More A's, More Pay

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."

Comments

This is cronyism at its finest

[dada21]

This is unbelievable and one of the reasons I've always "lobbied" against public education where teachers are also graders. It is my firm belief that you don't grade your own work. If you're a programmer, do you get to grade your programming?

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.

Re:This is cronyism at its finest

[realmolo]

The public education system in this country is pretty broken, I'll give you that.

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.

Re:This is cronyism at its finest

[Anne Honime]

This is unbelievable and one of the reasons I've always "lobbied" against public education where teachers are also graders. It is my firm belief that you don't grade your own work.

You've never taught, have you ? Grading is by far the most time consuming part of the job, and the most unpleasant. It's so f*cking boring that I'd have rather filtered raw sewage by hand than do it, sometimes. Why ? Because after reading 10 times the same half-learned, half out-of-ass statements, including blatant ripoffs of the immediate neighbours, you're completely fed up, and you know you've still got 30 to go. In my branch, one essay is roughly 15 minutes worth of my time, do the maths.

Teaching is pleasant ; I'd be more than happy to have someone else grade for me. But it's so damn exhausting that it takes a teacher dedication to do it. I can't count how many times I was offered money to grade some private inter-universities competitions between students (sort of extracurricular events to know who's pissing farther) and flatly turned them down. Nobody in his right mind would grade alone, even for money.

Re:This is cronyism at its finest

[Salvance]

Have you ever done taxes for someone who makes relatively little money? I do for quite a few, every year. They pay almost nothing in taxes. A friend of mine made $32,000 in 2005 (I'm actually looking at his tax return right now). He paid $1,400 in federal taxes, $400 in state taxes, and $2,400 in FICA. At the end of the year, he received back $5,000 (due to 100% refund of fed/state + child tax credit) - or $800 more than he paid. There's no possible way that he could afford his 2 children's education if we reduced his taxes any further, since they are already nothing.

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

[realmolo]

"If a school took advantage of the poor, another school who cares for the income would step up".

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

[Rakishi]

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.

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.

Re:This is cronyism at its finest

[Hebbinator]

No way. Not even close.

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

[shirai]

You've made bad assumptions in the equation.

That the "buyer" of public education is a citizen. But it doesn't have to be.

The "buyer" of public education can remain, as it is now, the government. By this criteria, the government decides how to reward schools for good performance and part of that could be rewarding for improving education in poor areas. In other words, the system breaking down under your analysis assumes that the citizens pay and rich citizens can pay more. This part of the free market system actually already exists. It's called a private school.

What the department of education is doing is creating competition within their suppliers of education (i.e. public schools).

I'd say, if you "objectively" rate education levels and reward based on objective criteria, this system has a chance of working.

Make no mistake, an algorithm for doing this requires some thought, but I think it can be done.

For example, consider this:

Schools earn x-y dollars per student where the actual value is determined by an objective performance measurement

Objective performance measurements are done nationally.

The performance measurement changes year by year based on national averages.

Of course, this does mean that areas pre-disposed to have smarter kids (e.g. rich kids who can afford better education aids, tutors, books, etc.) would tend to have better schools because it is easier to get better results but these schools would also tend to have more competition.

The free market would come up with innovative ways to tap the lower end market with new education ideas. Possibly things like more computer aided teaching so that there could be a lower teacher/student ratio without sacrificing education quality. Never underestimate the power of a free market and the desire to earn a buck.

Imagine if you were an entertainment company and you could sell software to schools that would teach kids how to read at an accelerated pace in a fun environment with less teacher involvement. Make kids want to learn. You'd have an automatic market for your product because the schools would want to buy it to increase their bottom line.

I know there are issues with this model but I also believe that a model can be designed that would ultimately be quite simple that would work and, I bet you almost any amount of money, you'd see amazingly innovative ideas that would give us better education cheaper.

Sunny

Why this is a corrupt and BAD ideas.

[Archeopteryx]

Chicago schools are nowhere near equal to one another. Some are fine. Others are worse than what you would imagine conditions are in third world countries.

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.)

This reminds me...

[feepness]

...of the story where the clueless manager gave out $50 for each bug a programmer fixed.

Easier Exams On The Way

[zefram cochrane]

In theory this is a great idea, give bonuses to teachers that are doing their jobs well. However, in practice....I fear that we will only see exams getting easier and the children being taught less and less. We will see classes being taught to the children at the bottom of the bell curve rather than the middle...and instead of screwing up the gifted children's education....everyone will suffer. Isn't it bad enough that we are teaching classes to prepare the children for standardized tests, and then don't cover a lot of information that isn't on those tests just for the sake of raising test scores?

Do first things first!

[bogaboga]

Nothing will be possible without instilling discipline in American schools. One only needs to visit schools even in the 3rd world to see how much discipline there is in schools over there. No wonder the products of those schools come over here and excel, leaving American kids behind!

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.

Re:Do first things first!

[Mard]

The reason there is no discipline in American schools is because we live in a nation where even if you skip classes and cheat on the exams, you'll get a job that pays enough to live comfortably. Most countries you would likely cite for discipline have actual competitive markets if you want a job that will keep you out of relative poverty. The solution is not simple, and would likely require a reform of our nation's entire education system. One idea that comes to mind is a two-tiered high school degree. One basic high school diploma, and one advanced high school diploma which is awarded to students to excel in standard courses or does average in advanced placement courses.

I have some experience which proves that Americans can learn discipline in school: here in Niceville Florida, some high school students are allowed to attend what is called a "collegiate high school." What this means is that they are taking college level courses with other high school and college students at Okaloosa Walton College. They are given high school credit AND college credit, and after two years taking a college work load they are given a high school diploma AND a two-year AA degree, which transfers 100% to any Florida university or college. Obviously this explanation is greatly simplified, but the system works and the students are far more disciplined than those at any high school I ever attended. Note that I'm just a college student at OWC, so I don't have much info on the college high school system, but I'm sure you could find more on their website: http://www.owcollegiatehigh.org/ . I believe the system is funded by state taxes and the students pay absolutely nil, but they are dropped from the system if they do not maintain a reasonable GPA, and attendance is as strict as high school.

The Real Solution

[kisanth88]

The only real solution to our American education system is to figure the average amount nationwide that all schools have for their budget.

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

How about...

[David_Shultz]

How about... giving more money to all teachers and attracting better talent? It is obvious and uncontroversial that offering more money gets you more skilled people. However, for some reason, when it comes to education people ignore this fact. If you want to provide incentives to get better teaching, raise salaries! Offering a prize for performance is just an underhanded way of trying to save money on your incentives -you are giving all the teachers a lottery ticket instead of cash. Worse than that, it clearly encourages cheating.

Re:How about...

[planetmn]

We already are paying most public school teachers $50,000 and up for 2/3 year of work.

This is a lie that keeps getting repeated as fact. My wife, who, while following my moves, has worked in three different school districts. In each one, she was required to work for 10 months out of the year (between classroom instruction and required continuing education). In addition, her average day was 10 hours long. She works more hours in an average year than the average american worker. This also doesn't count the grading that goes on in the evenings and weekends.

We already provide some of the best health benefits out there.

While teachers generally do get good benefits, that's less and less true with the budget crises that have been hitting local communities. For instance, my employers health insurance is much better than the one offered through my wife's teacher's contract.

The unions that teachers belong to do not allow merit raises

This is a problem that needs to be addressed. I like Tim Pawlenty's idea in MN to create "super teachers". Basically these are teachers who perform well in the suburbs, move to teach in the inner cities, and if they still perform well and get the students to perform, they receive high pay (upwards of $100k). But standardized tests are not the way to judge a teacher's performance.

they do not allow the school to fire poor performing teachers

This is another lie that keeps getting repeated as fact. While it is not easy to fire poor performing teachers, it's possible, and done. What the unions require is that you can show the teacher is actually performing poorly. The problem is that parent's of C children, don't like that, and want there children to get A's. It's much easier to blame the teacher and urge the school board and local politicians to fire the teacher, than it is to accept the fact that junior isn't performing very well. My concern is that if the union wasn't there to help the teacher, that teachers would have to be even more careful about the children of the rich and powerful, and that's not a good thing.

School budgets are out of control, spending is through the roof.

But this spending is going towards testing and not towards attracting and keeping good teachers, and not towards supplies for the classroom (believe me, I have a huge file of receipts for items that my wife has bought for her classroom with our money).

substantially decrease State interference into the curriculum,

Exactly, education should be a local issue. The state and federal dept's of education should make sure that success stories are available to other districts to utilize.

and get rid of all of the staff that just loves throwing around money for magic beans.

I'm not sure if I'm inferring correctly, but the spending comes from the administration and school board, not the teachers.

-dave

Certification vs. Education

[ookabooka]

I love the way we are taking education these days. I am currently in college and I notice that the institution is not at all what I expected. No one goes because they want to learn more about their field and want to be educated about it, they go because it is a certification they can put on their resume, which will determine if they get hired or not, or determine if they make $35K a year or $75K a year. I don't even know who I am angry at, the managers of the corporations that use college degrees instead of work experience to determine a candidate's worth, or the universities that take in tuition and try to pump out degrees with little idea at whether the student is actually "educated" or if they just learned "how to replicate the process" for the test and then forgot the information the next day.
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 guess standardized testing is just the best solution at the moment.
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.

Free market: like in your healthcare system?

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Education is important, people know this and will pay anything they can muster to get the best education for their children. Companies know this. If you leave education to the forces of the free market, prices of education will just rise ad infinitum, as their is not a point that parents will say 'this education thing is too expensive, little Joe doesn't need any'. The companies will just bleed em dry.

Same basically as the American healthcare system ... there's isn't a point where people say 'curing this cancer is too expensive, forget it'. So what are you left with? The most expensive system in the world with the least actual care and the highest number of uninsured citizens for any first world country.

I think you really need to rethink your 'let the free market sort it out' kind of philosophy.