5 ms·

Paying teachers more results in higher pupil performance

35 points by robg 15y ago

jmilloy 15y ago
Let's be clear: both explanations are that higher salaries result in better teachers which in turn results in higher student performance. It's not that saying that paying a teacher more results in higher performance.
- orbitingpluto 15y ago
  My first thought when I read the article title is that teachers would have more money to pay out of pocket to get materials for their students. A lot of teachers do this, from kindergarten to high school. I've had to hang out in a educational supply store more than once in my life when I and <pick any friend that is a teacher> have passed by one. That teacher then blows a sizable chunk of coin without fail. Arts & crafts, books, lined paper, sci calculators, and of course... stickers for that job well done.
  - Drakeman 15y ago
    Some US states have 60/40 plans built into their education budgets. What that means is 60% of the money the state gives to local schools must go to the "classroom." Now, how a state defines classroom is very loose. Most of the time, supplies, working facilities, new desks, books, and teaching materials fit into it. What is the other 40%? Administrative and teacher salaries, lunch programs, and transportation. In my experience, schools in the US actually waste a huge sum of money because they have incompetent administrative staff (with the added bonus that they're overpaid).
keithpeter 15y ago
UK note: over the last couple of decades there has been a lot of effort to 'raise standards' (contested vocabulary) in teaching over here. Partially pay awards, but also degree only recruitment, only certain kinds of degree accepted for Secondary school subject specialism, staff development requirements &c Public sector pay and conditions will drop relative to private sector in the UK over the next 10 years or so. If and when the business cycle picks up, you might see the 'quality' (contested vocabulary) drop again.
TomOfTTB 15y ago
This seems like they walked in looking for proof of their already established conclusion. If you look at Finland, Australia, Korea, Japan and New Zealand you see a cluster of countries who are paying their teachers well and who aren't getting results (Edit: By this I mean the countries below them aren't getting results yet are paying the same amount). Compare Denmark to Finland or Spain to New Zealand and then explain to me how the authors' thesis rings true. Plus we have anecdotal evidence that contradicts their conclusion in the U.S: Individual State salaries vary pretty significantly ($37,000 to $59,000) yet education results don't seem to reflect those salaries Teacher Salary By State: http://www.teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state http://www.teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state State Education Rankings: http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/september/state-education-ranking-shows-vermont-1-south-carolina-last http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/september/state-education-ran... I don't entirely disagree with the thesis that making "teacher" a more revered position will draw better people to it. But there are clearly other factors at play that the authors chose to disregard because they wanted to prove their already established conclusion. (If it were me I'd be comparing Switzerland, Germany and Sweden and trying to figure what the differences are there)
- wwweston 15y ago
  "If you look at Finland... paying their teachers well and who aren't getting results." I'd been given to understand Finland is generally regarded as one of the better education systems in the world. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm http://siteselection.com/ssinsider/snapshot/sf011210.htm http://siteselection.com/ssinsider/snapshot/sf011210.htm http://schoolmatters.knoxnews.com/forum/topics/how-does-finlands-education http://schoolmatters.knoxnews.com/forum/topics/how-does-finl...
  - TomOfTTB 15y ago
    You could very well be right. My point was the authors' conclusion didn't match their underlying data. So the validity of their underlying data didn't come into play.
  - anamax 15y ago
iterationx 15y ago
I found the conclusion of the movie "Waiting for Superman" interesting basically the major obstacle for improving education in the US is that you can't fire bad teachers because of union contracts.
- TomOfTTB 15y ago
  Well Yes but there's a backstory to that. If you talk to teachers who worked in the pre-union days they'll tell you it was a nightmare. Because it was run by low-level politicians (school board members) who were cowardly to the point of causing havok. Put it this way. Most people don't know the political positions of their individual school board members. So if someone comes to their house and says "this member is bad" they'll generally vote against them on the theory of "better safe than sorry". Which meant every crazy parent who thought their kid was treated unfairly would raise a fuss and get teachers fired because the Principal answered to the School Board members and those members had extremely tenuous holds on their position. Meaning teachers were getting fired fairly regularly, often for doing nothing wrong. Teachers Unions were born out of that abuse. The problem now is we've swung to the other extreme. Where even teachers who are bad can't get fired. But I wouldn't say the problem is the union contracts. If anything it's that we haven't found an appropriate metric for measuring teacher performance.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    If anything it's that we haven't found an appropriate metric for measuring teacher performance. Modern VAM (Value Added Modelling) methods tend to work well. This is basically building a statistical predictor of student performance, and then measuring whether individual teachers students meet this predictor. The teachers unions fight tooth and nail against using them, but they work well.
    - disgruntledphd2 15y ago
      Care to provide some evidence for this assertion? I am aware of the some of the research into building multilevel models of student and teacher performance, but one of the issues here is that if these metrics are used, there is no test set which can be utilised to validate the model. This is an absolutely huge issue when you are essentially hiring and firing people based on the metric.
donpark 15y ago
I agree with the general notion but don't think raising all teachers' salary will lead to better result. While Korean public school teachers are relatively well paid, top private 'Hakwon' teachers are paid several times more. Private education is a hot 'business' in S.Korea. Sad part is that the goal of private education in S.Korea is to enter good universities, not to get good education. Sadder part is, after graduating, many can't find jobs and those that do usually don't work in the field they majored in because they picked their school by reputation and their majors by ease of entry.
tokenadult 15y ago
This is not time-series data. The study design here (a cross-sectional survey of varying countries, showing a bare correlation between two variables) is not adequate to show causation. http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html (By the way, the scatter of data points around the regression line in their plot suggests that the model is subject to large degrees of error in prediction.) It would take an experimental design (randomly assigning one group of teachers in the same country to receive pay raises while another group does not, with before-and-after comparisons of pupil performance) to show that paying teachers more results in higher pupil performance. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz There have been hundreds of studies of educational interventions over the years, http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analyses-Achievement/dp/0415476186 http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analys... and many thoughtful international comparisons of teaching practice, http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-Classroom/dp/1439143137/ http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-Class... http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-Understanding/dp/0415873843/ http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic... http://www.amazon.com/Making-Learning-Whole-Principles-Transform/dp/0470633719/ http://www.amazon.com/Making-Learning-Whole-Principles-Trans... but none of those conclude that simply raising teacher pay, without changing teaching practices and perhaps also the composition of the teaching workforce, will have much to do with raising pupil performance in any place. Raising teacher pay systematically has been tried in the United States (notably in the state of Connecticut) and has not been shown to markedly raise pupil performance. An economist who closely studies education policy has suggested that pay and other incentives be used to encourage the least effective teachers to seek other occupations while rewarding the most effective teachers with increased compensation and more professional support. http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads/Hanushek%202009%20CNTP%20ch%208.pdf http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads... Such a policy, he estimates (showing his work in his article) would raise United States educational achievement to the level of the highest-performing countries. This is something worth verifying by experiment, although that will be politically difficult in any state of the United States http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj30n1/cj30n1-8.pdf http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj30n1/cj30n1-8.pdf and perhaps in Britain as well. http://www.economist.com/node/17849199 http://www.economist.com/node/17849199 P.S. I'm curious about why the United States underperforms so much compared to salaries paid to teachers in the chart shown in the submitted blog post.
hamidpalo 15y ago
Figure 1 above provides an insight into the relationship between teacher salaries and pupil outcomes, showing a clear statistical association between higher relative teachers’ pay and higher standardised pupil scores across countries. Aaaah! Correlation again being confused with causation. Omitted variable bias!
moreorless 15y ago
They do this in China. IMHO, it is a pretty mixed bag. Mostly they teach kids how to take tests.
Symmetry 15y ago
I bet that the correlation is much stronger for teacher starting salaries than for the 15 year in salaries that the study mentioned. What really matters is attracting the best people to be teachers, and when people look at jobs they mostly look at starting salaries. But for some reason in the US we tend to have a very steep seniority based pay scale, with a far greater inequality between old and young teachers than you see in pretty much any other industry. You could argue that more experienced teachers are better, but studies show that experience stops mattering after 5 years, and it was also my subjective experience in school that older teachers didn't seem to be any better at teaching.
paulhauggis 15y ago
I know everyone seems to want to pay teachers a higher salary, but in most school systems, they are already guaranteed a pay raise every year through the unions. Even if they did nothing to deserve it. Most jobs tech jobs start out high, but plateau at a certain salary range (you also don't automatically get a raise every year). If you are a teacher long enough (10+ years), you will get up to the $70-80K range (I know a couple of older teachers that get paid this much). With summers and many more vacation days, it evens out in the end. If you want better performance, we need better teachers. Because the unions will not allow us to put a measure on performance, the result is bad teachers getting into the system with the inability to fire them. I'm also finally glad they are putting an end to "rubber rooms". If you don't know what they are, take a look here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/education/29rubber.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/education/29rubber.html Another waste of our tax dollars that has been going on for years....

35 points by robg 15y ago

Let's be clear: both explanations are that higher salaries result in better teachers which in turn results in higher student performance. It's not that saying that paying a teacher more results in higher performance.

orbitingpluto 15y ago
My first thought when I read the article title is that teachers would have more money to pay out of pocket to get materials for their students. A lot of teachers do this, from kindergarten to high school. I've had to hang out in a educational supply store more than once in my life when I and <pick any friend that is a teacher> have passed by one. That teacher then blows a sizable chunk of coin without fail. Arts & crafts, books, lined paper, sci calculators, and of course... stickers for that job well done.
- Drakeman 15y ago
  Some US states have 60/40 plans built into their education budgets. What that means is 60% of the money the state gives to local schools must go to the "classroom." Now, how a state defines classroom is very loose. Most of the time, supplies, working facilities, new desks, books, and teaching materials fit into it. What is the other 40%? Administrative and teacher salaries, lunch programs, and transportation. In my experience, schools in the US actually waste a huge sum of money because they have incompetent administrative staff (with the added bonus that they're overpaid).

keithpeter 15y ago

UK note: over the last couple of decades there has been a lot of effort to 'raise standards' (contested vocabulary) in teaching over here. Partially pay awards, but also degree only recruitment, only certain kinds of degree accepted for Secondary school subject specialism, staff development requirements &c Public sector pay and conditions will drop relative to private sector in the UK over the next 10 years or so. If and when the business cycle picks up, you might see the 'quality' (contested vocabulary) drop again.

TomOfTTB 15y ago

This seems like they walked in looking for proof of their already established conclusion. If you look at Finland, Australia, Korea, Japan and New Zealand you see a cluster of countries who are paying their teachers well and who aren't getting results (Edit: By this I mean the countries below them aren't getting results yet are paying the same amount). Compare Denmark to Finland or Spain to New Zealand and then explain to me how the authors' thesis rings true. Plus we have anecdotal evidence that contradicts their conclusion in the U.S: Individual State salaries vary pretty significantly ($37,000 to $59,000) yet education results don't seem to reflect those salaries Teacher Salary By State: http://www.teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state http://www.teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state State Education Rankings: http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/september/state-education-ranking-shows-vermont-1-south-carolina-last http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/september/state-education-ran... I don't entirely disagree with the thesis that making "teacher" a more revered position will draw better people to it. But there are clearly other factors at play that the authors chose to disregard because they wanted to prove their already established conclusion. (If it were me I'd be comparing Switzerland, Germany and Sweden and trying to figure what the differences are there)

wwweston 15y ago
"If you look at Finland... paying their teachers well and who aren't getting results." I'd been given to understand Finland is generally regarded as one of the better education systems in the world. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm http://siteselection.com/ssinsider/snapshot/sf011210.htm http://siteselection.com/ssinsider/snapshot/sf011210.htm http://schoolmatters.knoxnews.com/forum/topics/how-does-finlands-education http://schoolmatters.knoxnews.com/forum/topics/how-does-finl...
- TomOfTTB 15y ago
  You could very well be right. My point was the authors' conclusion didn't match their underlying data. So the validity of their underlying data didn't come into play.
- anamax 15y ago

iterationx 15y ago

I found the conclusion of the movie "Waiting for Superman" interesting basically the major obstacle for improving education in the US is that you can't fire bad teachers because of union contracts.

TomOfTTB 15y ago
Well Yes but there's a backstory to that. If you talk to teachers who worked in the pre-union days they'll tell you it was a nightmare. Because it was run by low-level politicians (school board members) who were cowardly to the point of causing havok. Put it this way. Most people don't know the political positions of their individual school board members. So if someone comes to their house and says "this member is bad" they'll generally vote against them on the theory of "better safe than sorry". Which meant every crazy parent who thought their kid was treated unfairly would raise a fuss and get teachers fired because the Principal answered to the School Board members and those members had extremely tenuous holds on their position. Meaning teachers were getting fired fairly regularly, often for doing nothing wrong. Teachers Unions were born out of that abuse. The problem now is we've swung to the other extreme. Where even teachers who are bad can't get fired. But I wouldn't say the problem is the union contracts. If anything it's that we haven't found an appropriate metric for measuring teacher performance.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  If anything it's that we haven't found an appropriate metric for measuring teacher performance. Modern VAM (Value Added Modelling) methods tend to work well. This is basically building a statistical predictor of student performance, and then measuring whether individual teachers students meet this predictor. The teachers unions fight tooth and nail against using them, but they work well.
  - disgruntledphd2 15y ago
    Care to provide some evidence for this assertion? I am aware of the some of the research into building multilevel models of student and teacher performance, but one of the issues here is that if these metrics are used, there is no test set which can be utilised to validate the model. This is an absolutely huge issue when you are essentially hiring and firing people based on the metric.

donpark 15y ago

I agree with the general notion but don't think raising all teachers' salary will lead to better result. While Korean public school teachers are relatively well paid, top private 'Hakwon' teachers are paid several times more. Private education is a hot 'business' in S.Korea. Sad part is that the goal of private education in S.Korea is to enter good universities, not to get good education. Sadder part is, after graduating, many can't find jobs and those that do usually don't work in the field they majored in because they picked their school by reputation and their majors by ease of entry.

tokenadult 15y ago

This is not time-series data. The study design here (a cross-sectional survey of varying countries, showing a bare correlation between two variables) is not adequate to show causation. http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html (By the way, the scatter of data points around the regression line in their plot suggests that the model is subject to large degrees of error in prediction.) It would take an experimental design (randomly assigning one group of teachers in the same country to receive pay raises while another group does not, with before-and-after comparisons of pupil performance) to show that paying teachers more results in higher pupil performance. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz There have been hundreds of studies of educational interventions over the years, http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analyses-Achievement/dp/0415476186 http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analys... and many thoughtful international comparisons of teaching practice, http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-Classroom/dp/1439143137/ http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-Class... http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-Understanding/dp/0415873843/ http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic... http://www.amazon.com/Making-Learning-Whole-Principles-Transform/dp/0470633719/ http://www.amazon.com/Making-Learning-Whole-Principles-Trans... but none of those conclude that simply raising teacher pay, without changing teaching practices and perhaps also the composition of the teaching workforce, will have much to do with raising pupil performance in any place. Raising teacher pay systematically has been tried in the United States (notably in the state of Connecticut) and has not been shown to markedly raise pupil performance. An economist who closely studies education policy has suggested that pay and other incentives be used to encourage the least effective teachers to seek other occupations while rewarding the most effective teachers with increased compensation and more professional support. http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads/Hanushek%202009%20CNTP%20ch%208.pdf http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads... Such a policy, he estimates (showing his work in his article) would raise United States educational achievement to the level of the highest-performing countries. This is something worth verifying by experiment, although that will be politically difficult in any state of the United States http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj30n1/cj30n1-8.pdf http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj30n1/cj30n1-8.pdf and perhaps in Britain as well. http://www.economist.com/node/17849199 http://www.economist.com/node/17849199 P.S. I'm curious about why the United States underperforms so much compared to salaries paid to teachers in the chart shown in the submitted blog post.

hamidpalo 15y ago

Figure 1 above provides an insight into the relationship between teacher salaries and pupil outcomes, showing a clear statistical association between higher relative teachers’ pay and higher standardised pupil scores across countries. Aaaah! Correlation again being confused with causation. Omitted variable bias!

moreorless 15y ago

They do this in China. IMHO, it is a pretty mixed bag. Mostly they teach kids how to take tests.

Symmetry 15y ago

I bet that the correlation is much stronger for teacher starting salaries than for the 15 year in salaries that the study mentioned. What really matters is attracting the best people to be teachers, and when people look at jobs they mostly look at starting salaries. But for some reason in the US we tend to have a very steep seniority based pay scale, with a far greater inequality between old and young teachers than you see in pretty much any other industry. You could argue that more experienced teachers are better, but studies show that experience stops mattering after 5 years, and it was also my subjective experience in school that older teachers didn't seem to be any better at teaching.

paulhauggis 15y ago

I know everyone seems to want to pay teachers a higher salary, but in most school systems, they are already guaranteed a pay raise every year through the unions. Even if they did nothing to deserve it. Most jobs tech jobs start out high, but plateau at a certain salary range (you also don't automatically get a raise every year). If you are a teacher long enough (10+ years), you will get up to the $70-80K range (I know a couple of older teachers that get paid this much). With summers and many more vacation days, it evens out in the end. If you want better performance, we need better teachers. Because the unions will not allow us to put a measure on performance, the result is bad teachers getting into the system with the inability to fire them. I'm also finally glad they are putting an end to "rubber rooms". If you don't know what they are, take a look here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/education/29rubber.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/education/29rubber.html Another waste of our tax dollars that has been going on for years....