A respected researcher recently pointed out to me that there is a vast divide between most economists of education–who devoutly believe (it seems) that whatever matters can be measured, and if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t matter–and education researchers, who tend to think about the real world of students and teachers.
Here is an excellent example of the divide.
Bruce Baker takes issue with the currently fashionable idea that education can be dramatically improved by identifying the “best” teachers, giving them larger classes, and getting rid of the loser teachers.
Or, as he puts it:
“The solution to all of our woes is simple and elegant. Just follow these steps.
Step 1: Identify “really great” teachers (using your best VAM or SGP) who happen to be currently teaching inefficiently small classes of 14 to 17 students.
Step 2: Re-assign to those “really great” teachers another 12 or so students, because whatever losses might occur in relation to increased class size, the benefits of the “really great” teacher will far outweigh those losses.
Step 3: Enter underpants Gnomes.
Step 4. Test Score Awesomeness!”
He has a suggestion: Why not try the same at the fancy private and public schools?.
“One might assert that affluent suburban Westchester and Long Island districts with much smaller average class sizes should give more serious consideration to this proposal, that is, if they are a) willing to accept the assertion that they have both “bad” and “good” teachers and b) that parents in their districts are really willing to permit such experimentation with their children? I remain unconvinced.
“As for leading private independent schools which continue to use small class size as a major selling point (& differentiator from public districts), I’m currently pondering the construction of the double-decker Harkness table, to accommodate 12 students sitting on the backs of 12 others. This will be a disruptive innovation like no other!”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The method used by the bean counters matches how conservative minds think. Interesting studies—some using modern day brain scans—show that the electrical activity in the brains of conservatives think differently than those of progressives. They way they approach solving problems differs. Conservatives tend to base their problem solving methods as describe din this e-mail where progressives tend to be more into critical thinking and problem solving without the use of bubble tests as a judgement tool.
I guess that’s great news for progressives. I don’t know too many people who use bubble tests to solve their problems. They must all be progressives.
LOL
Progressives (i.e., NOT conservatives), like Arne Duncan and his boss?
Do a bit of digging like I did and Progressive label the only adjective that describes Arne Duncan and his boss.
If they have a real progressive streak, it’s sheltering under a large umbrella with this label on it:
Neo-conservative
Dig deeper to discover where the neo-conservative movement started and eventually you will learn that most of them migrated to the GOP but not all of them.
In fact, I think they are neoconservatives wearing progressive coats.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
To the degree that schools in suburban Westchester and Long Island have inexperienced teachers, I am sure everyone who commonly posts on this blog will agree that they have some teachers that are weaker than other teachers.
TE
Why would you please gift us with some more incredible insights.
Maybe you could tell us that Earth orbits the Sun. How about your version of the times tables. You must get off this horse, in case you haven’t noticed it died a long time ago.
There are going to be many inexperienced teachers in the public schools because so many experienced teachers are retiring in mass numbers.
It takes 5 to 10 years to gain the experience after training because there is nothing better than experience to learn. There’s a learning curve involved. Those who survive and stick it out will gain the experience. The rest who can’t take it, quit in the first few years and never come back.
I interned full time (in a paid position) under a master teacher in her fifth grade classroom for a full school year while I took classes in the evenings to earn my credential. The real challenge after teaching full time on that hard-earned credential was to learn how to survive in the mine field of public school politics and dealing with one politically correct method of teaching after another (all those magic bullets that promised to fix it all) that came down the political assembly line from the district, state and national levels—those programs were seldom if ever vetted by classroom teachers.
There was no choice. Do it or else!
I think you are correct that there is a large cohort of teachers retiring, mirroring the 50% increase in the number of teachers that happened 20-30 years ago.
My reading of the original post was that Mr. Baker thought it unlikely that wealthy suburban schools in the New York area would be “a) willing to accept the assertion that they have both “bad” and “good” teachers”. I would think that if we changed the words to “better” and “worse” teachers for the majority of students, no one could reasonably reject the assertion.
teachingeconomist… the problem with your argument is two-fold. If you are implying inexperienced teachers are weak teachers, that assumption is quite short-sided. The 25 year vet is typically no more polished than the 5 year or 10 year vet, and sometimes it can be quite the opposite. The other issue is that children are not consumers and schools are not a business. Child mature and develop at different rates, and sometimes it clicks for kids at different times. It isn’t always a forgone conclusion or the teachers effective or ineffectiveness.
“My reading of the original post was that Mr. Baker thought it unlikely that wealthy suburban schools in the New York area would be “a) willing to accept the assertion that they have both “bad” and “good” teachers”. I would think that if we changed the words to “better” and “worse” teachers for the majority of students, no one could reasonably reject the assertion.”
Actually, he thought it unlikely that wealthy suburban schools would test the idea because it’s patently stupid (and of course wealthy parents don’t like mad economist social engineering experiments performed on their children).
So you do not think that there would be any difficulty with wealthy suburban districts accepting the assertion that there are good (I would prefer better, but it is not my post) and bad (again, I prefer worse) in the district?
Let’s put this to a reality—and Rheeality—test.
One or both of Michelle Rhee’s girls go to Harpeth Hall. Let’s have a go at the hard data [= numbers] with which the stars of the “new civil rights movement” are so smitten.
Under “50 Reasons” there is the following:
“10. Helping hands. In order to help our girls meet the challenges of middle and high school, each student is assigned a faculty advisor who serves as academic counselor, advocate and link to the Harpeth Hall community.”
“11. Our state-of-the-art library houses 29,000 books, 1,000 ebooks, 20 electronic databases, 12 Kindles, six small group study rooms, two classrooms for library and technology instruction, and eight really comfortable chairs around a cozy fireplace.”
“14. Our faculty average more than 18 years of teaching experience and 80 percent hold advanced degrees.”
“26. Technology: Every student in grades 5-12 has a laptop computer connected by a campuswide wireless network.”
“29. 8:1 ratio: Our teachers know our students.”
“35. Five theatrical productions, five musical performances, two dance concerts and hundreds of pieces of original art, each year.”
“38. 65 desktop computers, 130 faculty/staff/administrative team laptops/tablets, approximately 350 student-owned laptops, 316 school-owned student laptops, 47 loaner netbooks/laptops, 44 Smartboards, 74 ceiling mounted LCD wireless projectors. At Harpeth Hall we integrate technology into every part of the learning experience. ”
Link: http://www.harpethhall.org/podium/default.aspx?t=151749
I stop here because I am sure that the public school teachers and staff that view this blog are in tears, seeing the terrible neglect and lack of resources at a school that, well frankly, hardly has two nickels to rub together:
“The Tuition, including fees, for the 2013-2014 Academic year is: $22,745 for the Middle School and $23,635 for the Upper School.”
Link: https://www.harpethhall.org/podium/default.aspx?t=151784&rc=1
Though I wouldn’t discount entirely their pathetic yearly fundraising:
“The Annual Fund is a top priority in the Next Step Campaign, and our goal is $1 million.”
That’s a lot of girl scout cookies, don’t ya think?
Link: http://www.harpethhall.org/podium/default.aspx?t=151862&rc=0
Of course, like any institution for young people, people give a penny or two to support ongoing activities:
“Gifts of any size to endowment strengthen Harpeth Hall for the future. Donors may establish a permanent named endowment as a tribute to a family member, faculty member, or for the general support of Harpeth Hall. Below is a list of funds that have been established over time. Funds are considered partially funded with a gift of $150,000 and fully funded with a gift of $250,000.”
Link: http://www.harpethhall.org/podium/default.aspx?t=151863
For the tear-jerking list of gift givers, click on the link above to access other links with more information.
I stop here because if I continue I am sure that folks will start calling for someone to pass the hat around. The numbers just aren’t in favor of those abandoned little tykes.
😡
Figures. Stats. Data-driven instruction. Management by the numbers. All in the service of, according to someone who knows the value of a world-class education: “our most precious assets.”
Michelle Rhee, natcherly. Who else knows what’s best for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN?
😎
Where are these classes of 14 to 17, please?
TchEcon,
Indeed there is likely variation in those suburban districts. But, the simulation results rely not on imbalancing class sizes across marginally different teachers, but rather across substantially different teachers. Might a suburban district try to shift more kids to a marginally better teacher (giving her a class of 22) and fewer to a marginally weaker teacher (giving her a class size of 17) for a class like algebra? Yes… that’s certainly a reasonable strategy for potentially maximizing the effects of both (especially if the weaker teacher is new, for example). But, that’s simply thoughtful building level management under circumstances where schools have such class size flexibility. But, those pushing these ideas aren’t generally speaking to how Scarsdale, or Exeter for that matter might optimally manage class assignments. Rather, these simulations are being used to assert substantial efficiency gains for large districts like NYC, or statewide.
My problem here is with the sweeping generalizations that systemwide efficiency gains can be made with such strategies and that we can make simple data (using only two measures – teacher value added & class size) based determinations to achieve our goals.
Bruce
But… I should note that if these teachers have to operate under the NY state teacher eval model, there is no incentive for the teachers to allow this imbalanced assignment, as the better teacher would be disadvantaged by the increased class size (and total student load), potentially marginally reducing her value added.
One might well ask if thoughtful building management is ubiquitous in the public school system. If not, perhaps instituting thoughtful building management could well be seen as a district wide improvement.
Personally I would not use two data points. I would make use of all the staff knowledge in the building in both evaluating teachers and allocating students across teachers.
Your example does bring up an issue of winners and losers. If we do transfer some students from an inexperienced teacher to an experienced one, it seems reasonable that the students still assigned to the inexperience teacher will gain because of the smaller class size and the students transferred would gain because they are assigned to a more experienced teacher. The students originally assigned to the more experienced teacher, however, will be worse off because of the increase in class size. This move will violate the spirit of this blog because it does not provide a better education for all.
I think I have a building model for the double decker tables. For our public schools, nothing is too good, so, we can use the heavy duty scaffold shelves from home depot. In true reform fashion, we can allow the depot to claim a tax credit and depreciation on their donated shelves. The head of this great experiment will also have to agree to have “some skin” in the game. The consulting geniuses will have to agree to a 25 % pay cut, to be restored proportionally with test increases. If tests do not increase they must agree to supply their entire salary to fund more teachers for the school so that class sizes can be reduced, and they must also agree to go away and leave us alone.
I teach in a portable classroom (trailer) and I have 36 kids in some of my classes. Especially 9th graders barely fit in there. For years, I’ve been saying that if the power that be want to stuff more kids in my classroom, they need to build either a balcony or a sun porch onto my classroom.