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Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

nytimes.com

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Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#31

Post by yummyfajitas »

gf44 wrote: post #12
chipsy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the most needy inner city kids, I think boarding schools might be appropriate even at an early age. Their home environment and neighborhood is so shattered that what they need most is a stable day-to-day existence shielded from drugs, gangs, and criminal behavior. If they don't get that, by the teen years, they're stuck in feudalistic "ghetto thinking," start getting into increasingly serious trouble, and just ar…

"Their home environment and neighborhood is so shattered that what they need most is a stable day-to-day existence shielded from drugs, gangs, and criminal behavior." You do realize you're talking out of your ass right? 99% of inner-city youths don't do drugs, aren't in gangs, and aren't involved in criminal behavior. Nice way to stereotype them though.

99% of inner-city youths don't do drugs...

If true, this means inner city youth do drugs about 50x less than youth in general. (Not asserting any precision in the numbers, just throwing out orders of magnitude.)

http://www.teendrugabuse.us/teendrugstatistics.html

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#32

Post by dtf »

gxs wrote: post #2

I went to an inner city Los Angeles high school. You wouldn't believe some of the individuals that can pass as qualified teachers. People that they themselves were never taught correctly, and went straight into teaching after college. This of course is the double whammy - poorly academically prepared people, with little real world experience - so they fail students on both counts. And yet...the most annoying part of…

Teaching sounds like one of the hardest jobs in the world. You get it from the kids, from the parents, from your superiors, from the government, from the media. I think I have at least a vague feeling for that spark of humanity that drives most good teachers, but I'm just astonished that it's enough for such a rare event to keep them doing what they do day-in day-out.

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#33

Post by danteembermage »

alphaoverlord wrote: post #17
JshWright wrote: post #4

It would suck for the folks who paid tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege to teach in states like New York where a graduate degree is mandatory for public school teachers. It's going to take almost two decades for the master's "bonus" to cover the cost of my wife's graduate degree.

If a graduate degree is mandatory, why is there a bonus? Can't they raise the base?

Hence the scare quotes on bonus I think

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#34

Post by yummyfajitas »

yp90 wrote: post #16
Mahh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The families of many of those students you refer to are just as shattered as their neighborhoods and that may be what makes it easy for them to be susceptible to influence from the neighborhoods. They wouldn't particularly care if boarding schools could help their kids or not, even if they could have access to boarding schools. Following this thought, the importance of education(what life would be as compared to with…

"The families of many of those students you refer to are just as shattered as their neighborhoods and that may be what makes it easy for them to be susceptible to influence from the neighborhoods." I find the stereotypes here frankly appalling. Have you guys even lived in the ghetto, or even taught in one? Inner city students are just as motivated and understand the importance of education as any other kid living in…

My high school was in the bottom 25% of NY State. We had kids carrying metal and glass. It's not ghetto, but it was low end.

I'd agree with the statement that most of the students there were not particularly motivated. But who knows, maybe kids become more motivated when you go from the bottom 25% to the bottom 10%.

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#35

Post by jonknee »

JshWright wrote: post #4

It would suck for the folks who paid tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege to teach in states like New York where a graduate degree is mandatory for public school teachers. It's going to take almost two decades for the master's "bonus" to cover the cost of my wife's graduate degree.

Well if the degree was worthwhile, they will get the bonuses for doing well and still be OK. Otherwise what are we paying for?

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#36

Post by WalterBright »

tisganitis wrote: post #27
WalterBright wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no bureaucratic rule that can be devised that can separate good teachers from bad ones. Every such rule can and will be gamed. It's like the difference between art and porn - the difference is obvious by inspection, but impossible to codify. With a free market school system, people will know who the good teachers are and will pay for them (supply and demand). With a government school system, this simply will…

Right, and in a free market system, those who can pay for the best teachers will get them, and those who cannot pay will be left with the worst teachers. Isn't that unfair? That is also exactly the opposite of what Gates is trying to accomplish with his plan. He wants to incentivize teachers to work with the poorest students at the most disadvantaged schools. By definition, the free market alone CANNOT solve this pro…

The problem we're discussing is how does one determine who the "best" teachers are? Gates did not propose a solution to this problem. I submit that, being a government school system, such a solution will involve a bureaucratic rule that will inevitably be gamed.

Note that the current system of determining the best as being a bureaucratic rule-based combination of seniority and educational level is a recognized failure. I guarantee you that all the alternative rules proposed in this thread can be easily gamed as well.

This is in spite of the fact that anyone working in a school (including the students) knows who the best and worst teachers are, and don't need any rule to tell them.

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#37

Post by ezy »

andrewce wrote: post #15

This response comes via the Washington Post, and offers sourced rebuttals/refinements: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers... Also: while I've got a world of respect for Bill Gates and his philanthropic efforts, I'm not sure that he's the most qualified to discuss education reform. I'm certainly down with schools restructuring their budgets, but there's wasted money all over the place, and ev…

Seems like the post article just wants to belabor a point Bill Gates did not actually make.

The points he did make, actually agree with the article's sources, but he does not reach the same overall conclusion. He did explicitly say that seniority matters and that the difference peters out mostly after ~5 years (he put a graph on the screen with sources). He mentioned other metrics should be applied as well, but did not specify exactly what the metrics should be (whereas this article concentrates on test scores as if he presented that as the only valid metric).

Gates minor conclusion is the reasonable one... seniority does matter, but not as much after a certain period of time, therefore it cannot be used as the only method of assessment. Furthermore, seniority is a rather indirect measure of competence. I don't see the opposing view as being arguable with a clear conscience, frankly.

And, in fact, if you listen to the speech, he does not state budgets as a priority -- yes, an obstacle to be overcome, but not the focus. The focus is in better outcomes.

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#38

Post by Legion »

I wish there was less focus on teachers, and more focus on fixing the problem of how badly kids fall behind before they ever get to school.

The battle is IMO largely won and lost in years 0-5, before kids even reach 1st grade. That's why programs like "Baby College" in Harlem are so important.

Even when kids do reach school age, the work of teachers is either amplified or underminded by parents.

My wife teaches 2nd grade (in a poor, needy school district), and frankly, the hours a day she has them can't undo the failure of parents in the kid's early development, nor overcome the constant sabotage of parents undoing much of the day's progress.

Yes, there are bad teachers. But good teachers can badly struggle due to no fault of their own. One teacher may go from superstar metrics to really poor numbers, based on the luck of the draw.

The point is, if you really want to improve education, you have to start in the home, in early childhood.

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#39

Post by Bertrood »

Mr. Gates has identified the 50 state school superintendents as critical stakeholders in his plan. With this identified audience, he's turned what seems an impossible task into a more manageable one.

Now he has an identifiable audience, with identifiable needs. He will be able to eliminate some of the noise that surrounds such a large issue because of this.

Ultimately, the goal is to build the best possible performance based system, but Mr. Gates saves the time and effort associated with re-crafting rejected ideas, by identifying and including necessary input from his crucial stakeholders (state superintendents) on the front end.

Re: Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master's degrees and seniority

#40

Post by tptacek »

ig1 wrote: post #7
wheaties wrote: post #3

This is easy to say but hard to do. "Based on excellence" is the mantra I've heard from software development circles for years and yet... 1. How many of us have lost productivity because some other developer ran rough-shod through code caring not for maintainability, readability, or even extensibility? Which one was praised and which one rewarded? Doesn't apply to teachers? Ever have a dud who couldn't do simple math…

Generally people seem to support either performance improvement measured by exams (i.e. how much students improved over the course of the term) or some sort of peer-review system. Both have their own problems, but both seem to be much better than the arbitrary system of seniority. There is evidence to show teachers get better with experience, but almost all of that improvement happens within the first few years of a…

It's actually not obvious that a testing-based teacher measurement regime would be better than the seniority system. The seniority system does lock in mediocre teachers, but it has minimal knock-on effects to the actual curriculum. Test-based measurement has already made some curricula toxic to students, and those test results have minimal impact to the teachers themselves.

How much worse would it be if the teach-to-the-test incentive was "afford a new car"?

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