More wisdom from Hard Facts: Merit pay for teachers is an idea that is almost 100 years old ahd has been subject to much research. In one study conducted in 1918, “48 percent of U.S. school districts sampled used compensation systerms that they called merit pay.” … The evidence shows that merit-pay plans seldom last longer than five years and that merit pay consistently failes to improve student performance. … [Researchers] also showed that cheating [by teachers] was quite sensitive to the size of the incentives provided for enhancing student scores. … The same problems emerged when merit-pay systems were implemented in the 1980s. … “It is like policy makers suffer from amnesia.” (pp.22-24) …
LV outlet are several businesses making many items and many of them are very enthusiastic about obtaining the top quality ones with the passage of time. It’s all-natural that the top quality goods like the gucci sneakers, sun shades or totes are very costly where the regular man will certainly find it hard to continue the buying with the passage of time.
Incentive pay for teachers will do the same thing that the state exams have started doing. Teachers now have to teach to the tests that the students have to take instead of the subjects and alternative thinking that promotes true education. Nothing more than zombie generators.
School-children are being turned into mini-encyclopedias that can only regurgitate the smallest facts that have been stuffed into them. Kids also now understand that they can google anything and have an answer, or find someplace to ask it.
For me the "end of unit" exams were one last chance to consolidate what I had learned, and the marking of these exams showed me what I (mis)understood. Useful for teachers to know what the classes were struggling with or learning easily.
These exams were possibly the most educational day of the unit of work we were studying.
As another person who works at a school with no grades, I third it.
However, we go a bit further and also have no pre-determined curricula, grade levels, power hierarchy or institutional expectations of what they should do or learn other than that they should know that they are individually responsible, now and forever, for what they do and learn.
And, while I don't know about "results" in the current test-results sense because we don't test, I can say that our graduates over the years have gone on to college at a higher rate than your typical traditional school in this region (rural, central WV) and have become doctors, entrepreneurs, and stay-at-home moms. No judgment.
Just saying, it takes a lot of trust, but humans are self-motivated their whole lives if they are in an environment where they are free and responsible for what they do. Isn't that what a democracy is supposed to be anyways?
I haven't read the book so I don't know the methodology. What type of schools were they getting their data from? Was it mostly public schools? Did they have a controlled study of just private or even charter+private?
My point being, if the incentive pay programs are implemented in public schools, which essentially have monopoly control over education, and whose teachers generally belong to a strong union, then I'd expect to see mass grade inflation without any improved learning. There'd be no incentive NOT to just juice up the grades.
Whereas if incentives were provided in a system where school choice was more open and the disciplining (and firing/hiring process) of teachers weren't so costly, we might see real benefit.
If they're not controlling the data for the vast majority of our ed sector being a public monopoly, then the data isn't really all that informative.
Conditional on not making even more dramatic changes to the hiring and compensation of teachers, further experimentation with merit pay is warranted. If Robin disagrees I would really like to hear why.
I don't know the details of the system - if there are schools which have absolutely rigid criteria, you could compare the people who fell very close to the boundary on either side, whereas if there's a discretionary component, that could still correlate with a number of factors for success which they haven't managed to control for.
"At least 55 studies show that when flunked students are compared to socially promoted students, flunked students perform worse and drop out of school at higher rates."
This is a surprise? Is this supposed to imply that flunking students causes them to perform worse and drop out of school?
I have an alternate hypothesis: Students who perform worse and know they are likely to drop out of school, are more likely to be flunked.
Kids like playing baseball. They don't like learning grammar. If I wanted to teach my kids grammar outside of school, and they weren't interested, I would have to offer them some sort of incentive (based on some sort of metric) to try.
There really is a world of difference between schooling and learning. All the comments along the lines of "how will you tell if they are learning"? are completely unaware of what real learning actually is.
Most of "education" ranges from a colossally-expensive baby-sitting operation to a stupendously wasteful signalling and credentialling machine.
If they’re not graded, how can anyone (especially the student!) ever know if they’re learning what they’re supposed to be learning?
You've tried to learn things outside of a class, right? Weren't you able to tell when you were learning and when you weren't?
One way to think about this is to ask the question "How would I teach my own kid something I want them to learn?" If you want to teach your kid to play baseball, build a toolbox or learn to program would you give them tests and grades? Would that be the focus with the presumption being that without grades they would have no motivation to learn?
It would also be the students' problem, because they would not have to hire another group to certify their competence and impressiveness. Doesn't mean it's a bad idea, but let's not forget lots of students want a nice transcript and will refuse to go to a university which doesn't certify them as smarter than other students.
LV outlet are several businesses making many items and many of them are very enthusiastic about obtaining the top quality ones with the passage of time. It’s all-natural that the top quality goods like the gucci sneakers, sun shades or totes are very costly where the regular man will certainly find it hard to continue the buying with the passage of time.
Incentive pay for teachers will do the same thing that the state exams have started doing. Teachers now have to teach to the tests that the students have to take instead of the subjects and alternative thinking that promotes true education. Nothing more than zombie generators.
School-children are being turned into mini-encyclopedias that can only regurgitate the smallest facts that have been stuffed into them. Kids also now understand that they can google anything and have an answer, or find someplace to ask it.
Our education system is seriously lacking.
There's a difference between being required to learn something and having that learning graded relative to those in your immediate physical vicinity.
For me the "end of unit" exams were one last chance to consolidate what I had learned, and the marking of these exams showed me what I (mis)understood. Useful for teachers to know what the classes were struggling with or learning easily.
These exams were possibly the most educational day of the unit of work we were studying.
As another person who works at a school with no grades, I third it.
However, we go a bit further and also have no pre-determined curricula, grade levels, power hierarchy or institutional expectations of what they should do or learn other than that they should know that they are individually responsible, now and forever, for what they do and learn.
And, while I don't know about "results" in the current test-results sense because we don't test, I can say that our graduates over the years have gone on to college at a higher rate than your typical traditional school in this region (rural, central WV) and have become doctors, entrepreneurs, and stay-at-home moms. No judgment.
Just saying, it takes a lot of trust, but humans are self-motivated their whole lives if they are in an environment where they are free and responsible for what they do. Isn't that what a democracy is supposed to be anyways?
I haven't read the book so I don't know the methodology. What type of schools were they getting their data from? Was it mostly public schools? Did they have a controlled study of just private or even charter+private?
My point being, if the incentive pay programs are implemented in public schools, which essentially have monopoly control over education, and whose teachers generally belong to a strong union, then I'd expect to see mass grade inflation without any improved learning. There'd be no incentive NOT to just juice up the grades.
Whereas if incentives were provided in a system where school choice was more open and the disciplining (and firing/hiring process) of teachers weren't so costly, we might see real benefit.
If they're not controlling the data for the vast majority of our ed sector being a public monopoly, then the data isn't really all that informative.
Conditional on not making even more dramatic changes to the hiring and compensation of teachers, further experimentation with merit pay is warranted. If Robin disagrees I would really like to hear why.
I don't know the details of the system - if there are schools which have absolutely rigid criteria, you could compare the people who fell very close to the boundary on either side, whereas if there's a discretionary component, that could still correlate with a number of factors for success which they haven't managed to control for.
"At least 55 studies show that when flunked students are compared to socially promoted students, flunked students perform worse and drop out of school at higher rates."
This is a surprise? Is this supposed to imply that flunking students causes them to perform worse and drop out of school?
I have an alternate hypothesis: Students who perform worse and know they are likely to drop out of school, are more likely to be flunked.
"Though we still have no clear results after all this time and money, further study is warranted; send your check to our address below."
It is interesting that we trust schools to evaluate themselves here, rather than having independent evaluators of their effectiveness.
That result is about tough vs easy grading. Why can't both results be true, that grading is worse but tough grading is better than easy grading?
Kids like playing baseball. They don't like learning grammar. If I wanted to teach my kids grammar outside of school, and they weren't interested, I would have to offer them some sort of incentive (based on some sort of metric) to try.
Thanks Robin for sharing this.
There really is a world of difference between schooling and learning. All the comments along the lines of "how will you tell if they are learning"? are completely unaware of what real learning actually is.
Most of "education" ranges from a colossally-expensive baby-sitting operation to a stupendously wasteful signalling and credentialling machine.
If they’re not graded, how can anyone (especially the student!) ever know if they’re learning what they’re supposed to be learning?
You've tried to learn things outside of a class, right? Weren't you able to tell when you were learning and when you weren't?
One way to think about this is to ask the question "How would I teach my own kid something I want them to learn?" If you want to teach your kid to play baseball, build a toolbox or learn to program would you give them tests and grades? Would that be the focus with the presumption being that without grades they would have no motivation to learn?
It would also be the students' problem, because they would not have to hire another group to certify their competence and impressiveness. Doesn't mean it's a bad idea, but let's not forget lots of students want a nice transcript and will refuse to go to a university which doesn't certify them as smarter than other students.