For once I don't have to get on educational my high horse and can instead let an article do my talking for me. This is right on the nose, with truths that undercut decades of unproductive...
For once I don't have to get on educational my high horse and can instead let an article do my talking for me. This is right on the nose, with truths that undercut decades of unproductive educational reform discourse.
This article also has a personally breathtaking paragraph:
Thinking about selection bias compels us to consider our perceptions of educational cause and effect in general. A common complaint of liberal education reformers is that students who face consistent achievement gaps, such as poor minority students, suffer because they are systematically excluded from the best schools, screened out by high housing prices in these affluent, white districts. But what if this confuses cause and effect? Isn’t it more likely that we perceive those districts to be the best precisely because they effectively exclude students who suffer under the burdens of racial discrimination and poverty? Of course schools look good when, through geography and policy, they are responsible for educating only those students who receive the greatest socioeconomic advantages our society provides. But this reversal of perceived cause and effect is almost entirely absent from education talk, in either liberal or conservative media.
I just... I don't have words at the moment for how that hit me right now. He's right, and I can't believe I've never thought to frame it that way before.
It seems like this ties back into teacher ranking, because if you select for the best students, the teachers are going to have an easier time, and vice-versa? When teachers are hard to recruit, it...
It seems like this ties back into teacher ranking, because if you select for the best students, the teachers are going to have an easier time, and vice-versa?
When teachers are hard to recruit, it seems like there a couple different conclusions you could make: they aren't paid enough, or it's too hard. Or sometimes both.
Yup. One of the significant criticisms of value-added measures, merit pay, or any other system that assesses and rewards/punishes individual teacher performance specifically is that it will...
Yup. One of the significant criticisms of value-added measures, merit pay, or any other system that assesses and rewards/punishes individual teacher performance specifically is that it will encourage destructive student selection measures. Rather than seeing teachers at my level as my co-workers and collaborators, I'm now forced to compete with them, hoping that I can somehow shift the worst students into their classes. It turns the highest-performing students into desirable commodities while the highest-need students become undesirable liabilities.
As for the solution to the issue of teacher recruitment and retention, I don't know that I have a good one. I can point you to another of my rants here on the matter, but that's less of actual policy and more just frustration speaking.
My hometown had three high schools – the local coed public high school (where I went), and both a boys and girls private Catholic high school. People involved with the private high schools liked to brag about the high scores their students scored on standardized tests – without bothering to mention that you had to score well on such a test to get into them in the first place. This is, as I’ve said before, akin to having a height requirement for your school and then bragging about how tall your student body is.
For once I don't have to get on educational my high horse and can instead let an article do my talking for me. This is right on the nose, with truths that undercut decades of unproductive educational reform discourse.
This article also has a personally breathtaking paragraph:
I just... I don't have words at the moment for how that hit me right now. He's right, and I can't believe I've never thought to frame it that way before.
It seems like this ties back into teacher ranking, because if you select for the best students, the teachers are going to have an easier time, and vice-versa?
When teachers are hard to recruit, it seems like there a couple different conclusions you could make: they aren't paid enough, or it's too hard. Or sometimes both.
Yup. One of the significant criticisms of value-added measures, merit pay, or any other system that assesses and rewards/punishes individual teacher performance specifically is that it will encourage destructive student selection measures. Rather than seeing teachers at my level as my co-workers and collaborators, I'm now forced to compete with them, hoping that I can somehow shift the worst students into their classes. It turns the highest-performing students into desirable commodities while the highest-need students become undesirable liabilities.
As for the solution to the issue of teacher recruitment and retention, I don't know that I have a good one. I can point you to another of my rants here on the matter, but that's less of actual policy and more just frustration speaking.
From the article: