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Not only that, but doubling the pay of teachers will only improve your results if you get rid of your current teachers. Which will be difficult to do. Otherwi

Not only that, but doubling the pay of teachers will only improve your results if you get rid of your current teachers. Which will be difficult to do. Otherwise you are just paying the same people more money and probably getting the same results.

syncerr 13y ago
Based them, in some way, on standardized test scores?
- jeltz 13y ago
  That encourages teaching for the standardised tests.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    There are horror stories in New York around parents asking, "Why no social studies for Junior this year?" and being told, "Social Studies is only covered on the high stakes exam next year, so that's not my problem." Standardized testing implies you really have to nail the test design, and be vigilant that people aren't working just to the metric, and aren't cheating. (Freakonomics has a chapter on how they caught cheaters in Chicago. Apparently they caught them in other cities too but didn't have the courage to fire them elsewhere.)
jerf 13y ago
The idea is that if you pay more, you may be able to attract more people who are skilled enough to make more than $52K in the private sector, and thereby hopefully duck around the "those who can, do, those who can't, teach", as, alas, there's more than a kernel of truth to that.
- mathattack 13y ago
  This is very true. I just don't like the idea of "Pay up because we idealists think it's urgent. It should be important like surgeons." It's very hard to get to a social change to pay them like Singapore. I think the means to this ends is via charter schools. Parents know who the good teachers are, and they fight to get taught by them. Charter schools have found a way in some cases to pay up. I think parental voting (with their feet) can be even better than test-based metrics, which are imperfect at best. (Everything not on the test gets neglected) This is a very complicated problem.
  - jerf 13y ago
    For what it's worth, I don't think it will work either. But not agreeing with an argument is no excuse to not understand it.

syncerr 13y ago

Based them, in some way, on standardized test scores?

jeltz 13y ago
That encourages teaching for the standardised tests.
- mathattack 13y ago
  There are horror stories in New York around parents asking, "Why no social studies for Junior this year?" and being told, "Social Studies is only covered on the high stakes exam next year, so that's not my problem." Standardized testing implies you really have to nail the test design, and be vigilant that people aren't working just to the metric, and aren't cheating. (Freakonomics has a chapter on how they caught cheaters in Chicago. Apparently they caught them in other cities too but didn't have the courage to fire them elsewhere.)

jerf 13y ago

The idea is that if you pay more, you may be able to attract more people who are skilled enough to make more than $52K in the private sector, and thereby hopefully duck around the "those who can, do, those who can't, teach", as, alas, there's more than a kernel of truth to that.

mathattack 13y ago
This is very true. I just don't like the idea of "Pay up because we idealists think it's urgent. It should be important like surgeons." It's very hard to get to a social change to pay them like Singapore. I think the means to this ends is via charter schools. Parents know who the good teachers are, and they fight to get taught by them. Charter schools have found a way in some cases to pay up. I think parental voting (with their feet) can be even better than test-based metrics, which are imperfect at best. (Everything not on the test gets neglected) This is a very complicated problem.
- jerf 13y ago
  For what it's worth, I don't think it will work either. But not agreeing with an argument is no excuse to not understand it.