Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators • Hacker News Board

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#121

Post by thirdtruck » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 5:45 PM UTC

bitzun wrote: post #55

argiopetech wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on how you felt unprepared? My experience doesn't mirror yours.

My observatiom has been that a lot of unschooling families have parents who do it because of their own neuroses and are otherwise ill equipped as parents. Conspiracy theories and fringe religions are common. Emotional manipulation and abuse is common. Isolation and poor social skill development is common. Important childhood experiences are restricted. Often these parents don't want their children to succeed and leav…

Speaking from first-hand experience, the positive and negative experiences aren't mutually exclusive.

I might be a college-educated autodidact who made an entire career out of self-taught tech skills but that was despite a parent trying to raise me as a young earth creationist and despite all kinds of still un- and underdiagnosed trauma and disorders. Didn't get my ADHD diagnosis until my late thirties and still haven't been diagnosed as autistic, among other things, all of which likely would have been glaringly obvious to public school staff.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#122

Post by graemep » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 5:49 PM UTC

mdip wrote: post #61

Both of my children were taught by an educator without a degree until 6th and 9th grade. Both entered the private school system/public school system and have scored two years of perfect grades so far. We were a pretty laid-back home schooling family. My kids didn't spend all day nose-in-books, watching documentaries in the afternoon between violin, piano and Spanish lessons. Up until this year it was a closely guarde…

This is very similar to my own experience. My older daughter was home educated until she was 16, then went to a sixth form college (school for 16 to 18 year olds) to do A levels (American equivalent would roughly be APs, AFAIK). Younger daughter is planning to do the same.

I did not even spend two hours a day teaching. They mostly taught themselves. It was fun for them, and rewarding for me. I also work remotely (self-employed) at that was vital.

So far both have done well academically.The older had offers of places at multiple good universities (Durham, York...) but decided to do a degree apprenticeship (govt funded, employer funded, degree + work) with Jaguar LandRover (and uni of Warwick, which is good for engineering) instead so dad's wallet is off the hook!

I am really glad we did it, and my kids are too.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#123

Post by SantalBlush » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 6:00 PM UTC

gbacon wrote: post #49

dboreham wrote: post #10

Underlying problem: people don't want to pay teachers enough.

Compensation is a vector. Teachers who are government employees receive their cash compensation, paid leave, summers off, job security through formalized tenure, generous pensions, generous health care benefits, and some lifetime benefits if they reach retirement age.

>Compensation is a vector.

This misses the point. To go along with your terminology, the problem is that the norm of the vector isn't large enough.

But calling it a vector in the first place is pretentious and unnecessary.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#124

Post by haswell » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 6:04 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #47

mjburgess wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the people best placed to assess a candidate for a role are those who know the duties of that role in detail. Much of what's taught at university has marginal benefits beyond a core, much smaller, cirriculum. Take something fairly complex like game development, say. Now: do some linear algebra, geometry, programming, etc. assessment in a wholistic way. Maybe a quick quiz for initial filter, then a hackathon w…

I don't disagree, but that doesn't seem to address the point. If a hiring organization doesn't bother to assess that now, why would the above-proposed change make a difference?

> If a hiring organization doesn't bother to assess that now, why would the above-proposed change make a difference?

I think the answer is in the question, and boils down to: the proposal is to change the status quo. Changing the status quo here means that organizations not doing these assessments are responsible for doing so going forward.

It’s reasonable to think that an organization in the current environment is not focused on such assessments because the system is supposed to be handling this (I’m not saying this should be considered sufficient). A change that involves shifting the burden necessarily means a change in the status quo of hiring organizations regardless of their past practices around assessing candidates.

To your point, setting the expectation that the hiring organization is responsible for assessing incoming candidates is part and parcel to the broader idea. The operating environment would no longer look like the current one, and would necessitate additional steps by hiring organizations. Not taking those steps would result in poorer and poorer quality hires.

Bringing this full circle, I think it’s worth pointing out that the place this started from is: teachers who did not complete a specific training requirement are as effective as those who did. At the very least, this seems to indicate that completing the specific training requirement is not a sufficient assessment criteria, and is presumably not helping organizations bring in better people. At the same time, the requirement does reduce the pool of available candidates, with seemingly no positive effect.

At least for this particular school example, in a worst case scenario, organizations that change nothing are no worse off than they already are. The training requirement isn’t acting as a differentiating criteria, which means that the organization is already the most impactful decision maker. The proposed change just formalizes the idea that completing a specific curriculum is not by itself a good indicator of future success. Organizations relying on this signal are not worse off if it’s taken away because it never indicated much to begin with, if the data are to be believed.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#125

Post by selimthegrim » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 6:08 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #25

kube-system wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This shifts the burden on to the employer to make a reliable assessment of the applicant. It shifts the burden on the employer to make an alternative assessment of the applicant. If what they're using now isn't reliable, but convenient, why would any alternative be?

Because the people best placed to assess a candidate for a role are those who know the duties of that role in detail. Much of what's taught at university has marginal benefits beyond a core, much smaller, cirriculum. Take something fairly complex like game development, say. Now: do some linear algebra, geometry, programming, etc. assessment in a wholistic way. Maybe a quick quiz for initial filter, then a hackathon w…

Strang’s course is very tightly coupled between his lecture and his book but from the perspective of other books, it’s pretty disorganized

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#126

Post by growingkittens » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 6:20 PM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #96

growingkittens wrote: post #87

The long-term impact is much more ambiguous to measure. I paid particular attention in school when a teacher would explain why they were trying to teach us something. I noticed the same patterns of teaching among different teachers in the same school system, and how it all worked together to reinforce the skills we needed. (Note: many of my peers experienced the "extra" work as pointless, because they didn't understa…

What’s a concrete example of one of the explanations for a reason you were given for your being taught something?

Most of what I remember involves "transferability" - the ability to take a skill in one area and apply it in a different context. One way to teach this involves combining subjects, such as practicing reading and comprehension skills in math class with word problems.

There is a keyword I am forgetting which would make this comment easier to answer in detail. If I remember it I will post again.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#127

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 6:21 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #95

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public education outcomes are pretty diverse as well, although there are good and bad schools (and home life status plays a lot in the results, which I assume is also true with homeschooling).

True, but each individual school is big enough to have actual data associated with it. Conclusions about the system as a whole might not work, but you can make a reasonable guess about whether you want to send your kids to a specific school.

Individual schools but we already know different schools vary greatly. As a form of selection bias, I bought my home in an area with schools where most kids go to college. The house was more expensive, so also needed to be richer, and it’s a two parent home, my neighbors are the same. It is t necessarily the school that’s good, it’s just selection bias all the way down.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#128

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 6:21 PM UTC

dilippkumar wrote: post #92

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #39

I am very close to obtaining an elementary school teaching degree (46 of 49 credits completed), and as of this year I am a full time teacher at a private school (which doesn't have to care whether I officially have a license). My masters program is considered among the best in the state. Unfortunately, I don't have many good things to say about my masters program. The majority of my classes have been interesting but…

This is extremely meme worthy material. Would you mind sharing the source?

The source is copyrighted / costs money. Also, I did purposefully choose the worst question as an example.

Practice tests can be purchased from this site https://www.nystce.nesinc.com but I can't find the page for this specific test (and don't really want to spend time looking). You're looking for the practice test for CST 245. This is the Arts & Sciences section of the Multi-Subject test for Teachers of Childhood, Grade 1 - Grade 6.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#129

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 6:24 PM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #108

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #39

I am very close to obtaining an elementary school teaching degree (46 of 49 credits completed), and as of this year I am a full time teacher at a private school (which doesn't have to care whether I officially have a license). My masters program is considered among the best in the state. Unfortunately, I don't have many good things to say about my masters program. The majority of my classes have been interesting but…

What’s the point of a question like this? Somewhere someone will have written down something they want teachers to be able to do and that will have been translated into a question like this. Was the original requirement bad or the translation into the question? What kind of system would lead to a better question?

I believe the standard is just "elementary school teachers should be able to read and interpret a table of data".

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#130

Post by germinalphrase » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 6:27 PM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #118

derefr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teacher pay is too low for anyone to want to take a teaching job when they have professional qualifications that would allow them to work a much better-paid job. (Especially when getting those skills also involved paying hundreds of thousands in student loans to a university. You need to earn your way out of that hole, and not working the best-paying job you can would be prolonging that debt!) But I think the article…

How much approximately do you think a teacher gets paid? Obviously it depends on specifics so maybe say whether you’re imagining a city centre / suburban / rural school, and whether the state/district is wealthy and whether it’s a high school or whatever. I have some guesses in my head for something like ‘high school teacher in moderately wealthy Chicago suburb’ (I haven’t written the number here because I don’t want…

I taught in a moderately wealthy suburb of Minneapolis. With ten years of experience, my comp was about 50k. While I have heard stories of teachers from prior generations receiving somewhat lavish defined benefit pensions, I don’t believe that has been an option for new teachers in decades. With regard to vacations, we had the school calendar vacations (which is fine), but otherwise I accrued about 8 days of PTO per year without any other sort of vacation/parent leave/etc. When our first child was born, I burned all three weeks of accrued PTO and was back on the job. By comparison, when I left teaching - I doubled my income, work about 20 percent fewer hours a week, have comparable healthcare, unlimited PTO, took 8 weeks paid parental leave with our second child, and have much less day-to-day stress. Teaching isn’t a salt mine, but - in my experience - it wasn’t a cushy job either.