To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destroy It • Hacker News Board

Re: To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destroy It

#11

Post by cynicalkane » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 12:49 PM UTC

ChristianMarks wrote: post #6

The Atlantic ought to read this NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/business/college-costs-are... Busting unions and destroying bureaucracies isn't going to change the way teaching is done fundamentally. What it will do is make teaching even less attractive as a profession. Most teachers I know value job security in exchange for salary. Take away security and you are left with little economic incentiv…

Most teachers I know value teaching in exchange for salary. I don't think teachers burn out and drop out for want of money, but because they can't stand the system anymore. That's been the case with the handful of teachers I know, anyway. And the good ones are most likely to burn out, because they're most likely to have career paths open that don't completely suck.

Re: To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destroy It

#12

Post by DanielBMarkham » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 12:50 PM UTC

ChristianMarks wrote: post #6

The Atlantic ought to read this NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/business/college-costs-are... Busting unions and destroying bureaucracies isn't going to change the way teaching is done fundamentally. What it will do is make teaching even less attractive as a profession. Most teachers I know value job security in exchange for salary. Take away security and you are left with little economic incentiv…

Your argument would be a lot more palatable if there weren't so many counter-examples everywhere.

I don't want to get into listing this or that counter-example, because you'll just say something along the lines of "but that's not the same at all!" I just wanted to point out that in some communities, there's a whole slew of commonly accepted examples of less money being used, less staff, teachers working without unions, and so on. In situations like that you're going to need to up your game a bit.

Re: To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destroy It

#13

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 12:53 PM UTC

v0cab wrote: post #9

Shivetya wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unions certainly do nothing to protect the students from the teachers, if the NYC area is any example. They exaggerate the costs of educating students and usually exert too much influence over local elections thereby insuring their continued existence and near immunity to control. Unions operate to serve themselves, their political contacts next, then their members; they certainly could care less about the business.…

I thought public school teachers in the US were considered to be underpaid? Certainly compared to public school teachers in South Korea, they don't earn that much compared to the national average salary. I don't believe there are sufficient laws in the US to protect teachers. The US's employment laws are poorly-regarded in the rest of the Western world. And what about at-will employment states? Teachers would be fire…

Teachers would be fired just because of accusations of wrongdoing.

It would be so terrible if a teachers who rub their genitals against students, mock homosexuals and simulate sex acts, or stalk their students were fired.

Thank goodness we have unions to protect these teachers and keep them in the classroom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/nyregion/found-to-have-mis...

Meanwhile, everyone besides teachers can be fired if they grope their customers. The world hasn't ended for them.

Re: To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destroy It

#14

Post by ChristianMarks » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 12:57 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #10

ChristianMarks wrote: post #6

The Atlantic ought to read this NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/business/college-costs-are... Busting unions and destroying bureaucracies isn't going to change the way teaching is done fundamentally. What it will do is make teaching even less attractive as a profession. Most teachers I know value job security in exchange for salary. Take away security and you are left with little economic incentiv…

What it will do is make teaching even less attractive as a profession. Most teachers I know value job security in exchange for salary. Take away security and you are left with little economic incentive to stay. That's ok, there is already a mismatch between supply and demand in teaching. Apparently there is a surplus of at least 280,000 teachers, according to the Department of Education [1]. This indicates that teach…

If one were to follow the link, one would find the following:

The American Jobs Act proposes a major investment that will modernize at least 35,000 public schools, and support 280,000 teacher jobs nationwide. See what impact the Act will have in your state, and read a complete overview of the American Jobs Act here.

There is nothing about a surplus of 280,000 teachers. This is a libertarian distortion. Disgusting.

Re: To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destroy It

#15

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 1:02 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #4

v0cab wrote: post #2

Getting rid of unions just sounds like a recipe for abuse. Management simply cannot be trusted to treat employees fairly.

unions certainly do nothing to protect the students from the teachers, if the NYC area is any example. They exaggerate the costs of educating students and usually exert too much influence over local elections thereby insuring their continued existence and near immunity to control. Unions operate to serve themselves, their political contacts next, then their members; they certainly could care less about the business.…

[deleted]

Re: To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destroy It

#16

Post by v0cab » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 1:03 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #13

v0cab wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought public school teachers in the US were considered to be underpaid? Certainly compared to public school teachers in South Korea, they don't earn that much compared to the national average salary. I don't believe there are sufficient laws in the US to protect teachers. The US's employment laws are poorly-regarded in the rest of the Western world. And what about at-will employment states? Teachers would be fire…

Teachers would be fired just because of accusations of wrongdoing. It would be so terrible if a teachers who rub their genitals against students, mock homosexuals and simulate sex acts, or stalk their students were fired. Thank goodness we have unions to protect these teachers and keep them in the classroom. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/nyregion/found-to-have-mis... Meanwhile, everyone besides teachers can be fi…

From the nytimes article:

"But to union officials, the right to an impartial hearing is sacrosanct, to protect teachers from losing their livelihoods because a principal or a student might have an ax to grind."

An impartial hearing -- sounds good to me.

We don't know that all the teachers in that article did those things you said. You're implying that we should fire them and make them leave that career, just because a kid and his friends said they did? Kids can lie, you know.

[EDIT: After reading further in that article, I see some of the teachers did misbehave, but they were punished for it.]

Without unions, teachers can look forwards to as much protection and fairness in the workplace as your average US restaurant server. Get on the wrong side of your boss or his son? Fired. Too many complaints from customers about you in one week? Fired. No proof required.

Re: To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destroy It

#17

Post by cynicalkane » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 1:05 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #5

After reading yummyfajitas' comment, I wish I could take back my upvote, because he's right: it's one thing to say the structure of the process itself is so byzantine and brittle that schools suck, but it's quite another to say we should remove measurable goals as well. If I didn't know better, I'd call this a disinformation piece: deliberately conflating two concepts into one large rant in order to try to join the t…

The thing about measurable goals in teaching is that all of them are awful. Economic psychology teaches us that bad incentives are worse than no incentives. The incentives being promulgated are things like "higher test scores" or "more kids graduating" so the system aligns itself towards teaching the test while simultaneously lowering the bar for everything else.

So let's talk about the software analogy. In software, the bar for formal acceptance usually really low. Do test cases pass? Maybe there's an auto-integration test that also must pass, and some requirements checkout QA has to do. You can write terrible code and have it pass the formal process, which is why you see a lot of terrible programmers coasting along at some of the worse companies. Some teams might have more formal requirements but that goes team by team. If you're working anywhere worth working, there'll be a much higher non-formal bar set by your manager, your team, your customers if you're in contact with them. So the incentives are there but they're personal and informal. The 'waterfall' pattern is one example of a misguided attempt to formalize the software dev process and align it with goals.

How would software devs feel if some perverse, untouchable bureaucracy measured their code according to ridiculous formal measures from the Central Bureaucracy and arbitrary rules that changed according political whims? That's what teachers are facing. I know some software devs face the same thing, but we always give them the same advice: find a better job. Teachers don't have that option because the bureaucracy is everywhere; but they can go to better (generally richer) schools, where it's a little mitigated, or they can drop out and leave that gaggle of little Kafkas behind forever.

Re: To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destroy It

#18

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 1:07 PM UTC

ChristianMarks wrote: post #14

yummyfajitas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it will do is make teaching even less attractive as a profession. Most teachers I know value job security in exchange for salary. Take away security and you are left with little economic incentive to stay. That's ok, there is already a mismatch between supply and demand in teaching. Apparently there is a surplus of at least 280,000 teachers, according to the Department of Education [1]. This indicates that teach…

If one were to follow the link, one would find the following: The American Jobs Act proposes a major investment that will modernize at least 35,000 public schools, and support 280,000 teacher jobs nationwide. See what impact the Act will have in your state, and read a complete overview of the American Jobs Act here. There is nothing about a surplus of 280,000 teachers. This is a libertarian distortion. Disgusting.

The claim is that there are or will be 280,000 unemployed teachers. Unemployment is surplus labor. The standard prescription for surplus labor is to reduce the cost.

Re: To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destroy It

#19

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 1:14 PM UTC

v0cab wrote: post #16

yummyfajitas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers would be fired just because of accusations of wrongdoing. It would be so terrible if a teachers who rub their genitals against students, mock homosexuals and simulate sex acts, or stalk their students were fired. Thank goodness we have unions to protect these teachers and keep them in the classroom. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/nyregion/found-to-have-mis... Meanwhile, everyone besides teachers can be fi…

From the nytimes article: "But to union officials, the right to an impartial hearing is sacrosanct, to protect teachers from losing their livelihoods because a principal or a student might have an ax to grind." An impartial hearing -- sounds good to me. We don't know that all the teachers in that article did those things you said. You're implying that we should fire them and make them leave that career, just because…

While putting teachers in the same boat as waiters, programmers and CEOs does sound awful, I think children will still wind up being educated.

Remember, the goal here is not to ensure teachers are never incorrectly fired, it's to educate children. If a few teachers are incorrectly fired, but student performance goes up, that's a win.

This is what happens in many industries. For example, if a trader or hedge fund manager gets unlucky and the market moves against him, he can be fired. Unfair individually, maybe, but in aggregate the net result is that the traders who aren't fired tend to perform better.

Re: To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destroy It

#20

Post by praxeologist » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 1:18 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #3

The article unnecessarily conflates two separate pieces of the bureaucracy. The first is management of inputs - work rules, prescribed teaching methods, etc. The second is management of outputs - measurement of student performance and penalties/rewards for teachers who harm/improve this. The first can certainly be scrapped at the global level (though of course experimentation should continue at lower levels). The sec…

Where, specifically, does the article conflate what you are saying?

Yes, it would be stupid to not give a teacher or programmer instructions, but we're talking about each individual school not being able to do this, right? Someone at the state level has already decided they want the federal funds tied to complying with whatever initiative and already passed down the order to each school.