5 ms·

I feel I should speak up about this one as a teacher (admittedly Australian however) and a supporter of teachers unions. Let's assume we are in a performance b

by zarify 16y ago

I feel I should speak up about this one as a teacher (admittedly Australian however) and a supporter of teachers unions. Let's assume we are in a performance based pay system. How do we measure performance? Is it average student grades? If so, then do we pay teachers who work in affluent areas more because every effort is afforded the students (tutoring etc)? Do we pay teachers who choose to work in more challenging schools less (and more likely have lower grades but possibly greater impact on students' lives with their successes)? What do we do with teachers hand picking elite classes to improve their perceived performance? It already happens even without performance pay? Or it could just be the luck of the draw. Sometimes I end up with difficult student groups simply because of a timetabling issue. Less pay? There are other metrics for teacher performance that have been proposed, and all the ones I have heard have been very flawed. Just to touch on the abuse bit at the start, if there was one employer in your town (as there effectively is in many rural areas when it comes to schools), should you relocate because of abuse you have received? (or indeed at all? Who doesn't deserve to feel safe from abuse in their workplace?)

yummyfajitas 16y ago
This is a solved problem. The solution is Value Added Modeling. This has been known for many years, but unfortunately it doesn't fit within a soundbite. You build a statistical predictor of student performance, then you pay teachers proportional to Actual Performance - Predicted Performance. If teachers pick elite classes to improve their performance, the bar is raised. If their class has a predicted score of 80%, then the teacher needs an actual score of 90% to get a bonus. Conversely, if you get a class of low quality students, the predicted score might be 20%. To get the bonus, you need to achieve 30%. The only incentives you have are hand pick classes of students that you can improve. If you are great at moving students from the 50'th percentile to the 60'th percentile, but suck with other student groups, your incentive is to get a class of students in the 50'th percentile.
- zarify 16y ago
  It's hard to argue with the logic of that approach. Classrooms aren't always logical places though. Consider factors like student movement between classes, courses and programs designed to move students to the workforce rather than complete school, parental pressure on students and teachers to place students into unrealistic pathways, and so on. I suppose you could factor all that into the model, though I'd question the feasibility of doing so. I'd also argue that grades aren't the only important factor in schooling. Building social skills, discipline, time management, helping to realize goals... All ways in which good teachers can influence students, and only some of them reflect in neat packages like test scores. Edit: I'd like to clarify that in my previous post I mentioned getting more difficult classes sometimes as the luck of the draw. I didn't mean low ability classes. I meant classes with students with serious behavioral issues, students with learning disabilities and so on. These will very often negatively impact the learning outcomes of the entire class, and is something you very rarely if ever have to deal with in top end classes.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Consider factors like student movement between classes, courses and programs designed to move students to the workforce rather than complete school, parental pressure on students and teachers to place students into unrealistic pathways, and so on. This would only matter in the event it did not average out over a teacher's entire cohort of students. I.e., you would need to get a situation where all the students who wanted to move into the workforce were taught by teacher A, and all the students who wanted to complete school were taught by teacher B. The law of large numbers helps here. Also, this would only matter insofar as this factor is uncorrelated with the things you do use as predictors - parental income, race, prior grades, etc. If all the low income students want a job, and all the high income students want to complete school, the predictor already incorporates this factor. I meant classes with students with serious behavioral issues, students with learning disabilities and so on. These will very often negatively impact the learning outcomes of the entire class, and is something you very rarely if ever have to deal with in top end classes. If this factor is strongly correlated with income (as you suggest), the predictor will already incorporate it.
marknutter 16y ago
I would think the best way to measure performance would be overall improvement rather than overall performance. That way there'd be more opportunity for higher compensation in poor schools. Or better yet, let the market decide who the best teachers are. If teacher A's students are consistently graduating from college and teacher B's students are not, parents are going to vote with their dollars and send their children to teacher A. In the current system, this isn't allowed to happen. "if there was one employer in your town (as there effectively is in many rural areas when it comes to schools), should you relocate because of abuse you have received?" Yes. That, or start a competing company. If the abuses are really bad, you'd no doubt attract a lot of other disgruntled employees who'd prefer to work for a better company. Jobs are not a right, no matter how badly people want them to be.
- zarify 16y ago
  "If the abuses are really bad, you'd no doubt attract a lot of other disgruntled employees who'd prefer to work for a better company." So uh, that'd pretty much be like a union, right? A group of people effectively saying that they won't work under certain conditions? ;) I suspect we'll fundamentally disagree on the first point about parents voting with their feet/wallets, since that kinda describes the private school system, and I'm a firm believer in the same education being available to everyone (freely, if possible, and cheaply if not).
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    I'm a firm believer in the same education being available to everyone (freely, if possible, and cheaply if not). A popular conservative position is to give all students the same educational opportunity by allowing parents to take their children's education dollars to private schools.
    - zarify 16y ago
      I'm aware of that one. I suspect the parents who can barely afford materials for voluntary fee public schools may disagree however ;) (Of course I suppose the conservative counter to that is to get a better job, and that they'd have enough money if taxes weren't contributing to education dollars :)
rick888 16y ago
so because you can't measure performance to fairly give raises, you just don't measure performance and give people raises that may or may not deserve it? This leads to bad teachers staying in the system and getting raises. It's an inefficiency in the system that needs to be fixed. If teachers really cared about their students, they would want to have the best education for them.
- rick888 16y ago
  I see we have some teacher's reading HN. Pointing out the inefficiencies in the system gets me downvoted. This is a good example as to why our schools in the US are failing.

by zarify 16y ago

yummyfajitas 16y ago

This is a solved problem. The solution is Value Added Modeling. This has been known for many years, but unfortunately it doesn't fit within a soundbite. You build a statistical predictor of student performance, then you pay teachers proportional to Actual Performance - Predicted Performance. If teachers pick elite classes to improve their performance, the bar is raised. If their class has a predicted score of 80%, then the teacher needs an actual score of 90% to get a bonus. Conversely, if you get a class of low quality students, the predicted score might be 20%. To get the bonus, you need to achieve 30%. The only incentives you have are hand pick classes of students that you can improve. If you are great at moving students from the 50'th percentile to the 60'th percentile, but suck with other student groups, your incentive is to get a class of students in the 50'th percentile.

zarify 16y ago
It's hard to argue with the logic of that approach. Classrooms aren't always logical places though. Consider factors like student movement between classes, courses and programs designed to move students to the workforce rather than complete school, parental pressure on students and teachers to place students into unrealistic pathways, and so on. I suppose you could factor all that into the model, though I'd question the feasibility of doing so. I'd also argue that grades aren't the only important factor in schooling. Building social skills, discipline, time management, helping to realize goals... All ways in which good teachers can influence students, and only some of them reflect in neat packages like test scores. Edit: I'd like to clarify that in my previous post I mentioned getting more difficult classes sometimes as the luck of the draw. I didn't mean low ability classes. I meant classes with students with serious behavioral issues, students with learning disabilities and so on. These will very often negatively impact the learning outcomes of the entire class, and is something you very rarely if ever have to deal with in top end classes.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Consider factors like student movement between classes, courses and programs designed to move students to the workforce rather than complete school, parental pressure on students and teachers to place students into unrealistic pathways, and so on. This would only matter in the event it did not average out over a teacher's entire cohort of students. I.e., you would need to get a situation where all the students who wanted to move into the workforce were taught by teacher A, and all the students who wanted to complete school were taught by teacher B. The law of large numbers helps here. Also, this would only matter insofar as this factor is uncorrelated with the things you do use as predictors - parental income, race, prior grades, etc. If all the low income students want a job, and all the high income students want to complete school, the predictor already incorporates this factor. I meant classes with students with serious behavioral issues, students with learning disabilities and so on. These will very often negatively impact the learning outcomes of the entire class, and is something you very rarely if ever have to deal with in top end classes. If this factor is strongly correlated with income (as you suggest), the predictor will already incorporate it.

marknutter 16y ago

I would think the best way to measure performance would be overall improvement rather than overall performance. That way there'd be more opportunity for higher compensation in poor schools. Or better yet, let the market decide who the best teachers are. If teacher A's students are consistently graduating from college and teacher B's students are not, parents are going to vote with their dollars and send their children to teacher A. In the current system, this isn't allowed to happen. "if there was one employer in your town (as there effectively is in many rural areas when it comes to schools), should you relocate because of abuse you have received?" Yes. That, or start a competing company. If the abuses are really bad, you'd no doubt attract a lot of other disgruntled employees who'd prefer to work for a better company. Jobs are not a right, no matter how badly people want them to be.

zarify 16y ago
"If the abuses are really bad, you'd no doubt attract a lot of other disgruntled employees who'd prefer to work for a better company." So uh, that'd pretty much be like a union, right? A group of people effectively saying that they won't work under certain conditions? ;) I suspect we'll fundamentally disagree on the first point about parents voting with their feet/wallets, since that kinda describes the private school system, and I'm a firm believer in the same education being available to everyone (freely, if possible, and cheaply if not).
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  I'm a firm believer in the same education being available to everyone (freely, if possible, and cheaply if not). A popular conservative position is to give all students the same educational opportunity by allowing parents to take their children's education dollars to private schools.
  - zarify 16y ago
    I'm aware of that one. I suspect the parents who can barely afford materials for voluntary fee public schools may disagree however ;) (Of course I suppose the conservative counter to that is to get a better job, and that they'd have enough money if taxes weren't contributing to education dollars :)

rick888 16y ago

so because you can't measure performance to fairly give raises, you just don't measure performance and give people raises that may or may not deserve it? This leads to bad teachers staying in the system and getting raises. It's an inefficiency in the system that needs to be fixed. If teachers really cared about their students, they would want to have the best education for them.

rick888 16y ago
I see we have some teacher's reading HN. Pointing out the inefficiencies in the system gets me downvoted. This is a good example as to why our schools in the US are failing.