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What happens when we pay public high school teachers based on performance

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Re: What happens when we pay public high school teachers based on performance

#111

Post by czbond »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #92
czbond wrote: post #50

If they want to improve teachers performance - reduce the $hit modern society is making them deal with. They're very under paid. How would you like to deal with corraling 23'ish hyper nut jobs all at different levels? That you have to be their parents, psychologist, DEI, identity fosterer, special education teachers etc. Funding in many schools isn't there now for specialists to do these roles.... because teachers wa…

DEI? Did you mean IEP?

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Districts have placed individual responsibility to the teachers in many cases with a strong DEI push - even stronger than had existed pre-covid.

Re: What happens when we pay public high school teachers based on performance

#112

Post by drewbug01 »

czbond wrote: post #50

If they want to improve teachers performance - reduce the $hit modern society is making them deal with. They're very under paid. How would you like to deal with corraling 23'ish hyper nut jobs all at different levels? That you have to be their parents, psychologist, DEI, identity fosterer, special education teachers etc. Funding in many schools isn't there now for specialists to do these roles.... because teachers wa…

> Funding in many schools isn't there now for specialists to do these roles.... because teachers wanted to earn more after inflation, so cuts made - more responsibilites to teachers.

This seems as though you're implying that it's the greedy teacher's fault that our school systems shove ever-increasing responsibilities upon them. As if the total pot of money in the system is a fixed, immovable sum, and so that if a teacher wants a raise it must mean that something elsewhere has to give.

Is there any shred of evidence to support that kind of thinking, though? We can quibble about salaries and outlier districts all day long if you want, but fundamentally it's not like teachers are the most highly-paid group of workers out there. And governments manage to find money to increase funding to other systems year after year (the police, for example).

Re: What happens when we pay public high school teachers based on performance

#113

Post by czbond »

drewbug01 wrote: post #112
czbond wrote: post #50

If they want to improve teachers performance - reduce the $hit modern society is making them deal with. They're very under paid. How would you like to deal with corraling 23'ish hyper nut jobs all at different levels? That you have to be their parents, psychologist, DEI, identity fosterer, special education teachers etc. Funding in many schools isn't there now for specialists to do these roles.... because teachers wa…

> Funding in many schools isn't there now for specialists to do these roles.... because teachers wanted to earn more after inflation, so cuts made - more responsibilites to teachers. This seems as though you're implying that it's the greedy teacher's fault that our school systems shove ever-increasing responsibilities upon them. As if the total pot of money in the system is a fixed, immovable sum, and so that if a te…

>This seems as though you're implying that it's the greedy teacher's fault that our school systems shove ever-increasing responsibilities upon them.

I believe the opposite. I believe teachers are underpaid, not greedy at all, and under staffed. Often education is under funded (in areas of the country such as mine).

Re: What happens when we pay public high school teachers based on performance

#114

Post by czbond »

dwater wrote: post #79
czbond wrote: post #50

If they want to improve teachers performance - reduce the $hit modern society is making them deal with. They're very under paid. How would you like to deal with corraling 23'ish hyper nut jobs all at different levels? That you have to be their parents, psychologist, DEI, identity fosterer, special education teachers etc. Funding in many schools isn't there now for specialists to do these roles.... because teachers wa…

When I worked in a relatively well to do suburban district I had class sizes up to 35 students. Because I was a math teacher, administration did their best to keep our class sizes under 30, teachers of other core classes were more likely to have 30+ students, and classes that didn't have standardized tests might have more than 35. If I recall correctly, every year I taught 9th graders, who are often hyper nutjobs.

Props to you! Sanity is fleeting with 30+ 9th graders

Re: What happens when we pay public high school teachers based on performance

#115

Post by RecycledEle »

dmix wrote: post #52
ufo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downfall is that in theory the purpose of school is to educate, not merely get people enough points to be admitted to college.

The schools are free to design their own pay packages right? The state isn't mandating that pay be tied to tests. This is mostly just an assumption that that would be the only metric used.

> The schools are free to design their own pay packages right?

No. Most if the time, state laws set limits on what school districts can do.

Re: What happens when we pay public high school teachers based on performance

#116

Post by RecycledEle »

I teach in Texas.

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) awards school districts for things like students earning industry IT certifications. This can be more than $1k per certification.

Teachers know what will happen if they try to excel in these areas: they will be fired. Coworkers explained this to me, but I did not listen.

I explained to a school board member that I was going to try to get my 9th graders certified. He replied that if even one student failed to earn their certification that I would have failed and he would have to fire me. I tried to reason with the idiot, but he made Dilbert's point haired boss seem competent.

I managed to get about half of my students Microsoft certified.

I left that school district in part because my life was hell there. One secretary in particular was very offended because she had to figure out how to spend the school district's money on certification exam vouchers and had to add students to a field trip to compete in an electronics competition. We took 2nd in the state, and I left the school district. Now I'm an adjunct at a community college.

If you want to fix Texas Public Schools, elect competent school board members.

If you want teachers to perform well, reward them instead of punishing them. When a teacher brings state money into the district, give them at least half of that money.

Re: What happens when we pay public high school teachers based on performance

#117

Post by sparrish »

dwater wrote: post #98
sparrish wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. They expel 'really bad kid's every year. It's hard to do but happens.

Teachers do not expel students, administrators or districts do. Teachers have very little recourse for dealing with "really bad kids (or parents)".

Are you saying Teachers have no input into the process at all?

Re: What happens when we pay public high school teachers based on performance

#118

Post by drewbug01 »

czbond wrote: post #113
drewbug01 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Funding in many schools isn't there now for specialists to do these roles.... because teachers wanted to earn more after inflation, so cuts made - more responsibilites to teachers. This seems as though you're implying that it's the greedy teacher's fault that our school systems shove ever-increasing responsibilities upon them. As if the total pot of money in the system is a fixed, immovable sum, and so that if a te…

>This seems as though you're implying that it's the greedy teacher's fault that our school systems shove ever-increasing responsibilities upon them. I believe the opposite. I believe teachers are underpaid, not greedy at all, and under staffed. Often education is under funded (in areas of the country such as mine).

Gotcha - the comment read precisely the opposite to me, thank you for clarifying :)

Re: What happens when we pay public high school teachers based on performance

#119

Post by kspacewalk2 »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #56
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the statement "monetary rewards for performance improve overall performance" considered bias, or just common sense?

It’s just false (for cognitive work). E.g. https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/Workingpapers/PD...

>However, psychological research suggests that >>>excessive>>very high<<< monetary rewards can decrease performance...

Re: What happens when we pay public high school teachers based on performance

#120

Post by kspacewalk2 »

dwater wrote: post #97
goda90 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication is that countries that fund education more can actually pay good teachers well, so there's room for paying bad teachers less.

Countries that fund education more can pay enough to attract a larger pool of candidates, and then choose only to hire the best of that pool. Unlike the current state of most school districts in the US, who will hire anyone that can meet the minimum qualifications, but still have huge numbers of vacancies. Many districts have lowered the requirements so they can bring in even less qualified people. From my reading, t…

Canada (or at least Ontario where I live) pays teachers relatively well, hire on merit, but results are quite mediocre when measured objectively (and, for what it's worth, correlate with my own subjective anecdata). This is at least partly due to perverse incentives introduced by the seniority system. You can hire the best, but if you promote and give raises to the ones who put in the most time, the best won't necessarily stick around nearly as much as you want them to.

According to the main rule of taxation, you're going to get less of what you're taxing. I we can generalize it and say that you'll get more of what you're incentivizing.

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