The Evil Economics Of Judging Teachers

The Awl:

The Times and a host of other publications heralded last week's new study extolling the lifelong money-earning benefits of having a good primary/middle-school teacher. Oh, yay! Let's do what these economists from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggest, right?

Actually, ugh, no. What economists Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard and Jonah Rockoff of Columbia want to do, apparently, is to identify and fire "weaker" teachers, for the sake of a barely perceptible increase in students' "lifetime income." Nobody has actually tried this yet; the report doesn't describe an experiment. It's just the conclusion they draw from their analysis of massive amounts of data gathered from public schools in New York City and cross-referenced against IRS records and the like.

Read the whole story: The Awl

Comments

[southingtonian]

04:01 AM on 01/16/2012

How about offering teachers, as is done for CEO's, a salary intended to attract the best and brightest?

[Allthosewhowander]

03:56 PM on 01/15/2012

What about the value of some of the inept administrators that are making decisions that create adverse affects in districts and in schools? Why is the entire focus of the accountability in education directed at teachers? NCLB has allowed for hack administrators to pad their resumes with the latest fad curriculum programs, at the expense of real teaching and learning. Their agendas are expected to be "implemented with integrity" by teachers whether they are what the students, schools, staff, and communities need or not. Then when administrative agendas fail, the teachers are scapegoats. Value in education should be examined from the top down. The education system is very management heavy, and many of those administrators are very disconnected from true education. They take credit for success, but let teachers take the brunt of the blame from politicians, media, and the public for failures in systematic policy. How can we assess value of educators when we use some formula to evaluate, only, teachers.

[jal6641]

03:15 PM on 01/15/2012

Wonderful article! I couldn't agree more. Every "Reformer" should read this.

[Michael D Ballantine]

10:20 PM on 01/14/2012

What a wonderful idea. We can use econometrics to determine that bad teachers should be fired because of a marginal increase in future earning potential. After we fire each group of lowest performing teachers, we are then faced with firing the next lowest group of performing teachers because as we move up the chain of quality, there will always be a lower group of performing teachers statistically requiring us to take action. When do we stop, when we only have one teacher left? Instead of blaming teachers for our problems in schools, let's point the finger at the guilty party, the one-size fits all system that treats every child the same. The one thing I am sure of is that every child is different and every child requires a unique learning atmosphere.

[kasukabe]

07:20 PM on 01/15/2012

First of all there is no "one size fits all" monolithic education system. There are many specialist and support services to assist students with different needs.

Every child simply cannot have a "unique learning atmosphere" without bankrupting the nation. As teachers we can make reasonable adjustments and accommodations for individuals or groups but there has to be some consistency between students in how they are instructed and assessed simply to make the job a realistically manageable exercise.

As usual the far-left green candidate would rather live in a fantasy world of wild-eyed proposals and promises that might sound good on paper but which are completely unrealistic in the real world. The American people will of course deliver their verdict duringthenext election when you again get less than 1% of the vote.

[Ganapati Edu]

10:49 PM on 01/15/2012

I'm sorry, that's not true. I have seen options for students quickly disappear. We struggle trying to find a path for our students because we are literally forced by the law to create heterogeneous classrooms where students in need of smaller classes for support don't get it and students in need of the push toward higher learning don't get it. Then there is the middle that just gets stuck in between. Why can't we just except that no child learns at the same rate and that's ok. Being on a slower track has little to do with your future success. It has a lot to do with personal development. We all develop at different rates. If we are not given the chance to develop at our natural rate, we end up hating the institution we are being forced to be part of. School becomes a requirement not a support for learning.

[Michael D Ballantine]

12:10 AM on 01/16/2012

If I believed as you, I wouldn't be running. As for bankrupting the nation, that is a little overblown. Every student is already in the system, this just requires additional data points attached to the student. Then it is down to server speed and capacity, something that is much more affordable now than 10 years ago when NCLB was first initiated. The system is the problem, that is what we need to change.

[marilread]

06:08 PM on 01/14/2012

personal development and children

the age of 3 or 4 to 8 are the most important education years for your child and personality development. Being intensive is not a bad thing. We need to bring the child out of themself,if their mind's due to some reason are too internal and focused outward on learning,and many schools should have good child psychologists(unfortunately for many schools their nevver around or there are budgeting problems and teachers/aid workers are not always adept). I have previously stated why child aid experts are a good fit. Recognizing personality/learning difficulties is important at 4 not 8. If small classes are not available to aid workers are good,and often teachers wont do the work child's aid people do. It's a very difficult problems. Children's personalities can be formed at very young ages,even 3 or 4. Good experts are very important, expensive also in doing this kind of testing,and testing is controversial or debated. Of course merit systems are debated, people who are wealthy and can afford should set there children up in some private type of schooling until they are 6 or 7 ...but do your homework...checkout the teacher...aid workers...we dont need protective hacks in school systems ...but i dont pretend to be a child specialist but as a turor for many years and with children,and some formal education in learning...my mind is on the children and no one else

[queequag]

03:12 PM on 01/14/2012

The key bullet point in the list of similarities of Finnish Schools and US military schools is that small classroom size--which is a proven variable for success--is the starting point for successful instruction.
Get this right, and the parent teacher relations, administrative relations, trust and autonomy issues will begin to resolve. Until we get over wholesaling and production-lining education to one-size fits all en masse we'll never get out of the rut we're in--opening the way to bogus privatization, vouchers, and the continued undermining of public education.

[SangZe]

12:53 PM on 01/14/2012

Take politics out of the educational system and most problems would be resolved.

[eceresa]

08:46 AM on 01/14/2012

Student performance has a lot more to do with students and parents than teachers. If you take those students who performed better in schools, they're likely to do better later on, too.

If you're the sort who wants to put the responsibility for EVERYTHING onto teachers, you're going to look at those facts and come to some pretty strange conclusions. That seems to be what happened in this "study."

[J R M]

07:13 PM on 01/13/2012

The last company I worked for decided to get rid of 10% of the staff each year. By removing the under-performing "dead wood" they would improve the productivity of the company.

Surprise, they cleaned out all the older senior staff. It is easy to arrange for under-performance - change their job description and responsibility to something that is not their strength and then stack rack them against others who have been specializing in the area for years. Instant underperformer and firing for cause.

Interestingly, the people who have been (or were in the process of being) dismissed for incompetence were frequently rehired at higher salaries via contracting companies to being their true expertise to bear on problems. Much though the company did not like having the specialized old farts around, they needed their expertise.

I wonder how the schools will do it? And how much collateral damage they will do?

[novabird]

05:44 PM on 01/14/2012

The current savage attack on teachers has nothing to do with benefiting students and everything to do with destroying teacher unions and public education so the rich cronies of the GOP can make unholy profits supplying pre-packaged curricula and privatizing public schools.

[Bob Pante]

06:59 PM on 01/14/2012

It's not the teachers it's the unions. They protect the incompetent teachers and have pushed the salaries so high taxpayers can't afford it. Unlike all the other industries they have forced overseas, teaching they cannot. At least not yet. Cops are being replaced by red light cameras, teachers can't.

Teachers need to be evaluated. Everyone in every job gets evaluated. A small business owner gets evauated by every single customer. This November President gets evaluated.

[kathy smelser]

02:50 PM on 01/13/2012

i wish we could just pay CONGRESS what they are worth based on how well they do their job WE WOULD BE OWED A REFUND