6 ms·

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.
    - jimktrains2 9y ago
      > To get back on topic, teachers are opposed to objective measures because if you can objectively tell if a teacher is bad, Or that since there exists no such measurement pushing for one is dishonest and betrays other agendas.
      - mseebach 9y ago
        Of course. But the whole point is that we shouldn't treat a teachers' union as an authority on whether it does (or can) exist. And no, it's by no means an established fact that it can't.
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    >but teachers unions are usually there to create a better workplace, which ultimately makes for better teaching outcomes. Unions exist to lobby for their members; teaching unions represent teachers, not students. All sorts of things might be in the interests of students but contrary to the interests of teachers. The obvious example is the New York City Department of Education's "reassignment centers". About 600 teachers in NYC are paid their full salary to sit in an office doing nothing. They're not sufficiently trusted to teach due to allegations of misconduct, but neither can they be fired due to strict tenure rules. This system is believed to cost $65m a year. Nobody is happy with the system, but the only way it can meaningfully change is if it becomes easier for the NYC Department of Education to fire teachers. It's entirely plausible that pupils might be served better by teachers who are brutally over-worked and subject to constant management scrutiny. We know from the private sector that wringing your employees dry is often a very effective way of improving the bottom line. That wouldn't necessarily be the right thing to do, but it simply doesn't follow that what's good for teachers is always what's good for students. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reassignment_centers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reassignment_centers
    - lmm 9y ago
      > Nobody is happy with the system, but the only way it can meaningfully change is if it becomes easier for the NYC Department of Education to fire teachers. It could meaningfully change if the NYC Department of Education paid their share of arbitration fees, or if the DoE and the union agreed to hire more arbitrators and work through the backlog of cases, or if the DoE got better at reassigning those teachers who have been cleared (many of those in the reassignment centres are teachers who were cleared in their arbitration hearings but the DoE haven't assigned to teaching positions). Partly this is because the DoE doesn't really believe in innocent until proven guilty, and part of that is because they don't trust their own bureaucrats to correctly document genuine misconduct and prove it to the standards the arbitrators require. Fixing that is absolutely on the DoE. What skilled, dilligent person would want to work in a field that consists mostly of unsupervised interaction with children if one unsupported allegation of misconduct could be a career-ender? That's where you'd be without the arbitration agreement. In much of the rest of the world that's how firing people from any job works - you can't do it without evidence. Somehow those countries manage to be productive. A competent department of education would be able to do the same. Giving an incompetent department more ability to fire people would not be progress.

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.
  - jimktrains2 9y ago
    > To get back on topic, teachers are opposed to objective measures because if you can objectively tell if a teacher is bad, Or that since there exists no such measurement pushing for one is dishonest and betrays other agendas.
    - mseebach 9y ago
      Of course. But the whole point is that we shouldn't treat a teachers' union as an authority on whether it does (or can) exist. And no, it's by no means an established fact that it can't.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  >but teachers unions are usually there to create a better workplace, which ultimately makes for better teaching outcomes. Unions exist to lobby for their members; teaching unions represent teachers, not students. All sorts of things might be in the interests of students but contrary to the interests of teachers. The obvious example is the New York City Department of Education's "reassignment centers". About 600 teachers in NYC are paid their full salary to sit in an office doing nothing. They're not sufficiently trusted to teach due to allegations of misconduct, but neither can they be fired due to strict tenure rules. This system is believed to cost $65m a year. Nobody is happy with the system, but the only way it can meaningfully change is if it becomes easier for the NYC Department of Education to fire teachers. It's entirely plausible that pupils might be served better by teachers who are brutally over-worked and subject to constant management scrutiny. We know from the private sector that wringing your employees dry is often a very effective way of improving the bottom line. That wouldn't necessarily be the right thing to do, but it simply doesn't follow that what's good for teachers is always what's good for students. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reassignment_centers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reassignment_centers
  - lmm 9y ago
    > Nobody is happy with the system, but the only way it can meaningfully change is if it becomes easier for the NYC Department of Education to fire teachers. It could meaningfully change if the NYC Department of Education paid their share of arbitration fees, or if the DoE and the union agreed to hire more arbitrators and work through the backlog of cases, or if the DoE got better at reassigning those teachers who have been cleared (many of those in the reassignment centres are teachers who were cleared in their arbitration hearings but the DoE haven't assigned to teaching positions). Partly this is because the DoE doesn't really believe in innocent until proven guilty, and part of that is because they don't trust their own bureaucrats to correctly document genuine misconduct and prove it to the standards the arbitrators require. Fixing that is absolutely on the DoE. What skilled, dilligent person would want to work in a field that consists mostly of unsupervised interaction with children if one unsupported allegation of misconduct could be a career-ender? That's where you'd be without the arbitration agreement. In much of the rest of the world that's how firing people from any job works - you can't do it without evidence. Somehow those countries manage to be productive. A competent department of education would be able to do the same. Giving an incompetent department more ability to fire people would not be progress.