It sounds as if Barack Obama has been listening to some economists (maybe even Austan Goolsbee): he has come out in favor of merit pay for schoolteachers. From an A.P. article:
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told the largest teachers union Thursday that performance-based merit pay ought to be considered in public schools.
Teachers at the National Education Association’s annual convention have expressed concerns about merit pay, which is gaining favor with lawmakers, including those currently rewriting the No Child Left Behind law.
Teachers say they worry that linking their pay to their students’ test scores would be unfair to teachers who have students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Teachers also say it isn’t fair to offer merit pay only to people who teach courses that are tested, like reading and math, but not to those who teach subjects like music or art.
Obama said teachers’ salaries should be increased across the board, but he also said there should be fair ways of measuring teacher performance and compensating teachers accordingly.
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wow – you people are all crazy. how can testing a group of students NOT give you some better idea as to how those students are performing? How can some data be better than no data?
You all sound like the tired old mantras from teachers unions who reject any sort of attempt to objectively measure how well teachers do on their jobs.
I read a study once that concluded that average class size has NO CORRELATION to how well students do. You know what does strongly correlate to student achievement? parental involvement and good teachers. Yes some teachers can perform better than others – and it can be measured.
Teachers unions don’t want this and instead tout small class sizes – to increase the number of teacher jobs! when what we should be doing is firing crappy teachers and giving good teachers larger class sizes.
Bravo to Obama, I say – this is just the type of stuff that might eventually fix the crappy public school system that we have. Higher pay, merit-bases increases, firing of bad teachers, and some sort of voucher system that will bankrupt crappy schools is just the kind of forward thinking that is needed to fix the educational system.
wow – you people are all crazy. how can testing a group of students NOT give you some better idea as to how those students are performing? How can some data be better than no data?
You all sound like the tired old mantras from teachers unions who reject any sort of attempt to objectively measure how well teachers do on their jobs.
I read a study once that concluded that average class size has NO CORRELATION to how well students do. You know what does strongly correlate to student achievement? parental involvement and good teachers. Yes some teachers can perform better than others – and it can be measured.
Teachers unions don’t want this and instead tout small class sizes – to increase the number of teacher jobs! when what we should be doing is firing crappy teachers and giving good teachers larger class sizes.
Bravo to Obama, I say – this is just the type of stuff that might eventually fix the crappy public school system that we have. Higher pay, merit-bases increases, firing of bad teachers, and some sort of voucher system that will bankrupt crappy schools is just the kind of forward thinking that is needed to fix the educational system.
i’m a teacher.
i support the idea of merit pay.
i also (as an engineer) know that in order to make merit pay effective we must develop functional metrics to evaluate a students growth. the simple multiple choice tests, administered once a year with a 5 month feedback lag are not going to be effective at this.
developing a metric that both provides good feedback, and isn’t capable of being gamed by the subjects (either students or teachers) is non trivial.
the largest obstacle to effective reform, however, is the overwhelming attitude of those who know nothing of what it’s like in the classroom (as evidenced by badger99′s post) who think they know the answers to very intractable problems, and who will throw a wrench at every valid argument made in favor of positive school reform.
i’m a teacher.
i support the idea of merit pay.
i also (as an engineer) know that in order to make merit pay effective we must develop functional metrics to evaluate a students growth. the simple multiple choice tests, administered once a year with a 5 month feedback lag are not going to be effective at this.
developing a metric that both provides good feedback, and isn’t capable of being gamed by the subjects (either students or teachers) is non trivial.
the largest obstacle to effective reform, however, is the overwhelming attitude of those who know nothing of what it’s like in the classroom (as evidenced by badger99′s post) who think they know the answers to very intractable problems, and who will throw a wrench at every valid argument made in favor of positive school reform.
Why does it have to be one or the other? Why not combine some standardized metrics with management evaluations? Isn’t that how it works in most other jobs? Why is education so different? Some sort of algorithm based on test scores, average grades, percentage of kids passed to the next grade, classroom attendance, etc., then a final set of variables based on the qualitative evaluation? To get around grade inflation and whatnot, there could be some sort of auditing of the assignments, tests, and grading, measuring it to the district’s curriculum. As for variables impacted by disadvantaged districts, these can be normalized to some sort of national average.
Why does it have to be one or the other? Why not combine some standardized metrics with management evaluations? Isn’t that how it works in most other jobs? Why is education so different? Some sort of algorithm based on test scores, average grades, percentage of kids passed to the next grade, classroom attendance, etc., then a final set of variables based on the qualitative evaluation? To get around grade inflation and whatnot, there could be some sort of auditing of the assignments, tests, and grading, measuring it to the district’s curriculum. As for variables impacted by disadvantaged districts, these can be normalized to some sort of national average.
wow – you people are all crazy.
Boy, is that ever right. And you’re crazy too.
Why does everyone ignore the statistical studies? It’s not about teachers. It’s not about reading to them, or taking them to the library, or that ridiculous No Child Left Behind.
Only 10% of students at select colleges are from divorced parents. But no politician is going to look out on a group of voters and say, “the problem with education in America IS PARENTING!”
It’s about students from families of the lower socio-economic classes. If you go to the inner city and pay teachers by test scores, then you are going to be paying them the least money. The students who supposedly need the most help have the poorest paid teachers. THAT’S WHAT WE HAVE NOW!
Because energy is cheap in this society, we self-select our communities. The lower classes are seperated from the upper. The car is our escape from living with them. So poor students have no role model other than poor parents with poor parenting skills.
It’s the parents…stupid! What are you going to do or say about that?
wow – you people are all crazy.
Boy, is that ever right. And you’re crazy too.
Why does everyone ignore the statistical studies? It’s not about teachers. It’s not about reading to them, or taking them to the library, or that ridiculous No Child Left Behind.
Only 10% of students at select colleges are from divorced parents. But no politician is going to look out on a group of voters and say, “the problem with education in America IS PARENTING!”
It’s about students from families of the lower socio-economic classes. If you go to the inner city and pay teachers by test scores, then you are going to be paying them the least money. The students who supposedly need the most help have the poorest paid teachers. THAT’S WHAT WE HAVE NOW!
Because energy is cheap in this society, we self-select our communities. The lower classes are seperated from the upper. The car is our escape from living with them. So poor students have no role model other than poor parents with poor parenting skills.
It’s the parents…stupid! What are you going to do or say about that?