Newsavmam,

Try cracking open a book for once.

https://www.epi.org/publication/book_teaching_penalty/

The deplorables either won't ever comprehend this, or they are 100% for destroying the education system while lining the pockets of the rich.

Like so many others, she had considerable ties to the community and family all over the state. She was never in the poor house by any means, but I know it was never easy for her.

I'm willing to admit "almost all" is an exaggeration but many do and government is notoriously bad at incentivizing performance.

This is a lot of words but what you seem to be missing is that you can pay the teachers more and fund that with a progressive income tax. Just because they don't do that now doesn't mean it is unpossible.

What are you even talking about? You came into a thread about teachers in four specific states with a national median salary and claimed "look, this median salary is a pretty good salary, why are people complaining?"

You are either an idiot or entirely dishonest because the teachers who are striking aren't making that national median salary, like wtf are you even talking about?

So this is an argument for increasing the salaries, correct?

My point wasn't that government is good at incentivizing performance, it's that private business is bad at it.

I know. I think for the most part everyone is bad at it but private business at least does better than government where a lot of the time performance has no monetary reward whatsoever.

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/10/...te-tax-breaks/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.f8e9e743664e

I highly disagree for good teachers.

This. If teaching and education were actually respected on a level near, healthcare, legal, finance, engineering, etc, then the barriers to entry would be higher (MA at minimum), and the compensation would be higher.

This is true for many, if not most, places, and I do believe that the education levels, certifications, etc should impact it. I do not believe that "years teaching" on its own should impact it. There should be a scale, or levels, that teachers are promoted through, as their proficiency increases. Years of experience would correlate, for good teachers, but not for bad teachers.

Eh. Not really imo. At most schools, most teachers, administrators, and even parents know who the good teachers are and who the bad teachers are. It's not some super secret unknowable thing. The exact list of qualifications for how to advance a teacher through pay/promotion levels may take some thought and negotiation, but it's doable.

I understand why it is set up the way it is, but it's not ideal. There have been other models proposed in different places before, usually shot down by one side or the other, administration vs teachers' unions vs political interests, etc. Even within the teachers' unions themselves, there are competing interests. The teachers' unions end up looking out for the bad teachers more than the good ones imo, since their mandate is usually to protect all of their members.

Some models propose more levels of distinguishment among teachers, for example promotion to Senior Teacher, Coach/Mentor Teacher, Department Chair being a bigger distinction than it is currently, Head of Instruction and Professional Development, etc.

That's the type of thing that I'm talking about, actual distinguishable levels for raises and promotions, instead of just based on years of teaching (with small bumps for education or certification levels). That would actually reward the good teachers (while also requiring more work from them, that would help the rest of the teachers), and not reward the bad teachers.

It should be funded by increases to the education system, but even without that, could be funded from the raises that the bad teachers are not getting, going towards the good teachers that are then doing more work as mentors/coaches, going to conferences, developing PD for their peers, etc.

For test scores, yes it would be judged based on growth rather than raw scores. That's not hard. You compare kids' performances vs their previous year's performances, as well as average of X years' performances. Throw out a certain number of outliers on the high and low ends, accounting for changes in family situations and difficult individual situations. Teacher pay wouldn't vary based on different scores every year, there would simply be rolling averages over multiple years, that would point towards a teacher being at a certain level or not, and that would help guide determinations if a teacher should be eligible for a certain raise or promotion to a certain level.

And obviously this would just be one factor. There would be much more in person evaluation by coaches, supervisors, principals, etc.

In most jobs, people get raises and promotions based on overall performance reviews by bosses and panels, it seems strange that people accept this for most industries but think it wouldn't work for teaching.

The reason performance reviews wouldn't work for teaching us principals don't have enough time to sit and watch classes.

They won't work because the only people who will get raises are the ones lucky/connected enough to get the honors classes. Whoever gets stuck teaching the kids who are still struggling with basic arithmetic or reading "See Spot Run" when they are 17 years old will get nothing or fired.

At many schools and districts that I know, the Principals or AP's do indeed sit down and watch classes. The problem is that it happens too infrequently (twice a year or so), and it's not that important - there's no levels to go through. It's just as a checkup on terrible teachers (which often doesn't matter anyway, as they're almost impossible to fire for performance, and only for gross negligence/near-criminal behavior), or to give a few pithy recommendations.

But if the "levels" system were implemented, it would have many other points of review and supervision. Immediate mentors/coaches, department heads, AP of Instruction and Professional Development, etc.

Also, if instruction, educational quality, and teacher performance were actually valued, then the Principal or AP of Instruction or whoever would indeed have/make time to do so. It would instead be something else that gets less time, not teacher performance and instructional quality.

This makes no sense.

If you're referring to test scores, see my segment on growth, not raw scores. You're comparing the student to his/her performance last year and previous years, not comparing a bottom end student to an honors student.

And test scores wouldn't be as big of a deal as some people make them out to be. It would be one factor. But most people at most schools (teachers, administrators, and lots of parents) know who the good vs bad teachers are, even without any reference to test scores.

Evaluation by superiors and other factors would have nothing to do with honors vs regular track vs poor students.

You aren't allowing for the reality that some kids are just plain dumb. Edward James Olmos himself couldn't reach them. If pay raises get tied to test scores then whoever wins the "lottery" for the good/motivated students get the raises.

If you leave the decision to administration they'll just play favorites like everyone else does. Worse yet they can deliberately sabotage everyone to keep raises low.

Teaching certificates in a lot of states require credits on top of bachelors or very specialized bachelor programs.

In practice this has meant teachers, in better districts on west and northeast coast at least, almost universally have education beyond bachelors (at minimum a very specialized bachelor’s degree) with a very significant percentage with masters degrees.

Performance bonuses for teachers are very difficult for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that there is a sense, even among teachers thenselves, that they should be in it for the kids, not the money. If you start teaching to earn bonuses, the mission is kind of tainted.

This is not unique to teaching. A lot of Harvard Business Review in the past 10 years has been dedicated to making the case to NOT give individual bonuses and prop trading, surprisingly to many, often gives identical bonuses. Even Google does a lot of this with bonuses that are in effect group based, regardless of individual output.

One of the ideas is “intrinsic” motivation is way better at generating positive outcomes and once you start generating “extrinsic” rewards, intrinsic motivation decreases.

And just like in teaching, this type of system depends a lot on social pressures to enforce max effort and quality.

There is another issue with teaching that lends it naturally well to a seniority based system: it is extremely repetitive on a year to year basis with minor variations in textbook, usually. One of the problems with common core was it shocked the teachers into learning a new curriculum at a speed they never experienced before.

Then those kids would have zero effect on measuring growth of test scores. They would just be plain dumb every year, for net zero effect.

As I've mentioned, test scores alone wouldn't trigger a pay raise, and they would be one factor for administration to consider in promotion.

Also, I still don't think you're understanding the measurement. Take good/motivated student Jane. She has presumably been a good student for most of her school years. So her good test score from grade 7 to grade 8 or whatever, on its own, shows zero net effect. It is only the positive or negative change that is measured.

A certain number of outliers would be ignored. So if a particular teacher is responsible for a large number of students to be more highly motivated - yes, they should be rewarded for it, or it should at least count somewhat towards their evaluation.

This is an argument against almost every industry where bosses/superiors/review panels determine raises and promotions.

It's not ideal, but it's better than the current system.

I don't see a problem here. If teachers are in it for the kids and doing a great job teaching them, they get rewarded. How would raises and promotions be a stumbling block to wanting to teach kids well?

This is a decent case that can be made. At some schools, there are team teaching situations, or grade level competitions, or even school vs school competitions. Bonuses could be rewarded for group achievements, not solely individual.

But speaking of bonuses actually misses the point as well. It is not an annual bonus that would be raised or lowered depending on test scores.

It is the way to measure whether a teacher should get a raise or promotion (beyond COLA adjustments applied across the board anyway) to a certain level, instead of the number of years working, being one of the only determinants.

I would say this is false for good teachers. They have intrinsic motivation anyway, and extrinsic motivation does not diminish that. Lack of extrinsic motivation often diminishes that, as they see their hard work getting **** on.

I don't know of any studies for this on teachers, but I have heard of such studies and philosophies for students. And although there are some unique programs that do things differently, most come to the conclusion that we still need to use grades for student performance.

This may be true in some systems, but not in others. Teachers are usually lesson planning themselves individually, or with a small number of peers in their school. Nowadays, teachers buy lesson plans from other teachers online, for small nominal amounts.

The textbook is not the sole determinant, and a teacher basing primarily just off the textbook, is probably not doing a great job.

It is true that as a teacher becomes more familiar with the material, it is easier to teach, and they should do a better job teaching, and they should have more time, i.e. be able to spend slightly less time lesson planning and learning things.

However, there are rapidly diminishing returns to this principle. Seniority increases for the first few years may be largely warranted, but beyond the first several years, it comes down more so to better teachers vs worse teachers.

Under the levels system, the better teachers would use the additional time gained, in order to mentor/coach other teachers, attend conferences, plan grade-level or school-wide professional development, etc., in order to qualify for the higher levels of promotions.

Agree. There are some good ideas behind common core, but the rollout and execution in many, if not most, places was horrendous.

Research strongly shows once extrinsic motivations are earned once, they no longer motivate and become taken for granted.

There is also research once you tell people they earn money for doing something, they'll stop doing it with no money, even though it's something they'd do anyway if never offered money before.

The experiments have been repeated in many different settings. Kids who were offered candy to play with a toy are very likely to stop playing once they consume the candy and never play with the toy again.

Tests of similar design yielded same results in both lab and corporate settings.

Social rewards have been shown to work significantly better. Basically once people meet their basic (expected) needs, they care more about social rewards (such as recognition, appreciation, love, and prestige) way more than some marginal improvement in financial situation.

This is playing out at Google and Amazon now. They are struggling to get their star engineers who can get the work done in very little time but are content to just earn their half a million a year instead of putting in the work to push the technological envelope. This is why Google talks sooooo much about culture and tries their damndest to just keep the financials competitive instead of being too far ahead of the curve.

You see a very similar phenomenon in Big Law where everyone is offering basically same salaries and firms are increasingly competing on prestige, summer programs, and work/life balance for best lawyers.


See response to first. Numbers matter, but it's extremely important to make it a minor part or you get into a death spiral of ever escalating incentives.


I am fine with all this.

Like corvette alluded to, teachers have community ties. They ARE the institutional knowledge in a lot of schools. In most districts the administration's turnover is WAY higher than the teachers'.


I believe standardized testing is important because I don't see how institutional accountability is possible otherwise. I even understand a lot of what Common Core is teaching, especially with regards to math.

I was honestly surprised by how they were teaching the four operations. A lot of the complaints about the unnecessary complexities were things that I was doing in high level math and comp sci classes. They were things I studied for math competitions and I definitely see some of the value in teaching kids how to work with numbers and abstract puzzles very early on but I couldn't help but think: "There is no way I could teach this **** they way they are testing it."

I get the strong desire to not teach math by rote (multiplication tables?) but c'mon, teachers are humans too. Humans that (for the most part) studied education (dah) and something most likely not math.

I understand all this. I don't think it applies to promotions for teachers. Otherwise, are you arguing that it applies to promotions in all industries, and we should eliminate promotions in all industries, and just pay by years of experience (plus education level, certification, etc)?

This is not an activity that gets no pay, that is suddenly paid. It is not a one time thing, or a bonus paid solely on the basis of test scores. It is a different way to implement pay raises, instead of based on years of teaching. Otherwise, your arguments would also apply to the 2nd year teacher vs the 1st year teacher. Once (s)he gets a small pay raise for their 2nd year, do they suddenly lose intrinsic motivation?

This is fine at levels where people are compensated highly. In an industry where people are compensated poorly, have to pay for supplies out of their own pockets, can barely make ends meet in some cases, and where people drop out of the profession due to pay - these things do not seem to apply the same way.

I am fine with this, at the level/numbers we are talking about for teachers. Again, it is important to understand that the pay levels themselves are not even necessarily changing by much (although I would prefer for all levels to be increased) - the way you get to the next higher pay level is what changes.

Everything you have mentioned still applies to the current system, except that numbers of years teaching is what is rewarded, not performance. So you have teachers not incentivized to do anything other than maintain their jobs, whether they are doing a good job or not.

That is in large part because it is much easier to fire administrators than teachers. Teacher turnover would be higher as well, if you could fire the bad ones easily.

That is a good argument for evaluation of students, just like there is a good argument for evaluation of teachers.

Right, so they needed much more preparation, refinement, and training of teachers before even attempting to roll something like this out. There weren't even decent materials/resources to support it.

That's the logical extreme but it doesn't work because we're talking about relative to expectations, which is often set by custom dating back years, even decades in some industries. Basically overpaying relative to expectations is a poor motivator but underpaying relative to expectations is a surefire way to piss people off.

If you don't have an established seniority raises, by custom or by a grid, all the
employees that perceive themselves to be above average get really pissed off when they don't get the raises they think they deserve. See some people's blogs/threads in H&F and OOT. (I am really thinking of one particular person).

I am at the point where I think, for the most part (OK is not in this group), teacher compensation (and most areas of school funding) is not the problem. Diminishing returns and all.

It's a huge part of the problem. How do you propose to get good teachers to take on larger amounts of responsibility and workload otherwise? i.e. Mentoring, coaching, group lesson planning, professional development, etc, are all desperately needed. They are built in to the system in some other countries, and shown to drive improvement in teaching, student learning, and results.

Also - let the bad teachers get pissed off and leave or get fired. Difficulty in firing bad teachers is a part of the problem in the first place.

Anyway, do you have anything against the system I discussed, where instead of pay raises happening almost solely by years teaching (plus small bonuses for higher education and certifications), these same pay raises would happen according to the following schedule:

1st 3-5 years based on years of experience, then thereafter, need promotion to the following levels:
Senior Teacher
Mentor/Coach Teacher
Department Head
AP/Head of Instruction

The exact levels are negotiable, and modifications to the system are fine. But something along this overall philosophy of raises and promotions, rather than solely # of years teaching.

Just make it an expected part of the job, culturally enforced or otherwise. NYC and where I grew up for example all had an expectation that the teachers run an after school club and stay behind at least once a week for very nominal incremental pay.

Those artificial titles are non-starters since they imply responsibilities and powers that frankly just don't exist, at least not to the extent to support an actual title.

What HAS worked is honorary titles and awards (even without titles) recognizing teachers that have gone above and beyond. Unions are particularly keen to recognize teachers that they believe are going above and beyond but in practice these leaders just have the union rep on fast dial and can tell new teachers just what the social expectations are.

LOL the solution to the problem of teach pay is mandatory, hardly paid for overtime! Capital doesn even need to worry about how to screw over working people. We'll provide our own suggestions.

But that's not what anyone was suggesting.

I've read similar research about monetary performance systems, in menial tasks huge rewards also lead to worse performance. They are not a solution for multiple reasons in this case.