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Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

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Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#231

Post by WalterBright »

yamtaddle wrote: post #221
WalterBright wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there isn't punishment. Teacher pay is entirely based on years of service and what degree they have. Achievement of their students has no affect on it. Teachers can't even be fired. See "Waiting for Superman". (Well, they can be fired, but only for things that have nothing to do with teaching.)

I'm going to be blunt, for the sake of bystanders, because I think HN can suffer sometimes on non-tech topics when we try to all be excessively-nice and it gets hard to sort out what's true because the confidently-wrong and confidently-right all look the same: this is clearly very much not a topic you have expertise on or have studied very deeply, and you're wrong about a lot of it. > No, there isn't punishment. Simp…

> which, yes, happens

At extremely low rates compared to other professions. It's effectively "can't be fired", unless the teacher has an affair with a student or something like that.

> career advancement means "leaving the classroom" in practically all cases

Having the reward for good teaching being leaving teaching is not a good riposte for my proposal.

I expect that a cash bonus for meeting grade level will incentivize the more competent and confident teachers to want to teach classes with the harder cases in them, so they can collect more bonuses.

The core idea, obviously, is to pay for the results you want.

Like a salesman. They get a (low) base salary + commissions on sales. It's in common use because it works. For the good salesmen, it's the path to riches.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#233

Post by tstrimple »

WalterBright wrote: post #230
ChainOfFools wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Give teachers a bonus for each student that achieves at grade level. Let the teachers figure out how to do it. As someone has already pointed out to you, what the teachers will figure out how to do is game the system in order to produce the appearance of success. Not all of them, not even perhaps a substantial majority. But enough of them will do so that the system becomes warped around reinforcing their behavior r…

> what the teachers will figure out how to do is game the system in order to produce the appearance of success. They will certainly try. However, bonus systems exist all over the place in the free market, and they work. The current system is quite thoroughly gamed in the teachers' favor by the unions.

And the free market is full of countless examples of those perverse incentives leading to perverse outcomes.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#234

Post by tomcam »

xwkd wrote: post #96
cm2012 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not much the education system can do here. When you look into educational research its grim - its really really hard to move the needle even a few % on outcomes in a school system, even with large grants and volunteers and special projects. Kids on the bottom half of the bell curve, especially without parental support, are always going to struggle at school.

Allow me to be an annoying pedant for a moment: Isn't that a bit tautological? The bottom half of the bell curve is below the mean in a normal distribution by definition. There's always going to be a lower half as long as we model statistics.

Allow me to be a pedant a moment. Isn't a pedant annoying by definition?

https://www.google.com/search?&q=definition+of+pedant

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#235

Post by tomcam »

WalterBright wrote: post #199
Hermitian909 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general idea you're getting at, incentivize teacher performance, rests on the underlying assumption that a "great teacher" can have an outsized impact on students outcomes in the one year they're teaching the student. Much of the US tried to find evidence of this in the 2000s and failed. Past the basic "does the teacher understand the material?" level, outcomes on a year-long basis are dominated by: - Home life (…

Monetary incentivization works quite well in the economy. The idea that it can't work with teachers is hard to believe. I've paid for instruction for various things. You bet there's a big difference in ability to teach from person to person. The ones that are good get paid well because they are in demand. The ones who aren't good, well, they wind up trying another career. Besides, if teachers don't matter, might as w…

> The ones who aren't good, well, they wind up trying another career.

I think that maybe those who can't, well...

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#236

Post by thelock85 »

WalterBright wrote: post #227
thelock85 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m simply pointing out that it’s not obvious how to implement teachers proctoring other classrooms’ exams in order to prevent the home room teacher from giving out answers for financial benefit. It’s not pragmatic when principals, guidance counselors, other-subject teachers and permanent subs are shoring up massive shortages across the country. If someone wants to try then go for it. But there are a lot of other wel…

> it’s not obvious how to implement teachers proctoring other classrooms’ exams in order to prevent the home room teacher from giving out answers for financial benefit A few seconds of thought: "don't give the teachers the test questions beforehand" > It’s not pragmatic when principals, guidance counselors, other-subject teachers and permanent subs are shoring up massive shortages across the country. It'll give the t…

Appreciate the enthusiasm and I’m all for trying. Still don’t think it’s pragmatic.

> don’t give the teachers the test questions beforehand

This is already the case, except for all of the practice questions that students are drilled over weeks before the actual test. Teachers simply could apply the test-taking strategies in real-time more efficiently than students to arrive at and share the answer.

Honestly I believe most teachers have too much integrity and we are solving for edge cases (per earlier comment about Tennessee experiment). Nonetheless all of these tactics are too naive for fed/state/local systems chock full of perverse incentives.

> It’ll give the teachers a way to make more money, making teaching more attractive

A few seconds of thought: “give the proposed money to teachers upfront.”

Why should there be more hoops to jump through towards a sustainable career in one of the toughest jobs? Why give Big Publishers (assessment, implementation and rubric developers) even more influence over perceived teacher quality than say parents, or everyday taxpayers who would foot the bill?

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#237

Post by WalterBright »

thelock85 wrote: post #236
WalterBright wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s not obvious how to implement teachers proctoring other classrooms’ exams in order to prevent the home room teacher from giving out answers for financial benefit A few seconds of thought: "don't give the teachers the test questions beforehand" > It’s not pragmatic when principals, guidance counselors, other-subject teachers and permanent subs are shoring up massive shortages across the country. It'll give the t…

Appreciate the enthusiasm and I’m all for trying. Still don’t think it’s pragmatic. > don’t give the teachers the test questions beforehand This is already the case, except for all of the practice questions that students are drilled over weeks before the actual test. Teachers simply could apply the test-taking strategies in real-time more efficiently than students to arrive at and share the answer. Honestly I believe…

> A few seconds of thought: “give the proposed money to teachers upfront.”

No incentive, won't work.

Parents have zero influence over teacher quality, and neither do taxpayers.

> Why should there be more hoops to jump through towards a sustainable career in one of the toughest jobs?

Because the existing system doesn't produce results.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#238

Post by WalterBright »

tstrimple wrote: post #233
WalterBright wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what the teachers will figure out how to do is game the system in order to produce the appearance of success. They will certainly try. However, bonus systems exist all over the place in the free market, and they work. The current system is quite thoroughly gamed in the teachers' favor by the unions.

And the free market is full of countless examples of those perverse incentives leading to perverse outcomes.

The computer you're using is the result of the free market.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#239

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #112
Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that only 50% of students are hitting that threshold is concerning to me. Why? I gave it a quick look so perhaps I missed some stuff, but the worst performance was Grade 11 math, where about 55% of students did not meet standards. But as someone who was great a math, and went to do it in Uni etc, I do not think its concerning that 60% of people do not know how to do matrices, calculus, or logic formalism or any of…

These tests are not looking (much) at advanced courses like Calculus. This is more “what percentage 9th graders can read at a basic 9th grade level”, “what percentage of 3rd graders can multiply and do basic 3rd grade math”. These numbers should be in the 80-90% range. But they are not. And note: the majority who are performing well below grade level are not failing. They are probably getting C’s and getting promoted…

But most of the 3rd grades seem to be doing ok when you look at the grade breakdown. The lowest performance is Math on grade 11, and its the lowest by a mile.

Also historically the results seem to track, this is not some crash compared to previous years.

All of this combined makes me think this is a headline that scares people, but not one that we should be worried about.

Smaller classes, better teacher pay, and shorter school days and those numbers would skyrocket I am sure, but it is easier to blame the kids than to learn from countries that outperform us.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#240

Post by dorchadas »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #223
dorchadas wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to remember the average adult only reads at a 6th grade level... Not that that's good, but I'd say there's many other factors involved than just the schools (parental involvement, do they read outside school, etc)

This is an awful excuse. The whole purpose of public education is to give students who don't have support at home an education. Passing the buck to parents makes the whole point of public school moot -- if kids with involved parents read and those without don't, why put kids in school at all at that point?

It's not an excuse - it's just the way it is. If kids don't have parental encouragement or involvement at home, they won't see the value in education. I taught in a rural district in the South that epitomized this. Cultural/familial attitudes towards education matter a lot more than anything the school can do. After all, kids still spend more time with their parents and family than they do at school; those attitudes rub off.

And it's not passing the buck to the parents; we're not asking the parents to teach them, merely to be involved, take an interest in the kid's education and show them the value of an education and encourage them to do the stuff they learn outside. The school can't do it all, nor should it have to (I'd argue teachers are already doing a lot more than they were ever trained to do because parents often don't have time to do it in our current society).

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