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>They do it because it works. You're making an assumption that the issue is that the teachers aren't putting in the effort. Children are not simple input/outp

by cmh89 4y ago

>They do it because it works. You're making an assumption that the issue is that the teachers aren't putting in the effort. Children are not simple input/output machines you program. A food insecure child with illiterate parents is going to require individualized and intensive resources, where a child who has Doctors for parents will generally show up to school with the knowledge they need. Gamification of schools is a really great way to get teachers to completely ignore the development of most of the class to focus on one or two kids. It's amazing that after the widely documented failure of NCLB, people are still promoting these 'work harder' systems.

WalterBright 4y ago
> You're making an assumption that the issue is that the teachers aren't putting in the effort. Not at all. I'm looking at we aren't getting the desired results. We've tried everything but the obvious - pay for results. > Gamification of schools is a really great way to get teachers to completely ignore the development of most of the class Quite the opposite. The bonus is per student. > It's amazing that after the widely documented failure of NCLB, people are still promoting these 'work harder' systems. NCLB was nothing like I proposed. It's also not about working harder. It's about results.
- cmh89 4y ago
  >Not at all. I'm looking at we aren't getting the desired results. We've tried everything but the obvious - pay for results. What you're proposing is not "obvious" to anyone who actually studies education. >Quite the opposite. The bonus is per student. How familiar are you with education? Children develop at different paces but are grouped by age, at least until high school. Teachers don't just teach to get the kids to the next grade, or at least they shouldn't. Under what you are proposing, it doesn't make sense for a teacher to spend any time on a kid who is already going to go on to the next grade. There is no incentive to challenge them with harder books, or harder math problems. Like, we literally already tried this with NCLB. The ended in the most obvious way possible. Teachers taught to get test results, standards were lowered to make it easier to move to the next grade, children who were excelling were ignored by their teachers who had to focus on children who were lagging. The whole concept behind 'pay for results' is that you think teachers are not putting the effort they could in. >NCLB was nothing like I proposed. I encourage you to do some reading on this topic. You're literally just describing a positive incentive based NCLB. You have the same operating theory that the designers of NCLB had. >It's also not about working harder. It's about results. This is a meaningless statement.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > I encourage you to do some reading on this topic. I did. The NCLB Act has precisely ZERO monetary incentives for teachers. It has nothing in common with my proposal. https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/no-child-left-behind-an-overview/2015/04 https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/no-child-left-behind-... It was obviously written and enacted by people who have no idea how incentives actually work.
    - cmh89 4y ago
      >I did. The NCLB Act has precisely ZERO monetary incentives for teachers They had negative monetary incentives for teachers and schools >It was obviously written and enacted by people who have no idea how incentives actually work. It was written by people who don't believe in public education. It's the literal concept you are pushing whether you recognize that or not.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        > They had negative monetary incentives for teachers and schools Please provide a reference for negative monetary incentives for teachers. > It's the literal concept you are pushing What I'm "pushing" is aligning incentives with the desired results. A system that works every time it's tried. Besides, if the public schools try my proposal, in no instance will the teachers or schools be worse off. There's literally nothing to lose by trying it.
        cmh89 4y ago
        >Please provide a reference for negative monetary incentives for teachers. Again, if you are interested, you should learn, literally, the basic of the subject on which you are speaking https://www.nber.org/digest/feb15/impact-school-performance-no-child-left-behind-program-sanctions https://www.nber.org/digest/feb15/impact-school-performance-... You are at this point "debating" the foundation of NCLB, of which it doesn't seem like you know anything about.
- ramblenode 4y ago
  > pay for results. > The bonus is per student. Something something about Goodhart's Law and cobras... But seriously, think about the second order effects of a powerful incentive like this. At best, you will likely turn schools into test prep centers where average and advanced students are further ignored (an effect NCLB is already criticized for). Worse is that students able to pass the assessments will realize they are a valuable asset worth $1000 per class by simply failing their pretest and passing their posttest and will figure out ways to trade this with teachers for a cut of the profit or for a grade. Given that trading these test scores is purely positive sum for both students and teachers and that both students and teachers are poor, I think you will see a highly efficient market emerge. And why would schools or states care? They are all making more money!
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    And the current system's have an incentive for success? All of your criticisms of the bonus pay proposal can be easily addressed, as the other ones in this thread. For example, test the kids once a year at the end of the academic year. There goes the incentive to fail the pretest. The advanced students can go into the gifted track, which can be operated differently. > And why would schools or states care? They don't care now. Proof: Seattle got rid of their gifted programs.
    - ramblenode 4y ago
      You should check out some teacher forums and see what teachers are complaining about to get an idea of what would help. Classes are too big, teachers are pressured to pass unprepared students to the next level, underperforming students are hard to motivate, there isn't enough time to prepare lessons and grade, etc. There are many areas that could be improved with funding, but you should start at the known problems. Think about this from the perspective of behavioral economics. Teaching is a profession with a high degree of intrinsic motivation given how stressful it is and how little it pays. Paying for performance on some test primarily rewards people who will game the test because that has a better cost/benefit ratio than heroically catching up kids who are performing several grade levels behind and have a difficult home life. Pay for performance tends to damage morale and increases attrition of intrinsically motivated workers (the kind you really want). This is what happens in controlled psychology experiments and it's what happened with NCLB.

by cmh89 4y ago

WalterBright 4y ago

> You're making an assumption that the issue is that the teachers aren't putting in the effort. Not at all. I'm looking at we aren't getting the desired results. We've tried everything but the obvious - pay for results. > Gamification of schools is a really great way to get teachers to completely ignore the development of most of the class Quite the opposite. The bonus is per student. > It's amazing that after the widely documented failure of NCLB, people are still promoting these 'work harder' systems. NCLB was nothing like I proposed. It's also not about working harder. It's about results.

cmh89 4y ago
>Not at all. I'm looking at we aren't getting the desired results. We've tried everything but the obvious - pay for results. What you're proposing is not "obvious" to anyone who actually studies education. >Quite the opposite. The bonus is per student. How familiar are you with education? Children develop at different paces but are grouped by age, at least until high school. Teachers don't just teach to get the kids to the next grade, or at least they shouldn't. Under what you are proposing, it doesn't make sense for a teacher to spend any time on a kid who is already going to go on to the next grade. There is no incentive to challenge them with harder books, or harder math problems. Like, we literally already tried this with NCLB. The ended in the most obvious way possible. Teachers taught to get test results, standards were lowered to make it easier to move to the next grade, children who were excelling were ignored by their teachers who had to focus on children who were lagging. The whole concept behind 'pay for results' is that you think teachers are not putting the effort they could in. >NCLB was nothing like I proposed. I encourage you to do some reading on this topic. You're literally just describing a positive incentive based NCLB. You have the same operating theory that the designers of NCLB had. >It's also not about working harder. It's about results. This is a meaningless statement.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > I encourage you to do some reading on this topic. I did. The NCLB Act has precisely ZERO monetary incentives for teachers. It has nothing in common with my proposal. https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/no-child-left-behind-an-overview/2015/04 https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/no-child-left-behind-... It was obviously written and enacted by people who have no idea how incentives actually work.
  - cmh89 4y ago
    >I did. The NCLB Act has precisely ZERO monetary incentives for teachers They had negative monetary incentives for teachers and schools >It was obviously written and enacted by people who have no idea how incentives actually work. It was written by people who don't believe in public education. It's the literal concept you are pushing whether you recognize that or not.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      > They had negative monetary incentives for teachers and schools Please provide a reference for negative monetary incentives for teachers. > It's the literal concept you are pushing What I'm "pushing" is aligning incentives with the desired results. A system that works every time it's tried. Besides, if the public schools try my proposal, in no instance will the teachers or schools be worse off. There's literally nothing to lose by trying it.
      - cmh89 4y ago
        >Please provide a reference for negative monetary incentives for teachers. Again, if you are interested, you should learn, literally, the basic of the subject on which you are speaking https://www.nber.org/digest/feb15/impact-school-performance-no-child-left-behind-program-sanctions https://www.nber.org/digest/feb15/impact-school-performance-... You are at this point "debating" the foundation of NCLB, of which it doesn't seem like you know anything about.
ramblenode 4y ago
> pay for results. > The bonus is per student. Something something about Goodhart's Law and cobras... But seriously, think about the second order effects of a powerful incentive like this. At best, you will likely turn schools into test prep centers where average and advanced students are further ignored (an effect NCLB is already criticized for). Worse is that students able to pass the assessments will realize they are a valuable asset worth $1000 per class by simply failing their pretest and passing their posttest and will figure out ways to trade this with teachers for a cut of the profit or for a grade. Given that trading these test scores is purely positive sum for both students and teachers and that both students and teachers are poor, I think you will see a highly efficient market emerge. And why would schools or states care? They are all making more money!
- WalterBright 4y ago
  And the current system's have an incentive for success? All of your criticisms of the bonus pay proposal can be easily addressed, as the other ones in this thread. For example, test the kids once a year at the end of the academic year. There goes the incentive to fail the pretest. The advanced students can go into the gifted track, which can be operated differently. > And why would schools or states care? They don't care now. Proof: Seattle got rid of their gifted programs.
  - ramblenode 4y ago
    You should check out some teacher forums and see what teachers are complaining about to get an idea of what would help. Classes are too big, teachers are pressured to pass unprepared students to the next level, underperforming students are hard to motivate, there isn't enough time to prepare lessons and grade, etc. There are many areas that could be improved with funding, but you should start at the known problems. Think about this from the perspective of behavioral economics. Teaching is a profession with a high degree of intrinsic motivation given how stressful it is and how little it pays. Paying for performance on some test primarily rewards people who will game the test because that has a better cost/benefit ratio than heroically catching up kids who are performing several grade levels behind and have a difficult home life. Pay for performance tends to damage morale and increases attrition of intrinsically motivated workers (the kind you really want). This is what happens in controlled psychology experiments and it's what happened with NCLB.