John Thompson, historian and teacher in Oklahoma, has reviewed the work of economists Raj Chetty. You may recall that Chetty, a Harvard professor, was co-author of a study that purported to show that teachers could be evaluated by the test scores of their students. An effective teacher, one who raised test scores, would raise lifetime income, increase high school graduation rates, prevent teen pregnancies, and have lifelong effects on students. Raj and his colleagues John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff were cited on the first page of the New York Times (before the study was peer-reviewed), appeared on the PBS NewsHour, and were hailed by President Obama in his State of the Union speech in 2012. Their study became the #1 talking point for those who thought that using test scores–their rise and fall–would be the best way to identify effective and ineffective teachers. As Professor Friedman told the New York Times, “The message is to fire people sooner rather than later.”
Critics thought the findings were fairly modest. Even the Times said:
The average effect of one teacher on a single student is modest. All else equal, a student with one excellent teacher for one year between fourth and eighth grade would gain $4,600 in lifetime income, compared to a student of similar demographics who has an average teacher. The student with the excellent teacher would also be 0.5 percent more likely to attend college.
That works out to about $105 a year for a 40-year career, or $2 a week. But the Times then looked at the results in the aggregate and calculated that the aggregate of gains for an entire class would be $266,000 over the lifetimes of the entire class, or millions of dollars in added income when multiplied by millions of classrooms. Pretty great stuff, even though it means only $2 a week for one student.
The Obama administration bought into the Chetty-Friedman-Rockoff thesis whole-heartedly. Fire teachers sooner rather than later. Use test scores to find out who is a great teacher, who is a rotten teacher. It all made sense, except that it didn’t work anywhere. The scores bounced around. A teacher who was great one year was ineffective the next year; and vice versa. Teachers were rated based on the scores of students they never taught. Tests became the goal of education rather than the measure. It was a plague of madness that overcame public education across the land, embedded in Race to the Top (2009) and certified by Ivy League professors.
Thompson writes:
As it becomes more clear that value-added teacher evaluations are headed for the scrap heap of history, true believers in corporate reform continue to respond with the same old soundbites on the ways that their statistical models (VAMs) can be valid and reliable under research conditions. But, they continue to ignore the real issue and offer no evidence that VAMs can be made reliable and valid for evaluating real individuals in real schools.
Gates Foundation scholar Dan Goldhaber recently replied to the American Educational Research Association (AERA) statement which “cautions against VAM being used to have a high-stakes, dispositive weight in evaluations.” His protest recalls the special pleading of VAM advocates Raj Chetty, John Friedman, and Jonah Rockoff in reply to the American Statistical Association’s (ASA) 2014 statement warning about the problems with using VAMs for teacher evaluations.
Goldhaber criticizes the AERA by citing a couple of studies that use random samples to defend the claim that they can be causally linked to a teacher’s performance. Using random samples makes research easier but it also makes those studies irrelevant to real world policy questions. Goldhaber then cites Chetty et. al and their claim that low-stakes 1990s test scores resulted in the increased income of individuals during the subsequent economic boom in New York City during the 2000s.
Interestingly, Chetty’s rebuttal of the ASA cited the same two random sample studies, as well as his own research that was cited by Goldhaber. Like Goldhaber and other value-added proponents, he acknowledged the myriad of problems with value-added evaluations, but added, “School administrators, teachers, and other relevant parties can be trained to understand how to interpret a VAM estimate properly, including measures of precision as well as the assumptions and limitations of VAM.”
That raises two other concerns. First, if educators should be trained in the arcane methodologies, assumptions, and limitations of regression studies in order to use VAMs, should economists not be trained in the logistics of schools so they can conduct research that is relevant to education policy? Secondly, even if they ignore the nuts and bolts of schools, isn’t it strange that Chetty and his colleagues ignore economic factors when explaining economic effects? Why are they so sure that education – not economic forces – explains economic outcomes?
These questions become particularly interesting when reading Chetty’s web site. If he was really committed to the use of his Big Data methodology to help improve schools and students’ subsequent economic outcomes, would he not engage in a conversation with practitioners, and ground his methods in reality, so information from his models could be used to improve schools? After all, architects run plenty of quantitative structural analyses of their construction projects but they also interview their clients and listen to how they will use their buildings.
Chetty could have gone back and learned what he didn’t know about schools before he joined in the social engineering experiment known as school reform. Instead, he is rushing off to promote policies for problems which seem to be equally beyond his realm of knowledge. And, he seems equally uncurious about the new people he wants to “nudge” into better behavior. His method for studying anti-poverty policy is to ignore what actually happens in schools and communities and to “treat behavioral factors like any other modeling decision, such as assuming time-separable or quasi-linear utility.” The goal of his new project is to create incentives so that policy-makers can rid poor people, especially, of their “loss aversion, present bias, mental accounting, [and] inattention” so they will move to better places.
I’m not an expert on Chetty’s new The Equality of Economic Opportunity Project but my reading of the evidence is that Robert Putnam, who combines qualitative and quantitative research to document the decline of social mobility, makes a much stronger case than Chetty, who believes social and economic mobility hasn’t declined. It seems to me that Putnam is right and that we must take a generational view in order to show that economic opportunity for the poor has been reduced. I also believe that Derek Thompson nails the case that each generation since the first half of the Baby Boom is seeing an economic deterioration.
I can’t help but wondering why Chetty doesn’t stop scurrying around complex social issues, pontificating on simplistic quick fixes, and study issues in depth. He seems more intent on promoting his Big Data methods, and defeating traditional social science, than actually solving real-world problems. Chetty (and other VAM true believers?) appear preoccupied with academic combat against traditional social scientists who still respect falsifiable hypotheses and peer review. Education and child poverty appear to be just the battlegrounds for academic combat with researchers.
Traditional school improvement was based on the imperfect process of drawing upon the scientific method to diagnose problems, policy debates, and the imperfect democratic process known as compromise. To do that, educators and researchers studied the history and the nature of the causes and effects of underperformance. Corporate reform sought the opposite. Rather than study and debate the nature of our schools’ shortcomings, problems and solutions, the contemporary reform movement attempted a series of bank shots. Ignoring their actual targets, they sought incentives and disincentives that would prompt others to devise solutions. The job of economists’ regression studies was to suggest rewards and punishments that would make educators improve.
An illustration of Chetty’s disdain for evidence-based, collaborative conversations about school improvement is the first graph on his web site. It shows the surge in student test score growth which occurs when a “High VA Teacher Enters,” and replaces a low performer. If Chetty sought to articulate a hypothesis or discuss how his hypothesis, if proven, could improve teacher quality, he would have addressed some issues. But, the graphic resembles a political attack ad more than a presentation of evidence for school improvement.
Chetty’s graphic is strangely opaque about what he means by “high VA” teachers or how many of them there are. In fact, those gains he showcased are the educational equivalent of a White Rhinoceros.
Chetty emphasizes the incredible size of his database. His data spans the school years 1988-1989 through 2008-2009 and covers roughly 2.5 million children in grades 3-8. Because there are 974,686 unique students in the dataset, his Power Points seem impressive. But, it is extremely difficult to find the key number which a traditional social scientist would have volunteered at the beginning of a study. Chetty’s graphs that illustrate such dramatic gains are based on samples as small as 1135. In other words, about 12 to 17 of these top-performing New York City teachers transferred, per year, into low value-added classrooms.
Chetty doesn’t ask why such transfers are so rare. Moreover, he makes it extremely difficult for a reader to learn the most important facts that would prompt that essential question and a constructive discussion of solution. Instead, he indicates that the answer is using VAMs to fire low-performing teachers and, without evidence, he implies that there are enough top 5% teachers who would respond to modest incentives and transfer to those low value-added classrooms. Otherwise, Chetty’s work on transfers might earn him academic awards but it is just theory, irrelevant for real world policy.
Sadly, it looks like Chetty’s new studies are equally simplistic. The problem, he implies, is not that the economic ladder out of poverty is broken. The problem is getting poor families to move from places without opportunity to places where there is opportunity. So, we in Oklahoma City should forget that Supply Side economics incentivized the mass transfer of good-paying jobs to the exurbs. In Oklahoma County, where poor children’s economic opportunity is in the bottom 17% of the nation, we should incentivize the movement of poor families to Cleveland County where social mobility hasn’t declined.
Presumably, the additional good-paying jobs for the influx of poor families would magically appear. In other words, Chetty’s logic on moving to opportunity is the first cousin of his faith that top teachers will flock to the inner city because they want to be evaluated with an algorithm which is biased against inner city teachers.
I wish I didn’t feel compelled to sound so sarcastic. I really do. But, for every complicated question, there is an answer that is quick, simple, and wrong. Why are Chetty et. al so quick to conclude that it is schools – not the totality of market and historical forces – that drive economic outcomes? Even though the market has undermined the futures of poor families, why does he remain convinced that it can fix schools?
And, the inconsistencies of Chetty and other corporate reformers drive me up the wall. He now proclaims, “We find that every year of exposure to a better environment improves a child’s chances of success.” Were he consistent, Chetty might understand that exposure to education environments might improve his chance of studying education in a way that improves his chances of successfully helping students.
Why does Chetty not take the time to understand the environments of poor children, and build better school environments? Why not help create learning environments that would attract high value-added teachers, not drive them out of the profession? Rather than demand that teachers and poor families learn to look at their worlds the way Chetty does, why not listen to the people who he says he wants to help?
“An effective teacher, one who raised test scores, would raise lifetime income, increase high school graduation rates, prevent teen pregnancies, and have lifelong effects on students.”
Wow! Can we add a few other expectations like giving the blind sight, the cripple the use of their legs and raising people from the dead.
If teachers are expected to accomplish all of these things then there will need to be some changes.
1. Teacher class loads of 90 or less (6 classes time 15 students) The current average for a high school is 150-180 students or more (6 classes time 25 or 30).
2. More collaboration and preparation time.
3. A pay raise that is triple or quadruple the current rate.
That man is delusional. He does not have a clue what he is talking about. He wants to create more square pegs all the same.
And:
4. The support of a community and society that actually work to alleviate the fundamental problems of poverty in this country.
5. Fix our welfare system. I have kids that are 3rd & 4th generation welfare and believe that eventually everyone just going to give it to them. They have no motivation or desire to achieve.
That’s part of what I mean about doing something regarding the fundamental problems of poverty. Welfare is not “fixing” the underlying problems. Education is, of course, important so they can get decent jobs and have a decent life. Raising the minimum wage. Making sure that there are decent jobs. Cleaning up the communities. Building more affordable housing.
And a whole bunch of other things.
Unfortunately the system is not designed to help people get off of it. It is designed to keep them dependent. In the beginning it was not meant as a “lifestyle” but an assistance program until a person could get back on their feet. It is so far from that now that it is sicking. We have woman that have 3, 4, 5 children out of wedlock with different bio-donors and we continue to reward them by giving them more money.
They should have instituted a well-thought-out system of workfare, not welfare, where you were either working or going to school (academic or trade), or both, while you were being helped financially by the government. Also, make sure that there were enough subsidized day care centers, with well-trained staff. Among other things.
But they didn’t.
I like how you think. Now if we tried to get to a system like that, it would just be “Un-American”. Someone would be offended.
Communism! It would have been called communism, no doubt.
Yep.
drext727 – “Fix our welfare system. I have kids that are 3rd & 4th generation welfare and believe that eventually everyone just going to give it to them. They have no motivation or desire to achieve.”
I would suggest you look into the history of welfare. You also suggested that welfare started off as more efficient, with a statement in a later post….” In the beginning it was not meant as a “lifestyle” but an assistance program until a person could get back on their feet.”
Welfare has been under the gun since Clinton. TANF has been sliced and diced.
Food stamp participation of course has skyrocketed, but that’s because our economy has gotten creamed.
I would suggest that there is a loss of motivation and desire to achieve in school and in life because America has gutted its labor.
Where’s the motivation and desire to achieve in K-12, or even in higher education, when the majority of jobs offer Wal-Mart pay and benefits, alongside food stamps?
The problem in this country is not welfare – it has been streamlined and gutted. The problem is our labor market that invites food stamps with low wages, harsh working conditions, and disrespect.
You make a valid point. One my biggest concern is the “babies for money” aspect. Many women are having more babies because they keep getting more money. After two children, the benefits should be reduced, not rewarded for having more and more babies.
The problem with reducing the benefits after two children is that it is the children who are punished. Unfortunately solving generational poverty is going to take more than manipulating benefit levels, and it won’t be easy.
Raj Chetty is wrong because he doesn’t understand the difference between correlation and causation. Pretty embarrassing for a researcher.
There are some many variables impacting students’ lives and the lives of poor families that Chetty’s assumptions are naive, not scientific.
The thing that really struck me about Chetty’s study was the base “present value of lifetime earnings” value that he used to calculate the $4,600 figure. Using sampling, Chetty found that the average present value of a 12-year-old’s future lifetime earnings is about $522,000. That means that in today’s dollars (i.e. accounting for inflation effects), the average kid can expect to make just over a half-million dollars in the course of their their entire lifetime. If that’s accurate, that is a little scary.
FLERP, do you think that getting a higher test score in 3rd grade produces $522,000 in lifetime earnings?
Is there a correlation (kids who get higher test scores earn more and succeed later in life) or causation (the teacher who can “produce” higher scores is responsible for lower teen pregnancies, higher lifetime earnings, and higher college-going rates)? I liked my teachers in grades 3-8, but I don’t think any of them had that dramatic effect on me.
The $522,000 lifetime earnings figure is the average amount of money (in today’s dollars) that today’s 12-year-olds can expect to earn over their entire lives. Chetty’s argument is that an excellent teacher will increase that figure from $522,000 to $526,600.
My point is that the $522,000 is a disturbingly low number for the expected lifetime earnings of a 12 year old.
Oh, I see. I thought you were talking about a gain over 30 years. The increase of $4,600 is sad.
I think FLERP! is saying it’s scary because $522,000 over a 30 year career is only $17,400 per year.
Dienne, I assumed FLERP meant half a million MORE over a 30-year career
The flawed assumption in Chetty analysis is that raising test scores is the path to boundless economic growth and equality. This is why “reformers” love it
522K, which shows that the problem in America is not lack of education, but the economic undervaluation for an hour of work.
Who has a thirty year career? I want one of those! Even if you go to college chances are you will work more than forty years. that means making a grand total of a little over $13,000 a year. The first thing Chetty should have done looking at his own data was start looking for other means of raising income than getting a stellar teacher.
We raised beef cattle for a number of years. Apparently, we were doing it wrong. Instead of focusing on what they were eating and keeping them healthy to get them up to market weight, we should have just bought some enormous scales and weighed them all the time. That would have done the trick, by golly!
Click to access 2010%20NCBA%20Cow%20Efficiency%20_Final_.pdf
Nah, we never did all that kind of stuff. We had free-range cattle, they ate our own grass and hay, with a little bit (not much) of grain that we bought from an organic producer. No hormones or other addiditives. And we didn’t send our cattle to feed lots. Direct to consumer marketing.
Sure, we probably could have put more weight on them, faster, if we had followed “preferred practices,” but that’s just not how we rolled. 😀
I like the analogy.
Hi Diane, Good critique by Thompson. While we are all slowly putting nails in the VAM coffin, and hope that “this too shall pass,” I made a modest contribution in the form of a speech that went on line about the policy fiasco that occurs when we judge teachers by standardized tests. I sent it to you over a month ago and you thought you would get its web address out to people. I dont think I missed it as I try to keep up with all you do. It does have a great failing, it takes an hour to view, and I apologize to all about my long windedness, but it makes 14 points about why you cannot ever use standardized achievement tests to evaluate teachers. Its why Chetty will always be wrongheaded.
Ill get a printed version one of these days—productivity has slowed down for me as I, like you, soon turn 78.
Iff you still want it, the speech is at:
http://education.unimelb.edu.au/news_and_activities/events/upcoming_events/dean_lecture_series/dls-past-2015/teacher-evaluation-and-standardised-tests-a-policy-fiasco
As always, thanks for all you do.
DCB
David C. Berliner
Regents’ Professor Emeritus
120 E. Rio Salado Parkway, Unit 205
Tempe, AZ 85281-9116
Ph: 480-861-0484
>
Thanks, David. I will post it. As you can imagine, I sometimes get overwhelmed with the stuff in my email box, in addition to writing posts and reading every comment. I do it because I love it, so I am not complaining. But sometimes I miss great stuff, like this video.
Thanks for the video, David!
Think I’m gonna drive 20 miles to the nearest Chinese restaurant for some take out and bring it back and watch the entire video!
Again, thanks and am looking forward to a written version. If it’s a matter of transcribing the video, I could help some if you need it. Let me know at dswacker@centurytel.net
Duane
President Obama could raise lifetime earnings today. All he has to do is restore the overtime rule to an amount comparable to what it was in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Oddly, he hasn’t been able to get that done over the last 7 years, although the teacher measurement schemes went in all over the country.
“It apparently is taking longer than expected for the U.S. Department of Labor to finalize a proposed rule that would make about 5 million more American workers eligible for overtime pay, in part because the agency received a flood of 270,000 comments in response to a preliminary version.
Right now, the threshold for white-collar salaried workers to earn overtime is $23,660, meaning that workers who earn more than that amount — below the poverty line for a family of four – can’t be paid at a higher rate if they work more than 40 hours a week or 8 hours in a day.”
I’m not clear why he’s taking such a roundabout route to increasing the lifetime earnings of working families. I suspect it’s because there’s many, many more powerful people who object to restoring the overtime rule than there are powerful people who object to measuring teachers by student test scores.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/careers/rule-expanding-overtime-pay-eligibility-wont-be-finalized-year-n462511
Chetty should apply his logic to CEOs, freeze their pay and fire all the bad eggs.
Of course with CEOs, the only way to get the most excellent ones is to provide high pay. Why wouldn’t the same be true for teachers?
If the Chetty study says a dollar invested in a teacher provides a return of a factor of three or ten, then the obvious conclusion from the Chetty study is for the US to invest another 100 billion in teacher pay to get more excellent teachers.
What gives Chetty?
‘Why are Chetty, et. al so quick to conclude that it is schools – not the totality of market and historical forces – that drive economic outcomes?”
For the every simple reason that Chetty et al are not scientists
O ye of little faith!
Still asserting that Chetty & Co. cannot turn VAM base metals into genuine teaching and learning gold?
Next thing you know you will claim, baselessly, that Michelle Rhee did not take “her” students from the 13th to the 90th percentiles.
Go figure…
😎
“the truly remarkable demonstration of how self-destructive economists’ dogmas are of their ability to go beyond a shambolic parody of the scientific method is their work after the crisis that purports to explain what caused the crisis”
I’m surprised you guys missed this in the ed bill:
“The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that passed the House of Representatives last week by a vote of 359-64 and will be passed with an overwhelming margin today by the U.S. Senate, will put into statute, for the first time, President Obama’s program to replicate and expand high-performing public charter schools.
Over just the past five years, this program has made it possible for tens of thousands of parents to enroll their children in great schools, most of which have long waiting lists. The infographic below summarizes the enormous payoff this program has had, and will continue to have over the years to come based on grant awards made up through this year.”
DC Democrats got their two top priorities into that bill- charters and testing.
Shortly before Mary Landrieu lost her Senate seat, she said she wanted to federally fund 500 new charter schools a year, presumably until public schools are replaced completely. She’s a lobbyist for the Walton heirs now, in addition to some other revolving door profiteering. I bet she lobbied her former colleagues on this bill, in fact.
I guess she’ll get her wish.
https://edreformnow.org/infographic-the-impact-of-president-obamas-program-to-replicate-and-expand-high-performing-charter-schools/
Bill Gates has bitten on the Chetty hook, line and sinker.
Gates now wants to control teacher education to ensure no candidates enter school unless they are at least as an “effective” a teacher with three years experience.
Effective means only thing to both of these amateurs. Test scores and increments of these that “exceed expectations.”
Gates latest round of grants for teacher education also stipulate the Common Core as mandatory. Add competency based tests for teacher educators and their candidates.
And then what does Gates do? He throws money at Relay Graduate School of Education, promoter of Teach Like A Champions principles from Doug LeMove. Principle three is called SLANT. This means Sit up straight. Listen. Ask questions. Nod. Track the speaker.
Who is more out of touch and arguably dangerously influential in education? Chetty or Gates?
The ed reform billionaires just have way too much influence over public ed. I don’t know how to stop it, particularly now that they’re buying up media coverage:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2015/12/08/should-the-trib-disclose-money-charter-school-backers-gave-to-the-la-times
I didn’t even consider that the Broad-purchased coverage in LA would be picked up by other news outlets, but of course it will be, which vastly expands the reach Broad purchased.
It really doesn’t matter to me if any of the various players are good or bad people. They simply have too much influence, period. That much clout concentrated in 5 unelected, unaccountable people isn’t a good idea.
Thanks John Thompson. As Diane said at one time, Chetty seems to be dropping bombs from thousands of feet in the air, without seemingly caring where the bombs hit.
Progressive policy-making uses the latest knowledge. Some academic competition (and gamesmanship) might be good for science.
But it’s reckless and thoughtless to jump from a single study to national policies with implications for millions of people without asking a lot of other questions.
Chetty’s results are flawed and unimpressive in so many ways. Also flawed is the conclusion that starting to base teacher job security on test scores will result in the future in similar $4600 per child lifetime income gains. How does it follow from Chetty’s results, even if they are taken as true, that we need to attach high stakes to exams and fire teachers with low-scoring students (with whatever formula is used to slice and dice numbers)?
We have no scientific basis to assume that teachers both test-score boosters and not, will continue to teach in the same way once high stakes are attached. Perhaps those high stakes will affect teaching, so that teachers devote way more time to test prep to boost scores, ignore or shortchanged non-tested areas like the arts, history, personal expression, speech, science and as a result, turn off kids’ interest in educational settings, so students perform as trained on tests, with higher test scores for the “most effective” teachers, but also that the students drop out in greater numbers, lose their sense of curiosity or ability to question, and ultimately earn less because they did not push themselves to learn more, have not been educated in important areas like arts, science etc. and have learned they need to be passive and uninspired robots following orders. How much does society lose (just in money, to use one of Chetty’s preferred measures) when our dreamers creators and inventors have their creativity stifled and don’t get the inspiration they need, all because a teacher’s job depends on the test scores and the test scores become the be-all and end-all of education?
This study was peer-reviewed to death. Moshe Adler at Columbia found that, in a previous study, Chetty found no increase in income at age 30 for the people they studied. Instead of declaring there was no correlation, they next studied age 28, where they found this small correlation (still no causation, of course). But they didn’t stop there. They projected the small increase over the course of the subjects’ working lives, even though they knew there WAS NO INCREASE for age 30. This omission is willful obtuseness at best, and is more likely something far more nefarious.
Raj Chetty is a mercenary, and thankfully there are many true academicians in multiple fields willing to dispute his destructive claims. They just haven’t been quoted by Obama…
I had no idea teachers are the cause of teen pregnancies. Thanks, Chetty. And I believed my dad all these years.
There’s no shortage of examples of “research”, that supports Walton-type ideology, finding the way to publication, as NBER working papers, followed by implementation into policy, without peer review or vetting for validity.
No surprise, after reading Sourcewatch’s report on the original funding for NBER and knowing that is headed by a MIT faculty member. (Charles, David and their father, Fred Koch are graduates and one of the brothers is a lifetime board member at the “MIT Corporation.”
“Harvard and MIT thwarted a reform proposal by Obama to slash their government research allocated to overhead…Harvard gets a rate of 69%, as contrasted with the national average of 52%.” “Harvard is taking the government to the cleaners.” Both are quotes from a Boston Globe, 2013 article.
How does Harvard receive any federal money, at all? With a legacy admission rate at a reported 30%, they have institutionalized discrimination. Americans do not have an equal chance at admittance, based on merit and therefore, all federal funding to institutions like Harvard, should be denied.
I may be wrong, but I am assuming they might be talking about the government grants that the science (and other) professors receive from the government to do their research. Harvard doesn’t provide the money that the profs need to do research. (Neither do other universities.) The profs apply for federal, and other, grants. For instance, most of the professors of biological sciences get funding from the NIH, as well as a few private entities, such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. They write proposals, then their proposals are reviewed by a panel of experts in the field, and their proposals are either accepted or rejected. Usually, they have to defend their research before another group, generally five or so years later, to justify continuation of their grants. (Of course, there are profs in science and medicine receiving grants from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies; that can be a problem because it might call into question the objectivity of their research.)
Okay, long-winded. When the profs get grant money, part of the grant goes to the university, for “overhead.” (Use of the lab, electricity, maintenance, janitorial services, etc, etc.). Generally, this overhead is around 50%, give or take. Harvard’s overhead is way out of line.
(The grants also pay the professor’s salary, as well as for his/her post-doctoral fellows, and other lab staff.)