4 ms·

If I were King of NYC and had to fix this I'd cut the budget to 15k per student and use the balance on incentive pay. Think: 1-2k for an A, maybe 100 dollars fo

If I were King of NYC and had to fix this I'd cut the budget to 15k per student and use the balance on incentive pay. Think: 1-2k for an A, maybe 100 dollars for a good discussion on a book, couple grand for getting a 4 or 5 on an AP test - that kind of thing. Quality education can likely be delivered for very little money. What I think we're missing is the motivation from the students, and young people are much easier to motivate with small amounts of money than adults.

atonse 3y ago
I can understand attaching incentives to a whole grade or school but to individual teachers, I simply can’t see how this wouldn’t be massively abused. Update: given to students! Interesting idea but still increases incentive for students to cheat.
- ALittleLight 3y ago
  Yes, teachers should be motivated by "Do your job to a minimum standard or be fired." I think kids would be really motivated by the chance to earn 15-20k a year. A legion of motivated kids would also help root out bad teachers. Right now, kids probably like a lazy teacher - less work for them. If your payout, as a student, is based on standardized tests - you're probably going to be upset with a teacher who isn't teaching you much. There would be corruption and cheating to balance against - but I think it's possible to strike a balance that's much better than our current system.
  - ecshafer 3y ago
    I’ve made a similar argument, paying students/ their families for good grades would be a huge incentive. A big aspect of cultures that seem to perform very well regardless of incomes is their focus on the importance of education, and the necessity of studying. If you tell kids you get $5k if you get an A on the state math exam, the entire family, community, school will be pushing those kids to do better on it to get the money.
    - addaon 3y ago
      > If you tell kids you get $5k if you get an A on the state math exam, the entire family, community, school will be pushing those kids to do better on it to get the money. And punishing them if they fail. And punishing /their teachers/ if they fail. Do you really want to raise the stakes on something that's already stressful enough for a huge portion of the population? "If you don't get a B or better, your little brother won't get to eat" doesn't lead to disciplined focus for many people...
      - ALittleLight 3y ago
        It depends if you want to educate kids well or not. Our current model says it's not that important to educate kids - that's why, despite tripling spending in inflation adjusted terms on per student spending since the 1970's test scores on national assessment tests have been flat. That's flat as in no improvement the last fifty years despite 3x the spending - infinitesimal gain pre-covid that was wiped out by COVID. In our current model people care about getting more money and benefits to district administrators, union officials, and companies that provide education services, but people obviously don't care about educating students well. I think that yes, like you describe, offering substantial amounts of money would produce substantial motivation. Better, it would produce motivation exactly where needed. The poorly family in generational poverty knows they can get 20k a year if their kid studies well. The poor family pressures their kids into studying a lot and doing well in school. Yes, that's hard on the kids but the consequences are that they're well educated and their families get needed support. By contrast, the idea that we shouldn't pay students because their families might pressure them into doing well is a false kindness. You would make school a little easier but doom the children to generational poverty all so the bureaucracy consuming our exorbitant education budget can continue to be rich.
      - ecshafer 3y ago
        If the parent is abusing their child that is going to happen regardless, and the possibility of an unlikely event being loosely tied to a policy shouldn' t stop a policy that may actually help.
  - ffhhttt 3y ago
    This would be ruined by cheating and people trying to game the system (and this includes pupils, parents and teachers).
bombcar 3y ago
Ah you’d pay the students - it might actually work.
- dkqmduems 3y ago
  Ignore the cheating problem and sure.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    You pay even more for snitching! Nothing can go wrong.
  - jkestner 3y ago
    Yeah, there’s no way adults don’t get involved if you promise $20k. This will just extend the existing test-taking/essay-writing industry from those who can afford to pay up front to those who will split the proceeds.
tmpz22 3y ago
Pulling funds from established services would cripple the system. Consider resourcing for special needs students, programs for low income families, programs for second language learners. You cut the budget in half and many of those services could no longer function. Im a supporter of social programs as a whole and am regularly disappointed when people completely ignore the less sexy parts of budgets as if they didn't exist. If you want to be more fiscally prudent you have to be willing to do the work and actually deep dive into the systems and budgets and people throughout the system. Slashing education with a machete is just lazy and incompetent and will hurt people. You want to convince people to actually lower costs? Do the grown up work.
michaelmrose 3y ago
Now we would have families partially dependent on little Johny and Little Jane's income screeching about unfair grading practices and agitating against hard teachers. These people elect the school board too. Also yanking more than half the budget destroys everything and nobody gets paid anyway. In other news part of the cost is to acquire qualified teachers who must be paid more than teachers in Nebraska because they have to be able to live in NYC. Do you really think most of the budget goes in the bin?
- ALittleLight 3y ago
  Yes, I'm pretty confident most of the budget is wasted. In the past 50 years inflation adjusted spending per student is up 3x and assessment tests are flat. Other countries educate students better at a lower cost. It's fundamentally not that hard or expensive to educate children - you need a teacher, classroom, simple supplies, and a tiny bit of administration - not much else. As for people screeching about unfair grading - yes. People screech about that now. We should make standardized tests and base the payments largely off that. Let parents get mad at schools and teachers that fail to prepare their children, that would be good.
  - ffhhttt 3y ago
    You’d have to spend a fortune on cheating prevention and would still fail. Also just trying to maximize standardized test scores by ignoring everything else is an outright awful idea. What would even be the point of that?
    - ALittleLight 3y ago
      No you wouldn't. You don't have to eliminate cheating, just keep it acceptably low. Also, I never said the point was to maximize standardized test scores. That would be the student's incentive but not the teachers. Teachers would try to teach the curriculum and students would try to learn it so they could do well on the tests. Teachers need not receive any more pay for test scores. As for the point - if you're abandoning measuring progress, let's just not educate kids and save ourselves a ton of money.
dev_hugepages 3y ago
Modern education is already rotten with extrinsic motivations and you wanna add money in? Those extrinsic motivations are primarily mediated by the parents, imagine the impacts with 1-2K (or even less)

atonse 3y ago

I can understand attaching incentives to a whole grade or school but to individual teachers, I simply can’t see how this wouldn’t be massively abused. Update: given to students! Interesting idea but still increases incentive for students to cheat.

ALittleLight 3y ago
Yes, teachers should be motivated by "Do your job to a minimum standard or be fired." I think kids would be really motivated by the chance to earn 15-20k a year. A legion of motivated kids would also help root out bad teachers. Right now, kids probably like a lazy teacher - less work for them. If your payout, as a student, is based on standardized tests - you're probably going to be upset with a teacher who isn't teaching you much. There would be corruption and cheating to balance against - but I think it's possible to strike a balance that's much better than our current system.
- ecshafer 3y ago
  I’ve made a similar argument, paying students/ their families for good grades would be a huge incentive. A big aspect of cultures that seem to perform very well regardless of incomes is their focus on the importance of education, and the necessity of studying. If you tell kids you get $5k if you get an A on the state math exam, the entire family, community, school will be pushing those kids to do better on it to get the money.
  - addaon 3y ago
    > If you tell kids you get $5k if you get an A on the state math exam, the entire family, community, school will be pushing those kids to do better on it to get the money. And punishing them if they fail. And punishing /their teachers/ if they fail. Do you really want to raise the stakes on something that's already stressful enough for a huge portion of the population? "If you don't get a B or better, your little brother won't get to eat" doesn't lead to disciplined focus for many people...
    - ALittleLight 3y ago
      It depends if you want to educate kids well or not. Our current model says it's not that important to educate kids - that's why, despite tripling spending in inflation adjusted terms on per student spending since the 1970's test scores on national assessment tests have been flat. That's flat as in no improvement the last fifty years despite 3x the spending - infinitesimal gain pre-covid that was wiped out by COVID. In our current model people care about getting more money and benefits to district administrators, union officials, and companies that provide education services, but people obviously don't care about educating students well. I think that yes, like you describe, offering substantial amounts of money would produce substantial motivation. Better, it would produce motivation exactly where needed. The poorly family in generational poverty knows they can get 20k a year if their kid studies well. The poor family pressures their kids into studying a lot and doing well in school. Yes, that's hard on the kids but the consequences are that they're well educated and their families get needed support. By contrast, the idea that we shouldn't pay students because their families might pressure them into doing well is a false kindness. You would make school a little easier but doom the children to generational poverty all so the bureaucracy consuming our exorbitant education budget can continue to be rich.
    - ecshafer 3y ago
      If the parent is abusing their child that is going to happen regardless, and the possibility of an unlikely event being loosely tied to a policy shouldn' t stop a policy that may actually help.
- ffhhttt 3y ago
  This would be ruined by cheating and people trying to game the system (and this includes pupils, parents and teachers).

bombcar 3y ago

Ah you’d pay the students - it might actually work.

dkqmduems 3y ago
Ignore the cheating problem and sure.
- bombcar 3y ago
  You pay even more for snitching! Nothing can go wrong.
- jkestner 3y ago
  Yeah, there’s no way adults don’t get involved if you promise $20k. This will just extend the existing test-taking/essay-writing industry from those who can afford to pay up front to those who will split the proceeds.

tmpz22 3y ago

Pulling funds from established services would cripple the system. Consider resourcing for special needs students, programs for low income families, programs for second language learners. You cut the budget in half and many of those services could no longer function. Im a supporter of social programs as a whole and am regularly disappointed when people completely ignore the less sexy parts of budgets as if they didn't exist. If you want to be more fiscally prudent you have to be willing to do the work and actually deep dive into the systems and budgets and people throughout the system. Slashing education with a machete is just lazy and incompetent and will hurt people. You want to convince people to actually lower costs? Do the grown up work.

michaelmrose 3y ago

Now we would have families partially dependent on little Johny and Little Jane's income screeching about unfair grading practices and agitating against hard teachers. These people elect the school board too. Also yanking more than half the budget destroys everything and nobody gets paid anyway. In other news part of the cost is to acquire qualified teachers who must be paid more than teachers in Nebraska because they have to be able to live in NYC. Do you really think most of the budget goes in the bin?

ALittleLight 3y ago
Yes, I'm pretty confident most of the budget is wasted. In the past 50 years inflation adjusted spending per student is up 3x and assessment tests are flat. Other countries educate students better at a lower cost. It's fundamentally not that hard or expensive to educate children - you need a teacher, classroom, simple supplies, and a tiny bit of administration - not much else. As for people screeching about unfair grading - yes. People screech about that now. We should make standardized tests and base the payments largely off that. Let parents get mad at schools and teachers that fail to prepare their children, that would be good.
- ffhhttt 3y ago
  You’d have to spend a fortune on cheating prevention and would still fail. Also just trying to maximize standardized test scores by ignoring everything else is an outright awful idea. What would even be the point of that?
  - ALittleLight 3y ago
    No you wouldn't. You don't have to eliminate cheating, just keep it acceptably low. Also, I never said the point was to maximize standardized test scores. That would be the student's incentive but not the teachers. Teachers would try to teach the curriculum and students would try to learn it so they could do well on the tests. Teachers need not receive any more pay for test scores. As for the point - if you're abandoning measuring progress, let's just not educate kids and save ourselves a ton of money.

dev_hugepages 3y ago

Modern education is already rotten with extrinsic motivations and you wanna add money in? Those extrinsic motivations are primarily mediated by the parents, imagine the impacts with 1-2K (or even less)