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We could argue that the fear of being fired ought to motivate as well. Professional athletes operate under this model. Perhaps we could implement a teacher’s “d

We could argue that the fear of being fired ought to motivate as well. Professional athletes operate under this model. Perhaps we could implement a teacher’s “draft.” Lower performing but still competent enough teachers could be “traded” and stars could result in bidding wars. At the end of each “season” the lowest school gets first pick in that summer’s draft. Substitutes could be like free agents. And winning “seasons” could be financially rewarded with bonuses. There could be a system of measurement based on improvement of students rather than just raw scores, so even lower performing students could help the team “win” by improving even if they are still not meeting the overall standards. You might find teachers wanting to go to tougher schools because bringing a kid from a 20 to a 50 earns more “points” than bringing a kid from an 80 to an 85. I haven’t fully thought this out yet, but we do know one thing: if you are in a hole, stop digging. If something isn’t working, brute force rarely helps. We need innovation in education but not just pedagogical— but with the entire incentive structure for both teachers and students. Crazy idea, I know. But sometimes crazy works.

sverige 8y ago
What if most teachers aspire to teach in places that appeal to them and have no interest in being traded like cattle?
neel8986 8y ago
In my opinion carrot and stick model works in areas where 1) participants are extremely competitive 2) End reward is huge (fame, money). That's why such model excels in areas like competitive sports, investment banking, startups etc. Teaching has neither component. If you give great teachers rockstar like salary may be it will work. Similarly most of the researchers I meet are fed up with publish or perish model of research
sewercake 8y ago
what metrics would you use to assign points? What would a point mean? While I understand and sympathize with the desire to quantify 'good teaching', it's a 'domain' that has a whole lot of noise. Abstractly, agents will optimize for the metrics, and not what the metrics approximate. Now if an agent in the system optimizes for the metrics (and not what they're measuring), but the metrics themselves are solid, then you'll come out with a largely okay system. I think the point of this article is that maybe we don't have good metrics to measure solid pedagogical performance, and so, in that case, when agents optimize for the metrics, and not what the metrics measure, then the system provides no value. So maybe the crazier idea is back-off, and try a different approach that doesn't involve rewarding or punishing the teachers themselves.

sverige 8y ago

What if most teachers aspire to teach in places that appeal to them and have no interest in being traded like cattle?

neel8986 8y ago

In my opinion carrot and stick model works in areas where 1) participants are extremely competitive 2) End reward is huge (fame, money). That's why such model excels in areas like competitive sports, investment banking, startups etc. Teaching has neither component. If you give great teachers rockstar like salary may be it will work. Similarly most of the researchers I meet are fed up with publish or perish model of research

sewercake 8y ago

what metrics would you use to assign points? What would a point mean? While I understand and sympathize with the desire to quantify 'good teaching', it's a 'domain' that has a whole lot of noise. Abstractly, agents will optimize for the metrics, and not what the metrics approximate. Now if an agent in the system optimizes for the metrics (and not what they're measuring), but the metrics themselves are solid, then you'll come out with a largely okay system. I think the point of this article is that maybe we don't have good metrics to measure solid pedagogical performance, and so, in that case, when agents optimize for the metrics, and not what the metrics measure, then the system provides no value. So maybe the crazier idea is back-off, and try a different approach that doesn't involve rewarding or punishing the teachers themselves.