North Carolina teacher's resignation letter • Hacker News Board

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#131

Post by wpietri » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 8:53 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.

According to the NEA, that's only scheduled hours, not actual work hours.

http://www.nea.org/home/12661.htm

That certainly matches the teachers I've known; they put in a ton of non-classroom hours, and often put in a fair bit of their own money.

A Gates Foundation survey puts it at 53 hours per week:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/survey...

And for teachers involved in extracurricular activities, the average is over 11 hours a day.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#132

Post by yequalsx » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 8:55 PM UTC

archon wrote: post #78

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…

> There are large portions of the United States where parents without any training or knowledge on teaching have very strong opinions on what should or should not be said in the classroom. Getting rid of tenure and academic freedom will, in some areas, lead to ignorant people making important educational decisions. It's a very slippery slope, denying some people input into "important educational decisions", or any de…

I have strong opinions on whether or not the U.S. should go to war with country A. My opinion counts as far as voting goes. I have opinions on tactics involved in fighting a battle. My opinion counts for very little because I am wholly ignorant about fighting wars. My opinion in this should count for very little.

Sometimes it's best to leave implementation to the experts. Sometimes not. One should be careful about when/where such intrusion takes place.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#133

Post by wpietri » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 8:56 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?

I've visited Montessori classrooms that did some of that. But I think that kind of engagement is contingent on good student/teacher ratios and a fair bit of unstructured time.

Standardized testing pushes in the opposite direction, alas. It encourages teachers to push for the sort of rote learning that is instantly forgotten when the test is past.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#134

Post by acdha » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 8:58 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.

As someone married to a teacher in one of the highest paying districts in the country (DC), this is completely unlike our experience: less salary, longer hours, far worse working conditions - schools tend to be run like factories a generation or two ago, with rigid top-down management, not information-age businesses, and don't forget significant hassles like inflexible hours and vacation schedules. This is for someone with a subject-area Ph.D and an education masters compared with any normal software engineering gig requiring only a BS.

Since the source is Forbes I would strongly recommend scrutinizing the original data to see how they cherry-picked it. A disturbingly common deception tactic is to only count actual teaching time, which is akin to reporting a software developer's hours by focusing on time typing new code and ignoring testing, documentation, meetings, research, HN, etc. Similarly, you frequently hear "3 months vacation" bandied about when it's typically closer to 2 months and ignores weeks of district/school professional development, pre/post-year planning & prep, mandatory continuing education, etc. We typically have only one or two options for a two-week vacation during the entire summer break.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#135

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 8:58 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #79

Bud wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if you aren't a fan of testing as a way to measure and improve teacher effectiveness, please find an alternative that works better. Just not having any metric at all is far worse than the imperfect tests we have. This is a gigantic assumption which you have tossed out there without any support whatsoever. You are basically making an assumption which encompasses the entire issue in question, and then just blithely…

What evidence do you have that things were better before 2001?

For anyone that knows anything about the current system, its almost obvious. Education in the states is much more of a wreck now than it was BB (Before Bush). The only thing kids have improved at now is....taking standardized tests.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#136

Post by wpietri » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 8:59 PM UTC

imbriaco wrote: post #66

factorizer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right. why fix the system, when you can be part of an elite?

Because your responsibility is to your kids and not to some idealistic vision of what you could be doing to improve the school system as a whole.

False dichotomy. Your responsibility as a parent is to your children. Your responsibility as a citizen is to run your government effectively.

Captain TLDR above is basically saying "fuck other people's kids", which is abdicating his civic responsibility.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#137

Post by yummyfajitas » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 8:59 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #122

yummyfajitas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 just the application of the scientific method to education. That's not true in any way. The purpose of the education system is to create a well-informed citizenry prepared for a productive life and for the duty of running a country. The goal of standardized testing is to get some very rough metrics about superficial, easy-to-observe aspects of some basic parts of the apparatus. The two are ver…

The purpose of the education system is to create a well-informed citizenry prepared for a productive life and for the duty of running a country.

Could you be specific? In particular, how do I measure whether a citizen is prepared for a productive life or not?

Heck, we could start by testing the hypothesis that getting everybody to focus lots of classroom time on standardized tests improves actual education.

How would you set up the experiment? In particular, how would you compare group A (no tests) to group B (with tests)?

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#138

Post by king_jester » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 8:59 PM UTC

waterlesscloud wrote: post #123

halffullheart wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously this is a complex issue, and I don't mean to single you out here, but I'm surprised how often I hear the argument that teachers aren't good enough from people who are concerned about the quality of education in the US. It seems to me that in most other industries, the workers in the field are given the benefit of the doubt. In other words, do people really believe that Americans are great at being programme…

Most of us have been to public schools. We have direct, first-hand observations about the quality of teachers. I had a few stars, most were just getting by, some actively sucked. From everything I've ever heard, most people had the same experience. It's not like we're talking about something none of us know anything about. We've been there, seen it.

The first hand experience of people having been a student once isn't enough information in which to judge a whole profession. If that were the case, we should be letting only users of software direct how software is made.

Also, experiences can be really variable for different people. Some students might have many great teachers and be in a position where school is very positive for them. Other students could be facing an entirely different picture about the kind of schools and teachers available to them, esp. given the variances in local and state politics, class levels, income, and attitudes towards teaching.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#139

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 9:03 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #99

justin_vanw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I agree that in a general sense just pulling a number out of the air is crap. Testing isn't wrong, it's just not as correlated to the things we would actually like to measure as we would like it to be. This is an open problem in the world, and solving it (besides potentially making the inventor fabulously wealthy) would dramatically change the world. How do you decide if someone is qualified for a job, or will…

Actually, we do have a good way to determine how someone will perform. The US military has used the ASVAB test for decades, and studies have shown that performance correlates with test results. http://official-asvab.com/validity_res.htm

Took the pre-asvab in high school back in the 90s, got a perfect score. The recruiters called a lot. Took the full ASVAB at a recruiting station, still got a very high score. Too easy, how can that be a real test? My ACT/SAT scores were good but not perfect.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#140

Post by acdha » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 9:04 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #39

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…

Testing is only any good if students are assessed at the beginning and end of each year. We care about the difference a teacher makes in the lives and skills of students. Those that make the most difference get the most reward. But hey - that might be ridiculously easy to game - every which way. (Personally I would get my whole class pissed out of their brains on the first test, and teach normally for the rest of the…

Even this isn't enough: teachers suffer from small sample sizes and tests which attempt to reduce very complex realities to simple numbers. Imagine teaching 70 students, some of whom have significant problems outside your control (e.g. not showing up for class) - if that number changes by just a couple of students either way, your evaluation can go up or down completely due to random variation.

At this point, I'd also note that the people running the numbers tend to have very limited math skills – a great way to recoup some of the money we're pouring into standardized testing would be for each district to hire expert statisticians, scientists, etc. so the comparisons could be done by people who understand how to avoid measurement and analysis errors.