8 ms·

Method to Grade Teachers Provokes Battles

3 points by px 16y ago

yummyfajitas 16y ago
A common criticism of measuring teacher performance is that teachers will try to get the best students in order to get the highest bonuses. Apparently VAM solves this problem: “My kids come in at a very high level of competence,” [...] After she teaches them for a year, most score highly on a state science test but show little gains, so her bonus is often small compared with those of other teachers..." It seem as if VAM gives teachers an incentive to seek out the students that they can help the most. Win.
- locopati 16y ago
  It still assumes that the teacher has the most influence over their students, rather than the parents & the environment. I do not know if studies show results one way or the other here (suspect it's rather hard to tease apart). A possible analogy would be that my bonus depends on the work of my teammates (and by extension, their environments). Except, in that case, my teammates have control over their environments are possibly more skillful than a student at managing their situations. Mind you, I'm not saying that teachers shouldn't be evaluated. Just don't think this will be a magic bullet. And numbers have a way of taking on a life of their own, as if by quantifying something we are establishing something meaningful. In reality, the numbers will be used to justify whatever political agenda is running the show. That, quite reasonably, is what the teachers are concerned about.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    It still assumes that the teacher has the most influence over their students, rather than the parents & the environment. No it doesn't, since VAM measures deltas. Why would a poor environment cause a group of students to do well in the 3'rd grade, but poorly in the 4'th grade? If environment is the determining factor, then the value added should be close to zero for most teachers. Some individual students may have their environment change, but this will average out over many students (with high probability).
    - MichaelSalib 16y ago
      Imagine two groups of students in two different environments. If students in the bad environment are incapable of realizing significant gains regardless of their teachers whereas students in the good environment are likely to manifest gains no matter how bad their teachers are, then comparing deltas won't help. What you'd need to do is rotate teachers into a variety of different environments. I mean, even a mediocre teacher should produce significant gains for a class of wealthy students: the more mediocre the teacher is, the more private tutoring her students will get to compensate. Consider graduates from selective engineering schools like MIT. They tend to be very good. Does that mean that MIT is really good at undergraduate education? Of course not. In fact, MIT is pretty bad at undergraduate education. But that doesn't matter because the world's best engineering students are desperate to attend MIT and MIT can pick and choose. I think this method holds promise, but like the GP, it is hardly a silver bullet.
      - yummyfajitas 16y ago
        If students in the bad environment are incapable of realizing significant gains regardless of their teachers whereas students in the good environment are likely to manifest gains no matter how bad their teachers are, then comparing deltas won't help. In that case, good teachers will avoid such students, and bad teachers will seek them out. This is actually quite a highly desirable result - we won't waste a good teacher on hopeless students, and a bad teacher can't harm them much. As I said, VAM gives teachers an incentive to target the students that they can help the most. Now that I think about it, it also gives bad teachers an incentive to target students they can't harm. The more I think about it, the more I like it.
        MichaelSalib 16y ago
        In that case, good teachers will avoid such students, and bad teachers will seek them out. This is actually quite a highly desirable result - we won't waste a good teacher on hopeless students, and a bad teacher can't harm them much. That might be the case in a world where there was perfect information, no barriers to entry, and no significant asymmetries. In the real world though, a brilliant young teacher may get her start working with children damaged by, say, lead poisoning, and get no results. As a result, she'll be branded as incompetent. Since she's been branded as a bad teacher, she won't be able to get jobs in high performing schools with better students and will never get an opportunity to demonstrate her brilliance. Or she might be so discouraged by her failure that she leaves the profess altogether. You can imagine the equivalent problem faced by teachers of well-off children.

3 points by px 16y ago

A common criticism of measuring teacher performance is that teachers will try to get the best students in order to get the highest bonuses. Apparently VAM solves this problem: “My kids come in at a very high level of competence,” [...] After she teaches them for a year, most score highly on a state science test but show little gains, so her bonus is often small compared with those of other teachers..." It seem as if VAM gives teachers an incentive to seek out the students that they can help the most. Win.

locopati 16y ago
It still assumes that the teacher has the most influence over their students, rather than the parents & the environment. I do not know if studies show results one way or the other here (suspect it's rather hard to tease apart). A possible analogy would be that my bonus depends on the work of my teammates (and by extension, their environments). Except, in that case, my teammates have control over their environments are possibly more skillful than a student at managing their situations. Mind you, I'm not saying that teachers shouldn't be evaluated. Just don't think this will be a magic bullet. And numbers have a way of taking on a life of their own, as if by quantifying something we are establishing something meaningful. In reality, the numbers will be used to justify whatever political agenda is running the show. That, quite reasonably, is what the teachers are concerned about.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  It still assumes that the teacher has the most influence over their students, rather than the parents & the environment. No it doesn't, since VAM measures deltas. Why would a poor environment cause a group of students to do well in the 3'rd grade, but poorly in the 4'th grade? If environment is the determining factor, then the value added should be close to zero for most teachers. Some individual students may have their environment change, but this will average out over many students (with high probability).
  - MichaelSalib 16y ago
    Imagine two groups of students in two different environments. If students in the bad environment are incapable of realizing significant gains regardless of their teachers whereas students in the good environment are likely to manifest gains no matter how bad their teachers are, then comparing deltas won't help. What you'd need to do is rotate teachers into a variety of different environments. I mean, even a mediocre teacher should produce significant gains for a class of wealthy students: the more mediocre the teacher is, the more private tutoring her students will get to compensate. Consider graduates from selective engineering schools like MIT. They tend to be very good. Does that mean that MIT is really good at undergraduate education? Of course not. In fact, MIT is pretty bad at undergraduate education. But that doesn't matter because the world's best engineering students are desperate to attend MIT and MIT can pick and choose. I think this method holds promise, but like the GP, it is hardly a silver bullet.
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      If students in the bad environment are incapable of realizing significant gains regardless of their teachers whereas students in the good environment are likely to manifest gains no matter how bad their teachers are, then comparing deltas won't help. In that case, good teachers will avoid such students, and bad teachers will seek them out. This is actually quite a highly desirable result - we won't waste a good teacher on hopeless students, and a bad teacher can't harm them much. As I said, VAM gives teachers an incentive to target the students that they can help the most. Now that I think about it, it also gives bad teachers an incentive to target students they can't harm. The more I think about it, the more I like it.
      - MichaelSalib 16y ago
        In that case, good teachers will avoid such students, and bad teachers will seek them out. This is actually quite a highly desirable result - we won't waste a good teacher on hopeless students, and a bad teacher can't harm them much. That might be the case in a world where there was perfect information, no barriers to entry, and no significant asymmetries. In the real world though, a brilliant young teacher may get her start working with children damaged by, say, lead poisoning, and get no results. As a result, she'll be branded as incompetent. Since she's been branded as a bad teacher, she won't be able to get jobs in high performing schools with better students and will never get an opportunity to demonstrate her brilliance. Or she might be so discouraged by her failure that she leaves the profess altogether. You can imagine the equivalent problem faced by teachers of well-off children.