4 ms·

As someone who works in education, I find it interesting that "each case is unique" hasn't prevented outcome based metrics in education.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
admg 9y ago
It really should but I think thats a much more difficult problem to politically explain why every case is unique!
Fordrus 9y ago
A very simple hypothesis as to why doctors can argue this effectively but teachers cannot is that teachers are not as powerful a lobbying group as doctors. Doctors have effectively been able to defend their "turf," from hostile encroachment, while teachers have not, not because the situations do not contain substantial parallels, but rather because doctors are politically strong while teachers are politically weak.
- StudentStuff 9y ago
  Opposition to most doctors is low, they aren't being forced to be rated by their clients, whereas most teachers have a weak union in a district with poor funding, and thus they have to contend with overloaded classes that result in poor educational outcomes that lead to most students not going on to do much with their lives. Its much easier to punch down than it is to punch up!
- freeflight 9y ago
  The term "Gods in white" exists for a reason, many people ascribe a lot of authority and knowledge to physicians and doctors in general. Doubting your doctor's diagnosis is usually considered a rather odd thing to do and if it's a doctor of psychology it could even be interpreted as a symptom. While with teachers it's kinda the opposite; Even tho their whole job is to know and teach things, many people have a way easier time disagreeing with them straight out of principle. Wonder how much of that boils down to socialization aka in what contexts children are introduced to these professions?
- phamilton 9y ago
  I find it interesting that teachers have a union and doctors have a professional association. I think that distinction goes a long ways in the comparison.
geocar 9y ago
In education, you're effectively looking for long-term financial success of your students, and you search for proxy metrics that predict it. Most of the things you need to control for are the same socioeconomic factors behavioural scientists are working on in other fields. Also: Since almost everyone goes to school, there's a lot of easy-to-anonymise data. In medicine, I don't think there's a clear long-term metric (lifespan? financial success? happiness?), and there's at least two nasty selection bias that people generally only see a doctor when (self-report) something is wrong, and that doctors specialise. But let's say you solve those problems: What kinds of questions[1] are you going to ask that are supposed to predict satisfaction with the doctor? [1]: https://londoncalling.co/2013/02/simple-customer-feedback-idea-seen-at-heathrow-airport/ https://londoncalling.co/2013/02/simple-customer-feedback-id...
- Steuard 9y ago
  I don't see "long-term financial success" as being obviously the right metric for judging education at all. It's worth considering, absolutely! But people choose to forego maximum wealth for other priorities all the time, and often for very desirable reasons (both individually and socially). Why shouldn't the metric have something to do with long-term personal fulfillment and happiness? Why shouldn't it have something to do with long-term contributions to society? I agree with you that the more abundant data (and reduced selection bias) available for schools makes measurements easier for them than for medicine, but I don't think that it's any easier to define an appropriate metric for judging them.
  - StudentStuff 9y ago
    HN really likes to talk money over everything, in spite of how money is merely a means to an end. I think a better metric would take into account overall health history, years paid into Social Security (as a proxy for income), and food/housing stability. Look at those three factors, and you can get a grip on how a person's life has gone in a way you can compare to others.
- avip 9y ago
  I sure hope my kids` teachers don't share your views of their success metric.
cpitman 9y ago
Isn't this a common objection by teacher unions when pushing against using metrics for retention and compensation?
- mseebach 9y ago
  They may be right, but they have a very strong prior interest in this matter (that there can exist no objective measure of a teachers competence), so not the best arbiter of objective insights here.
  - StudentStuff 9y ago
    I know most of HN hates unions, but teachers unions are usually there to create a better workplace, which ultimately makes for better teaching outcomes. The difference between a 24 student class and a 35 student class is huge in terms of educational outcomes, yet here in the US we tend to cut spending on and underfund education, either by ripping away stable revenue sources like property tax and replacing that with lottery income (which varies wildly from year to year), or by just slowly reducing the amount of money allocated toward schools year after year. Hence how you end up with places like Seattle having well funded schools due to local ballot measures, yet a similar school in Eastern Washington will get 20% to 30% less funding, and have abysmal results due to it. Proper education isn't a technology problem, but an investment problem, and rather than investing in schools today, we would rather lock many of those students up in the future here in the US.
    - mseebach 9y ago
      It isn't about "hating" unions, or otherwise, but about recognizing the simple fact that unions aren't magical unicorns, they are interest organisations and the teachers' unions represent the interests of the teachers. Now, those interests are often aligned with the interests of the students, but students' interests do not flow from teachers' interests. To get back on topic, teachers are opposed to objective measures because if you can objectively tell if a teacher is bad, the union will lose influence over pay and employment security, which is where their power is anchored. Thus, they will of course promote studies that show the failures of such objective measures and try to discredit those that show the opposite. Just like any other interest organisation. That doesn't mean that I have a problem with the existence of interest organisations, but let's not pretend they are something they're not.
neuro_imager 9y ago
Yes people have come up with these metrics (mostly bureaucrats with a fetish for anything that looks like data). As far as I know no-one has come up with a metric that's actually useful for students and teachers.
dredmorbius 9y ago
Teacher-based metrics in schools turn out to have extreme variance. In cases where the same teacher was subject to multiple assessments (there's a Math Nerd writing for Bloomberg who presented this, I think at TED), there was no correlation between the multiple measurements. Straight-up noise. Cathy O'Neil, "MathBabe", "Algorithms are Opinions in Code". Starting at 2m22s here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2u_eHHzRto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2u_eHHzRto

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

admg 9y ago

It really should but I think thats a much more difficult problem to politically explain why every case is unique!

Fordrus 9y ago

A very simple hypothesis as to why doctors can argue this effectively but teachers cannot is that teachers are not as powerful a lobbying group as doctors. Doctors have effectively been able to defend their "turf," from hostile encroachment, while teachers have not, not because the situations do not contain substantial parallels, but rather because doctors are politically strong while teachers are politically weak.

StudentStuff 9y ago
Opposition to most doctors is low, they aren't being forced to be rated by their clients, whereas most teachers have a weak union in a district with poor funding, and thus they have to contend with overloaded classes that result in poor educational outcomes that lead to most students not going on to do much with their lives. Its much easier to punch down than it is to punch up!
freeflight 9y ago
The term "Gods in white" exists for a reason, many people ascribe a lot of authority and knowledge to physicians and doctors in general. Doubting your doctor's diagnosis is usually considered a rather odd thing to do and if it's a doctor of psychology it could even be interpreted as a symptom. While with teachers it's kinda the opposite; Even tho their whole job is to know and teach things, many people have a way easier time disagreeing with them straight out of principle. Wonder how much of that boils down to socialization aka in what contexts children are introduced to these professions?
phamilton 9y ago
I find it interesting that teachers have a union and doctors have a professional association. I think that distinction goes a long ways in the comparison.

geocar 9y ago

In education, you're effectively looking for long-term financial success of your students, and you search for proxy metrics that predict it. Most of the things you need to control for are the same socioeconomic factors behavioural scientists are working on in other fields. Also: Since almost everyone goes to school, there's a lot of easy-to-anonymise data. In medicine, I don't think there's a clear long-term metric (lifespan? financial success? happiness?), and there's at least two nasty selection bias that people generally only see a doctor when (self-report) something is wrong, and that doctors specialise. But let's say you solve those problems: What kinds of questions[1] are you going to ask that are supposed to predict satisfaction with the doctor? [1]: https://londoncalling.co/2013/02/simple-customer-feedback-idea-seen-at-heathrow-airport/ https://londoncalling.co/2013/02/simple-customer-feedback-id...

Steuard 9y ago
I don't see "long-term financial success" as being obviously the right metric for judging education at all. It's worth considering, absolutely! But people choose to forego maximum wealth for other priorities all the time, and often for very desirable reasons (both individually and socially). Why shouldn't the metric have something to do with long-term personal fulfillment and happiness? Why shouldn't it have something to do with long-term contributions to society? I agree with you that the more abundant data (and reduced selection bias) available for schools makes measurements easier for them than for medicine, but I don't think that it's any easier to define an appropriate metric for judging them.
- StudentStuff 9y ago
  HN really likes to talk money over everything, in spite of how money is merely a means to an end. I think a better metric would take into account overall health history, years paid into Social Security (as a proxy for income), and food/housing stability. Look at those three factors, and you can get a grip on how a person's life has gone in a way you can compare to others.
avip 9y ago
I sure hope my kids` teachers don't share your views of their success metric.

cpitman 9y ago

Isn't this a common objection by teacher unions when pushing against using metrics for retention and compensation?

mseebach 9y ago
They may be right, but they have a very strong prior interest in this matter (that there can exist no objective measure of a teachers competence), so not the best arbiter of objective insights here.
- StudentStuff 9y ago
  I know most of HN hates unions, but teachers unions are usually there to create a better workplace, which ultimately makes for better teaching outcomes. The difference between a 24 student class and a 35 student class is huge in terms of educational outcomes, yet here in the US we tend to cut spending on and underfund education, either by ripping away stable revenue sources like property tax and replacing that with lottery income (which varies wildly from year to year), or by just slowly reducing the amount of money allocated toward schools year after year. Hence how you end up with places like Seattle having well funded schools due to local ballot measures, yet a similar school in Eastern Washington will get 20% to 30% less funding, and have abysmal results due to it. Proper education isn't a technology problem, but an investment problem, and rather than investing in schools today, we would rather lock many of those students up in the future here in the US.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    It isn't about "hating" unions, or otherwise, but about recognizing the simple fact that unions aren't magical unicorns, they are interest organisations and the teachers' unions represent the interests of the teachers. Now, those interests are often aligned with the interests of the students, but students' interests do not flow from teachers' interests. To get back on topic, teachers are opposed to objective measures because if you can objectively tell if a teacher is bad, the union will lose influence over pay and employment security, which is where their power is anchored. Thus, they will of course promote studies that show the failures of such objective measures and try to discredit those that show the opposite. Just like any other interest organisation. That doesn't mean that I have a problem with the existence of interest organisations, but let's not pretend they are something they're not.

neuro_imager 9y ago

Yes people have come up with these metrics (mostly bureaucrats with a fetish for anything that looks like data). As far as I know no-one has come up with a metric that's actually useful for students and teachers.

dredmorbius 9y ago

Teacher-based metrics in schools turn out to have extreme variance. In cases where the same teacher was subject to multiple assessments (there's a Math Nerd writing for Bloomberg who presented this, I think at TED), there was no correlation between the multiple measurements. Straight-up noise. Cathy O'Neil, "MathBabe", "Algorithms are Opinions in Code". Starting at 2m22s here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2u_eHHzRto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2u_eHHzRto