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

#51

Post by praxeologist » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 3:16 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #26

praxeologist wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where, specifically, does the article conflate what you are saying? They explicitly list both work rules and the need to satisfy minimum test scores in the 6'th and 7'th paragraph. 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? Right. Similarly, you don't hire a contractor, and ask him to write the spec for wha…

You aren't answering the question, be specific. The article says there that "Law is everywhere in schools." Then, it lists some ways teacher-student interaction is regulated. Then, it mentions how DOE mandated scoring reorients what the teacher does.

This isn't conflating. This is showing two different ways the laws (deemed by unelected bureaucrats) affect the culture of the school.

>Right. Similarly, you don't hire a contractor, and ask him to write the spec for whatever he wants to build. He'll just cook up some easy to meet standard and report success when it's met.

This is a faulty analogy. We're not suggesting teachers just do whatever they want.

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

#52

Post by Tloewald » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 3:17 PM UTC

ylem wrote: post #37

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…

Perhaps it might be worth examining one metric: IMPACT--championed by Rhee in Washington DC public schools and also used by the LA times to judge teachers publicly. Here's the basic idea--one should try to determine the "value added" of a teacher. It's not fair to look at a teacher teaching the gifted class and the teacher teaching a remedial class and look at their absolute results. However, one could look at the te…

The NY Times was able to show that if you look at the "value add" of teachers who teach two different classes the correlation between their results for the two classes is very weak, suggesting that the value add measure is nearly worthless. (You're incentivizing luck.)

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

#53

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 3:46 PM UTC

jbooth wrote: post #47

yummyfajitas wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next time you hire a freelancer, why don't you use his intuition about his own performance rather than measuring whether he actually built what you wanted him to build? ...good teachers being fired due to unfortunate statistical conflagrances.. How do you know they were good? Because they said so, and one of their cronies agreed? This link is relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal-agent_problem I'll no…

The teacher in question was given high marks on review by all her superiors, not just herself. On a freelancer's results, I'm not applying a standardized test to their results so yeah, I am in fact using my intuition an brain about what they built. Metrics are fine, they just shouldn't be fetishized, and we shouldn't allow them to make us fire good teachers. They also shouldn't dominate what's taught to the extent th…

The teacher in question was given high marks on review by all her superiors, not just herself.

If the students didn't perform, but her superiors liked her, why are you assuming the superiors know what they are talking about?

Again, how can I compare the opinions of heterogeneous superiors, and why do you believe the opinions are correct and objective metrics are wrong?

Opinions fail on many counts - comparability and objectivity being the most obvious. Why do you fetishize opinion, and assert it as being more accurate than objective metrics?

They also shouldn't dominate what's taught to the extent they do.

All standardized tests do is measure whether a school is meeting their goals. If standardized tests are preventing schools from ignoring their goals and teaching whatever they feel like (or perhaps nothing at all), why is that a bad thing?

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

#54

Post by aestetix » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 4:21 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #53

jbooth wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The teacher in question was given high marks on review by all her superiors, not just herself. On a freelancer's results, I'm not applying a standardized test to their results so yeah, I am in fact using my intuition an brain about what they built. Metrics are fine, they just shouldn't be fetishized, and we shouldn't allow them to make us fire good teachers. They also shouldn't dominate what's taught to the extent th…

The teacher in question was given high marks on review by all her superiors, not just herself. If the students didn't perform, but her superiors liked her, why are you assuming the superiors know what they are talking about? Again, how can I compare the opinions of heterogeneous superiors, and why do you believe the opinions are correct and objective metrics are wrong? Opinions fail on many counts - comparability and…

Why do you trust a standard the federal government has set over what a teacher says? After all, the teachers are the ones who have hands on experience with how the students are actually doing.

Further, standardized tests don't really measure much, except for how well student can take tests and regurgitate information.

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

#55

Post by jeffdavis » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 4:31 PM UTC

praxeologist wrote: post #28

cynicalkane wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Wow, could these people miss the point more? It isn't about "removing measurable goals", rather letting each school set goals and not the DOE.

I see people arguing until they are blue that national standardized testing is bad. But it doesn't get them anywhere because they miss a crucial point:

If someone gives money, they want measurable, or at least visible, results.

If you want autonomy at the level L (federal/state/county/local), you can't take any money from any level greater than L.

You may not want complete autonomy, just a better national system. If that's the case, then you need to come up with a better way to measure results -- not inputs -- and suggest that. If it's really better, then people will listen, and maybe the existing standardized tests will be replaced with this better system.

There is less of a demand for testing at the local level, of course, because people generally know pretty well how their local schools are doing.

But nobody in Kansas is going to take a tour of schools in Alabama to see if the federal money is being spent wisely. They need a number. It doesn't matter how counterproductive you say it is to collect this number, they will only stop asking for a number when we stop asking for their money.

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

#56

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 5:00 PM UTC

aestetix wrote: post #54

yummyfajitas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The teacher in question was given high marks on review by all her superiors, not just herself. If the students didn't perform, but her superiors liked her, why are you assuming the superiors know what they are talking about? Again, how can I compare the opinions of heterogeneous superiors, and why do you believe the opinions are correct and objective metrics are wrong? Opinions fail on many counts - comparability and…

Why do you trust a standard the federal government has set over what a teacher says? After all, the teachers are the ones who have hands on experience with how the students are actually doing. Further, standardized tests don't really measure much, except for how well student can take tests and regurgitate information.

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by MaysonL » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 5:03 PM UTC

The way to fix the American educational system is to teach teachers better ways to teach. Teaching is a learnable and teachable art, even though like all arts, some people will be better (sometimes much better) than others. See "Building a Better Teacher": http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html...

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

#58

Post by mattchew » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 5:07 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…

> 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.

What good is it to have measurable goals if you are measuring the wrong thing, or your measurements are corrupt, or there is no effective means of correction if goals are not met?

> To continue the programming analogy, as a customer you guys are delivering crap all the time. I pay ten times as much and the crap just gets worse. Now we can sit around and dicker all day long about the process you have for making crap, but one thing we are not going to do is remove the testing at the end that makes it obvious to everybody just how shitty the whole thing is.

Keep it in then. Your programming team can learn to game the system, and your management team can quietly lobby to change the metrics so the numbers look better, and you can even bring in a pair of Bobs for a development cycle to shake things up, but none of that actually gets you to working software.

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

#59

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 6:36 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #35

jordanb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great many teachers have been laid off due to the funding crisis in local government. That crisis was caused by a decline in tax revenue, especially property taxes due to the housing bubble. It was delayed by funding from the Recovery Act but RA payments ended a long time ago. The result is that this country's local governments are spending much less on education than they were a few years ago, and therefore employ…

If you have a fixed amount of money to spend, you can either buy fewer items, or pay less per item. It's due primarily to union contracts that schools are buying fewer items. If they reduced the compensation of teachers (i.e., reduce price in response to a demand decrease), there would be no need to reduce the number of teachers.

[deleted]

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

#60

Post by droithomme » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 7:30 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #23

cynicalkane wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thing about measurable goals in teaching is that all of them are awful..." I learned to fly people around in airplanes using various instructional techniques, including at times studying for the test. So do most airline pilots. Seems to work for them. The military has been training people for over 200 years with measurable teaching goals. In fact, some of the best teachers are ex-military. I could continue if…

I test my software using methods of my own devising. Our customers love the software. It's unheard of for bugs to get out in a release.

There is no central government agency counting how many lines of code per function point, how many spaces per tab, or what brace style I use.

Nor should there be. The people at the local level are the only ones qualified to determine how to test. And the success is proven by the fact that we are leaders in our segment, reviews are good, customers are happy, and we are profitable.