In OECD Global Skills Study, U.S. Millennials Come Up Short

[cbrunny]

I listed a whole bunch. Nowhere did I say that teachers should be bulletproof, but you said the answer was simple, to fire bad teachers. I simply asked the obvious question of how you would identify a bad teacher.

I'm all for teacher evaluation, but a common refrain from people with little experience in education is something similar to what you said: "just fire the bad ones!". It's nowhere even remotely close to that easy because determining what constitutes a 'bad teacher' is insanely hard. Sure there's the drunk guy sleeping on the desk, but that's a tiny tiny fraction of teachers, including a tiny fraction of those you would probably want to consider 'bad'.

The difference between you and I is that even though I am a qualified teacher, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in education. People that aren't experts shouldn't pretend to be experts. I think we should fire bad teachers. I don't know the best way to do that and I think a true expert should find a way instead of finding excuses.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Those are questions for experts to find answers to. I can't believe that as society we are comfortable saying "evaluating teachers is too hard so we won't do it" - that boggles my fucking mind.

No one is suggesting that we shouldn't evaluate teachers because it's difficult. But you came in and literally said "it isn't that hard," and now you're backtracking and saying it's not on you to answer how such an endeavor would look. Eskimo raised a good point; if we don't actually have a well-defined goal, how can we determine whether people are reaching it? My mothers were teachers and they hated how the union went to bat for demonstrably shitty co-workers who just freeloaded and accomplished nothing, so I'm with you that something needs to be done to address that problem. But you make it sound simple, and in reality it's a series of complex problems that don't have a simple solution. Getting rid of bad teachers is a start, but without defining what constitutes a good or bad teacher, it's a useless platitude, not to mention it does nothing to address the limited supply of quality teachers or how to get more people interested in teaching, nor does it address the cultural problem of parents who don't care about education. If you don't address those broader issues, getting rid of bad teachers isn't going to have an enormous impact.

 

[glenn1]

I listed a whole bunch. Nowhere did I say that teachers should be bulletproof, but you said the answer was simple, to fire bad teachers. I simply asked the obvious question of how you would identify a bad teacher.

I'm all for teacher evaluation, but a common refrain from people with little experience in education is something similar to what you said: "just fire the bad ones!". It's nowhere even remotely close to that easy because determining what constitutes a 'bad teacher' is insanely hard. Sure there's the drunk guy sleeping on the desk, but that's a tiny tiny fraction of teachers, including a tiny fraction of those you would probably want to consider 'bad'.

Then fire them all and replace them with minimum wage workers or just stick the kids in front of a TV. If you can't demonstrate how or even if you add value then you don't deserve a taxpayer paid salary. You can't have it both ways of wanting to claim credit when your kids do well, and it's not your fault when they do badly. If you can't measure teachers for performance then you have no choice but presume they have none and pay them accordingly.

 

[cbrunny]

No one is suggesting that we shouldn't evaluate teachers because it's difficult. But you came in and literally said "it isn't that hard," and now you're backtracking and saying it's not on you to answer how such an endeavor would look. Eskimo raised a good point; if we don't actually have a well-defined goal, how can we determine whether people are reaching it? My mothers were teachers and they hated how the union went to bat for demonstrably shitty co-workers who just freeloaded and accomplished nothing, so I'm with you that something needs to be done to address that problem. But you make it sound simple, and in reality it's a series of complex problems that don't have a simple solution. Getting rid of bad teachers is a start, but without defining what constitutes a good or bad teacher, it's a useless platitude, not to mention it does nothing to address the limited supply of quality teachers or how to get more people interested in teaching, nor does it address the cultural problem of parents who don't care about education. If you don't address those broader issues, getting rid of bad teachers isn't going to have an enormous impact.

Perhaps I was not clear then. I understand that the actual determining a way to evaluate teachers and decide whether or not they should be fired is extremely complex. I said it was simple with reference to the concept being simple. Losing your job as a concept is pretty easy to understand, which is what I was referring to. That is also why I am suggesting it should be up to experts to figure out how to do it.

My apologies for not being clear. Seems we are all pretty much on the same side.

 

[fskimospy]

The difference between you and I is that even though I am a qualified teacher, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in education. People that aren't experts shouldn't pretend to be experts. I think we should fire bad teachers. I don't know the best way to do that and I think a true expert should find a way instead of finding excuses.

I agree that people who aren't experts shouldn't pretend to be experts. True experts are trying to find good ways to evaluate teachers every day. It's really hard.

 

[Zaap]

No surprise.

Been saying it for years. Were more and more a nation of spoiled pricks, among the least skilled,. least intelligent, least creative, least talented... yet who think of themselves as the most superior people on earth with an absolute birthright to a cozy first-world living (served up on a silver platter on the back of others, of course).

Reality is gonna be a bitch for a lot of spoiled first-world idiots who don't actually measure up in the real world as it shrinks ever more and money can flow to those who actually do measure up.

 

[Genx87]

Well I was referring to GATE programs in elementary and middle schools but even in your example surely you can see the huge autocorrelation and selection bias problems there. Are people more likely to succeed because of the education they got in AP classes or because the type of people who take AP classes are simply more likely to succeed in college?

In studies of GATE programs that rely on admissions criteria studies have looked at the difference in performance between students who barely made it in and those who barely missed (to largely account for differences in ability). GATE had no effect on student achievement.

So if it's not improving achievement maybe it's a waste of money, no?

What was the difference between those that made it in and those that weren't close? Or didnt even try or desire to enter an advanced class. I can certainly understand why those on the fringe of the cut off would perform similar.

 

[fskimospy]

What was the difference between those that made it in and those that weren't close? Or didnt even try or desire to enter an advanced class. I can certainly understand why those on the fringe of the cut off would perform similar.

That would screw up the research question though. What they were trying to look at was if GATE classes improved student achievement. When you're doing that you want to look at kids who are as similar as possible, except for being in GATE.

I mean if your conclusion is that kids of similar ability (both at the fringe) perform equally despite more resources being spent on the GATE kids that seems to indicate that either you need to raise the eligibility requirements as these marginal kids aren't seeing any benefit from it, or your program is not effective.

 

[shortylickens]

what a surprise considering they were herded to school like cattle and ignored while they played on their phones all day.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Agreed. For most kids there should be less classes like advanced math and more helping them develop their analytic and deductive reasoning skills and build their "emotional intelligence" skills. For the vast majority of folks "hard skills" like knowing calculus is far less valuable than "soft skills" like being able to professionally interact with a client, do some root cause analysis, understand what their true need is and suggest solutions for them.

Good post.

The curriculum seems more designed to impart crystallized knowledge to make you a well rounded Jeopardy contestant, than to help you develop skills that use and compliment your fluid intelligence.

 

[realibrad]

Standards of their peers as defined by what? Peers as defined by what?

If kids in grade x do better in teacher 1's class over teacher 2's class. The peer in that context is defined by the teachers teaching that grade in that district.

Peers for kids would be any kid in that district in that grade.

 

[fskimospy]

If kids in grade x do better in teacher 1's class over teacher 2's class. The peer in that context is defined by the teachers teaching that grade in that district.

Peers for kids would be any kid in that district in that grade.

There are many problems with this.

1. You want to compare math teachers to English teachers to German teachers on a common scale? Sounds pretty tough.

2. What if Teacher 1's students are simply less capable than Teacher 2's? Why should Teacher 1 be penalized for this?

3. What if Teacher 1's kids tend to come from a poorer part of the district than Teacher 2's? Poverty and other social ills that come along with it have statistically significant negative correlations with student performance.

4. What if Teacher 1's kids are more heavily black and/or hispanic? Even when controlling for other factors these students perform more poorly on tests.

By the way, controls for these are built into a lot of statistical models for evaluating teacher performance, but if you talk to anyone who works on them they will let you know it is far from an exact science.

All this is assuming you want to rate teachers purely on student performance on standardized tests, which I would argue is a fool's errand. Not only does that presume that standardized tests are equally applicable to all students (not remotely true) but it also presumes they capture all the things we use schools for, which they don't. When I think back to the best teachers I had they impacted my life in lots of ways other than what would have shown up on an English test that spring.

It all comes back to if you ask 10 different people what our schools should be doing you will often get 10 different answers. That makes evaluating how good a job they are doing very hard.

 

[berzerker60]

Looking at teachers is the wrong focus, and blaming them for test scores is ridiculous. Teachers don't really matter that much. Parental involvement is way, way, way, way more important. This is a well-studied area:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2853053/

Parental educational level is an important predictor of children’s educational and behavioral outcomes (Davis-Kean, 2005; Dearing, McCartney, & Taylor, 2002; Duncan, Brooks-Gunn, & Klebanov, 1994; Haveman & Wolfe, 1995; Nagin & Tremblay, 2001; Smith, Brooks-Gunn, & Klebanov, 1997).

(Links to each of those studies in the link I provided)

http://www.edline.com/uploads/pdf/PrivateSchoolsReport.pdf

http://www.ncte.org/policy-research/wwk/achievementgap

Blaming teachers for poor test scores is like blaming dentists for American kids having bad oral hygiene. They can help fix the problem, but they don't cause it. Parents have to take responsibility for their kids, and that means we all have to support parents in supporting their kids (which means, for example, making sure they don't have to work 3 jobs to buy necessities)

 

[Zaap]

Blaming teachers for poor test scores is like blaming dentists for American kids having bad oral hygiene. They can help fix the problem, but they don't cause it. Parents have to take responsibility for their kids, and that means we all have to support parents in supporting their kids (which means, for example, making sure they don't have to work 3 jobs to buy necessities)

I agree with what you said except for the last part. It's not everyone else's responsibility because someone decided to have kids. If a person can't support themselves without working 3 jobs- don't add kids to mix and expect it to get any better.

Also, plenty of societies much poorer than our spoiled brat first-world society manage to raise kids with a focus on education and bettering oneself, self-respect. respect for elders and society, etc. We're a nation of people hellbent on shucking off our responsiblities for everything on someone else and saying, "Your fault!"

 

[schmuckley]

I think..o wait..I know..
The US educational system was better 60 years ago.
The correct thing to do would be figure out what changed and revert it.
I can tell you what happened :Liberal eductation.
They've dumbed down the SAT's twice since I took them..
..and still the scores sink..
The Liberal education system is not about teaching children to think for themselves;It's about telling them what they should know.
IMO;It's the proper thing to do to teach people to think for themselves.
PS:It goes much deeper than teachers;It goes to publishers of textbooks,those who approve them..etc..all the way up the chain, really.