Most assessment of teaching is based on a mix of results (grades given)(but often not controlled for student background, heterogeneity, etc) and polling (students). There is not much evidence that these metrics detect good teaching. They do clearly detect really bad teaching (so lots of false positives, few false negatives).

(But how do you define good teaching even operationally?)

Unfortunately, really bad teaching is not the fundamental problem with bad schools. Usually it's really bad organization and institucional culture.

The systems with the best results (worldwide) are generally those that distribute resources most homogeneously. The US fails very badly on this point.

Yes. My mistake.

I specifically addressed that already. Funnel huge amounts of money to mitigate the negative effects of poverty on children from 0-3. Parents that aren’t desperate for money make better choices than those who are desperate.

You’re treating a symptom, not a cause. And your treatment would actually perpetuate the symptoms.

Bad teachers don’t exist because of unions. Strong unions protect and incentivize stronger median candidates to enter and stay in the profession. If starting salaries were massively pumped up, then you get better folks in the door, and then you give regular and good bumps in pay to maximize retention. The bad teachers you speak of won’t get hired after awhile because they will lose out to the massively improved candidates that will be flooding applications.

As someone coming from a country with strong unions, it can certainly happen that unions means it is sometimes harder to get rid of a bad teacher. Not always, bad is bad.

But it's also true that it is a strong factor in keeping teacher salaries at a decent level, ensuring that school budgets flow into the actual classrooms and generally making sure teachers themselves have a say in decisions that affect them.

Yeah. That thread has virtually no discussion of science at all.

From this:

If you meant something different and/or you clarified since and I missed it, my apologies. You've further clarified now, thanks.

No, I'm not saying that, but it can be tricky to say the least, especially when you try to apply one standard across the board. There are SO many complexities that determine why students succeed or struggle, and to use any kind of standardized assessments as a way to determine who is a bad teacher (or even worse, how much funding a school or district should receive) is a really bad idea. Perhaps you're not suggesting that, but it's often where the "we need to get rid of the bad teachers!" discussions go. Teachers need to be assessed on a much more local and individual level.

Sure. I think this aspect is often overplayed; I hear the "a teacher has to kill someone before they get fired!" rhetoric here sometimes, but no question that there is what some would consider a lot of process involved in labour relations. It's good that some of it is there, but there are times when it can be frustrating from an employer point of view.

Yeah, here it used to be district by district, and you'd get a lot of whipsawing. About 30-40 years ago they shifted to a collective agreement for the entire province. There are pros and cons to each, but overall I feel it's better.

A focus? I can. I'd be pretty surprised if there was an educational jurisdiction that is struggling where bad teachers are in the top 3 problems. I think Godgers said it well:

And I would expand on his further points and ask if there truly is a problem with bad teachers, why is that? Do they have the training and support they need? Our district recently started working with the union on a better mentoring program, so teachers don't find themselves coming from university, dropped into a classroom, and left on their own. Of course such a program has existed for decades, but we've made a concerted effort to substantially improve it, and we're seeing good results. This wasn't done because our district is struggling, but because there's always lots of room to improve.

I don't want to come off as suggesting teachers can do no wrong. Every profession has some shitty members; teaching is no exception. But I think that the problem is frequently exaggerated, and as quoted above, often a symptom of something deeper.

Well said.

Agree completely. And on the occasions when there needs to be an uneven distribution, it should be because extra support is needed in some areas. The whole idea of giving less resources to schools or districts that struggle is completely backwards.

I agree with your post, but am going to add a little nuance to this point. There are times when a very politicized union will make it difficult to take very justifiable action. The union's mandate is to support their membership, and there are times when that runs contrary to the best interest of the students. Of course, that doesn't render any of your points less valid.

"Bad" is relative. The goal is to elevate the median competency, which improves the efficacy of dollars spent. Think of sports teams and how they construct their rosters. Not to mention the emphasis they put on coaching and training.

The last paragraph is true, I think. One of the ideas the OP alluded to from NYC is kinda of an example. We can debate how different poor white kids, and poor black kids life experience are, but they are going to be similar based upon socioeconomic circumstances of their parents. So, how diverse are you making the schools by simply trying to get a equitable racial composition per school? What's the educational benefit? What's the opportunity and economic cost in fufilling this policy?

I'm not sold on diversity (as described by NYC) solving the educational issues bad schools have. So, you have these administrators focusing on this diversity plan that's likely to not improve education.

Now, if they wanted to divide the rich kids up, you might get somewhere.

This is an interesting question. Race matters. A lot. Even if you are wealthy. To the extent you are suggesting otherwise, I strongly disagree.

But is the life experience of a wealthy black kid more similiar to the life experience of a wealthy white kid or the life experience of a poor black kid?

Probably the former, especially if we are talking about the VERY wealthy and the very POOR.

It’s also a mistake to think that the only problem school diversity is trying to solve is educational outcomes.

Unless by “education” one means in the broadest possible sense.

I wasn't remotely suggesting that schools in Baltimore were bad because they are predominantly black. Nor was I suggesting that adding white kids to bad schools would have some sort of magical effect.

And again, bad schools are not just an inner city problem.

I could take you to some schools in rural Alabama that are absolutely terrible.

Right, it's economics. They can't attract good teachers, or competent admins, irrelevant of the racial composition.

The public school system has long been an explicit means of enforcing racial hierarchy and you’d need to be hopelessly naive to think that stopped completely in the 1960s. Increasing diversity is almost inevitably going to improve outcomes for minorities.

Not in Baltimore, or Rural Alabama. Thinking a white kid is getting a better education at the worst schools, is just being dumb (which tells you race is not a significant factor in education). If you think the teachers, or admin are racist, what ever, I'm all for hiring more competent teachers and admins.

I digress, this part is not about education to progressives, this is about social justice ideology, like everything else. This is why we have people focusing on equitable racial demographics.

Nice strawman, since Trolly wasn't specifically talking about the worst schools.

Here's some evidence of what he's talking about

The whole premise is incoherent. Is America is as racist as you all say it is, education has little value, consequently leading to this emphasis on diversity in order to socially engineer society, including schools, to be "less racist" through diversity, rather than teach kids stuff.

Great contribution! Maybe you should leave discussion of education to the people who think it means something, then?

edit, since the great edit repetitions have already begun:

This post is definitely showing the value of education tbh

It’s wild that “social justice” and “equitable racial demographics” are supposed to be pejoratives. The sinister truth is, Trolly actually cares about racial equity! Really tore my mask off there.

It's not a pejorative. It's a concept, one that has several flaws. An equitable racial demographic in B'more does not fix, or even come close to fixing the issues with that city, nor does it fix the issues in rural Alabama, or any rust belt city for that matter.

I have no qualms saying you care more about racial demographics than education. I don't get why you think that's said pejoratively simply because I think your priority is wrong.

Equitable social demographics make things unequivocally better for those most in need anywhere. Including Baltimore.

Fixing issues is a weird straw man to justify keeping the status quo. It sounds like what a moderate southerner might say to justify Jim Crow or slavery at various times in our history.

Lots of racial discussion about an issue that, as has been pointed out ITT, crosses racial lines depending on area of the country.

So let's take a local approach to each fix. Milwaukee was recently labeled as the most segregated major city in the country. Do we dissolve MPS and build new schools in white areas of the city to bus the inner city kids out to, or do we force suburban SAHMs to take their kids to the inner city schools? The latter might be the most effective option, since at least a small portion of those moms will also be bringing their PTA volunteerism with them. Community emphasis on education is what MPS lacks the most. It's certainly not a money problem. The MPS per-student budget is already significantly higher than the better performing suburban districts within Milwaukee County.

My wife spent 3 of her years with MPS at this school, and out of ~120 students she had during that time, she had a total of 4 parents show up for a teacher conference. The saddest thing she had to do is to tell the parents of her undeniably brightest student one year that they should find a different school for her to attend the next year. You can think of me as a deplorable evil manbaby all you want, but I married way out of my league to an absolute saint, and her years at MPS were undoubtedly the worst experience of her career. She was poached from a Choice school within the city (99% black student population, but tied to a church), and while the sweet public servant benefits and salary bump were nice while she was there, it didn't even begin to make up for the emotional toll it took on her. She finally broke, and has joined the ranks of countless other burnt out teachers who are never going back to the City.

MPS can't get enough teachers. The suburban districts don't pay nearly as well, but will have 500+ candidates apply for every open posting. It's not a money problem.

If you address the social demographics you necessarily provide correctives to racial injustice.

Poor people need massive amounts of money. Give it to them.

Cities are usually hyper-segregated due to housing policies and other seemingly innocuous local government measures that insidiously force groups into cloistered areas. The best way to combat these quasi redlining policies is to revoke them. Eventually schools will become more naturally integrated. Forced integration may be necessary in extreme cases.

The additional money per student doesn’t come close to bridging the poverty divide of generational suburban wealth/income and most importantly time that poor overworked inner city families deal with. You would have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per pupil per year to bridge it.

Of course it is, like practically everything else, a money problem.

If teachers made 3x what they make now in MPS, the applications would FLOCK to MPS. Don’t kid yourself. Even the most hostile classroom would attract better teaching talent ceteris parabus, and it’s not like kids are physically assaulting teachers on a daily basis at these schools.