black mirror wrote:
Possibly because public education sucks (on the average) in the US?
It does? According to whom? What does "on average" mean?
We educate EVERYONE, fella. We don't kick our underperforming kids to the curb to pump up scores. If you're going to use grade level test scores, etc, with other countries, then perhaps you should only count our top 50%.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_myth_of_public_school_failureIndependent thinker wrote:
HRE wrote:You want to compare teachers to software engineers? Ok. How many threads have you ever seen here criticizing software engineers and their salsries, job performances and the like? I have never seen such a thread here.
If people were forced to pay software engineers' salaries through taxes and software engineers' salaries were based on tenure instead of ability, I think you would find some threads.
Teachers' salaries are a very tricky topic. The security provided by the job is something that ensures quality applicants. The lack of monetary incentives for quality work can stifle improvements. We all had a teacher growing up that clearly was just going through the motions. We all also had some great teachers, who clearly went above and beyond the minimum needed to maintain their job. Ideally this difference would be reflected in their pay.
We never have threads about weeding out incompetent cops, firemen, Department of Motor Vehicle clerks, highway crew employees, or really anyone else who gets paid with public money. It's always teachers and there's always someone like Mr. Potato Head who is mad at someone, has no real solution to whatever bothers him other than a general "off with their heads," comment, then decides he's going to set himself up as arbiter of what's intelligent or logical.
If you believe people like him the classrooms are crammed with people who should be out of a job. My kids have now spent a combined 21 years in public schools which means we must have dealt with at least 70-80 teachers by now. I have yet to find anyone of them that seems to need a "weeding."
Were they all great? No. Very few were. Most were decent or competent. Did I like them all? Almost. There's one I dislkie intensely but that was just over an episode that I think he handled very badly. I wouldn't even "weed" him though I hope my second son doesn't get him.
Weed out every truly incompetent teacher in the US and who's going to teach your kids when you're done? Almost the same people who were teaching them before the worst ones were weeded out. Most of them are not outstanding but they also are not incompetent.
If we decide that only the "best and brightest" are going to teach our kids we're either going to have thousands of students per class or millions of untaught students. "Best and brightest" is also very rare. Your teachers, your doctors, your attorney, your track coach, your plumber are all likely pretty average. You are too. So am I.
There would be nothing wrong and maybe a lot that's right about getting rid of the worst schoolteachers in the country just as there's be nothing wrong in getting rid of the worst cops, social workers, car salesmen, or anything else. But the sort of vitriol that gets thrown around towards teachers convinces me that in weeding out the worst a lot who are competent but who pissed someone influential off would get whacked as well.
Essentially, some of us like job security and others don't. I'm in the first group. Comparing teachers and software engineers, I see the teacher as having something that the software engineer and anyone else who has held their job for a reasonable time also should have.
So we shouldnt try to do anything because things are SOOO great now?
Sorry I'm not buying it.
In every industry bosses evaluate employees and hire and fire and promote based on productivity- except education. Some how everyone else has figured it out, but the school refuse to go along.
Like someone said, just give pay based on age if that's the case. "You're 50 yrs old and breathing, you now make $50,000. Congratulations!"
HRE wrote:
We never have threads about weeding out incompetent cops, firemen, Department of Motor Vehicle clerks, highway crew employees, or really anyone else who gets paid with public money. It's always teachers
I see your point though that teachers are seemingly singled out more often than most. I just felt that your example of a private sector job was a poor analogy for the reasons I gave.
As I said before, teacher compensation is a very tough issue, which is why we're seeing so much passion on each side in this thread. Most of us can agree that the current system isn't ideal, but the implementation of a new system would be immensely complex.
One of issues with the current system is that wages are independent of subject taught. This is not to say that one subject is "more difficult" than another, but wages should be a product of simple supply and demand. Currently there is a desperate need for quality science/math teachers, yet science/math teachers are paid the same as the overabundant gym teacher. I know several highly intelligent individuals that started as math teachers, but went back to school so that they could become gym teachers exactly for this reason.
Aquafina wrote:
So we shouldnt try to do anything because things are SOOO great now?
Sorry I'm not buying it.
In every industry bosses evaluate employees and hire and fire and promote based on productivity- except education. Some how everyone else has figured it out, but the school refuse to go along.
Like someone said, just give pay based on age if that's the case. "You're 50 yrs old and breathing, you now make $50,000. Congratulations!"
You're acting like coming up with teacher evaluation criteria is a new thing that no one has thought of before. It may be shocking to you, but teachers have always been evaluated, and the worst teachers have always been fired. However, the process is not as simple as it would be in a "regular" job.
I'd like to introduce many on here to the concept of the bell curve. Not everyone can be the best at his or her profession. In a large population set, such as teachers, if you get rid of the worst, the bell curve doesn't disappear, it is simply redrawn based on new criteria. So you will always have "underachieving" teachers. Now do you see one of the problems with stat-based evaluations?
sheep farmer wrote:
The real problem is in producing quality evaluations. Who is going to do it, what is quantitative grounds for firing, how do we account for differences in subjects & students, and how do we measure with anything approaching a fine grain?
My parents are both teachers (my father is a professor, my mother a middle school teacher who has worked in a number of different subjects) and I of course encountered bad and good teachers in middle school, high school, and college. So I've heard about and thought about this for quite some time.
WHO:
Who is qualified to evaluate teachers?
It's not students. Consistently tough teachers who grade critically and ask for excellence in the classroom are going to get shot down on student evaluations. I heard an awful lot of bitching in college from students who actually had to do a decent amount of work for a class.
It's not principals. They're quite far removed from the day-to-day operations of the classroom, usually having been out of it for a while. Dropping in once or twice a year for an evaluation is not a good indicator of progress or lack thereof - and that is really all the time a principal has to evaluate a teacher. There are usually not that many principals per school (3 for my elementary & middle school, which was K-8 with about 10 teachers per grade. 90 teachers, 2 days a year for each for evaluations...you get the idea).
It's not standardized tests. The 'chain of education' that leads up to a teacher inheriting students from another teacher has more to do (esp. as you get farther and farther from kindergarten!) with their current state of education than anything their teacher will teach them. You get kids who don't know much, you will probably end up spitting out kids at the end of the year who don't know much. Having everything ride on these huge tests also just sucks. You have to stop teaching to prepare for it, and they tend to have horrible biases depending on economic / cultural situations. We also can't separate out what kids SHOULD be improving that aren't, which ones will not improve no matter how much effort we put into it, etc. And how do you test teachers on music curriculum, physical education, gifted and talented, theater?
It's not other teachers, though they'd be the most qualified to do it. Like principals, there's just not enough time in the day, and the only people who really know what's going on in a classroom is the teacher and the students. They're the ones that are there every day.
Optimally you'd want to blend this all together to measure it, but then it still ends up being subjective, unwieldy, costly to administrate and execute, and gives you no better idea of who is a good teacher. It just gives you some numbers that change each year. Maybe they're correlated to reality. Maybe they're not. Who knows?? It would take years of weeding out 'bad' teachers with this strategy, controlling test numbers and evaluations for economic conditions and just plain unintelligent students, before you knew if it worked at all. And if it didn't? What then? Just say 'sorry' to the people you fired mistakenly?
It's a very John Stuart Mill sort of problem. How do we measure the teachers that are best for everyone when the effect of education cannot be measured well? I got a decent education by weaseling my way through an awful public school system with a 50% graduation rate and into a good college. Do I count as a gold star for both bad teachers and good teachers at that school? What about kids who would have dropped out at 16 no matter what?
How can you demand that a person should lose their livelihood on a guess of whether they are apt at it?
No this is not a problem. At least not one that should get in the way of progress. It is getting tiresome addressing the same points over and over again.
Reviews are tough.
Reviews are never perfect. Sometimes people do get fired wrongly. Sometimes people do get raises undeservedly.
But real reviews with real consequences happen everywhere else. And I guarantee you that in every other situation those who are being reviewed could come up with equally many and equally valid reasons why reviews just cannot work in their situation.
But they happen.
And they work.
Aquafina wrote:
So we shouldnt try to do anything because things are SOOO great now?
Sorry I'm not buying it.
In every industry bosses evaluate employees and hire and fire and promote based on productivity- except education. Some how everyone else has figured it out, but the school refuse to go along.
Like someone said, just give pay based on age if that's the case. "You're 50 yrs old and breathing, you now make $50,000. Congratulations!"
Doctors are evaluated based on productivity? Nope. All doctors lose patients, have trouble with them not taking meds, not following recommendations, etc. Is the doctor who has 12% of his patients die in a given year less effective than the one who only has 8% die? Of course not. The patients are different, and there are elements out of the doctors control.
This example applies to many, many professions. How, exactly, are fireman "productive"? Judges? Dude, all professions do not produce things: products, sales numbers, etc, etc.
Most professions, in fact, evaluation based on COMPETENCE. Not productivity, as it doesn't really apply. And if one attempts to apply it (as with doctors), you get absurdity.
So... you're clearly delusional, and you clearly have a vendetta against educators. Everyone else has it "figured out"? Please.
Mr. Potato Head, you are a douche.
You think you have all of the answers but you do not. You can respond to everyone with your opinions but you never have a solution for yourself.
If you know how to fix this problem then do it.
Previous people have stated problems and you respond with an opinion. Come up with a solution.
Teachers are not looked highly upon. It is some work that a lot of people would not like to do. When it comes to having a standard what do you look for? Test scores. Teachers will begin to teach only the test and nothing else. Then what? We become a society that can recite answers but not come up with new and creative solutions? (Sounds a lot like you, opinions no solutions)
Get a clue and try to put yourself in the mind of a teacher, principal, superintendent before you go nuts on a running message board about how "simple" the solution.
The value added (http://www.cgp.upenn.edu/ope_value.html) model seems to be the future. What do you guys thinnk about it? Teachers?
Mr Potato Head wrote:
No this is not a problem. At least not one that should get in the way of progress. It is getting tiresome addressing the same points over and over again.
Reviews are tough.
Reviews are never perfect. Sometimes people do get fired wrongly. Sometimes people do get raises undeservedly.
But real reviews with real consequences happen everywhere else. And I guarantee you that in every other situation those who are being reviewed could come up with equally many and equally valid reasons why reviews just cannot work in their situation.
But they happen.
And they work.
You're coming around. NEWS FLASH: Teachers actually do have reviews, and some are quite intense. Obviously, this depends on the principal, but I've had three during my career. Much like some bosses in the private sector, I've had a variety - one was a hard a*s who wanted all of our lesson plans, popped in frequently, and held "ineffective" teachers to the fire, if you will. My current principal is very hands off; she trusts us (perhaps to her fault) to the extent that her evaluations are often formalitiies. I'm sure there are private sector eval's just like this.
Bottom line? This thread started with you calling for a firing of a good number of teachers (immediately), and an elimination of tenure and pensions. It's evolved into, "there needs to be a review process in place."
Well, there already is one. Thread over.
No this is not a problem. At least not one that should get in the way of progress. It is getting tiresome addressing the same points over and over again.
Reviews are tough.
Reviews are never perfect. Sometimes people do get fired wrongly. Sometimes people do get raises undeservedly.
But real reviews with real consequences happen everywhere else. And I guarantee you that in every other situation those who are being reviewed could come up with equally many and equally valid reasons why reviews just cannot work in their situation.
But they happen.
And they work.
I can understand that it would be tiresome addressing the same points over and over again. But you've not done that, so I'm not sure you have any claim to it.
I am an engineer and I cannot think of reasons why evaluations would be as nearly as hard for my profession. It is extremely easy to tell what is done well and what is not, whether I did my work on time or whether I did not, and whether I am participating in the company in a meaningful way.
There aren't any easy ways to do that for teachers.
We aren't talking perfect reviews. We are talking useful ones. I just don't think they can be useful without a lot of effort - and the amount of effort you put into it will cost more than the bad (or good) teacher you manage to fire because of it.
You've managed to brush away all the arguments other people have made without offering anything of substance yourself. If you wish to continue arguing your position, perhaps you had better make a hasty left onto the road called Useful Discussion, and off of the highway of Ignorant Speculation where you are now spewing your pollution.
Ho Hum wrote:
The value added (http://www.cgp.upenn.edu/ope_value.html) model seems to be the future. What do you guys thinnk about it? Teachers?
Good in theory. But, like many other measures, based on several flawed principles.
First the good:
1. Not norm-referenced. Kids of low ability, even if they don't "pass," still should show a year's worth of growth.
2. It expects growth similar to a student's previous years in school. This is, obviously, different student to student.
3. In theory, the levels schools and classrooms. All students must show growth. Ok.
The problems:
1. It assumes students develop at a predictable, even rate. Children develop at varying speeds, due to a million factors. For example, a student may show a ton of growth between grades 3 & 4, but then that child's father passes away and the family moves. Will that child show the same amount of growth in 5th grade? Most likely, no. And it will have nothing to do with the teacher.
2. It assumes student academic gains are due solely to that year's teacher. In subjects like English, it takes years to master higher-level thinking required in deep reading, identifying theme, etc. (Yes, these are higher order skills for students in middle school). The skill may be introducted in 6th grade, but the gains not realized until 9th, when it all "clicks." Does this mean the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade teachers did nothing? No. It means the child didn't develop evenly. More like a looonnggg slope and then a peak. Which is normal.
3. It assumes test writers can develop assessments that can delineate - exactly - "one year's growth." What in the world does this mean? You ask a 100 educators, you'll get a 100 different answers. When schools are being evaluated on whether or not a child made a year's worth of growth you had better (a) clearly define what exactly that is, for all subjects in all grades, and (b) design assessments that can discern one grade level achievement from the other. Consistently. IMO, this is impossible, except maaaybe in math. In subjects like social studies, the area of study changes year to year. There is no "cumulative effect". In language arts, the standards are nearly identical between grades 6 and 9. SO what exactly is a year's worth of growth? No one knows.
4. These "value-added" measures only apply to the basics" math, english, science, social studies. This is only a fraction of teachers. How is value added in Art? Band? Gym? (Hey! You made 8 of 10 freethrows this year! You're up from 5 last year!) Of course, with this example, that student would be expect to make 11 of 10 free throws the next. It's ridiculous.
SO overall, it's good in theory. It makes a nice slogan or platform for politicians who espouse "reform" in education. Unfortunately, it's ripe with flaws. As the following writer notes, it's like "measuring height with rubber bands"
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2010/10/09/value-added-measurement-unreliable.html?sid=101I agree that there should be checks and balances, but I'm leaning on the side of capitalism. Teachers certainly shouldn't be fired solely because they are making more than new recruits. But right now there are way too many a**holes, layabouts, and plain old shit teachers that stopped caring as soon as they got tenure. There are good reasons to fire them, it just won't happen because of the union. There should never be a point in your career when you can last over someone else without working as hard as them. And a lot of these teachers are finding loopholes to run up their salaries in the last year to get huge pensions for the rest of their lives. These are the same teachers that were complaining when their peers were fired because the SCHOOL DISTRICT WAS IN DEBT. Well you can't have it both ways.
Doctors get evaluated on productivity all the time. How many patients did you see per hour? How many specialist referrals did you make? And so on. I am an promise you if there was a surgeon whose patients who were dying at 50% higher rate, it would be investigated.Job evaluation is hard. But it is done all over the place. Personally I think that the bottom 5% of teachers should just have classes full of other teacher's kids. If you believe the evaluation system is flawed, the kids would be getting the same education. As far as the bell curve shifting. Sure it happens which is a good thing. But there is also poor teachers coming in (those with little experience) and good ones leaving (those retiring). As far actual percent firing, the percentage would drop after a while (have to clear out 20 years of dead wood). Eventually you would get to the point where you only have to get rid of 1 or 2% of the underachivers.
drinker of kool aid wrote:
Aquafina wrote:So we shouldnt try to do anything because things are SOOO great now?
Sorry I'm not buying it.
In every industry bosses evaluate employees and hire and fire and promote based on productivity- except education. Some how everyone else has figured it out, but the school refuse to go along.
Like someone said, just give pay based on age if that's the case. "You're 50 yrs old and breathing, you now make $50,000. Congratulations!"
Doctors are evaluated based on productivity? Nope. All doctors lose patients, have trouble with them not taking meds, not following recommendations, etc. Is the doctor who has 12% of his patients die in a given year less effective than the one who only has 8% die? Of course not. The patients are different, and there are elements out of the doctors control.
This example applies to many, many professions. How, exactly, are fireman "productive"? Judges? Dude, all professions do not produce things: products, sales numbers, etc, etc.
Most professions, in fact, evaluation based on COMPETENCE. Not productivity, as it doesn't really apply. And if one attempts to apply it (as with doctors), you get absurdity.
So... you're clearly delusional, and you clearly have a vendetta against educators. Everyone else has it "figured out"? Please.
I don't know why anyone thinks we need to make any changes to attract the best and brightest into this profession.
Aren't we doing a great job of it today?
To those who think it would be a "good business" practice to fire someone every time someone younger comes along you are absolutely wrong. If it were such a good idea you would see private companies doing it. This simply doesn't happen. What young person would choose to go work for a company that fires all of its employees once they turn 40 or 50. They would take their expertise to another company who doesn't throw out their workers prematurely.
I just used software engineers for comparison because someone mentioned them in a previous post. Non-teaching public employees make a better comparison.
When I was in college I worked for a city highway crew in the summers. If anyone was stealing public money it was us, though we didn't get huge amounts of it. But we didn't do a lot of anything in terms of work and spent literally hours each week just hanging out on the truck under a tree on a deserted road. In four years of this there was one complaint made about us wasting money. Much different than teachers are perceived.
this could've been such a great troll but its turned into a serious discussion.
This is all very interesting. But...it's Friday night and I need to go to bed so I can go in tomorrow morning and catch up on some work. I'll probably be there from about 6-11:00 a.m.
I probably should mention that I'm a middle school science teacher and take great pride in what I do.
Ineffective teachers can be and are fired. Administrators (like ours) make sure good teachers are supported and those who aren't "cutting it" are either fired or put in very undesirable positions.
Been at it for 19 yrs.
for reals now wrote:
Seriously, think about both of those concepts for a second.
Pension - the worker will continue to get paid for the rest of his/her life for NOT working. How utterly unsustainable, unproductive, and ridiculous.
Tenure - a teacher/professor works hard for a number of years and then has permanent job security thereafter. Must be nice!
If you have a pension or tenure, hey, I'm not knocking you, you (or your union) negotiated those things into your compensation package, more power to you. But it boggles my mind that management would ever accept such an arrangement, or even that someone would come up with these concepts in the first place.
It boggles your mind because your still have to pop your zits in the morning. Until you have worked for 30 years in the same job and have put your money into your retirement you will not understand.
Old age is here before you know it. You have to prepare for the days when you are old. When you get old you can't do what you did when you young.
Also don't foreget mangement also gets old, we all do, so they also piggy back on compensation packages, even better packages.
Ask your dumb ass question when you are appraoching 60 and you find yourself not being able to do what you did 30. You will then hope you have a pension and tenure.