6 ms·

Our startup (based in Seattle) was looking at ways to help analyze the performance of teachers. It turns out that the unions lobbied for legislation in Washingt

by sgk284 16y ago

Our startup (based in Seattle) was looking at ways to help analyze the performance of teachers. It turns out that the unions lobbied for legislation in Washington that forbids such software from being installed in the schools. The unions don't want mediocre teachers to be found out. It's really a crappy situation and really took us by surprise.

gregwebs 16y ago
I think more than just "being found out" unions also have to tell there members that they are doing something for them. Teaching jobs are already really good (except perhaps for the pay, but that is constrained by government budget). So the unions can tell their members that they will always go to bat for them, even though it is almost completely unnecessary for a competent teacher.
patio11 16y ago
If the unions didn't zealously represent mediocre members, there wouldn't be any point to having them. (There might have been decades ago when management quite literally hired private armies to beat down their employees. Taking a look at the private sector, we can see that non-unionized employees are largely not beaten down by private armies and also don't come to class falling down drunk. Unions have and will continue to zealously defend teachers who do that.)
- philwelch 16y ago
  That was my dad's conclusion decades ago, funny enough. Before he joined the Marines towards the end of WWII he was a laborer and union member, and as far as he could tell the union offered virtually no benefit to young and talented workers. Mediocre workers who were loyal to the union long enough to gain seniority did well, but ability got you nowhere. In the wartime Marine Corps he wasn't promoted quickly but he was still given the duties and responsibilities he was capable of as soon as he proved himself. The private armies and so forth were mostly a 19th century phenomenon.
  - cabalamat 16y ago
    > ability got you nowhere. Sadly, this appears to be true in many walks of life.
    - billswift 16y ago
      Sadly true, but it is institutionalized in unions and civil service (and even worse in unionized gov't jobs like teaching).
- jseliger 16y ago
  This is fairly true, and for more on it, see Megan McArdle's typically interesting take on the theory and practice of unions: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/02/how-unions-work/35328 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/02/how-unio... .
- antidaily 16y ago
  Non-unionized employees can also be paid less and receive less benefits which is great. Because that's how you find the best of the best - offer next to no salary or benefits. It's so simple - you task these underpaid drones with teaching a meaningless standardized test to kids who are physically and sexually abused at home and come to school without a jacket (or breakfast or a packed lunch). If the kids don't do well, clearly it's the teacher's fault and they should be forced out immediately, which will be easier without union representation. Also, to save money, it's important to threaten older, experienced teachers with cut retirement benefits if they don't retire early (happening in MI) so that cheaper, newer teachers can be hired in their place. And even though all studies show that academic achievement starts at home, don't blame the parents. Ever.
  - marltod 16y ago
    Interesting rant, however you have not explained why you think Union Teachers are better than non union teachers at educating children? Tax payers pay taxes so that children in their communities get a good education. Why would tax payers pay a teacher 80k a year when there are qualified unemployeed people willing to do the job at 40k.
    - antidaily 16y ago
      The narrative used to be that teachers were underpaid. Now, because the states are broke and property tax revenues are lower, we're trying to squeeze teachers by paying less and making them work more hours ... and still get kids to do better in school. Just not sure it works that way. I don't have any concrete facts on why unionized teachers are better, but they're paid more, have better benefits, legal protections... so maybe that makes them more motivated.
      - ori_b 16y ago
        No, more motivated would involve having a risk of losing the benefits if you don't teach well. Rewarding... well.. nothing, simply for the sake of rewarding breeds complacency and apathy, not motivation.
- ktsmith 16y ago
  I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you have no actual experience with teachers unions, teachers contracts, teachers liability, or school districts in general other than your own time attending schools. I have no love for unions in general, especially those I've had the misfortune of dealing with in the tech sector. I do however appreciate some of what the teachers union my wife is a member of provides. All teachers in our state (and most others) are required to purchase and hold liability insurance at all times. The union has negotiated rates that are over 50% less than individual rates offered by these same insurers. The union has legal representatives available to protect teachers from many different types of actions, this includes the very real threat of false accusations made by students or their parents. The school districts don't provide any of those services, and in some cases are legally prohibited from doing so as teachers are state/county employees so they fall under various laws that limit the benefits that can be offered to state workers. Teachers unions also provide representatives to mediate disputes between fellow teachers, administrators, parents, and district staff. This service can be invaluable, especially when mediating disputes between staff members and principles. Having a run in with a principle can ruin a teachers career due to the nature of how many administrations work and the good old boy system at work during hiring at many schools. While teachers unions do use collective bargaining to negotiate contracts which include salary schedules this only has a minimum effect on most teachers. Some stellar teachers don't make as much as they might, and some mediocre teachers make more than they should. The problem is that even without the teachers union state laws often limit compensation that can be offered anyway, and at least in my state, compensation packages are done in groups or packages regardless of whether or not those workers are unionized. This means that superstar teachers wouldn't be able to get higher salaries than they do now anyway. Given that almost all state workers here are payed based on time on the job and job classification there would be very little difference. It could actually be worse given that teachers currently get more money based on their continued education in addition to years of service. This provides incentive to teachers to continue to learn and, in theory, become better teachers. As for mediocre teachers being defended by the union, that's an unfortunate consequence of what the union offers. There are several well publicized cases of horrible or mediocre teachers being protected zealously by out of control unions or union reps. Given the total number of teachers employed, the total number of cases the unions mediate, these are the exception and not the rule. You aren't going to read about a teacher being protected by a false student accusation unless it actually goes to court. As a member of the union if there is any type of a dispute you have the right to call on the union to defend you. In most cases this is still a problem with the mediocre teacher and not the union directly. By paying those union dues the teacher gets the right to have the union step in on their behalf. In some cases you'll notice that there's a problem with public service in general. The teachers union has negotiated for contracts and rules that are unbelievable, so have the police, tech and other unions. For whatever reason people love to single out teachers unions and teachers in general. My experience since my wife has become a teacher and I've become much more aware of what goes on at schools is that most people arguing for changes in schools have no idea what they are talking about. They have not volunteered at schools, they have not actively participated in school board meetings, they have never seen a teachers contract, they don't understand the laws that are already in place, they don't read the legislation that's pending on the state or federal level, and they don't think about or understand the consequences of the legislation they do read. There's a lot of that in the discussions about education on HN too as well.
rmorrison 16y ago
I would be very interested in more details, if you can. What was the product? How did it work? What legislation?
deadmansshoes 16y ago
Are you going to analyze teachers performance based on their students results? If so you will be penalizing those in worse areas. And you will make teachers teach to your performance criteria. Besides how many programmers would like their value to be assessed by a piece of software?
- derefr 16y ago
  > Are you going to analyze teachers performance based on their students results? If so you will be penalizing those in worse areas. I would assume you'd analyze based on the first and second derivatives of the students' results—good teachers leave kids better off than when they started, and great teachers teach kids how to learn faster and better. The important prerequisite to this, though, would be to test kids both before and after each lesson, with tests of equivalent questions and equal difficulty—otherwise, you have no idea how much of their learning was because of the class, and how much they already knew.
  - ryanhuff 16y ago
    In practice, year to year, the ability of kids varies. While you might have a strong group one year, the next year things can be much different. Imagine the jockeying by teachers to get the best students if it meant their job or a raise. Do the less able kids get kicked the the curb because teachers are worried about getting fired?
    - derefr 16y ago
      Define "the best students." With my assumption of measurement by derivatives above, those would be the students whose knowledge changed the most during the lesson—those who knew the least before and the most after. Thus, teachers would be jockeying for the students most in need of education, not the students who already know the most (because the pretest scores would reveal that the teacher hadn't changed their knowledge very much over the year.) Rather than the current No Child Left Behind policy of regression to the mean, this would assign the most "learning-intensive" teachers to the students most in need of learning, and assign the students who self-study or are otherwise pre-informed to teachers who are more "lenient", likely diving further into interesting sidebars and tangents. Both groups would be better off for it.
tokipin 16y ago
yea it's unfortunate. the good thing is the current administration's Race to the Top requires states to remove protectionist laws before even being considered for the grants http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNbDv0zPBV4#t=12m http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNbDv0zPBV4#t=12m
- ktsmith 16y ago
  Removing the restrictions has no effect at all. Nevada, where I live and my wife teaches, changed the law to require that all teaching contracts have some type of performance based pay clause in them. The result is that the contracts for the upcoming school year offer bonuses to teachers based on performance. The requirements are poorly defined or understood. Neither the administration, teachers union or teachers understand how it will work. The general consensus is that no bonuses will be paid out, and the state will be eligible for the additional funds, for which it has already applied.
cabalamat 16y ago
The new UK government plans to let groups of parents and others to set up their own "free schools" on the Swedish model. Perhaps some varient on this would solve the problem?
WarDekar 16y ago
For a great look at this, check out the documentary [1] The Cartel. He focuses on New Jersey for the most part, but he touches on how difficult it is to remove poor teachers because of the teachers unions (which fight for the teachers at all cost, and essentially don't give a damn about education). One example given was of a 17-year teaching veteran- an English teacher that was illiterate! I'm not entirely sure how that happens, but anything is better than what is currently happening with our schooling system- and make no mistake, it's not an education system, but a schooling system as former NYState educator of the year John Taylor Gatto [2] argues [3-5]. [1] http://www.thecartelmovie.com/ http://www.thecartelmovie.com/ [2] http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ [3] http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Schooling/dp/0865714487/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273739766&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Sch... [4] http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteachers-Compulsory/dp/0865716692/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273739766&sr=1-3 http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteacher... [5] http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/ http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/
jswinghammer 16y ago
Did you want to install cameras or record what they were doing? Or give students feedback mechanisms or something? I am considering a startup in this space myself.
- sgk284 16y ago
  Hey, check out my reply here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343564 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343564

by sgk284 16y ago

gregwebs 16y ago

I think more than just "being found out" unions also have to tell there members that they are doing something for them. Teaching jobs are already really good (except perhaps for the pay, but that is constrained by government budget). So the unions can tell their members that they will always go to bat for them, even though it is almost completely unnecessary for a competent teacher.

patio11 16y ago

If the unions didn't zealously represent mediocre members, there wouldn't be any point to having them. (There might have been decades ago when management quite literally hired private armies to beat down their employees. Taking a look at the private sector, we can see that non-unionized employees are largely not beaten down by private armies and also don't come to class falling down drunk. Unions have and will continue to zealously defend teachers who do that.)

philwelch 16y ago
That was my dad's conclusion decades ago, funny enough. Before he joined the Marines towards the end of WWII he was a laborer and union member, and as far as he could tell the union offered virtually no benefit to young and talented workers. Mediocre workers who were loyal to the union long enough to gain seniority did well, but ability got you nowhere. In the wartime Marine Corps he wasn't promoted quickly but he was still given the duties and responsibilities he was capable of as soon as he proved himself. The private armies and so forth were mostly a 19th century phenomenon.
- cabalamat 16y ago
  > ability got you nowhere. Sadly, this appears to be true in many walks of life.
  - billswift 16y ago
    Sadly true, but it is institutionalized in unions and civil service (and even worse in unionized gov't jobs like teaching).
jseliger 16y ago
This is fairly true, and for more on it, see Megan McArdle's typically interesting take on the theory and practice of unions: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/02/how-unions-work/35328 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/02/how-unio... .
antidaily 16y ago
Non-unionized employees can also be paid less and receive less benefits which is great. Because that's how you find the best of the best - offer next to no salary or benefits. It's so simple - you task these underpaid drones with teaching a meaningless standardized test to kids who are physically and sexually abused at home and come to school without a jacket (or breakfast or a packed lunch). If the kids don't do well, clearly it's the teacher's fault and they should be forced out immediately, which will be easier without union representation. Also, to save money, it's important to threaten older, experienced teachers with cut retirement benefits if they don't retire early (happening in MI) so that cheaper, newer teachers can be hired in their place. And even though all studies show that academic achievement starts at home, don't blame the parents. Ever.
- marltod 16y ago
  Interesting rant, however you have not explained why you think Union Teachers are better than non union teachers at educating children? Tax payers pay taxes so that children in their communities get a good education. Why would tax payers pay a teacher 80k a year when there are qualified unemployeed people willing to do the job at 40k.
  - antidaily 16y ago
    The narrative used to be that teachers were underpaid. Now, because the states are broke and property tax revenues are lower, we're trying to squeeze teachers by paying less and making them work more hours ... and still get kids to do better in school. Just not sure it works that way. I don't have any concrete facts on why unionized teachers are better, but they're paid more, have better benefits, legal protections... so maybe that makes them more motivated.
    - ori_b 16y ago
      No, more motivated would involve having a risk of losing the benefits if you don't teach well. Rewarding... well.. nothing, simply for the sake of rewarding breeds complacency and apathy, not motivation.
ktsmith 16y ago
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you have no actual experience with teachers unions, teachers contracts, teachers liability, or school districts in general other than your own time attending schools. I have no love for unions in general, especially those I've had the misfortune of dealing with in the tech sector. I do however appreciate some of what the teachers union my wife is a member of provides. All teachers in our state (and most others) are required to purchase and hold liability insurance at all times. The union has negotiated rates that are over 50% less than individual rates offered by these same insurers. The union has legal representatives available to protect teachers from many different types of actions, this includes the very real threat of false accusations made by students or their parents. The school districts don't provide any of those services, and in some cases are legally prohibited from doing so as teachers are state/county employees so they fall under various laws that limit the benefits that can be offered to state workers. Teachers unions also provide representatives to mediate disputes between fellow teachers, administrators, parents, and district staff. This service can be invaluable, especially when mediating disputes between staff members and principles. Having a run in with a principle can ruin a teachers career due to the nature of how many administrations work and the good old boy system at work during hiring at many schools. While teachers unions do use collective bargaining to negotiate contracts which include salary schedules this only has a minimum effect on most teachers. Some stellar teachers don't make as much as they might, and some mediocre teachers make more than they should. The problem is that even without the teachers union state laws often limit compensation that can be offered anyway, and at least in my state, compensation packages are done in groups or packages regardless of whether or not those workers are unionized. This means that superstar teachers wouldn't be able to get higher salaries than they do now anyway. Given that almost all state workers here are payed based on time on the job and job classification there would be very little difference. It could actually be worse given that teachers currently get more money based on their continued education in addition to years of service. This provides incentive to teachers to continue to learn and, in theory, become better teachers. As for mediocre teachers being defended by the union, that's an unfortunate consequence of what the union offers. There are several well publicized cases of horrible or mediocre teachers being protected zealously by out of control unions or union reps. Given the total number of teachers employed, the total number of cases the unions mediate, these are the exception and not the rule. You aren't going to read about a teacher being protected by a false student accusation unless it actually goes to court. As a member of the union if there is any type of a dispute you have the right to call on the union to defend you. In most cases this is still a problem with the mediocre teacher and not the union directly. By paying those union dues the teacher gets the right to have the union step in on their behalf. In some cases you'll notice that there's a problem with public service in general. The teachers union has negotiated for contracts and rules that are unbelievable, so have the police, tech and other unions. For whatever reason people love to single out teachers unions and teachers in general. My experience since my wife has become a teacher and I've become much more aware of what goes on at schools is that most people arguing for changes in schools have no idea what they are talking about. They have not volunteered at schools, they have not actively participated in school board meetings, they have never seen a teachers contract, they don't understand the laws that are already in place, they don't read the legislation that's pending on the state or federal level, and they don't think about or understand the consequences of the legislation they do read. There's a lot of that in the discussions about education on HN too as well.

rmorrison 16y ago

I would be very interested in more details, if you can. What was the product? How did it work? What legislation?

deadmansshoes 16y ago

Are you going to analyze teachers performance based on their students results? If so you will be penalizing those in worse areas. And you will make teachers teach to your performance criteria. Besides how many programmers would like their value to be assessed by a piece of software?

derefr 16y ago
> Are you going to analyze teachers performance based on their students results? If so you will be penalizing those in worse areas. I would assume you'd analyze based on the first and second derivatives of the students' results—good teachers leave kids better off than when they started, and great teachers teach kids how to learn faster and better. The important prerequisite to this, though, would be to test kids both before and after each lesson, with tests of equivalent questions and equal difficulty—otherwise, you have no idea how much of their learning was because of the class, and how much they already knew.
- ryanhuff 16y ago
  In practice, year to year, the ability of kids varies. While you might have a strong group one year, the next year things can be much different. Imagine the jockeying by teachers to get the best students if it meant their job or a raise. Do the less able kids get kicked the the curb because teachers are worried about getting fired?
  - derefr 16y ago
    Define "the best students." With my assumption of measurement by derivatives above, those would be the students whose knowledge changed the most during the lesson—those who knew the least before and the most after. Thus, teachers would be jockeying for the students most in need of education, not the students who already know the most (because the pretest scores would reveal that the teacher hadn't changed their knowledge very much over the year.) Rather than the current No Child Left Behind policy of regression to the mean, this would assign the most "learning-intensive" teachers to the students most in need of learning, and assign the students who self-study or are otherwise pre-informed to teachers who are more "lenient", likely diving further into interesting sidebars and tangents. Both groups would be better off for it.

tokipin 16y ago

yea it's unfortunate. the good thing is the current administration's Race to the Top requires states to remove protectionist laws before even being considered for the grants http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNbDv0zPBV4#t=12m http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNbDv0zPBV4#t=12m

ktsmith 16y ago
Removing the restrictions has no effect at all. Nevada, where I live and my wife teaches, changed the law to require that all teaching contracts have some type of performance based pay clause in them. The result is that the contracts for the upcoming school year offer bonuses to teachers based on performance. The requirements are poorly defined or understood. Neither the administration, teachers union or teachers understand how it will work. The general consensus is that no bonuses will be paid out, and the state will be eligible for the additional funds, for which it has already applied.

cabalamat 16y ago

The new UK government plans to let groups of parents and others to set up their own "free schools" on the Swedish model. Perhaps some varient on this would solve the problem?

WarDekar 16y ago

For a great look at this, check out the documentary [1] The Cartel. He focuses on New Jersey for the most part, but he touches on how difficult it is to remove poor teachers because of the teachers unions (which fight for the teachers at all cost, and essentially don't give a damn about education). One example given was of a 17-year teaching veteran- an English teacher that was illiterate! I'm not entirely sure how that happens, but anything is better than what is currently happening with our schooling system- and make no mistake, it's not an education system, but a schooling system as former NYState educator of the year John Taylor Gatto [2] argues [3-5]. [1] http://www.thecartelmovie.com/ http://www.thecartelmovie.com/ [2] http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ [3] http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Schooling/dp/0865714487/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273739766&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Sch... [4] http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteachers-Compulsory/dp/0865716692/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273739766&sr=1-3 http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteacher... [5] http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/ http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/

jswinghammer 16y ago

Did you want to install cameras or record what they were doing? Or give students feedback mechanisms or something? I am considering a startup in this space myself.

sgk284 16y ago
Hey, check out my reply here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343564 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343564