Yesterday I reported that top med school docs are no healthier for patients. Today I report that even at private schools, teachers who are fully certified do not help students perform any better on math and science tests:
Vote of hands here, does *anyone* expect that teaching certifications correlate non-trivially with teaching quality?
Not I. It would be great if there were graduate programs that could help a person become a more effective teacher, but the existing programs strike me as mostly worthless. I have no direct knowledge or experience of them, but the people whose judgement I trust almost universally hold them essentially worthless.
Rafal wrote:Richard Kennaway wrote: "Correlation is not transitive"
Indeed, but I was under the impression that IQ and scholarly qualifications are both measures of a single quality
What do you mean by both being measures of a single quality? Their correlation surely falls well short of 1 (virtually all correlations reported in social science and psychology do), and therefore either could correlate positively with educational outcomes while the other correlates not at all or negatively.
Richard Kennaway wrote: "Correlation is not transitive"
Indeed, but I was under the impression that IQ and scholarly qualifications are both measures of a single quality, and the absence of correlation between educational outcomes and teacher qualifications would in this situations imply they are not.
Rafal Smigrodzki : if teachers' IQ's correlate with outcomes, and higher IQ teachers are better at passing qualification tests (i.e. qualifications correlate with IQ), then qualifications should correlate with outcomes.
Robin,I think what I'm pointing out is less a place to add disclaimers to avoid gotchas (I find them annoying too) than an area that would seem to be of central concern for someone interested in overcoming bias. If a group of people are successfully overcoming bias in particular situation, I think it's a very interesting question why they're overcoming that bias -what's different about them.
I'm surprised that you don't seem to have that interest here (or in a variety of other similar topics).
Hopefully, I tire of adding disclaimers to every sentence. If I start out saying "most of the demand" I figure I can later just say "folks don't like" without it being assumed I mean absolutely everyone absolutely all of the time.
Robin, I doubt ALL people would still prefer a more credentialed teacher over a less credentialed teacher, or a more credentialed doctor over a less credentialed doctor, if the best empiricism indicated no benefit in doing so. So where's the interest in seeing what is different about these two sets of people? Instead, you write:
"I expect patients are willing to pay more for top med school docs, and parents are willing to pay more for educated and certified teachers. And I expect that this would continue even if patients and parents knew the above results. I suspect most of the demand for teachers, doctors, and many other professionals comes from folks wanting to affiliate with certified-as-impressive people. And merely making patients healthier or making students perform better doesn't count much toward impressiveness, relative to academia-certified impressiveness.
But folks don't like to admit this directly; they'd rather pretend they care more than they do about other outputs. Which is why folks don't want to hear about the above results. The media will oblige them, and so they will continue in their preferred delusions. Bet on it."
That's where you went from what many people might do, to a claim that all people will do this. Or at least a seeming disinterest in what's different about people that don't make doctor or teacher selections based on academia-certified impressiveness if there's no tangible health or education gain.
Are still lost about the criticism in my earlier comment?
The paper seems interesting, thanks for bringing it to our attention, but from only the first 3 pages it seems badly paraphrased, focusing not on informing us but highlighting your favorite talking point.
Things I picked up:* a common rationale is to ensure a minimum level of quality (as often with licensing)* some people have a beef with TFA* states may have quirky testing systems* teachers who reach the profession by alternative means may be systematically different [<-- my first thought]
If there is a blogger (a "Rob" to Tyler's Tyrone maybe?) who could have summarized the last 10 pages and their findings on the above as well as Robin's universal thesis of counterproductive sincerity-signaling, I sincerely would have rather heard from him.
Of course, maybe I could have finished the paper in the time it took to selfishly snark about someone else's goodwill labor.
Image via Wikipedia Robin Hanson certainly thinks so.He has provocative post at Overcoming Bias about the relationship between expertise, credentials and rationality."Yesterday I reported that top med...
Teaching, like medicine or law, is just another guild. Grades, class rank and a school's reputation are just proxies for merit assessment of newly minted guild members. Licensure is just a barrier to entry to protect the guild's monopoly.
If teaching and medicine is anything like law then similarly once you're licensed and start practicing you find that much of what you were tested on is useless or obsolete at best and wrong at worst.
For example, a typical bar exam question will read something like this: "Your client climbed through an open window into his neighbor's house. He pulled the sofa into the center of the the room and set it on fire with a match. Then he left. The sofa fire burned for a while and then went out on its own. The ceiling was singed. Is your client potentially guilty of A) Arson; B) Burglary; C) Breaking and Entering; or D) None of the above?" It's our wtf??? moment when we realize that the whole education and licensing process serves no real purpose other than to artifically depress the supply of lawyers so as to maintain, if not heighten, the demand for those able to survive the hazing.
Once you get into the courtroom neither your pedigree nor your GPA count one whit. I suspect the same may be true of other guilds.
If anything, the MA in education is a signal of commitment.
Also, if we are going to rant against teachers/the educational system, you would not believe the amount of self-serving bias among teachers; the bile they spew against man's 23rd greatest achievement, wikipedia, sheesh, not to mention the anti-market bias.
There are so many biases among educators, such as seeing EVERYTHING as a problem of ignorance that can be solved with, wait for it, education (fellow teachers claim that we simply need to teach "ethics", which they, of course, find themselves capable of doing). I once tried to make the point that educators are generally going to be biased toward overestimating the benefits of education, and that, if students don't feel an assignment is worth their time and effort, we should seriously consider shifting our priors in that direction (I didn't say priors). I literally thought I was going to be physically attacked.
Having just finished the masters program at GMU, I would like to say that I learned very close to nothing that I will use in actual teaching. The only productive aspect was a student teaching internship, where I co-taught with an experienced teacher. Honestly, there was a lot of Myers-Briggs type indicators and Lev Vygotsky, but nothing of any practical value. I hope none of my professors read this site (some of your classes were at least interesting, and, if you read this blog, you are probably part of that "some".)
When I took Caroline Hoxby's economics of education class, we learned a lot about high school teacher certification. We learned that it may be that certification actually has a negative effect on education quality. The opportunity cost of spending the extra year(s) gaining this certification (without necessarily gaining any real skill) drives high-aptitude potential teachers into other fields. In addition, the spurious signal value of the extra degree may attract lower aptitude people because they can gain extra salary after attaining the degree.
Eliezer tutors people? Where do I sign up?
Vote of hands here, does *anyone* expect that teaching certifications correlate non-trivially with teaching quality?
Not I. It would be great if there were graduate programs that could help a person become a more effective teacher, but the existing programs strike me as mostly worthless. I have no direct knowledge or experience of them, but the people whose judgement I trust almost universally hold them essentially worthless.
Rafal wrote:Richard Kennaway wrote: "Correlation is not transitive"
Indeed, but I was under the impression that IQ and scholarly qualifications are both measures of a single quality
What do you mean by both being measures of a single quality? Their correlation surely falls well short of 1 (virtually all correlations reported in social science and psychology do), and therefore either could correlate positively with educational outcomes while the other correlates not at all or negatively.
Richard Kennaway wrote: "Correlation is not transitive"
Indeed, but I was under the impression that IQ and scholarly qualifications are both measures of a single quality, and the absence of correlation between educational outcomes and teacher qualifications would in this situations imply they are not.
Rafal
Rafal Smigrodzki : if teachers' IQ's correlate with outcomes, and higher IQ teachers are better at passing qualification tests (i.e. qualifications correlate with IQ), then qualifications should correlate with outcomes.
Correlation is not transitive.
Tyler:Tyrone :: Robin:Ramone
Robin,I think what I'm pointing out is less a place to add disclaimers to avoid gotchas (I find them annoying too) than an area that would seem to be of central concern for someone interested in overcoming bias. If a group of people are successfully overcoming bias in particular situation, I think it's a very interesting question why they're overcoming that bias -what's different about them.
I'm surprised that you don't seem to have that interest here (or in a variety of other similar topics).
Hopefully, I tire of adding disclaimers to every sentence. If I start out saying "most of the demand" I figure I can later just say "folks don't like" without it being assumed I mean absolutely everyone absolutely all of the time.
Robin, I doubt ALL people would still prefer a more credentialed teacher over a less credentialed teacher, or a more credentialed doctor over a less credentialed doctor, if the best empiricism indicated no benefit in doing so. So where's the interest in seeing what is different about these two sets of people? Instead, you write:
"I expect patients are willing to pay more for top med school docs, and parents are willing to pay more for educated and certified teachers. And I expect that this would continue even if patients and parents knew the above results. I suspect most of the demand for teachers, doctors, and many other professionals comes from folks wanting to affiliate with certified-as-impressive people. And merely making patients healthier or making students perform better doesn't count much toward impressiveness, relative to academia-certified impressiveness.
But folks don't like to admit this directly; they'd rather pretend they care more than they do about other outputs. Which is why folks don't want to hear about the above results. The media will oblige them, and so they will continue in their preferred delusions. Bet on it."
That's where you went from what many people might do, to a claim that all people will do this. Or at least a seeming disinterest in what's different about people that don't make doctor or teacher selections based on academia-certified impressiveness if there's no tangible health or education gain.
Are still lost about the criticism in my earlier comment?
The paper seems interesting, thanks for bringing it to our attention, but from only the first 3 pages it seems badly paraphrased, focusing not on informing us but highlighting your favorite talking point.
Things I picked up:* a common rationale is to ensure a minimum level of quality (as often with licensing)* some people have a beef with TFA* states may have quirky testing systems* teachers who reach the profession by alternative means may be systematically different [<-- my first thought]
If there is a blogger (a "Rob" to Tyler's Tyrone maybe?) who could have summarized the last 10 pages and their findings on the above as well as Robin's universal thesis of counterproductive sincerity-signaling, I sincerely would have rather heard from him.
Of course, maybe I could have finished the paper in the time it took to selfishly snark about someone else's goodwill labor.
BTW, Ray Stasco, PhD knew the secret behind effecive teaching: first you must get the student's attention.
Are You Too Easily Impressed?
Image via Wikipedia Robin Hanson certainly thinks so.He has provocative post at Overcoming Bias about the relationship between expertise, credentials and rationality."Yesterday I reported that top med...
Teaching, like medicine or law, is just another guild. Grades, class rank and a school's reputation are just proxies for merit assessment of newly minted guild members. Licensure is just a barrier to entry to protect the guild's monopoly.
If teaching and medicine is anything like law then similarly once you're licensed and start practicing you find that much of what you were tested on is useless or obsolete at best and wrong at worst.
For example, a typical bar exam question will read something like this: "Your client climbed through an open window into his neighbor's house. He pulled the sofa into the center of the the room and set it on fire with a match. Then he left. The sofa fire burned for a while and then went out on its own. The ceiling was singed. Is your client potentially guilty of A) Arson; B) Burglary; C) Breaking and Entering; or D) None of the above?" It's our wtf??? moment when we realize that the whole education and licensing process serves no real purpose other than to artifically depress the supply of lawyers so as to maintain, if not heighten, the demand for those able to survive the hazing.
Once you get into the courtroom neither your pedigree nor your GPA count one whit. I suspect the same may be true of other guilds.
If anything, the MA in education is a signal of commitment.
Also, if we are going to rant against teachers/the educational system, you would not believe the amount of self-serving bias among teachers; the bile they spew against man's 23rd greatest achievement, wikipedia, sheesh, not to mention the anti-market bias.
There are so many biases among educators, such as seeing EVERYTHING as a problem of ignorance that can be solved with, wait for it, education (fellow teachers claim that we simply need to teach "ethics", which they, of course, find themselves capable of doing). I once tried to make the point that educators are generally going to be biased toward overestimating the benefits of education, and that, if students don't feel an assignment is worth their time and effort, we should seriously consider shifting our priors in that direction (I didn't say priors). I literally thought I was going to be physically attacked.
Having just finished the masters program at GMU, I would like to say that I learned very close to nothing that I will use in actual teaching. The only productive aspect was a student teaching internship, where I co-taught with an experienced teacher. Honestly, there was a lot of Myers-Briggs type indicators and Lev Vygotsky, but nothing of any practical value. I hope none of my professors read this site (some of your classes were at least interesting, and, if you read this blog, you are probably part of that "some".)
When I took Caroline Hoxby's economics of education class, we learned a lot about high school teacher certification. We learned that it may be that certification actually has a negative effect on education quality. The opportunity cost of spending the extra year(s) gaining this certification (without necessarily gaining any real skill) drives high-aptitude potential teachers into other fields. In addition, the spurious signal value of the extra degree may attract lower aptitude people because they can gain extra salary after attaining the degree.