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

Post by niels_olson » Sun, Nov 21, 2010, 6:04 PM UTC

aik wrote: post #109

yummyfajitas wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

37 hours total, averaged over all full time teachers. Sorry, should have been more clear. This includes work done at home (e.g., grading). http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf You might have done more work, but you were above average.

1. Those stats are from 2003. New programs (especially No Child Left Behind) have caused a lot of teachers to have to put in a lot more hours (of pointless work). 2. Any truly dedicated and correctly-focused teacher I would imagine would have to spend more hours per week, talking to parents, spending extra time with students, research, etc.

Post by yummyfajitas » Sun, Nov 21, 2010, 6:20 PM UTC

jbooth wrote: post #127

yummyfajitas wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 $…

Well, I'm pretty sure they're already doing something similar to that. And you consistently hear the best teachers complaining that by teaching to the test they're doing a worse job of teaching. Developer productivity is really hard to measure with universal statistics -- every attempt to do so has failed miserably and usually made things worse. Does that mean that nobody should spend money on development?

Post by jbooth » Sun, Nov 21, 2010, 7:04 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #133

jbooth wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm pretty sure they're already doing something similar to that. And you consistently hear the best teachers complaining that by teaching to the test they're doing a worse job of teaching. Developer productivity is really hard to measure with universal statistics -- every attempt to do so has failed miserably and usually made things worse. Does that mean that nobody should spend money on development?

You should not hire developers if they have no measurable effect on your software quality/feature set/P&L. Incidentally, measuring developers is done routinely. Every bank (except maybe Citi) has a set of procedures and guidelines for outsourced development. These procedures make the process fairly predictable and they reduce costs/dependencies. Much like outsourced IT, teaching is repetitive grunt work. It can and s…

Post by lancewiggs » Mon, Nov 22, 2010, 12:13 AM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #121

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…

You might be interested in this UK charity that was covered on BBC Radio 4 last week: http://www.teachfirst.org.uk/TFHome/index.aspx They take high flying graduates from top Universities and "fast tracks" them into teaching jobs in "challenging" schools. The idea being that the graduates teach for at least two years and then go on to other things with the support of the charity. I guess just exposing young kids to pe…

Post by apu » Mon, Nov 22, 2010, 1:51 AM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #66

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…

Relative to the Military or Social Security budgets, the cost would barely even register on the balance sheet. WTF? We already spent more on education than the military ($859B > $731B, circa 2008, 2009 numbers not available yet). If we tripled spending, education would be bigger than SS, military, medicare and medicaid combined . Unless you are Paul Krugman, I think that level of spending would register on the balanc…

  [1] reports 45.4 billion vs. 660.6 billion
  [2] reports ~100 billion vs. ~700 billion
  [3] reports 157 billion vs. 895 billion
  [4] reports 89.4 billion vs. 544.5 billion