not talking attorney or registered nurse salaries here, but we aren't talking attorney/ nurse student loans or pressure either. No blood, no lawsuits, no ambulance chasing.

Like I say, if the kids are good, teaching is something you would do for free.

Oh -- parents are part of the problem, I will admit. I sort of blame crappy teachers and adminsistrators for creating an environment in which a lot of kids and parents feel alienated from the process. If you don't buy into the process, which requires hard, often unpleasant work, the whole thing goes to hell. But it should be the educators who are on the frontlines of fixing the lazy, fun-only fucked up culture that is the USA.

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#78

Post by forkandwait »

busyant wrote: post #76
forkandwait wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't revolutionize teaching because TENURE AND SENIORITY RULES ARE LOCKED DOWN BY THE UNIONS. Want to revolutionize teaching (and save some money)? Break the unions and fire the worst 10% of the teaching staff. Then do it again next year. (Edit: we really DO care about teaching, and spend enormous amounts of tax payers dollars and collective worry on it.)

The Unions are only part of the problem. You want to fire the shitty teachers, right? I'm all for that. Unfortunately, this is only a PARTIAL solution. You also need to be able to fire the shitty administrators (see below). AND you need to be able to "fire" the shitty students (troublemakers). The school administrations are often composed of transient "revolving door" bureaucrats whose only goal is to pad their resum…

Good point. I would only say that in the long term, the parents' and kids' alienation from the system as a whole is partly the fault of the system. A lot of schools in working class areas SUCK -- everybody knows it and feels stuck with it, so why would they feel like they should play along with the teachers when they call?

Really, I just want to be able to fire the sucky teachers and administrators. I am really a downright socialist (with free enterprise a necessary evil that must be vigorously contained); I hate to be arguing against unions.

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#79

Post by forkandwait »

brg wrote: post #68
jdietrich wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why haven't the unions been broken? Nobody would tolerate unions that protected incompetent lawyers or doctors. Union-breaking is practically a science these days, it's neither expensive nor difficult, especially against a workforce with no ability to mount a meaningfully disruptive strike. It appears to me that there simply isn't the political will to do it. The teaching unions make more noise than parents and stude…

Who has an incentive to work against public unions? Public unions operate in a monopoly for which one business can not be undercut. And after all, public unions vote.

The 85% of us who don't belong to the teachers unions should vote against them. Unfortunately, the teachers unions have the democratic party in their pocket, and I am sure as hell never going to vote for today's republican party (yuck!).
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