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I find it hard to believe that teacher quality doesn't matter at all. I'm not sure that that's what this study is telling us. Maybe it's just telling us that

by curtis 8y ago

I find it hard to believe that teacher quality doesn't matter at all. I'm not sure that that's what this study is telling us. Maybe it's just telling us that there is no significant (or at least measurable) difference between teachers that are a little bit below some threshold and teachers that are a little bit above. It surely isn't telling us what would happen if you replaced all the teachers in a school with teachers recruited from the top 5 or 10 percent of all teachers in the country. I really want to know what would happen if you did that. On the other hand, suppose it works really well. We still can't replace all the teachers in the country with the top 5 or 10 percent of all the teachers in the country, so it's not like that would be actionable.

stevenwoo 8y ago
Maybe the teaching system in America is unfixable with the small changes as suggested and tested by the long term but small Gates Foundation study, and revolutionary changes more akin to the Finnish public school system which ironically adopted American academic theories about education wholesale to improve (usual caveat it's easier to change a small country versus the USA or maybe even a state in the USA given political reality). https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/17/highly-trained-respected-and-free-why-finlands-teachers-are-different https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/17/highly-tra...
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I think your final observation is the important part. These studies cost a lot of (often scarce) funding resources. We probably shouldn’t spend the money on hypothetical strategies that cannot be practically implemented. From a practical point of view, we necessarily want to know if there is a way to distinguish between teachers at or around an average level, since this is what necessarily applies to most cases. (Research on MOOC approaches, video lectures, etc., could be a separate strand of experiment though, to see if it can leverage the top decile to a broader audience). This study is saying (modulo the usual limits of generalizing from just one study), that teachers a little above the threshold don’t cause compounding improvements in outcomes over a ~5 year period. But as always it’s rife with possible issues. - maybe bonus incentives weren’t high enough to induce any different effort? - maybe thresholds for distinguishing good and bad teachers were not set right, or need to be dynamically adaptable to different circumstances - maybe there were just confounders, like the mentioned school merger, making student performance primarily causally driven by non-teacher factors over these years in these locations - maybe the particular student cohorts just respond differently to teacher-based treatments than students in general would - maybe students or teachers are affected more by social engagements than learning activities, so that the firing of a beloved, but ineffective, teacher causes a student to remain underperforming, or even resentful of a new, but high-performing teacher. Whatever the case, this single study does not really offer enough to conclusively (or even suggestively) say that rewarding good teachers or firing bad teachers has no effect. It had no effect in this case, with this methodology. Would need to see replications and variations of the type of experiment before aligning any beliefs about budgets or teacher incentives towards this result.
turingcompeteme 8y ago
> replaced all the teachers in a school with teachers recruited from the top 5 or 10 percent of all teachers in the country. My Sister and SO are both teachers and we've had this discussion. They believe that if you took a low performing school, and replaced all the teachers with the best teachers in the country, you would find zero difference. My sister has been beaten up by students, breaks up fights nearly every day, deals with child protection services, assault from parents, weapons in the classroom, drugs, gang activity, students who haven't eaten or bathed all weekend, etc. She teaches Grade 6. It doesn't matter in the slightest how good of a math teacher she is. She's has it bad, but I think many people here may be surprised just how common her situation is.
- shoo 8y ago
  That's a pretty strong argument for increasing the baseline level of social, community, heath, employment services, in addition to a focus on education. likely need to invest in those changes and then keep the programs funded and running with careful adjustements for multiple generations. i agree, there's only so much a single teacher, or a school full of teachers can do if a lot of other basic needs aren't being met.
  - tellarin 8y ago
    This again links back to the Finish system. It doesn’t stand alone by itself. All the other social services are also in place.

by curtis 8y ago

stevenwoo 8y ago

Maybe the teaching system in America is unfixable with the small changes as suggested and tested by the long term but small Gates Foundation study, and revolutionary changes more akin to the Finnish public school system which ironically adopted American academic theories about education wholesale to improve (usual caveat it's easier to change a small country versus the USA or maybe even a state in the USA given political reality). https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/17/highly-trained-respected-and-free-why-finlands-teachers-are-different https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/17/highly-tra...

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

I think your final observation is the important part. These studies cost a lot of (often scarce) funding resources. We probably shouldn’t spend the money on hypothetical strategies that cannot be practically implemented. From a practical point of view, we necessarily want to know if there is a way to distinguish between teachers at or around an average level, since this is what necessarily applies to most cases. (Research on MOOC approaches, video lectures, etc., could be a separate strand of experiment though, to see if it can leverage the top decile to a broader audience). This study is saying (modulo the usual limits of generalizing from just one study), that teachers a little above the threshold don’t cause compounding improvements in outcomes over a ~5 year period. But as always it’s rife with possible issues. - maybe bonus incentives weren’t high enough to induce any different effort? - maybe thresholds for distinguishing good and bad teachers were not set right, or need to be dynamically adaptable to different circumstances - maybe there were just confounders, like the mentioned school merger, making student performance primarily causally driven by non-teacher factors over these years in these locations - maybe the particular student cohorts just respond differently to teacher-based treatments than students in general would - maybe students or teachers are affected more by social engagements than learning activities, so that the firing of a beloved, but ineffective, teacher causes a student to remain underperforming, or even resentful of a new, but high-performing teacher. Whatever the case, this single study does not really offer enough to conclusively (or even suggestively) say that rewarding good teachers or firing bad teachers has no effect. It had no effect in this case, with this methodology. Would need to see replications and variations of the type of experiment before aligning any beliefs about budgets or teacher incentives towards this result.

turingcompeteme 8y ago

> replaced all the teachers in a school with teachers recruited from the top 5 or 10 percent of all teachers in the country. My Sister and SO are both teachers and we've had this discussion. They believe that if you took a low performing school, and replaced all the teachers with the best teachers in the country, you would find zero difference. My sister has been beaten up by students, breaks up fights nearly every day, deals with child protection services, assault from parents, weapons in the classroom, drugs, gang activity, students who haven't eaten or bathed all weekend, etc. She teaches Grade 6. It doesn't matter in the slightest how good of a math teacher she is. She's has it bad, but I think many people here may be surprised just how common her situation is.

shoo 8y ago
That's a pretty strong argument for increasing the baseline level of social, community, heath, employment services, in addition to a focus on education. likely need to invest in those changes and then keep the programs funded and running with careful adjustements for multiple generations. i agree, there's only so much a single teacher, or a school full of teachers can do if a lot of other basic needs aren't being met.
- tellarin 8y ago
  This again links back to the Finish system. It doesn’t stand alone by itself. All the other social services are also in place.