6 ms·

I'll just put one citation into this discussion. Raj Chetty and his collaborators produce amazing research. I attended a talk when he visited New Zealand a few

I'll just put one citation into this discussion. Raj Chetty and his collaborators produce amazing research. I attended a talk when he visited New Zealand a few years ago. In this paper he's attempting to address the dream of measuring teacher value, by measuring changes in test scores against changes in lifetime income. Yes there are other ways of measuring teacher "value" too, but income changes are relevant to this discussion, since they tell us how much a teacher could theoretically ask for in "commission". The paper suggests that an average teacher vs a bottom 5% teacher makes a $250,000 lifetime difference in income (present value). "The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood" http://www.nber.org/papers/w17699 http://www.nber.org/papers/w17699 Take a look. He does a neat job controlling for different factors, trying to tease causality out of correlation.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
amelius 9y ago
> address the dream of measuring teacher value, by measuring changes in test scores against changes in lifetime income. Of course, combined with the premise of this article, such measurement will incentivize teachers to turn students into sales-people :)
aj7 9y ago
250k lifetime? So he should get another $6k. Teachers and engineers don't work for money. And there are often bad consequences for people who "don't work for money." I worked in sales so I could afford to be an engineer later. There were plenty of ex-teachers in sales. They did well.
- phkahler 9y ago
  >> Teachers and engineers don't work for money. You're right. I hit the comment button and was going to say you're damn wrong - I have done a lot to increase my pay with each new job. I wouldn't be at work if not for the money. But then I realized you're right too. I don't think about money much at all when I'm a work. I do try to make a good product, and I do worry about bill of materials and production cost, but I don't focus on money coming to me because that's already been agreed upon. Is that what you meant by that statement?
  - mavhc 9y ago
    An engineer doesn't want to make a bad product, but if a company has a good product they don't even need to hire a salesperson
    - SuperGent 9y ago
      That's not necessarily true. There are thousands of examples of good products that failed due to lack of marketing.
    - jasode 9y ago
      Both Boeing and Airbus make good airplanes. Nevertheless, they hire expensive salespeople and pay them massive commissions. They don't just tell the airlines to download a pdf brochure of the planes' specifications and call them when they're ready to place an order. People making statements such as "good products sell themselves" are probably thinking about gadgets like iPhones that don't require "greasy used car salesmen" with high-pressure tactics to close a sale. Yes, the Apple employees at stores are more like order takers than salespeople. However, many well-engineered products absolutely require salespeople to close the deal. I was recently researching $100k CNC milling machines -- there are several brands with quality engineering and yet they all have salespeople to guide prospective customers about configurations and persuade me to buy. Trying to decide purely based on information posted at the manufacturers website and printed brochures would be unwise. Yes, the general "concept of a CNC machine" sells itself but a particular brand & particular model of CNC does not.
      - scirocco 9y ago
        As an Account Manager, I research about my customer and reach out to them once I am convinced we can add value. Not just sell them stuff.
      - mavhc 9y ago
        But you can't trust what the company says about its own product, so you really you're talking to someone who can negotiate a contract where you get your money back if it sucks. If they get their money back, does the contract negotiator lose their commission again?
- avs733 9y ago
  >Teachers and engineers don't work for money. And there are often bad consequences for people who "don't work for money." This is a metnarrative[0]. It is a thing that people say not because it is true but because it is useful to create a larger narrative that is perceived as useful within the social sphere. Peopl, especially engineers, are socialized to believe it and normed to say it. The result is very simply lower pay for their labor. It is a post hoc justificication. [0] Sorry to lazy at the moment for a real cite so heres a wiki one...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanarrative....A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanarrative....A metanarrative (also meta-narrative and grand narrative; French: métarécit) in critical theory and particularly in postmodernism is a narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea
  - blusterXY 9y ago
    Dressing up a bad argument in the rhetoric of a derelict academic philosophy does not make it interesting or correct. Especially when all you are doing is describing a concept rather than telling us why it applies in this case. Besides, if there is a fallacy in the OP's statement surely it is not the assertion that teachers don't prioritize money so much as the assertion that engineers do. At least among the software engineers I know (and I suspect the same holds for most people on HN), engineers are as multifaceted in their approach to work as anyone else. Most people would happily trade off non-trivial amounts of wealth for other social values such as work-life balance or work on projects that have personal meaning. The most unhappy workers anywhere are those who can only choose between jobs based on their salary.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    So true! Case in point: people considered it "oniony" for a top teacher to leave the state for one that pays teachers better. The metanarrative has made it risible for high-star teachers to shop around for better salaries like star basketball players would! That's ridiculously unfair, press them into a kind of charity role. https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/6ktzx1/teacher_of_the_year_in_oklahoma_moves_to_texas/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/6ktzx1/teacher...
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  Replacing one teacher in the bottom 5% with an average one got the student $250k more over their lifetime. So the average teacher is generating around $135,000 more than the poor teacher. And equating teachers to engineers makes no sense, I've met dozens of people in some engineering school to make money.
  - selectodude 9y ago
    That seems questionable. In a lot of school systems, the best teacher may be the difference between a kid ending up in jail or not, but kids that are flirting with that line aren't going to be particularly successful on aggregate. And American society loves sending black kids to jail. So, what's the value add there? It's so much more complex than that.
    - boomboomsubban 9y ago
      Yes, this is talking about the "average class." Individual circumstances vary in both directions, that doesn't make it questionable. Though, the difference between going to jail or not pretty quickly adds up to the 250k number. Yes, this is way more complex than my two minute writeup of a small chunk of a 94 page paper.
phkahler 9y ago
I don't think the problem is evaluating individual teachers. If you look at average teacher compensation it isn't that much compared to the value they add. We could let the school and the union work out how to spread the pay among the teachers at a school, I think they're underpaid overall and that has nothing to do with evaluating them individually.
- rayiner 9y ago
  How much value do they add?
  - hacking_again 9y ago
    All of it? None of it? Teachers themselves don't add value, teachers enable value addition.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      I mean, obviously everyone adds value (from janitors up to doctors). And my person view is that all jobs should be compensated at the same hourly rate. But is there anything special about teachers? Like if they all quit society would go to hell, but that’s true of garbagemen and road workers too. The question is, does it matter who does the job?
      - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
        >And my person view is that all jobs should be compensated at the same hourly rate. What? Care to elaborate?
        rayiner 9y ago
        I think the economy should compensate people based on factors they have control over, not ones they don’t. Someone who was born smart shouldn’t be better off for his luck. Your can choose how much you work. Maybe you can choose to do things like get an education (but not in our system where that is gated by standardized tests).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

amelius 9y ago

> address the dream of measuring teacher value, by measuring changes in test scores against changes in lifetime income. Of course, combined with the premise of this article, such measurement will incentivize teachers to turn students into sales-people :)

aj7 9y ago

250k lifetime? So he should get another $6k. Teachers and engineers don't work for money. And there are often bad consequences for people who "don't work for money." I worked in sales so I could afford to be an engineer later. There were plenty of ex-teachers in sales. They did well.

phkahler 9y ago
>> Teachers and engineers don't work for money. You're right. I hit the comment button and was going to say you're damn wrong - I have done a lot to increase my pay with each new job. I wouldn't be at work if not for the money. But then I realized you're right too. I don't think about money much at all when I'm a work. I do try to make a good product, and I do worry about bill of materials and production cost, but I don't focus on money coming to me because that's already been agreed upon. Is that what you meant by that statement?
- mavhc 9y ago
  An engineer doesn't want to make a bad product, but if a company has a good product they don't even need to hire a salesperson
  - SuperGent 9y ago
    That's not necessarily true. There are thousands of examples of good products that failed due to lack of marketing.
  - jasode 9y ago
    Both Boeing and Airbus make good airplanes. Nevertheless, they hire expensive salespeople and pay them massive commissions. They don't just tell the airlines to download a pdf brochure of the planes' specifications and call them when they're ready to place an order. People making statements such as "good products sell themselves" are probably thinking about gadgets like iPhones that don't require "greasy used car salesmen" with high-pressure tactics to close a sale. Yes, the Apple employees at stores are more like order takers than salespeople. However, many well-engineered products absolutely require salespeople to close the deal. I was recently researching $100k CNC milling machines -- there are several brands with quality engineering and yet they all have salespeople to guide prospective customers about configurations and persuade me to buy. Trying to decide purely based on information posted at the manufacturers website and printed brochures would be unwise. Yes, the general "concept of a CNC machine" sells itself but a particular brand & particular model of CNC does not.
    - scirocco 9y ago
      As an Account Manager, I research about my customer and reach out to them once I am convinced we can add value. Not just sell them stuff.
    - mavhc 9y ago
      But you can't trust what the company says about its own product, so you really you're talking to someone who can negotiate a contract where you get your money back if it sucks. If they get their money back, does the contract negotiator lose their commission again?
avs733 9y ago
>Teachers and engineers don't work for money. And there are often bad consequences for people who "don't work for money." This is a metnarrative[0]. It is a thing that people say not because it is true but because it is useful to create a larger narrative that is perceived as useful within the social sphere. Peopl, especially engineers, are socialized to believe it and normed to say it. The result is very simply lower pay for their labor. It is a post hoc justificication. [0] Sorry to lazy at the moment for a real cite so heres a wiki one...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanarrative....A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanarrative....A metanarrative (also meta-narrative and grand narrative; French: métarécit) in critical theory and particularly in postmodernism is a narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea
- blusterXY 9y ago
  Dressing up a bad argument in the rhetoric of a derelict academic philosophy does not make it interesting or correct. Especially when all you are doing is describing a concept rather than telling us why it applies in this case. Besides, if there is a fallacy in the OP's statement surely it is not the assertion that teachers don't prioritize money so much as the assertion that engineers do. At least among the software engineers I know (and I suspect the same holds for most people on HN), engineers are as multifaceted in their approach to work as anyone else. Most people would happily trade off non-trivial amounts of wealth for other social values such as work-life balance or work on projects that have personal meaning. The most unhappy workers anywhere are those who can only choose between jobs based on their salary.
- SilasX 9y ago
  So true! Case in point: people considered it "oniony" for a top teacher to leave the state for one that pays teachers better. The metanarrative has made it risible for high-star teachers to shop around for better salaries like star basketball players would! That's ridiculously unfair, press them into a kind of charity role. https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/6ktzx1/teacher_of_the_year_in_oklahoma_moves_to_texas/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/6ktzx1/teacher...
boomboomsubban 9y ago
Replacing one teacher in the bottom 5% with an average one got the student $250k more over their lifetime. So the average teacher is generating around $135,000 more than the poor teacher. And equating teachers to engineers makes no sense, I've met dozens of people in some engineering school to make money.
- selectodude 9y ago
  That seems questionable. In a lot of school systems, the best teacher may be the difference between a kid ending up in jail or not, but kids that are flirting with that line aren't going to be particularly successful on aggregate. And American society loves sending black kids to jail. So, what's the value add there? It's so much more complex than that.
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    Yes, this is talking about the "average class." Individual circumstances vary in both directions, that doesn't make it questionable. Though, the difference between going to jail or not pretty quickly adds up to the 250k number. Yes, this is way more complex than my two minute writeup of a small chunk of a 94 page paper.

phkahler 9y ago

I don't think the problem is evaluating individual teachers. If you look at average teacher compensation it isn't that much compared to the value they add. We could let the school and the union work out how to spread the pay among the teachers at a school, I think they're underpaid overall and that has nothing to do with evaluating them individually.

rayiner 9y ago
How much value do they add?
- hacking_again 9y ago
  All of it? None of it? Teachers themselves don't add value, teachers enable value addition.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    I mean, obviously everyone adds value (from janitors up to doctors). And my person view is that all jobs should be compensated at the same hourly rate. But is there anything special about teachers? Like if they all quit society would go to hell, but that’s true of garbagemen and road workers too. The question is, does it matter who does the job?
    - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
      >And my person view is that all jobs should be compensated at the same hourly rate. What? Care to elaborate?
      - rayiner 9y ago
        I think the economy should compensate people based on factors they have control over, not ones they don’t. Someone who was born smart shouldn’t be better off for his luck. Your can choose how much you work. Maybe you can choose to do things like get an education (but not in our system where that is gated by standardized tests).