North Carolina teacher's resignation letter • Hacker News Board

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#101

Post by danielweber » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

wisty wrote: post #84

tokenadult wrote: post #31

"I lost my job only due to my lack of seniority. I was devastated." He ("he" is correct; I was confused by the given name at first until looking the person up with a Google search) should blame the typical master contract with the teachers in the school district for that. That is a standard contract provision recommended by schoolteacher unions whether a state has a "union shop" or "right-to-work" rules. Usually, sch…

> Actively identifying the most able teachers and encouraging the least effective teachers to find other employment, regardless of seniority, could do much to improve the efficiency of the public school system and free up resources to reward the best teachers better than they are rewarded now. How do you think should they do this? If you use test scores, teachers will try to "teach the test", or even encourage studen…

You cannot manage professionals by a set of numbers. (Sales might be the single exception.) Dilbert is full of tales of developers being graded on lines of code or number of bugs.

You need to have human judgment involved.

The problem is that the teachers' union does not trust the administrators (probably with good historical reason, but that's neither here nor there) to make those decisions using human judgment. They will only submit to clear rules, and, as with any organization, the rules will tend to benefit the members of the org that are in charge of bargaining.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#102

Post by Bud » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:51 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #93

sirmarksalot wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked that up on the BLS website, and while you're not using the same units as them, your numbers don't seem to match up. According to BLS, the median pay is $53,230 per year, which would be closer to $26.50 an hour, assuming a 40-hour work week. http://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/high-s... Maybe the Forbes article you're referring to about is only counting classroom hours, which is a pretty abs…

The correct figure is 38.5 hours/week for 9 months/year. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf That's about $33.5/hour for wages alone. It also ignores the value of gold plated health care + pensions, etc.

"Gold plated" (sic) health care?

Tuck in your pants. Your bias is peeking out.

(Edit after being downvoted, in an attempt to be more constructive): Seriously, you seem to have an animus against teachers having decent health care. What's your problem with that, and why do you feel it's appropriate to label their quite average health care plans as "gold plated", as if they were unfairly receiving more health care than they are entitled to?

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#103

Post by vehementi » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:51 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #59

kstenerud wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just not having any metric at all is far worse than the imperfect tests we have." Are you sure about that? How do you know that a bad metric is better than no metric? It sounds a lot more like "We should be doing something. This is something. Therefore we should do it."

This is a question about the philosophy of science. How do you know clinical trials are better than observational methods? How do you know controlled experiments are better than post-hoc reasoning and logical deduction? Standardized testing is just the application of the scientific method to education. If you don't believe in the scientific method then you shouldn't apply it here. But if you are asking for an empiric…

Standardized testing is an application of the scientific method to education, but it's (accurately) measuring stupid shit that we shouldn't care about in ways that are not relevant.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#104

Post by johnrgrace » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:51 PM UTC

aroberge wrote: post #64

yequalsx wrote: post #52

There seem to be quite a few people who want to do away with tenure and seniority rules as a means of fixing a broken system. Is there any evidence that doing this would fix the system or make it better? Academic freedom, tenure, and seniority (to a lesser extent) have a lot of positives. Getting rid of these should only be done if the reasons are compelling and valid. What is required is not a collection of anecdote…

Tenure and Academic freedom are applicable to University professors, not to teachers.

In the United States, public school teachers do get tenure in most locations which protects them for being fired except for a limited set of reasons or teacher supply being greater than demand.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#105

Post by capnrefsmmat » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:52 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #91

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard teaching methods for science and math don't work by many measures. That's not the fault of poor teachers; even well-rated teachers do poorly at improving student understanding. This is largely the fault of our notion that teachers are explanation delivery devices and students explanation receptacles, where the only improvements can be found in better explanations and better student engagement. The notion is…

"Students need to actively test their understanding by making predictions and failing, and no courses I've ever experienced attempt to do this." Shouldn't a good teacher prod students in this direction?

Yes, but they often don't. We usually think of good teachers as people who give clear explanations and keep the students interested. Attacking student misconceptions tends to confuse them, even if it improves their understanding in the end, so people are reluctant to do it.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#106

Post by danielweber » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:53 PM UTC

justin_vanw wrote: post #25

It's fine to grumble about testing, but the debate is not about the tests. Teachers performance in the US has been terrible for many years. Partly this is because of bad management, partly because of low pay, and partly because of teacher unions preventing any action against the worst teachers and insistance on tenure tracks. The reason testing is good isn't because it is somehow super accurate. It is good because it…

Besides sales, every attempt to manage professionals by an objective formula ends up with horrible results. The technocrats will always insist we just need a better formula.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#107

Post by wisty » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:55 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #101

wisty wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actively identifying the most able teachers and encouraging the least effective teachers to find other employment, regardless of seniority, could do much to improve the efficiency of the public school system and free up resources to reward the best teachers better than they are rewarded now. How do you think should they do this? If you use test scores, teachers will try to "teach the test", or even encourage studen…

You cannot manage professionals by a set of numbers. (Sales might be the single exception.) Dilbert is full of tales of developers being graded on lines of code or number of bugs. You need to have human judgment involved. The problem is that the teachers' union does not trust the administrators (probably with good historical reason, but that's neither here nor there) to make those decisions using human judgment. They…

That's why I think it might work for finding the bottom 10%. Those are the ones you want to fire. If a teacher is in the bottom 30% (and in danger of getting in to the bottom 10%), you probably want them behaving like robots (teaching the test, following set procedures). If they are competent (most teachers are) you want them to manage themselves, as heavy incentives will just screw up their behavior.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#108

Post by tibbon » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:56 PM UTC

curt wrote: post #72

justin_vanw wrote: post #25

It's fine to grumble about testing, but the debate is not about the tests. Teachers performance in the US has been terrible for many years. Partly this is because of bad management, partly because of low pay, and partly because of teacher unions preventing any action against the worst teachers and insistance on tenure tracks. The reason testing is good isn't because it is somehow super accurate. It is good because it…

"partly because of low pay" Teachers are actually some of the highest paid people in society. When you don't include benefits teachers make about $40/hr while engineers make $42/hr. If you do include benefits, a teachers compensation far exceeds that of an engineer due to their pensions. Source, BLS via Forbes.

Its a pretty wide spread depending what state.

North Carolina teachers start around $37k, averaging out later to $46k. Some counties are higher, some lower.

The pension plans are problematic, because many of them are under funded. For an older teacher about to retire this might not be an issue, but if you're 30 this seems like a much less certain deal.

Teachers are rarely compensated on an hourly basis, and when they are it probably doesn't count half of their hours.

Would your attorney charge you (in 5 minute increments) for a call at 7pm? You bet they would! But a call with a parent at 7pm nets a teacher nothing. Nor does preparation in the evening. Many teachers have exceedingly low classroom budgets as well, and are often forced to purchase supplies out of pocket.

The High School theatre teacher who is working on a play with students until 11pm every night for weeks and weekends isn't compensated on an hourly basis; or given overtime. Its just part of the gig. And that sucks.

I wouldn't mind being a teacher some day, as I love teaching; but unless I hit the startup lottery there's no way i can accept that level of compensation given my background, experience and skills. And even then, in a state like North Carolina that is more about rules than education, I can't see myself being able to last 3 days in that environment.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#109

Post by mamoswined » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:57 PM UTC

joshuahedlund wrote: post #100

jimbokun wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this comment from this teacher's blog article "And if the choices have run out for my toddler when he’s ready for school, I will do it myself. Maybe I’ll do it for others, as well. Who knows." questions about a potential education system hack popped into my head. Maybe many others have already had this idea... What about uniting the home-schooling and frustrated-teachers movements? I'm sure there are onerous…

> Does anything like this already exist? Google "homeschool co-ops"

I was part of one when I was a kid. Science was taught by a teacher who used to teach in public schools and we were very fortunate to have him because my mother didn't want potentially dangerous chemicals or dissection animals in the house. I was home-schooled from 1st to 8th grade, then went to public high school and college.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#110

Post by danielweber » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:59 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #80

schreiaj wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does being part of an elite come into play when it comes to parents wanting their children educated in the manner of their choosing?

Because that privilege costs a ton of money that only the upper middle class and the elite can comfortably afford? That said, i agree with imbracio: parents' primary responsibility is to ensure their kids get a good education, rather than worrying about fixing a system that is unfit able in its current state.

A private school education is not really expensive in most of the country. Think around $5000 a year. I know that's not pocket-change to many people, but you hardly need to be "upper middle class" to do it.