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Most HN readers are programmers. Just imagine this logic being applied to yourselves. Your performance is measured in a single week at the end of each year by s

by asolove 12y ago

Most HN readers are programmers. Just imagine this logic being applied to yourselves. Your performance is measured in a single week at the end of each year by statistically-controlled standardized tasks. Your manager's performance is then measured by the statistically-inferred effect that working for her has had on your performance given your previous year's performance and a model of how programmers' performance changes over time based on a few variables. How well do you think that would work? Would it accurately reflect the work you had done in the previous year? Would it generate the right incentives for you to actually do good work and for your manager to help you grow? Or is it more likely that random variation would dominate meaningful variation. That getting sick or feeling depressed that week would have markedly more impact than all the ways you really got better or worse that year? Or that it would generate perverse incentives to, say, learn about the standard task early, to prepare for the kinds of tasks you were measured on instead of the ones that produce value? Or, for that matter, that it would destroy the motivation of everyone involved by replacing their intrinsic motivation to do well with an extrinsic motivation to get rewarded?

harryh 12y ago
If you don't have some sort of system to extrinsically reward people with different skill levels different amounts than the best people are eventually going to figure that out and go do something else where they'll get paid what they're worth. If you don't believe this think about how pissed you'd be if that idiot down the hall who couldn't write good code to save his life made as much money as you do.
- Florin_Andrei 12y ago
  You seem to assume that money is the sole motivator, everywhere. What's really going on is that you're trapped in your own world view, validated by people like you, all alike in your social circles. My advice: at least try and get out of it a little. I'm up to my gills in the high-tech culture, working at a startup in the Silicon Valley - but my wife is a teacher. I went to a Halloween party hosted by some of her co-workers - it's a tremendous difference in terms of culture, ideals, etc. It was literally like meeting people from a different country. Metrics aren't the final answer to every question. When dealing with people (which is what education is doing), a simple, single, narrow number used to reduce everything to a handy metric can be incredibly misleading. Whenever I head some folks saying that we need more metrics and more competition to make the education system better, I just want to tell them: "thank you, but sit down and shut up, cause you've no idea what you're talking about."
  - harryh 12y ago
    My wife is also a teacher(1). While I didn't go to a Halloween party with her coworkers this year I've been to quite a few other parties with teachers. So maybe don't make assumptions about my world view huh? I never said that metrics were the final answer to every question either. Teaching is obviously an incredibly nuanced profession. If, as Michael Lewis showed us, we can't even measure baseball player's performance very well then oh gosh it's going to be much much harder for teachers (or programmers too!). But that doesn't mean there aren't any differences in skill either. There are great programmers. There are not so good programmers. There are great teachers. There are bad teachers. If we deny this reality and just pay them the same amount then eventually the good ones are going to figure out they're getting screwed no matter how much they intrinsically like the gig. 1. http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/communication_and_me/faculty/alice_e_marwick_88434.asp http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/commun...
gabemart 12y ago
> Your performance is measured in a single week at the end of each year by statistically-controlled standardized tasks. My main point was that if you're going to appraise teachers based on their students' standardized test scores, it would seem to make sense to use a statistical model that tries to measure how much of an effect the teacher has on the predicted test scores of their students. I'm completely open to the argument that we shouldn't be appraising teachers based on student test scores, but that does not seem to be the position the article is advocating.
aetherson 12y ago
To be clear, most HN readers' employment and compensation is based on a manger's holistic sense of that HNer's value. We can generally be fired without cause. If teachers want to argue that they should be in an employment regime similar to programmers, sure, I'm sympathetic. But my strong impression is that they don't want that at all.

by asolove 12y ago

harryh 12y ago

If you don't have some sort of system to extrinsically reward people with different skill levels different amounts than the best people are eventually going to figure that out and go do something else where they'll get paid what they're worth. If you don't believe this think about how pissed you'd be if that idiot down the hall who couldn't write good code to save his life made as much money as you do.

Florin_Andrei 12y ago
You seem to assume that money is the sole motivator, everywhere. What's really going on is that you're trapped in your own world view, validated by people like you, all alike in your social circles. My advice: at least try and get out of it a little. I'm up to my gills in the high-tech culture, working at a startup in the Silicon Valley - but my wife is a teacher. I went to a Halloween party hosted by some of her co-workers - it's a tremendous difference in terms of culture, ideals, etc. It was literally like meeting people from a different country. Metrics aren't the final answer to every question. When dealing with people (which is what education is doing), a simple, single, narrow number used to reduce everything to a handy metric can be incredibly misleading. Whenever I head some folks saying that we need more metrics and more competition to make the education system better, I just want to tell them: "thank you, but sit down and shut up, cause you've no idea what you're talking about."
- harryh 12y ago
  My wife is also a teacher(1). While I didn't go to a Halloween party with her coworkers this year I've been to quite a few other parties with teachers. So maybe don't make assumptions about my world view huh? I never said that metrics were the final answer to every question either. Teaching is obviously an incredibly nuanced profession. If, as Michael Lewis showed us, we can't even measure baseball player's performance very well then oh gosh it's going to be much much harder for teachers (or programmers too!). But that doesn't mean there aren't any differences in skill either. There are great programmers. There are not so good programmers. There are great teachers. There are bad teachers. If we deny this reality and just pay them the same amount then eventually the good ones are going to figure out they're getting screwed no matter how much they intrinsically like the gig. 1. http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/communication_and_me/faculty/alice_e_marwick_88434.asp http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/commun...

gabemart 12y ago

> Your performance is measured in a single week at the end of each year by statistically-controlled standardized tasks. My main point was that if you're going to appraise teachers based on their students' standardized test scores, it would seem to make sense to use a statistical model that tries to measure how much of an effect the teacher has on the predicted test scores of their students. I'm completely open to the argument that we shouldn't be appraising teachers based on student test scores, but that does not seem to be the position the article is advocating.

aetherson 12y ago

To be clear, most HN readers' employment and compensation is based on a manger's holistic sense of that HNer's value. We can generally be fired without cause. If teachers want to argue that they should be in an employment regime similar to programmers, sure, I'm sympathetic. But my strong impression is that they don't want that at all.