America's Education System Is Fine

[Jolly Rogerer]

So if my test scores are the metric by which it's determined if i'm "good" or not, why would I teach at an urban school? Too risky to teach underprivileged kids who are already behind. Why not stick to the suburbs, where its far easier to get good scores?

You asked how we can tell whether a teacher is good or not, not how we can incentivize people to work in urban schools. But I think you are assuming that children in urban schools will not respond as well to good teaching, and that even if this is true that it can't be normed for. I disagree.

To me it's pretty simple. Students should improve over the year, and with some good testing we can even normalize the results to take into account the students in the classroom as well as the teacher in complicated ways. These sorts of tests have already been under development for over a decade in places Michigan State University's School of Education, which came to the conclusion that teaching matters a lot and wanted to quantify that in order to teach teachers exactly how to teach better.

 

[Zelig]

By having the teachers be managed by managers who treat it like an education business.
Like in the real world, how things get done.

Good luck.

 

[Zelig]

So if my test scores are the metric by which it's determined if i'm "good" or not, why would I teach at an urban school? Too risky to teach underprivileged kids who are already behind. Why not stick to the suburbs, where its far easier to get good scores?

Triple teacher salary, have them sign 3-year contracts without knowing where they will be assigned, if they quit, treat them the same as deployed people who desert from the military.

 

[Jolly Rogerer]

Triple teacher salary, have them sign 3-year contracts without knowing where they will be assigned, if they quit, treat them the same as deployed people who desert from the military.

"Looks like I'm going to do bomb disposal in Fallujah! Oh thank god, I was scared to death it was going to be teaching science in Detroit!"

 

[Xanikk999]

By having the teachers be managed by managers who treat it like an education business.
Like in the real world, how things get done.

The business model does not work for everything. How would treating education like a business change for the better?

What would these changes be like? Do you kick kids out of school for getting bad grades instead of trying to help them? No free education?

 

[Arakhor]

I'm wondering why anyone would start a thread about America's education system being fine and then part of the way through proclaim that he is very intelligent and found it all easy anyway.

 

[cardgame]

Clearly not intelligent enough to make good on his premise :3

 

[SpiritWolf]

The fact that anecdote is used to infer upon the whole population (without any regard to statistics and real data) makes the OP deliciously ironic.

 

[Miles Teg]

DT, I don't think you're really getting this. You keep saying that education reform is difficult and complicated, and there aren't any easy answers. I know you've taught with TFA in a crappy urban school, put god knows how many hours into studying education policy and keeping up with developments, and all that jazz.

But these people have read things. Serious things. ON THE INTERNETS. And they've applied their fine minds shaped by several years of high school to the problem, and realized that it's all easy. The education gap doesn't exist, because they've never seen it (Like magnets. HOW DO THEY WORK?). If it does exist, it's probably the fault of the stupid people teaching them, or the stupid people they have to go to class with. DT, why won't you listen to their expertise?

 

[BuckeyeJim]

Triple teacher salary, have them sign 3-year contracts without knowing where they will be assigned, if they quit, treat them the same as deployed people who desert from the military.

What would be the goal here? I ask this with all sincerity. Is this a suggestion that our current teachers in urbania are deficient in some manner? I can understand how increasing salary may attract more intellectual talent, and may even attract teachers who are more equipped to teach, but sadly I do not think that artificially inflating the costs of teachers will have any positive effect. Offering up money will not thicken the skin of people teaching in urbania, especially the types of people you're trying to attract into the system. Threatening teachers with desertion will not make them care any more or less after being numbed by their every day existence in an awful urban school. The goal is to get students to learn, and more money to teachers does not in any way encourage this. I would sooner assume that this would do nothing more than result in the same situation we have now: children who do not care about learning, who are engrossed in anti-intellectualism, taught by adults who are so worn down and strung out from dealing with the children, their parents, and the vast ocean of social problems that downtown frequently describes, that they become lost and completely apathetic to their situation and environment; hopeless if you will. Money does not reverse apathy.

The way I see it, whether you add money to the system, or look at it is now, it boils down to this.

Inner city schools will have new bright eyed teachers trying to save the universe with their egalitarian viewpoints and ultra-progressive post-modern approach to teaching. They quickly learn that it is impossible for them to penetrate the mentality of urbania, become jaded, and either: A.) Remain within that system doing the best they can, but making no meaningful impact because the root cause of the issues lie outside school walls. Or B.) They get the hell out and go some place where they are better appreciated and, as a completely independent point, are better compensated.

You will not fix this with money or threats. I believe the number of able people who would take the money to endure that kind of occupational stress for any length of time is nearly zero. In fact, I would even suggest that young adults would take advantage of this and use it as a jump to earn compensation that would otherwise be outside of private sector job prospects. People would sign up, do a few years, bank some cash, and then get out without ever giving a flying crap about the kids themselves. You're essentially converting it from a teaching/child centric model, to a money centric model. What type of office professional who's already making that kind of money, or even 80K is going to forfeit their cozy occupational cublicled existence for the schools of urbania for $120,000 a year and actually care about teaching? At least for any length of time beyond 2 years? Who could stand it that isn't already standing it? To also reiterate, none of this addresses the issues associated with the pupils sitting in the seats and the kinetic energy that's working against their academic lives.

Oh, and just for the record, people were talking about rasing salaries to 80K. Milwaukee Public School teachers are making over 100K per year on average, and those schools are absolutely terrible. There has to be dozens of rural schools running on half the money that are producing better results with similar poverty rates.

 

[downtown]

You asked how we can tell whether a teacher is good or not, not how we can incentivize people to work in urban schools. But I think you are assuming that children in urban schools will not respond as well to good teaching, and that even if this is true that it can't be normed for. I disagree.

Nah, I think Urban kids can respond to quality teaching...I see it every time I go back to the classroom. I don't think we have perfected a method of examination well enough to use it as the principle aspect of teacher evaluation though.

To me it's pretty simple. Students should improve over the year, and with some good testing we can even normalize the results to take into account the students in the classroom as well as the teacher in complicated ways. These sorts of tests have already been under development for over a decade in places Michigan State University's School of Education, which came to the conclusion that teaching matters a lot and wanted to quantify that in order to teach teachers exactly how to teach better.

Well, you are correct that several studies have shown that quality teaching matters more than any other classroom specific variable...but not as much as some outside the classroom variables. What we are still struggling with is identifying exactly what makes for "good teaching", or predicts good teaching, and, more importantly to the reform movement, how we can evaluate it using tests.

My point about the disparity between rich and poor schools, as it pertains to testing evaluations, still stands though. I think we agree that we expect students to grow by at least 1 grade level a year...ideally, growing to the *correct* grade level. In a classroom of kids with highly educated and motivated parents, one can reach this benchmark with average (or even below average) teaching competency. This isn't to say teaching at a rich school doesnt have problems, but getting kids to hit benchmark tests isn't one of them.

Compare to say, Detroit or New Orleans, and you'll find a highly competent teacher can struggle strongly to meet that benchmark, when considering the amount of remediation needed and the loss from summer vacation that disproportionately impacts poor schools. The Detroit teacher might actually be a better teacher, but the scores wouldn't reflect it.

Testing is an important tool, and standardized tests should play a part in teacher evaluation, but they should not be the only part, and maybe not even the biggest part. They do, after all, only tell you the knowledge recall on a particular day, whereas administration observations and classroom work samples (which should include a daily assessment of knowledge) would help complete the picture.

 

[downtown]

Oh, and just for the record, people were talking about rasing salaries to 80K. Milwaukee Public School teachers are making over 100K per year on average, and those schools are absolutely terrible. There has to be dozens of rural schools running on half the money that are producing better results with similar poverty rates.

I'll address the rest of this post later, but this is flat out wrong. The average teacher salary in MPS is 56,000. The compensation package, when you factor in insurance and pension, according to the Maclver Institute, is over 100K...but those pension benefits are not realized until after teachers have been in the system for many years. It is highly disingenuous to insinuate they make 100k in salary.

 

[GamezRule]

Why do we have a Jolly Rodger and a Jolly Rogerer?

 

[BuckeyeJim]

I'll address the rest of this post later, but this is flat out wrong. The average teacher salary in MPS is 56,000. The compensation package, when you factor in insurance and pension, according to the Maclver Institute, is over 100K...but those pension benefits are not realized until after teachers have been in the system for many years. It is highly disingenuous to insinuate they make 100k in salary.

Well, for what it's worth, I said they "make." I was pretty careful about where I went with it.

So are we talking about tripling salary AND tripling benefits? Were we talking about total compensation to begin with? Either way my point still stands. Milwaukee Public School teachers have a pretty sweet deal. They earn good money, have a benefits package that most people earning under 150K would die for, more paid time off than anyone in the private sector. The theory presented in this thread is that this kind of money should result in improved performance. But it doesn't. Milwaukee Public Schools are still terrible. What's the suggestion, that we can go from 100K to 300K in compensation and it'll be like a magical wand and fix everything? I hate to tell ya this, but if you reduced compensation to 75K, or 60K, or even 50K, I bet results wouldn't budge much.

 

[downtown]

What would be the goal here? I ask this with all sincerity. Is this a suggestion that our current teachers in urbania are deficient in some manner?

Yes, it is. Our urban teachers have fewer certifications, years of experience, lower Praxis and ACT scores and lower college GPAs than their suburban peers. Schools no longer have a captive labor market now that women can enter medicine, engineering and business, and they have been able to recruit better talent.

I can understand how increasing salary may attract more intellectual talent, and may even attract teachers who are more equipped to teach, but sadly I do not think that artificially inflating the costs of teachers will have any positive effect.

So you don't think that bringing better teachers has any positive impact at all? Research disagrees.

Offering up money will not thicken the skin of people teaching in urbania, especially the types of people you're trying to attract into the system.

Of course it will! People have a limit of what they will put up with relative to their salary. For 9 bucks an hour, I will put up with almost nothing. For 90,000 bucks an hour, I could put up with an awful lot (I think I'd go back to my New Orleans classroom for 60,000). Older, more experienced teachers stay solely because their contracts give out the huge pension payouts after 30 years experience. We have quality young teachers leave not just because they are so completely frustrated with how broken the system is, but because they can earn better money for less stress elsewhere.

In less than 2 years, I'll be making significantly more than I'd be making if I had stayed in NoLa, working 25 hours less a week, and with almost no workplace stress. People respond to economic incentives!

The goal is to get students to learn, and more money to teachers does not in any way encourage this.

Haven't I see you endorse merit-pay before?

Money does not reverse apathy.

You wouldn't care more about your job performance if I gave you a huge raise? What if I gave you a huge pay cut?

You will not fix this with money or threats. I believe the number of able people who would take the money to endure that kind of occupational stress for any length of time is nearly zero. In fact, I would even suggest that young adults would take advantage of this and use it as a jump to earn compensation that would otherwise be outside of private sector job prospects. People would sign up, do a few years, bank some cash, and then get out without ever giving a flying crap about the kids themselves.

That's actually exactly how the charter school system works, sans the not caring about kids part, and that's been one of the glittering rays of hope for Urban Education. I don't think it is sustainable though, because I suspect the labor pool will eventually dry up.

To also reiterate, none of this addresses the issues associated with the pupils sitting in the seats and the kinetic energy that's working against their academic lives.

That's true, and it's why simply pouring money into the problem alone will not solve the achievement gap. I believe I have consistently argued that point on these forums. I do believe that base teacher salary is going to need to be raised (considerably) to recruit the talented labor force we need, but that money could be raised from other cuts, or targeted spending in other areas.
eyeJim;10427260]Well, for what it's worth, I said they "make." I was pretty careful about where I went with it.

So are we talking about tripling salary AND tripling benefits? Were we talking about total compensation to begin with?

I'm only just talking salary, and I think lowering total compensation (pensions) would be one way to do it (which just happened in Wisconsin, by the way).

Either way my point still stands. Milwaukee Public School teachers have a pretty sweet deal. They earn good money, have a benefits package that most people earning under 150K would die for, more paid time off than anyone in the private sector. The theory presented in this thread is that this kind of money should result in improved performance. But it doesn't. Milwaukee Public Schools are still terrible. What's the suggestion, that we can go from 100K to 300K in compensation and it'll be like a magical wand and fix everything? I hate to tell ya this, but if you reduced compensation to 75K, or 60K, or even 50K, I bet results wouldn't budge much.

No, I think representing the benefits package as 100K for a public school teacher is dishonest, because the benefits after salary are typically only fully realized after either retirement, or medical calamity. A healthy 23 year old looking to enter the Milwaukee labor market would likely look more at the yearly salary, rather than the backloaded pension plan.

The schools would likely be pretty terrible if you cut that to 75K (at 50K, which would basically remove all insurance and retirement plans, or cut the average salary to 30K...would mean you'd struggle to keep schools open). Milwaukee would be a good case study for why high compensation alone won't solve an achievement gap.

 

[Jolly Rogerer]

Why do we have a Jolly Rodger and a Jolly Rogerer?

Because we both had a name we liked, and then registered with that name.

 

[Jolly Rogerer]

downtown,


What I'm suggesting is that every student has a lot of test (and any other legally acquired data like as you suggest homework etc.) recorded, and this is used to build a very deep portrait of that student. With that we should be able to predict with some accuracy the level of advancement that student should expect to achieve over the school year with average quality teaching. This should make this form of teacher evaluation as fair as possible.

It should also allow the teacher to have a similar data base built up, showing where their teaching strengths and weaknesses lie, and allowing them to improve their weak points. It would also allow administrators to assign teachers and students together in a more symbiotic fashion than "random" if they so choose. The main point though is to fairly evaluate the teacher so that qualities can be appreciated, fairly compensated and utilized.

 

[BuckeyeJim]

Yes, it is. Our urban teachers have fewer certifications, years of experience, lower Praxis and ACT scores and lower college GPAs than their suburban peers. Schools no longer have a captive labor market now that women can enter medicine, engineering and business, and they have been able to recruit better talent.

Well, you already talked about GPA doesn't mean a teacher can teach well. All of those things are indications that teachers can learn well. My point still stands, and we may just have to agree to disagree here.

So you don't think that bringing better teachers has any positive impact at all? Research disagrees.

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that increasing salary will not necessarily attract anybody that's a better teacher into the field.

Of course it will! People have a limit of what they will put up with relative to their salary. For 9 bucks an hour, I will put up with almost nothing. For 90,000 bucks an hour, I could put up with an awful lot (I think I'd go back to my New Orleans classroom for 60,000). Older, more experienced teachers stay solely because their contracts give out the huge pension payouts after 30 years experience. We have quality young teachers leave not just because they are so completely frustrated with how broken the system is, but because they can earn better money for less stress elsewhere.

In less than 2 years, I'll be making significantly more than I'd be making if I had stayed in NoLa, working 25 hours less a week, and with almost no workplace stress. People respond to economic incentives!

Yes, people do respond to economic incentives. But this is an independent point on whether people will respond in the manner you desire in this situation. What you describe is a condition where people will definitively acquire money, but without any gaurantee that they will care any more, or teach any better, than the personnel that are teaching there now. I've browsed your blog here and there, and I think this is a general instruction manual on the problems with these schools and how quickly really good teachers such as yourself become burned out, and basically end up being a daycare operator collecting a paycheck. You will never, ever, ever, in a million years, be able to convince that me that money will be able to transform the psychosis of people thrust into the environment of a bad urban public school that is outlined within your blog. Extra money will not wear people out. It will just turn into a situation where people are toughing it out for a phat paycheck.

Haven't I see you endorse merit-pay before?

I don't think so. Especially in this context.

You wouldn't care more about your job performance if I gave you a huge raise? What if I gave you a huge pay cut?

We're not talking about job performance though. And we've already outlined the issues associated with judging job performance for teachers. We're just talking about summarily raising the pay of teachers across the board to attract better teachers. There is no attachment between job performance and the pay in this given circumstance.

That's true, and it's why simply pouring money into the problem alone will not solve the achievement gap. I believe I have consistently argued that point on these forums. I do believe that base teacher salary is going to need to be raised (considerably) to recruit the talented labor force we need, but that money could be raised from other cuts, or targeted spending in other areas.

Again, you may recruit more intelligent people, but that does not mean that people will endure that type of environment. I still envision a situation where young adults enter the system goo goo eyed and motivated to transform the system, and then getting rung out like a wet rag after less than a year, trudging through the second year, and then start to examine alternatives to what they're currently doing. I envision young adults getting run down and becoming apathetic from the environment, and losing that enthusiasm and the desire to learn. I envision them becoming paycheck collectors, and not seeing much movement in tangible results.

No, I think representing the benefits package as 100K for a public school teacher is dishonest, because the benefits after salary are typically only fully realized after either retirement, or medical calamity. A healthy 23 year old looking to enter the Milwaukee labor market would likely look more at the yearly salary, rather than the backloaded pension plan.

It seems to me that teaching curriculum needs to have a better focus on how important and how HUGE those backloaded benefits are.

 

[downtown]

downtown,


What I'm suggesting is that every student has a lot of test (and any other legally acquired data like as you suggest homework etc.) recorded, and this is used to build a very deep portrait of that student. With that we should be able to predict with some accuracy the level of advancement that student should expect to achieve over the school year with average quality teaching. This should make this form of teacher evaluation as fair as possible.

It should also allow the teacher to have a similar data base built up, showing where their teaching strengths and weaknesses lie, and allowing them to improve their weak points. It would also allow administrators to assign teachers and students together in a more symbiotic fashion than "random" if they so choose. The main point though is to fairly evaluate the teacher so that qualities can be appreciated, fairly compensated and utilized.

Yeah, I think that's mostly fair. Between testing, classwork samples and classroom observations, I think you can get a pretty fair evaluation of a teacher over a period of time (this prob varies a little band teachers and the like though). I only protest when I think that standardized tests alone are used primarily to evaluate teacher performance. I do not believe that is fair or accurate.

Well, you already talked about GPA doesn't mean a teacher can teach well. All of those things are indications that teachers can learn well. My point still stands, and we may just have to agree to disagree here

None of them are perfect indicators. The strongest ones we have seem to be college GPA/record of previous achievement and National Board certifications. By every possible metric though, poor urban teachers lag behind their better heeled suburban ones.

I've browsed your blog here and there, and I think this is a general instruction manual on the problems with these schools and how quickly really good teachers such as yourself become burned out, and basically end up being a daycare operator collecting a paycheck. You will never, ever, ever, in a million years, be able to convince that me that money will be able to transform the psychosis of people thrust into the environment of a bad urban public school that is outlined within your blog. Extra money will not wear people out. It will just turn into a situation where people are toughing it out for a phat paycheck

Well, thats interesting, since it's been on private for a few months

While it is true that I got very frustrated and eventually left my teaching position in New Orleans, that was out of a frustration at the failure of every system, not just at the poverty of my students. New Orleans, like no other major US city, except for perhaps Detroit and Camden, is a fundamentally broken place. The libraries are still in trailers, the roads are missing pavement, the social services and health care providers are shot, even for people with money, let alone for the broke kids. I would have wanted to leave even if I was a stockbroker there.

What drove me so crazy about my school, (and I wasnt able to write about this while I was working there, for obvious reasons), was how broken EVERYTHING was. Our school leadership was not run by particularly talented individuals. Our school board was still under investigation by the US Justice Department for failure to comply with desegregation rulings. We had zero competent social workers. I taught in a trailer...and oh yeah, I had 5 weeks of training and was out of my subject content area and age level. I'm trained to teach music and English for older students. I was teaching 4th graders science.

Poverty, and the problems that come with it, are constant...but there are a whole lot of poor schools with more talented people behind the scenes keeping order. I teach in a school in Chicago now that services just a poor population as was in New Orleans, but nobody is throwing chairs or assaulting anybody. It's because we brought in smart people who have their stuff together. We couldn't attract or retain those people in New Orleans.

We're not talking about job performance though. And we've already outlined the issues associated with judging job performance for teachers. We're just talking about summarily raising the pay of teachers across the board to attract better teachers. There is no attachment between job performance and the pay in this given circumstance.

I think the changes to teacher accountability are a political certainty, given whats happened in the news during the past 6 years. I think a stark raise in teacher salary when coupled by fair teacher accountability program would be fair.

It seems to me that teaching curriculum needs to have a better focus on how important and how HUGE those backloaded benefits are.

They are large, but most people don't stick around to really get 'em. MPS has a 50% turnover rate for new teachers after the first 3 years. If you leave early, your pension compensation is quite modest. When I cashed out of Louisiana, I got less than 4,000.