Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you thought out the perverse incentives your pay scheme would create?
Like teachers giving answers to students because higher grades / more passing means more money...
Have a third party do the testing.
California needs real math education, not gimmicks
321–330 of 386 posts
Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would it be ineffective? Suppose you're a teacher at a school where the kids are all below grade level. Sounds like a much larger opportunity to get those bonuses than a school where all kids are above average. > or maybe your should think a bit before blaming teachers Teachers are only human, and humans respond to positive incentives. The current system has no incentives.
I think you have baked into your plan an incorrect assumption: You are massively overestimating the effect a teacher's input has on student output. Of all the things that lead to student education performance, the quality/performance of the teacher is very low on the list. Teachers are not factory workers, where if they are more skilled, or faster, or better trained, they'll produce more widgets faster. Most teachers…
> You are massively overestimating the effect a teacher's input has on student output
Who needs teachers, then, if they are so ineffectual? Might as well replace them with a canned video course.
BTW, every school knows who the good teachers are and who the useless ones are. They get paid exactly the same. Do you think that's a good system?
> There are teachers who are better than other teachers, but it's not generally measurable in "student outcomes".
Of course they are.
> Just like there are better programmers than other programmers, but it's not measurable in "company revenue".
Company revenue is the sum of all the contributions of its workers. A student outcome is not the sum of the other student's outcomes, and is measurable independently.
> Teachers will be incentivized to move to schools or districts with better students.
Sure. And there are only so many of those positions available.
Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bottom of the average of SAT scores of college attendees is the top 30%+ of students; Master's and PhD's are even more elite. This is like saying "the defensive line in the Cleveland Browns are the worst NFL players in the country": they're still NFL players.
Your misunderstanding is a great example of why we need better statistics education. 62% of recent high school graduates attend college (Bureau of Labor Statistics). 1 in 1,282 high school football players joins the NFL (0.078%). Your math is wrong by almost two orders of magnitude. Attending college does not make one "elite" and equating the likelihood of getting a degree in education with the likelihood of joining…
That doesn’t necessarily negate their point. What % of students attend a four year college that requires the SAT? If a student attends junior college they wouldn’t need an SAT (among other pathways to college that don’t require it).
They didn’t source their statistic so it could just be made up but I think the general point that those that achieve an EdD were above average students seems likely.
Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would it be ineffective? Suppose you're a teacher at a school where the kids are all below grade level. Sounds like a much larger opportunity to get those bonuses than a school where all kids are above average. > or maybe your should think a bit before blaming teachers Teachers are only human, and humans respond to positive incentives. The current system has no incentives.
I think it’s the reverse. The baseline remedial student growth is say .8 grades per year. Therefore to get 1.0 grades of progress you would need 125% baseline effectiveness. To get the same with a 1.2 growth rate student it would only take 83%. Students also can’t be judged in isolation, remedial students adversely affect other students so that needs to be taken into account somehow. I’m not saying it couldn’t be don…
Not necessary. Do end of year testing, the same as is done today for assessing achievement levels.
Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
An incentive for the teachers is better than no incentive. I recall a case at a company I worked for. They snagged a major contract with IBM, but it had a tight deadline. They hired a team of 6 or 7 greybeards to do the work. The fun thing was they each got a $10,000 bonus if delivered on time. They delivered it on time, got the $10 grand each (a lot of money in those days), IBM was happy, all good. So I asked them,…
While I agree with the idea that people respond to incentives, you are making it out to be a lot simpler to design these schemes than is actually the case. The examples you give are straightforward. You already have a bunch of people who know how to do a job, so you pay them to do it quickly. Basically you are giving them money to go and tell their families they are going to be working late for a while and they have…
> Grading your own work is not going to lead to healthy outcomes.
Sigh. Why do people keep bringing this up? Of course you'd need an assessment test that is not under the control of the teacher. Nobody sets up an incentive program where the person being incentivized evaluates himself.
Come on. Give me a reasonable riposte.
Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also makes a lot of parents happy. A lot of it comes down to political inertia and the dominance of reactionism. If you have a system with a dedicated school for violent and behaviorally challenged kids, there would be a much larger number of angry parents reacting to the idea of integrating those students with their children.
The happy parents won’t vote in significant enough numbers to offset unhappy ones. Pissed off people vote
That's my point about inertia
Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks
#327Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course there are limits on what can be achieved. But we won't know until we try. It's hard to be worse than the current system of no incentive whatsoever.
Where did you get the idea that US public schools are in some kind of crisis? They're doing pretty well, like they always have, but people are remarkably willing to simply accept claims (often by parties with financial interests in making them) that they aren't.
> Where did you get the idea that US public schools are in some kind of crisis?
Declining achievement levels, the perfectly horrible results in inner city schools, and the disparities between different racial groups.
Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree with the idea that people respond to incentives, you are making it out to be a lot simpler to design these schemes than is actually the case. The examples you give are straightforward. You already have a bunch of people who know how to do a job, so you pay them to do it quickly. Basically you are giving them money to go and tell their families they are going to be working late for a while and they have…
> Grading your own work is not going to lead to healthy outcomes. Sigh. Why do people keep bringing this up? Of course you'd need an assessment test that is not under the control of the teacher. Nobody sets up an incentive program where the person being incentivized evaluates himself. Come on. Give me a reasonable riposte.
I think you need to steelman my arguments, per HN guidelines. I didn't say that each teacher would literally mark their own work, the fair interpretation would be that another teacher or committee of teachers would do this.
Here's what I wrote:
> But then who defines the baseline? Teachers again. Maybe not the exact same teachers but they are all part of the same system.
So how do you intend to grade the teacher's work, except by other teachers, who are in the same position?
This is just like having board members appointing CEOs out of the same pool.
In fact, it's a pretty hard problem to deal with in general, and it appears many places in society, so it's fair to ask how this would be dealt with.
If we're going to build an incentive system, we don't want it to be gamed.
Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where did you get the idea that US public schools are in some kind of crisis? They're doing pretty well, like they always have, but people are remarkably willing to simply accept claims (often by parties with financial interests in making them) that they aren't.
> Where did you get the idea that US public schools are in some kind of crisis? Declining achievement levels, the perfectly horrible results in inner city schools, and the disparities between different racial groups.
> Declining achievement levels
Nope. Do the homework here.
> the perfectly horrible results in inner city schools
Another claim remarkably free of any data
> the disparities between different racial groups.
African American kids today score better than white kids 30 years ago did.