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Gates Foundation study: We’ve figured out what makes a good teacher

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Gates Foundation study: We’ve figured out what makes a good teacher

#51

Post by randomdata »

crusso wrote: post #37
gnosis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very legitimate question. How can teachers do the best with the resources they're given and the the children they're working with, no matter how threadbare the resources are, and no matter how traumatized and disadvantaged their students are? Whether standardized tests have a role in answering that question or in evaluating teacher performance is hotly debated right now. But the purpose of my original post w…

How can society as a whole ensure that every child gets the best education possible? Step one, define "best education possible". Step two, learn to measure whether or not a child is getting one (or the closest you can come to it). Step three, maximize some aggregate or regionalized version of your measurements through restructuring of school systems, rewards for good schools and teachers, etc. The study in this artic…

It is not even clear if the article gets to step one. Some of the teachers who I feel had the greatest impact on my education taught classes that I did not necessarily score well in. If I am a statistical norm, those teachers would be consider poor teachers according to the metrics, contrary to reality.

Re: Gates Foundation study: We’ve figured out what makes a good teacher

#52

Post by sp332 »

roguecoder wrote: post #32
the_bear wrote: post #17

It's common for people who received good educations to say that test scores aren't an acceptable indication of learning. It's probably true that if you already have an acceptable level of education, test scores shouldn't be too important, but it seems like the people criticizing test scores haven't experienced what education is like for the children being "left behind." In middle school, the last three weeks of each…

Except that even those things don't predict later success. Any kid with a family that can afford books will score higher on "can this kid read English". Any kid who's been drilled can learn to multiply two numbers together. Without cognitive skills behind them, though, those are not useful abilities. The best predictors of future success are self-control, emotional intelligence and a grasp of functional algebra (whic…

I think it's worth emphasizing that the research done in this article doesn't look at kids' absolute test scores, but only the difference between test scores before and after the school year.

Also, my school emphasized self-control, but how do you learn emotional intelligence?

Re: Gates Foundation study: We’ve figured out what makes a good teacher

#53

Post by elemenohpee »

crusso wrote: post #28
elemenohpee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is it any different than the rest of the working world where you can control some things and you can't control others yet your job is to do the best you can with what you can control? So the argument is that since everyone sucks at measuring things that any arguments about how a particular system of measurement is ineffective should be discarded?

So the argument is that since everyone sucks at measuring things You read something into my argument that I didn't put there, so I'm going to disregard it as a straw man.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to create a straw man, just trying to tease out a hidden premise, although I suppose I could have been less of a dick about it.

I think we can all agree that judging people based on things that they have no control over is not an effective way to evaluate them. This happens in education, as the parent comment outlined. This happens in engineering, as you outlined. It does not follow that teachers should be evaluated in this way, or that a discussion about the problems with this method should not take place.

Re: Gates Foundation study: We’ve figured out what makes a good teacher

#54

Post by loucal »

Is this the same gates foundation that I saw on 60 minutes pumping GMO seeds and fossil fuel fertilizer to third world countries to "help" them out of their food crisis?

In fairness, I think I heard they realized something like "what works in america doesn't work everywhere" (bit of a cop out to save face) and moved toward more sustainable organic methods, but I'm not completely sure.

All I know is, if its that hard for them to figure out the most practical way to grow a plant, we should probably take their advice on growing the minds of our children with a grain of salt.

Re: Gates Foundation study: We’ve figured out what makes a good teacher

#55

Post by sethammons »

crusso wrote: post #36
mac1175 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think relativism does play a role on outcomes regardless of the parallels you are drawing here. However, you do make a point on a person's competence based on how well they can handle a situation but I don't think you can group one's role as a teacher being equal as one's role as a lead engineer.

I don't think you can group one's role as a teacher being equal as one's role as a lead engineer. Why not? Government run education is pathetic. Incentives are all out of whack, there's no competition between teachers or schools that can affect the status quo. Teachers could use a huge dose of whatever it is that the more competitive business world has to deal with.

Schools are the entity least run like a business out of anything else I can think of -- this is at the administrative level. When it comes to teacher competition, it is a different game than Company A winning a competitive contract over Company B. We want both companies to win here (read: both teachers -- or schools). Another problem with this idea is that you can fire obstinate clients. You can't do that with students.

Teacher competition, I think, would reduce collaboration. Why give your competitor your secrets to success?

Incentive pay? The problem under this idea is that new teachers are often given the most difficult and unruly of students while more experienced teachers get honors classes. I find this odd because the teachers will the best "tools" for dealing with difficult problems are moved away from those problems.

Then again, the problem is that with any idea for reform, there is a list of reasons why it should not or would not work.

I'm a fan of letting students who are not interested in the academics of school work towards trade school and let those who are academically inclined to work towards university. However, a retired college physics professor friend of mine does not like this solution because he would have been tracked towards trade school and never discovered his love for physics.

Re: Gates Foundation study: We’ve figured out what makes a good teacher

#56

Post by sethammons »

madaxe wrote: post #11

"Test scores" Brilliant. Well, yes, that is the best way to measure a teacher's efficacy, if your goal is to teach students to jump through hoops and pass standardised tests rather than to think. The best teacher I ever had was my grandmother - she taught me the most important lessons I'd ever learn, such as: "Observe the world around you." "Reach your own conclusions." "What was fact yesterday may be fiction tomorro…

On the "tests are a distraction from learning" point, it reminds me of:

"testing students more often to improve test scores is similar to a rancher weighing is cows more often to increase their weight."

Re: Gates Foundation study: We’ve figured out what makes a good teacher

#57

Post by poppysan »

the_bear wrote: post #27
elemenohpee wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you go to school? How does this happen?

I went to the University City School District in St. Louis. It was actually a pretty strange place because it's the main district that Wash U (Washington University in St. Louis) is in, so about 10% of the students are children of (mostly white) professors and other very education-oriented professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc). Because of that, top classes (honors and AP) were actually pretty good. I, and many of my…

I can co-sign for the quality of the district he mentions. My nieces and nephew are there now. It's totally an economic issue. My sister-in-law really does care about the education of her kids and their potential future, but she has to work 2 jobs to barely support them adequately. It's a case of survival knocking education down a notch on the priority scale.

Re: Gates Foundation study: We’ve figured out what makes a good teacher

#58

Post by sethammons »

crusso wrote: post #9
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #7

Using test scores in order to judge the quality of a teacher is like using brush strokes in order to measure the quality of a painter.

So where part of the study showed that with randomized redistributions of students, certain teachers were able reproduce higher test scores -- your countering evidence shows otherwise. Great. Where's your evidence? My own evidence (experience going through school and generalization of how ability works in most professions) tells me that the good teachers in my life helped me to learn the information better and more d…

I just realized that I keep replying to you, crusso (lol). Cheers. I'm more interested in the demographics of the student population than the 'random distribution (1)' of students in that population to different teachers. What I mean by this is that I would expect 'good' teachers to be able to demonstrate their abilities with with relatively homogeneous groupings of students where those students are from relatively decent neighborhoods. If, however, this study included teachers in inner city schools with huge variance in the 'quality' of student that a teacher would receive at often vastly different levels of understanding in the teacher's discipline area, then I think the results would be interesting insofar as to allow others to dig into what makes these teachers effective.

1: If we are looking at a teacher who teaches a course with a pre-requisite, the grouping of students becomes more similar (ie, a trigonometry teacher is likely to have students both motivated to do well and to have passed the requisite lower level math classes, and their success is less surprising to me).

Re: Gates Foundation study: We’ve figured out what makes a good teacher

#59

Post by sopooneo »

roguecoder wrote: post #32
the_bear wrote: post #17

It's common for people who received good educations to say that test scores aren't an acceptable indication of learning. It's probably true that if you already have an acceptable level of education, test scores shouldn't be too important, but it seems like the people criticizing test scores haven't experienced what education is like for the children being "left behind." In middle school, the last three weeks of each…

Except that even those things don't predict later success. Any kid with a family that can afford books will score higher on "can this kid read English". Any kid who's been drilled can learn to multiply two numbers together. Without cognitive skills behind them, though, those are not useful abilities. The best predictors of future success are self-control, emotional intelligence and a grasp of functional algebra (whic…

From my work teaching I am very skeptical of the notion that it is a family's ability to "afford" books that makes the difference. It is whether the family knows that books are important and chooses to get them and read with their children. While monetary poverty is horrible, it's effect on educational outcome is dwarfed in comparison to cultural dysfunction and despair.
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