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The article doesn't really present it as a success, though: > Yet so far, both merit-pay efforts and programs that recruit a more-elite teaching corps, like Te

The article doesn't really present it as a success, though: > Yet so far, both merit-pay efforts and programs that recruit a more-elite teaching corps, like Teach for America, have thin records of reliably improving student learning. Yet, I imagine you'd find it odd to suggest that better programmers shouldn't be better compensated in some sense. I think merit pay (or just higher pay) and high demands are too different things, and the latter often destroys the benefit of the former. I recall reading an article where teachers were measured on many different axes with insane expectations. I imagine that works about as well as micromanaging a programmer's time. I don't know how the Equity Project was ran, exactly, but it's trivial to mess that kind of thing up. Compensation is absolutely relevant to teacher quality: it has to be. Pay and other factors (respect, benefits) influence how people choose their profession, do they not? So it will influence who becomes a teacher, so if we posit that teachers matter, this will have an effect. A study is not required here. And as I've noted in my other post, this didn't seem widespread or covered well. Having one small program esoterically targeting some teachers and giving them more money a large shift does not make. I'm not going to become a teacher all of a sudden because one small program shows up that could theoretically offer someone money anymore than I'll become a professional StarCraft player because a small city in Canada is experimenting with basic income.

eastWestMath 10y ago
Is Teach for America the one that recruits Ivey league grads and drops them into classrooms in inner city classrooms? I always thought it was a wonderful microcosm of everything wrong with the US system. The exact situation where you need experienced teachers with deep ties to their community is where they put Ivey league grads with no training, experience, or shared life experiences with the students due to their wildly different socioeconomic class. It even has the "white saviour" complex baked into it.
- douche 10y ago
  Yes, it's that one. It's largely a glorified gap year (s) for Ivy Leaguers en route to law school. They recruited hard at Dartmouth and I knew a score or so who did that for a little while... They don't even require rudimentary training or experience with teaching to apply, nor even a plausibly applicable major.
lr4444lr 10y ago
First of all, the article is from 2010. TEP only started the year prior, and the city/state did not have the metrics to publish. Now they do. I think merit pay (or just higher pay) and high demands are too different things, and the latter often destroys the benefit of the former I have to respectfully disagree, and I don't think you truly believe that given your 2nd to last paragraph. Following the logic, more money -> more competition for that employer -> employer can have greater selectivity in hiring people who can handle higher demands. Also, TEP is largely if not entirely exempt from lengthy union due process in dismissing underperforming teachers. This was as good a lab experiment as you'll get in educational research, and the empirical data simply was not positive. There is legitimate discussion to be had about potentially improving the model - there are even legitimate arguments NOT to improve the model but run it on its own merits for moral reasons if people like it - but we cannot use a data-driven philosophy and then let our eagerness to disprove the null hypothesis lead us to ignore the data point.

eastWestMath 10y ago

Is Teach for America the one that recruits Ivey league grads and drops them into classrooms in inner city classrooms? I always thought it was a wonderful microcosm of everything wrong with the US system. The exact situation where you need experienced teachers with deep ties to their community is where they put Ivey league grads with no training, experience, or shared life experiences with the students due to their wildly different socioeconomic class. It even has the "white saviour" complex baked into it.

douche 10y ago
Yes, it's that one. It's largely a glorified gap year (s) for Ivy Leaguers en route to law school. They recruited hard at Dartmouth and I knew a score or so who did that for a little while... They don't even require rudimentary training or experience with teaching to apply, nor even a plausibly applicable major.

lr4444lr 10y ago

First of all, the article is from 2010. TEP only started the year prior, and the city/state did not have the metrics to publish. Now they do. I think merit pay (or just higher pay) and high demands are too different things, and the latter often destroys the benefit of the former I have to respectfully disagree, and I don't think you truly believe that given your 2nd to last paragraph. Following the logic, more money -> more competition for that employer -> employer can have greater selectivity in hiring people who can handle higher demands. Also, TEP is largely if not entirely exempt from lengthy union due process in dismissing underperforming teachers. This was as good a lab experiment as you'll get in educational research, and the empirical data simply was not positive. There is legitimate discussion to be had about potentially improving the model - there are even legitimate arguments NOT to improve the model but run it on its own merits for moral reasons if people like it - but we cannot use a data-driven philosophy and then let our eagerness to disprove the null hypothesis lead us to ignore the data point.