4 ms·

There are bad teachers. Sure. But there are good ones too. And teachers are the largest professional field in the US (about 6.2M, versus, for example 1.2M la

There are bad teachers. Sure. But there are good ones too. And teachers are the largest professional field in the US (about 6.2M, versus, for example 1.2M lawyers). This indicates a couple of problems: 1) The thought you can rid yourself of all or even most bad teachers is absurd. You can't easily chop off the bottom 10% each year and bring in an additional 500,000 new teachers. 2) With a population that large the quality of teaching will regress to the mean. We just realistically can't expect an all-star team of 6M of anything. So what do we do? The first thing is to realize the big problem is in the inner-city and rural areas -- in underserved communities. And honestly, I think we need to focus a bit more on the community and less on the classroom proper. Like I'd really like to see summer reading programs in these communities, with some strong incentives. I also think things like Khan Academy would actually really help. I'm probably overly optimistic, but I think getting kids to listen to lectures is easier than getting them to do homework at home. My experience is that good schools and good students actually do quite well. The biggest thing that probably will get overlooked, even by what I'd like to do, are bright students at poor schools.

Eliezer 16y ago
> You can't easily chop off the bottom 10% each year and bring in an additional 500,000 new teachers. Yes you can. You just have to offer high enough salaries.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  In the US we graduate about 100k engineering students each year(http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2008/11/50-of-us-engineering-students-dropout---why.html http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2008/11/50-of...). So even if we hired every engineering graduate from US schools every year, we wouldn't fill the gap, by a long shot. My point is that for a population this huge you're not going to be able to backfill for any reasonable dollar amount or you have to significantly lower your standards, in which case you're probably hiring people that will largely fall into that same bottom 10% next year.
- earl 16y ago
  Fine. Amend kenjackson's statement to say that, in the real world, voters have demonstrated in practice they are unwilling to pay sufficient taxes to attract a high quality group of people to teaching as a profession.
tokenadult 16y ago
The thought you can rid yourself of all or even most bad teachers is absurd. Eric Hanushek shows steps of reasoning, based on facts, in one of his published articles, http://www.stanfordalumni.org/leadingmatters/san_francisco/documents/Teacher_Deselection-Hanushek.pdf http://www.stanfordalumni.org/leadingmatters/san_francisco/d... suggesting that if the United States systematically persuaded the bottom 5 percent of teachers to leave teaching for some other occupation, year after year after year, it wouldn't be long before the academic achievement outcomes in United States schools would be as high as those in schools anywhere in the world. The issues he considers in his article are quite interesting, and show that he has thought a long time about education reform and side-effects of education policies. As for the claim that the bottom 5 percent of teachers leaving the occupation couldn't be made up numerically (you mentioned 10 percent, but I am following Hanushek's figure), I disagree with that claim on several grounds. 1) Previous studies of the issue have shown that there are many credentialed teachers who are not currently actively teaching full-time. Again, I am still Googling for studies as I post this (this is a fact I read in books years ago), but it's fairly widely known that there are teachers with credentials who currently don't participate in the teacher labor force. 2) On the basis of international comparisons of class sizes, and on the basis that a bottom-5-percent teacher probably does more harm than good, we might just as well persuade the worst teachers to do other kinds of work, and have the top 95 percent of teachers divide up the students for slightly larger class sizes each, and perhaps a share of the compensation packages formerly allocated to the worse teachers who have left the occupation. 3) Supply of labor is generally elastic with respect to demand (especially in the current United States economy, with high unemployment). If schools around the country announce that they are dismissing teachers who don't perform well, and still sticking to the same class size targets, something else will change (perhaps the prestige of the occupation of teaching, as it becomes known as an occupation that doesn't tie the fortune of competent teachers to pay scales designed for incompetent teachers) and new workers will be attracted to make the investment, whatever that is, to enter the occupation. See Hanushek's article for more details. I think this is an important issue to discuss, and I'm glad you joined issue about what is possible, and what should be done. The biggest thing that probably will get overlooked, even by what I'd like to do, are bright students at poor schools. I'm glad you mentioned that issue at the bottom of your post. That is an issue of great concern to me too. My reply to the article submission in this thread, with a link to an article by Kenschaft on mathematics teaching, http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf is motivated by that concern. Best wishes for finding people to collaborate with to help improve education for able students from low-income backgrounds who currently can't afford to shop for schools.

Eliezer 16y ago

> You can't easily chop off the bottom 10% each year and bring in an additional 500,000 new teachers. Yes you can. You just have to offer high enough salaries.

kenjackson 16y ago
In the US we graduate about 100k engineering students each year(http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2008/11/50-of-us-engineering-students-dropout---why.html http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2008/11/50-of...). So even if we hired every engineering graduate from US schools every year, we wouldn't fill the gap, by a long shot. My point is that for a population this huge you're not going to be able to backfill for any reasonable dollar amount or you have to significantly lower your standards, in which case you're probably hiring people that will largely fall into that same bottom 10% next year.
earl 16y ago
Fine. Amend kenjackson's statement to say that, in the real world, voters have demonstrated in practice they are unwilling to pay sufficient taxes to attract a high quality group of people to teaching as a profession.

tokenadult 16y ago

The thought you can rid yourself of all or even most bad teachers is absurd. Eric Hanushek shows steps of reasoning, based on facts, in one of his published articles, http://www.stanfordalumni.org/leadingmatters/san_francisco/documents/Teacher_Deselection-Hanushek.pdf http://www.stanfordalumni.org/leadingmatters/san_francisco/d... suggesting that if the United States systematically persuaded the bottom 5 percent of teachers to leave teaching for some other occupation, year after year after year, it wouldn't be long before the academic achievement outcomes in United States schools would be as high as those in schools anywhere in the world. The issues he considers in his article are quite interesting, and show that he has thought a long time about education reform and side-effects of education policies. As for the claim that the bottom 5 percent of teachers leaving the occupation couldn't be made up numerically (you mentioned 10 percent, but I am following Hanushek's figure), I disagree with that claim on several grounds. 1) Previous studies of the issue have shown that there are many credentialed teachers who are not currently actively teaching full-time. Again, I am still Googling for studies as I post this (this is a fact I read in books years ago), but it's fairly widely known that there are teachers with credentials who currently don't participate in the teacher labor force. 2) On the basis of international comparisons of class sizes, and on the basis that a bottom-5-percent teacher probably does more harm than good, we might just as well persuade the worst teachers to do other kinds of work, and have the top 95 percent of teachers divide up the students for slightly larger class sizes each, and perhaps a share of the compensation packages formerly allocated to the worse teachers who have left the occupation. 3) Supply of labor is generally elastic with respect to demand (especially in the current United States economy, with high unemployment). If schools around the country announce that they are dismissing teachers who don't perform well, and still sticking to the same class size targets, something else will change (perhaps the prestige of the occupation of teaching, as it becomes known as an occupation that doesn't tie the fortune of competent teachers to pay scales designed for incompetent teachers) and new workers will be attracted to make the investment, whatever that is, to enter the occupation. See Hanushek's article for more details. I think this is an important issue to discuss, and I'm glad you joined issue about what is possible, and what should be done. The biggest thing that probably will get overlooked, even by what I'd like to do, are bright students at poor schools. I'm glad you mentioned that issue at the bottom of your post. That is an issue of great concern to me too. My reply to the article submission in this thread, with a link to an article by Kenschaft on mathematics teaching, http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf is motivated by that concern. Best wishes for finding people to collaborate with to help improve education for able students from low-income backgrounds who currently can't afford to shop for schools.