More A's, More Pay 366
theodp writes "Little slashdotters may find teacher a tad more upset when they screw up on a test. The Dept. of Education just launched the first federal program that uses bonuses to motivate teachers who raise test scores in at-risk communities, awarding $42M this month to 16 school systems. Any fears that teachers might cook the books to score a typical $5,000 payoff? Not to worry, says Chicago's school chief, there are statistical analyses in place that spot testing irregularities, presumably better at catching Cheaters than those used in the past."
This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
In any public job, allowing the employee to grade their output is going to end up with the grades falling into the average level as much as possible. If a public employee has too many failing students, they'll get fired. If they have too many students doing above average, they don't have a reason to ask for more money. With mostly average students (say, grade C or so), you can always say you can do better with more money. Since most teachers don't have a student for more than a few years, this can go on ad infinitum.
I'm against publicly funded education entirely, but I would be 100% satisfied with TRUE free market grading systems. The ACT and SAT are not realistic scoring systems -- even though the ACT says they are a private organization. We need REAL grading companies who settle the knowledge of students. Why should a 12 year old always be in the 6th grade? Shouldn't various students of various abilities be judged to their level by what the market needs? Shouldn't education be partially based on what will be required of the student if they were to enter the industry at a certain knowledge level?
To me, this feels like more teachers' union cronyism and preferential treatment to keep private industry out of the education system. What we need is more competition and less paternalism in this very-important market. Let us see what would happen when real competition creeps into the system -- not more regulation.
IMO, a step towards improving our education (Score:4, Insightful)
We expect our teachers to put more and more hours in (most work tons of nights and weekend hours) for "the love of the children", and without any incremental pay. Shouldn't we reward them for their good work? Instead, we treat all teachers the same, and then provide tenure after 5 years (or so, depending on the school/state) that protects even the poor performing teachers. This is detrimental to our children, our future, and to our teachers.
The only problem I see with the program is that it only addresses at-risk schools. While school teachers in more affluent areas often get paid more (in my area, the difference is ~$15,000 between the wealthy and inner city school teachers), saying they shouldn't be compensated for good performance is like saying our "at risk" students matter more than everyone else. Rolling out the bonus program to all school districts could be a huge win for our education system.
great, my degree means even less now (Score:3, Insightful)
Why this is a corrupt and BAD ideas. (Score:5, Insightful)
My friend taught science and math in a Chicago school in a poor neighborhood.
In all the years he taught there; they NEVER had books, they NEVER had lab supplies, they SELDOM had working AV equipment, they NEVER had a computer.
Not that this effected the average grades, because any grade he assigned that was below a C was magically changed to a C by the principal.
How the fsck can you teach school without books?
I submit to you that basing his pay on the number of A's is corrupt in the extreme. (Though, thankfully, he is retired now.)
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
But letting the "free market" handle it is suicide. You'd end up with multiple "tiers" of schools. Good schools for rich people, bad schools for poor people. Which is exactly how it is now, except that the poor people would be even WORSE off, because they'd be paying more, and wouldn't get any funding from the state to fix things, or any hope of changing the situation through elections.
Or are you one of those idealists that thinks that companies in the "education business" would actually give a shit about the schools in poor areas? Because they wouldn't. They'd run them as cheaply as possible, and simply raise the rates at the schools for rich people. Much better margins on the rich kids, you see. The schools for poor kids aren't where the money is at.
The "free market" isn't good at providing services for the public good, because what is good for the public is rarely good for the bottom-line.
Do first things first! (Score:5, Insightful)
What hurts me most is the fact that these kids excel at written English and write much better essays yet they have to learn the language in addition to their vernaculars. American kids, who [mostly] speak English from childhood have horrible English, so solve the discipline question then we can go from there.
Could Be Useful (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:2, Insightful)
For example, look at Jiffy Lube. Sure, everyone can probably change their oil themselves, but I get my oil changes for all my vehicles for $17.99 (with coupon) at Jiffy Lube. So do a lot of poor people. And what about Wal*Mart? They take back any returns without many questions, offer incredible price discounts, and pay their long-term employees well. What about the market for cheese? You can get exceptionally good and healthy cheese for a very low cost -- but there is expensive cheese for those who want it. Expensive cheese isn't limited to the wealthy, either.
If a school took advantage of the poor, another school who cares for the income would step up. With independent free market grading companies, you don't have to worry about your teachers -- as long as your student is passing independent testing, you know they're doing great. Also, it makes sense to have teachers who work without the huge bureaucracy of the public education system. Go to your township tomorrow, get a budget of the local education system, and divide it by teachers. Guess what? You'll probably come up with a 70% loss rate -- where'd the money go? To the bureaucrats! Free market education means that poor people might just want enough education to get their kids to a level where they can enter industry and hope to build a future for THEIR children -- they might also pick a school that sticks with the same basic education text books for a few years rather than replacing them every year with little-to-no difference.
You're losing more in your lifetime to public education (see property taxes) than you'd realize, and 70% of that money is going to bureaucrats to keep the system afloat.
Show me one truely competitive market that is bad to the poor -- I haven't found any in all my history of debating this debate.
This is probably not wise. (Score:2, Insightful)
In scenario 1, this is bad because it creates an obvious incentive to grade very kindly. People can try to test for that influence to prevent it all they want, but if they create a market out of good grades, the market is going to react.
Scenario 2 doesn't fair much better, as anyone who has seen first hand the results of teachers teaching to, for example, the AP tests. Test scores will improve, knowledge will actually tend to decrease as original and creative thinking is discouraged in favor of simply being told the types of answers testers are looking for, rather than having to learn how to get there yourself. It's sort of the opposite of the Socratic teaching method.
If someone wanted to raise salaries to increase the size of the pool of teacher candidates, fine. But if a bonus is what's really changing someone's attitude, I think we all know greed isn't conducive to working with people well (and yes kids are people). Despite the flaws in our school system, I'm pretty sure I feel better knowing my kids teachers are there to educate because that's what they enjoy, and not there to try to get a certain set of letters or numbers associated with them so they get a bunch of cash, regardless of the actual amount of knowledge attained.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
Most families with children who make under 30 or 35K per year are in the same boat. If we eliminated property tax for landlords, this would amount to approximately $50-100 per month on an apartment valued at $50K. This would not solve the problem. And if we removed employer paid FICA, this would just kill Social Security and Medicare, which is all most of our poor population has to rely on after 65.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't say that a privately-run school would "take advantage" of the poor. I said that they would spend as little as possible, since they would know that their customers couldn't pay very much.
Let's say you had a privately-run school in a poor area. They offer the absolute bare-minimum education, and their margins are very, very low. Eventually, they decide that they aren't making enough money, or possibly are even LOSING money, so they sell the school to a different company. What is that company going to do first? Cut costs in every way. They'd have to. Hire cheaper teachers, buy cheaper equipment, cut every corner. Eventually THAT company will probably give up.
What happens when no company wants to serve a given area with schools, because they can't really make a decent profit on it? Remember, a given corporation/investment group doesn't HAVE to start a school with their money. They can do whatever they want. Why would they invest millions into a school in a poor area if they could invest that same money in to some more profitable venture?
And you want me to show you one competitive market that is bad to the poor? You've never found any, you say? How about health insurance, or healthcare in general. There's a couple of free-markets that have screwed the poor. You really didn't think of those?
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you'd know that they're being taught how to pass some third party standard which is probably going to make them corporate drones. The companies in turn don't give a damn since they're importing all their actual non-drone workers from asia and using visas to keep them in line.
Go to your township tomorrow, get a budget of the local education system, and divide it by teachers. Guess what? You'll probably come up with a 70% loss rate -- where'd the money go? To the bureaucrats!
Since we all know that facilities, supplies, non-teacher workers (janitors, security guards, etc.), field trips, after school programs don't cost anything.
they might also pick a school that sticks with the same basic education text books for a few years rather than replacing them every year with little-to-no difference.
Have you even GONE to a public school in the US or do you just pull all of this out of your ass? I mean, hell in my elementary school we used books from the 70s and 80s due to budget reasons, they only got new ones when the old ones became so inconsistent or plain old as to be unusable.
What degree? (Score:4, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with post-secondary education, which is still the only place you get a degree.
The Real Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Double that number and then increase all corporate american taxes to get an amount of money equal that doubled number. (Corporations benefit from well educated workers, so should be willing to pay to get them)
Then distribute this amount of money evenly to all schools nationwide based upon the number of students that were enlisted in the previous year. Beyond that the federal government should have no say other than that money should be spent by the school district it was allocated to ONLY. Let the states manage their educational systems. Increase this number and the tax amount by the previous year's inflation numbers published by the federal reserve and you have a well funded local educational system.
This has the dual effect of increasing nearly all school's budgets (and rich parents can still donate money in rich areas if they want an elite school) and at the same time reducing the dependence on local property values for school income (and theoretically reduce local taxes) This is Democratization of American Education.
And to the critics that say doubling the amount spent on average in American public schools - public education is the ONE thing that this nation can throw money "away" on or "spend money frivilously on".
John B
Re:Do first things first! (Score:3, Insightful)
Great Idea, but with one change (Score:4, Insightful)
The teachers should get a bonus according to the amount that they have improved the student's level of education over the year that they spent with the teacher. You look at their grades for the year before they were with the teacher, and the grades for the year after, and the teacher gets a bonus according to the improvement. That way the teacher is making an investment in their own future by improving the student's education.
This elimates some of the cheating problem.
How about... (Score:5, Insightful)
Certification vs. Education (Score:5, Insightful)
This applies here too. Essentially they are assessing worth by attaching a numerical value to "intelligence" or "education". Most of the time if you just went to these schools and sat down in the classes you would get a better idea than assigning some standardized test. Then again, the costs associated with that would be astronomical and end up taking away from what the schools have. .
I don't care what you mod me (if at all) this was just a stupid rant, I just wonder if its me or if others out there agree.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
Public education programs like M2M in Georgia (majority to minority) give kids from downtown atlanta a chance to get a better public education in the 'burbs on the state's dime. Many of these kids are from low income families where education is not exactly an emphasis.
A lot of these kids who I graduated with were insistant on getting formal "college prep" education, and the schools downtown focus on "job prep" degrees.. in a free market, these students would have been lost in the ghetto forever.
As for "no truely competitive markets that are bad for the poor" - the only thing more ridiculous than liberal idealism is economic idealism. There is no such thing as a "truely competitive market," and if there was, the poor would be the last ones to be able to take advantage of it. Poor people are at the disadvantage of not being able to drive around like people with cars and BP cards, so shopping around isnt exactly an option. Maybe you've heard of the "food desert" theory of urban nutrition? People without vehicles have to go where they can walk or where the bus can take them. You would leave a lot of kids out in the cold - the whole American Dream(tm) where a kid from the most humble upbringing can get an education and a good job depends heavily on standardized public education.
Now, our public school system as a whole is very corrupted, but I think that the tenure system put in place by teachers unions is the root of the problem. Young, freshly educated teachers are put in the worst possible situations and have to spend years to get anywhere in the system, while old crotchety dinosaurs climb the ranks and get the raises merely because they have been there the longest... not exactly a good formula for growth and development, eh? Also, it leads to a lot of "I put my time in, I'm getting mine" behavior - there was a scandal around here with teachers 'retiring' and getting rehired immediately so that they could be drawing pensions AND getting paid their salaries.. its stealing, plain and simple. Taking twice the paycheck for doing the same amount of work, taking money away from the education system in the process. SOMETHING needs to change, but I don't feel like a Free Market system would be the right choice.
Im all for a free-market TEACHER system with standardized testing. Maybe try and adjust it with a baseline score to reflect improvement versus just raw scores to avoid punishing educators in less educated-oriented environments.. Give raises to the teachers who TEACH. Just make sure they dont take a dive for the pre-test...
This is all a ramble- its like 3am here and i've been studying medchem all day.. take from it what you will. Remember though, its like grandaddy said:
"if there was an easy answer, no one would have to argue about it, would they?"
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:2, Insightful)
How about private police? Private firefighters? Private hospitals? Private schools? All of these were the norm before the government (mostly) took over. And guess what, poor people couldn't afford them. You are assuming that just because education would become cheaper overall that it would still be affordable for poor people. Without a government monopoly these things are extremely expensive. There's a reason why they were brought under state control in the first place. If you can't afford to feed your children, how the hell are you going to afford to educate them, even if it the cost is relatively cheaper than it is now?
The free market does not solve everything, especially for services that are absolutely vital for every person to have. Last time I checked a $20 oil change at Jiffy Lube (when the oil costs less than $5 and takes maybe 15 minutes of your time) wasn't exactly a necessity of life. That is a truly terrible analogy.
Free market: like in your healthcare system? (Score:5, Insightful)
Same basically as the American healthcare system
I think you really need to rethink your 'let the free market sort it out' kind of philosophy.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent. Schools that suffer the poorest performance, hence need the most help, get the least funding. Bravo. You've managed to reverse engineer the existing problem to perfection while maintaining that your new and fresh 'solution' is a bright alternative. You have a strong future in School Board politics.
Seriously, the vast vast vast majority of people who complain about and make decisions about our educational system know little to nothing about how it works under the hood. If you are serious about offering a solution, study the problem properly and in full, then come up with some ideas. Bounce those ideas off of others who've done the same. If you are not serious about offering a solution, then quit spouting off on chat boards about how 'simple' that solution assuredly is.
Society's toughest problems are not simple. They can't be solved by the average
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:3, Insightful)
You've never taught, have you ? (...) Nobody in his right mind would grade alone, even for money.
I tought for 12 years in high-school and undergraduate college courses, and fully agree with you in one thing: grading sucks!
In the other hand, in many situations I felt that grading my own students was unfair. As a teacher, you have some freedom at designing tests, or even grading the answers. There's always a gap for teachers' own personal criteria, that can be influenced by it's own performance (extremes like "after all... why should I test that hard if I didn't thought that good", or "I said that a zillion times, that mistake CAN'T be forgiven"). I think that independent graders would be a good solution. They don't need to be teachers: standard tests can be equally well designed by field experts (physicians, historians, etc.), and having no involvment with the teaching process can be designed and used in a less emotional way.
Grading isn't an unpleasant job itself. Mixing grading with teaching is.
Even more: that's an unethical mixup. In real sports, coaches don't referee.
A last think: how much our relationship toward students would improve if they stopped seen us as "graders" and just could see us as "facilitators" in aquiring knowledge. That's a job I really would like to have... don't you?
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong question - Can you find poor areas that don't have Wal-Marts? While I don't know about Wal-Mart itself, I do know that a lot of businesses avoid high-crime, low-income areas, which are generally the areas that are suffering the most from the inadequacies of the current system.
Competitive markets are based on two things: profit margins, and that some companies will fail. Regularly and often. While we have failing schools today, they are still the exception. I don't want a system that presumes that school A can fail and it's OKAY. School B might come along, but the two years it can take for a new business to take over a market represents a significant chunk of the education of a child. That's half of an american high school experience, and 2/3 to 1 junior high/middle school experience. Once you fall behind, you tend to stay behind.
Competitive markets are a strong, good system. Nonetheless, there's a reason people entrust the government with certain duties rather than markets -- they tend to be duties where reliability is valued over efficiency. Not to say that the current public education system doesn't have serious issues, but scrapping the system will simply get you a new set of problems, and in this case the new system's problems are inherent to the system.
Re:The Real Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The United States is a democratic republic. There are plenty of reasons that power needs to remain at the state levels, not least because different regions have different feelings for the value of education. Rather than universalize the funding (across the US) I'd agree that such a plan is both more palatable, and more consistent with the original vision of the US by doing it on a state-by-state basis, dividing up the 'pot' of tax money paid within a state.
2) Your idea does disregard the burden placed on certain area schools bearing the non-homogenous brunt of immigrant or 'special needs' students. I don't disagree with it, but it's an observation which must be made. Schools which are located in areas with heavy immigrant populations are going to have a higher educational burden (cost per student average) than a small rural school district. Then again that rural district is going to have higher busing costs...does it all come out equivalent? I don't know, but I doubt it.
3) I think it's no coincidence that Fredrick the Great had an extraordinarily skilled military, and was the first to implement universal public education. I'd argue that not only does it DIRECTLY affect our economic success, it also bears directly on our military strength to have a well-educated populace, especially when our military philosophy depends on small-unit initiative and decisionmaking (particularly in a country which relies on a small cadre army and callups for the bulk of military numbers). Thus I'd say that a goodly chunk of the defense budget should ALSO go toward education...however, I would also say that this means that there isn't anything wrong with the military recruiting in schools (PC anti-military types, piss off!), nor is there anything wrong with spending more time/resources on physical fitness, camping, mapreading and geography, even shooting if the kids want to - all things that are disappearing from the curriculum (for lack of funding, usually), but which can be both fun for the kids and useful later in life in a military context.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, privatizing the education system will whiplash you right back to where you are right now within 2 generations (my predicition), and then you'd have to deal with a million extra uneducated adults who fell between the cracks of the private system. That likely means higher crimes rates, and a lower economic output for the country as a whole.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:3, Insightful)
The school district in my community is in a tough situation. They've been teaching elementary school science by using hands on experiments. The problem is that the test wants to make sure that students have memorized a textbook, and not understand the scientific process. I could care less if a fifth grader knows the genus of a frog or camel, I'd rather they understand how science is performed and learn to enjoy it, so that we have more scientists, not fewer (as is the current trend). So the district must now teach science out of a text book, rather than hands on.
Have you taken the SATs? How much of that was useful in college, and later in life? Virtually none of the verbal portion. Why do you think there are SAT (and other standardized test) prep courses. It's not teaching you knowledge or application, it's teaching you how to take the test.
In addition, some people just don't test well. Some people get nervous. Others succeed at tests, but fail in other areas such as writing reports or presenting materials. Standardized tests, when created properly, and when combined with others methods of verification, can be a useful tool. On their own, and poorly written, they mean next to nothing.
-dave
You got part of it right (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Most people are not qualified to comparison shop. To truly coparison shop between drugs, treatments and hospitals you need lots of information and some knowledge of statistics. Most people just can't do this type of analysis. Therefore you need to rely on the opinions of health care providers and licensing boards. It is not like shopping for clothes and comparing Wal-Mart to Target.
2) Even if you are qualified to do this, in emergency or other high priority medicine there is often no time to do detailed reviews. If you are bleeding and in pain you are not going to comparison shop. All you would want to do is stop hurting.
Free market forces simply do not work in health care, except perhaps for elective procedures such as plastic surgery.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the problems a lot of people seem to have is that there will be disparity between the education of the wealthy, and the education of the poor. But it doesn't matter what system you come up with, this will ALWAYS happen except in an extreme totalitarian state where private schools and home schooling are illegal.
What people are offering with the idea of private schools and vouchers and other systems are a way to improve schools almost universally across the board - but the best schools will still be the best schools, and the worst will still be the worst. People will need to simply get over that.
Re:How about... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You got part of it right (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides, you are confusing the pharmacutecal industry with the health service industry. they are not related, and do not work in tandem. Doctors tend to have indipendant practices, and would love to practice preventive care, as it maximises billable time. Doctors do not sell drugs, nor do they profit off selling drugs.