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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

#91

Post by crzyman »

This is an interesting example of how there is a difference betweena policy being a "heat pump" and a "resistive heater", and that both can occur simultaneously.

The problem with "heat pumps" is that they necessitate a "cold" side, from which they "pump the heat" to the "hot" side. Their goal isn't to increase the overall "heat" in the system, it's to move the "hot" all to one side.

A "resistive heater" can add "heat" to the system more evenly, but is less efficient and you won't see "temperatures" rise nearly as quickly.

And that both can occur at the same time.

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

#92

Post by paulryanrogers »

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?

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

#93

Post by robocat »

readyman wrote: post #31
azinman2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fear as well. Is there a better way to assess teacher quality, especially in challenging student environments?

Don't assess teacher quality. Eliminate poverty by eliminating capitalism, a system that literally depends on it.

HN guidelines:

  Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle.
Please read guidelines link at bottom of page. So many of your past comments are simple anti-capitalist opinions that are not gratifying intellectual curiosity. Not a mod: just hoping for better discourse here.

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

#94

Post by Clubber »

gadders wrote: post #71
jddj wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You get what you measure" is broadly applicable and systems need to accomodate that. There's nothing about teachers that makes them less ethical than the the average car emissions system engineer KPMG auditor person

The expectation is that they would be more ethical, in the same way you would expect EG a doctor to be.

It's easier to be incorruptible by money when you already have a lot of money.

One of the big societal problems with pushing down wages for 50 years is that it makes society less ethical because people aren't comfortable enough in their finances. When people aren't comfortable with their finances, they are less likely to be able to quickly ignore unethical things that might help their financial situation even a little bit.

Quick example: You see a guy drop a $20 when stuffing his ATM withdrawal into his wallet. I would say, "hey bud, you dropped a 20." Someone else might just let him walk out and pick it up for themselves because it would help them a lot more than me.

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

#95

Post by dwater »

jorvi wrote: post #38
dwater wrote: post #12

I was a public school teacher that worked in a district that attempted to measure teacher value add. There was limited pay for performance based on that metric. And the district I worked in was majority racial minority and majority living in poverty. "Using the expiration of preexisting collective bargaining agreements as a source of exogenous variation in the timing of changes in pay, I show that the introduction of…

A secondary question is: is the pay increase high enough to induce more talented people to become a teacher? If all it does is pull higher quality teachers from other places, it is zero sum and all you eventually end up with is the same quality schooling for a higher price. I do think teachers as a whole should be paid well, but that is a separate discussion.

When I left teaching my salary went up 50% on day 1, to 100% after about a year, to 150% after 2 or 3 years, and has continued climbing significantly since. If I had stayed my salary would have lagged inflation. The pay for performance bonuses I've heard of have never been more than 20% of a teacher's salary. I'm not typical because I have CS and Math degrees, but still, I have no intention of ever considering returning to teaching.

Not part of this discussion, but I did work with people who left public schools to work at charter schools because you could get 25-50% more there, but they rarely stayed more than 2 years because of the working environment being more toxic than at public schools.

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

#96

Post by sparrish »

goda90 wrote: post #61
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #30

Hard to think of an argument why they shouldn’t be. You can argue the raw materials are something they can’t control but plenty of other industries have the same issue, real estate, hiring, and we still pay them on performance. Think we’d see accepting poor behavior, teachers writing off or actively bullying students tank if this were implemented properly.

A real estate agent or a hiring manager can still walk away from a really bad property, candidate, etc. A teacher can't walk away from a really bad kid (or really bad parents!) without leaving the profession entirely.

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

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

#97

Post by dwater »

goda90 wrote: post #74
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication being that countries with more taxes can afford to waste money by paying bad teachers well?

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, the Nordic countries view teaching as a high value profession on par with doctor and lawyer, and this results in potential teachers having to work very hard to land a job and keep it.

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

#98

Post by dwater »

sparrish wrote: post #96
goda90 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A real estate agent or a hiring manager can still walk away from a really bad property, candidate, etc. A teacher can't walk away from a really bad kid (or really bad parents!) without leaving the profession entirely.

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)".

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

#99

Post by Clubber »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #47
marviel wrote: post #2

From Conclusion: > This paper has studied the effects of the introduction of flexible pay for pub- lic school teachers on the composition of the workforce, teachers’ effort, and student achievement. A switch away from seniority-based salary schedules toward pay-for-quality in a subset of Wisconsin school districts resulted in high-quality teachers moving to these FP districts and low-quality teachers either moving to…

> test scores improved I understand that using test scores makes for easier science, but I grew up with some level of "teach the test" and in my anecdotal experience you turn schools into the dullest cram schools when performance is measured this way. I did fine on tests but I hated it. The only reason I didn't drop out was because I didn't realize I had the agency to do so.

This. My kid is naturally curious and she can tell you everything about the things she gets curious about. She'll spend hours digging for information on a subject. She absolutely hates school though.

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

#100

Post by kkfx »

I adverse using metrics for value people, while I do not adverse metrics per se, as a companion information for statistical purposes. The issue with metrics used for something it that they became a target, not a measure anymore. They push toward conformism, witch happen to be antithetic to innovation.

Using metrics to understand at a large scale what happen, if a method work or not, where to improve etc might be useful and harmless. Using them as a way to prize or penalize have regularly very bad results.

The ancient quis custodiet ipsos custodes it's equally valid for metrics, who evaluate those who design the measure?

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