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If teachers were estimated on mean test scores, we could rank them the same way we often rank salespeople. Would you be ok with this? If not, why not? And more

If teachers were estimated on mean test scores, we could rank them the same way we often rank salespeople. Would you be ok with this? If not, why not? And more importantly, why don't your newfound rationalizations apply equally well to salespeople or traders? (Incidentally, traders also are measured against a statistical model - risk adjustments + benchmark rate.) VAM is an accurate measure of teacher contribution to student performance in the first place. And with sales, you need to determine whether your attribution/commission model is an accurate measure of salesperson compensation to company profits. It's the exact same problem, it uses similar statistical methods, and it has variance. * Whereas with sales people, you get new metrics every quarter.* So test every quarter and evaluate on that basis. Done. Further, many salespeople have less information per month than teachers - for example, the enterprise salesgirl I mentioned earlier who has 0, 1 or 2 sales/month. You seem to be desperately reaching for rationalizations that explain why teaching is fundamentally different than every other profession. Why is that?

nitrogen 10y ago
...teaching is fundamentally different than every other profession. Why is that? The payoff of a good teacher shows up years down the road, not once per quarter. Teaching is extremely politicized; parents and random joes like to manipulate the system and are likewise manipulable by less scrupulous members of the public with a hidden agenda -- this is the "think of the children" phenomenon writ large. Teacher class assignments are politically motivated, not random, so student quality is not random. There are substantial movements by parents to eliminate standardized tests because they don't want their children labeled or profiled, and yet you want to increase testing to every quarter. The fears of those parents are somewhat justified because testing software keeps all kinds of behavioral metrics on students that are never revealed to parents. You have an insanely powerful union to deal with that doesn't necessarily represent the true interests of teachers.
Alex3917 10y ago
> If teachers were estimated on mean test scores, we could rank them the same way we often rank salespeople. Good sales people create value by bringing in money, and sales are measured in money. Good teachers create value by teaching well, and mean test scores don't measure teaching well. That might be slightly simplistic, but that's the big picture idea. > And with sales, you need to determine whether your attribution/commission model is an accurate measure of salesperson compensation to company profits I'm not arguing that sales people are always fairly compensated, only that there is less complexity in doing so and the epistemological issues are more straightforward. > So test every quarter and evaluate on that basis. In sales, measuring is free, whereas testing is more like growing carrots... If you keep pulling up your carrots to check how big they are, then at the end of the summer you're not going to have any carrots. > explain why teaching is fundamentally different than every other profession I never said or implied this.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  So near as I can tell, we can't detect the dragon by looking since he's invisible. We can't use a heat meter to detect him with since the fire lives in his (perfect insulator) stomach. We can't put dust on the floor to look for fingerprints since he floats. Would the world be any different if the dragon didn't exist? Similarly, if "teaching well" didn't exist, how would the world be different? What testable predictions (if any) does your set of ideas make? In sales, measuring is free, whereas testing is more like growing carrots... If you keep pulling up your carrots to check how big they are, then at the end of the summer you're not going to have any carrots. Giving quarterly exams will somehow destroy all learning? This goes against pretty much all the principles of spaced repetition. I take a Hindi test every day and it sure seems to help me.
  - Alex3917 10y ago
    I mean if you're willing to accept that the best teachers are the ones that improve standardized tests the most then the research on VAM shows that good and bad teachers exist, it's just not able to reliably differentiate between them in a reasonable amount of time. A more straightforward 'proof' would just be looking at all students who take a class on something random like mycology and then seeing what percentage have had some level of engagement with that subject five or ten years later.

nitrogen 10y ago

...teaching is fundamentally different than every other profession. Why is that? The payoff of a good teacher shows up years down the road, not once per quarter. Teaching is extremely politicized; parents and random joes like to manipulate the system and are likewise manipulable by less scrupulous members of the public with a hidden agenda -- this is the "think of the children" phenomenon writ large. Teacher class assignments are politically motivated, not random, so student quality is not random. There are substantial movements by parents to eliminate standardized tests because they don't want their children labeled or profiled, and yet you want to increase testing to every quarter. The fears of those parents are somewhat justified because testing software keeps all kinds of behavioral metrics on students that are never revealed to parents. You have an insanely powerful union to deal with that doesn't necessarily represent the true interests of teachers.

Alex3917 10y ago

> If teachers were estimated on mean test scores, we could rank them the same way we often rank salespeople. Good sales people create value by bringing in money, and sales are measured in money. Good teachers create value by teaching well, and mean test scores don't measure teaching well. That might be slightly simplistic, but that's the big picture idea. > And with sales, you need to determine whether your attribution/commission model is an accurate measure of salesperson compensation to company profits I'm not arguing that sales people are always fairly compensated, only that there is less complexity in doing so and the epistemological issues are more straightforward. > So test every quarter and evaluate on that basis. In sales, measuring is free, whereas testing is more like growing carrots... If you keep pulling up your carrots to check how big they are, then at the end of the summer you're not going to have any carrots. > explain why teaching is fundamentally different than every other profession I never said or implied this.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
So near as I can tell, we can't detect the dragon by looking since he's invisible. We can't use a heat meter to detect him with since the fire lives in his (perfect insulator) stomach. We can't put dust on the floor to look for fingerprints since he floats. Would the world be any different if the dragon didn't exist? Similarly, if "teaching well" didn't exist, how would the world be different? What testable predictions (if any) does your set of ideas make? In sales, measuring is free, whereas testing is more like growing carrots... If you keep pulling up your carrots to check how big they are, then at the end of the summer you're not going to have any carrots. Giving quarterly exams will somehow destroy all learning? This goes against pretty much all the principles of spaced repetition. I take a Hindi test every day and it sure seems to help me.
- Alex3917 10y ago
  I mean if you're willing to accept that the best teachers are the ones that improve standardized tests the most then the research on VAM shows that good and bad teachers exist, it's just not able to reliably differentiate between them in a reasonable amount of time. A more straightforward 'proof' would just be looking at all students who take a class on something random like mycology and then seeing what percentage have had some level of engagement with that subject five or ten years later.