Chicago teachers' strike

[hrothgar]

Couple quick comments:

 

I think that Phil is hitting the nail right on the head when he focuses on the difficulty of creating accurate metrics.

 

Unfortunately, while standardized tests are both objective and popular, they are very severely flawed for measuring teacher effectiveness. Standardized test scores are inaccurate and they incentivize the wrong behavior.

 

Longitudinal studies have shown that the performance of individual teachers varies enormously from year to year. Teacher effectiveness is important, however, ultimately it gets swamped by various environmental factors. As a result, it is completely unfair to use standardized test scores as a primary metric for compensating teachers.

 

Sadly, the easiest way for teacher's to raise test scores is for them to falsify test scores and teaching students how to "game" the test...

 

I know that this isn't going to be popular, but the best way to fix the system is probably to throw money at it...

 

I know that this is going to come as a shock to people, but US teacher's don't get paid very much. Historically, ingrained sexual discrimination allowed the US to pay teachers squat while still attracting highly qualified candidates. These days, women can get good jobs in the broader work force. This is doubtlessly good for society, but bad for teacher quality. (As I understand matters, these days most teachers are drawn form the bottom third of the academic population).

 

Plain and simple, if you want to start attracting quality teachers you're going to need to

 

1. Pay them a lot more

2. Accord them a bit more respect in society

3. Give them a lot more autonomy

 

FWIW, my mother used to taught junior high and high school level German and French for 20 years before she got fed up and moved to teaching college. She forbade me to ever go into public education. (And before you make the obvious jokes, this has nothing to do with my personality, but rather how unpleasant the entire profession has become)

[phil_20686]

Couple quick comments:

 

I think that Phil is hitting the nail right on the head when he focuses on the difficulty of creating accurate metrics.

 

Unfortunately, while standardized tests are both objective and popular, they are very severely flawed for measuring teacher effectiveness. Standardized test scores are inaccurate and they incentivize the wrong behavior.

 

 

SO yes, but I am still in favour of metrics. Despite the difficulties, I think data>>>people. When you realise how wrong and arbitrary most hiring decisions are, you realise that metrics do not need to be all knowing to be an improvement. :)

[hrothgar]

SO yes, but I am still in favour of metrics. Despite the difficulties, I think data>>>people. When you realise how wrong and arbitrary most hiring decisions are, you realise that metrics do not need to be all knowing to be an improvement. :)

 

Don't get me wrong... I love metrics.

Right now, Akamai is paying me a very nice salary to create new metrics.

 

If anyone can propose a good set of metrics for measuring teacher effectiveness, I'd be all for it.

I haven't ever seen any, nor do I know how to do so.

[phil_20686]

Don't get me wrong... I love metrics.

Right now, Akamai is paying me a very nice salary to create new metrics.

 

If anyone can propose a good set of metrics for measuring teacher effectiveness, I'd be all for it.

I haven't ever seen any, nor do I know how to do so.

 

We will only be able to create good metrics, after we collect lots of data. As I understand it, the unions are opposed to data collection, because they fear that principals will use it to get rid of people. And they say that the metrics are bad.

 

I agree that standardised test data is probably not the best. We need to collect not only standardised scores, but also routinely record the scores of every piece of work, and cross correlate it with family background and income. If we did that, we could start the hard work of constructing a decent metric.

 

 

 

[hrothgar]

I agree that standardised test data is probably not the best. We need to collect not only standardised scores, but also routinely record the scores of every piece of work, and cross correlate it with family background and income. If we did that, we could start the hard work of constructing a decent metric.

 

Few problems with this plan

 

1. Both the US and the EU have rather strict privacy laws which impact the ability to collect and use said information

 

2. There is a lot of excellent sociological work focusing on how perceptions about student abilities influences the behavior of teachers. (One of the most interesting examples focused on how feminine a woman's name was with achievement in math). Heisenberg's uncertainty principle isn't just for electrons...

 

Have you seen any of the literature studying the Finnish school systems?

[Bbradley62]

I think you're making this way too complicated, especially for elementary schools. It is reasonable to estimate that each class in a given public elementary school is drawn from the same pool of students. So, start by measuring each teacher's students' progress against the rest of their own school. If your students perform at more than, say, 1.5 standard deviations below the mean of your own school, then you are flagged for scrutiny. If it happens a second consecutive year, when you presumably have a different subset of students within the same pool, you need to find a new job.

[phil_20686]

1. Both the US and the EU have rather strict privacy laws which impact the ability to collect and use said information

 

2. There is a lot of excellent sociological work focusing on how perceptions about student abilities influences the behavior of teachers. (One of the most interesting examples focused on how feminine a woman's name was with achievement in math). Heisenberg's uncertainty principle isn't just for electrons...

 

Have you seen any of the literature studying the Finnish school systems?

 

I have not, except insofar as some studies crop up in the British media.

 

I have seen the studies about marking, and photographs/gender knowledge.

 

I do not think number one is a genuine problem. There are relatively weak standards for anonymising. For example, they collect income data on students routinely for the purpose of deciding if you qualify for free school meals. You could certainly collect it at the year group level, and I suspect at the class level would be ok. Obviously the teachers should not find out the results of individual schools, but this is reasonably easy to achieve in practice.

 

Its already virtually compulsory to fill in parental income on university application forms, for the purpose of deciding what student loan support you are entitled too. You can only avoid it if you are not taking student loans, which pretty much marks you as independently wealthy.

[phil_20686]

I think you're making this way too complicated, especially for elementary schools. It is reasonable to estimate that each class in a given public elementary school is drawn from the same pool of students. So, start by measuring each teacher's students' progress against the rest of their own school. If your students perform at more than, say, 1.5 standard deviations below the mean of your own school, then you are flagged for scrutiny. If it happens a second consecutive year, when you presumably have a different subset of students within the same pool, you need to find a new job.

 

The problem with this is that the population of teachers is large. So even if the % is small, you are talking about a large number of teachers being arbitarily fired. THere are 500,000 teachers in the US, so I think you would have to get a three sigma result, before you could use it for firing/hiring decisions.

 

Of course, the correct way to use it is to bring people under scrutiny, and if their peers feel them to be under performing, then they fire. Not to mention, many teachers, like many other workers in various stripes, will go through rough patches in their lives that affect the quality of their teaching. Serious illness in their children/spouse, depression, burnout etc. You should be prepared to tolerate two or three years of bad results from good teachers, if they have a good track record in the past, on the expectation that they will improve in the future.

 

Few people are equally productive through out their lives.

[hrothgar]

 

It is reasonable to estimate that each class in a given public elementary school is drawn from the same pool of students. So, start by measuring each teacher's students' progress against the rest of their own school. If your students perform at more than, say, 1.5 standard deviations below the mean of your own school, then you are flagged for scrutiny. If it happens a second consecutive year, when you presumably have a different subset of students within the same pool, you need to find a new job.

 

Sadly, your notions of "reasonable" don't accord well with reality

 

According to the data I've seen there is enormous variance in the Year over Year success of individual teachers.

One year some one is on top, the next he is on the bottom.

In all seriousness, you might as well be flipping coins.

 

This is not to say that individual teachers don't score well on this metric year in and year out.

Flip enough quarter's and one of them is going to turn up heads 20 times in a row.

 

However, its not fair to use this as an exclusive (or even a primary) metric for evaluating teacher performance.

[Bbradley62]

All such details can (fairly easily) be worked out: career average of ratings, how many sigma, etc. I think the major point is that doing something is better than not, and standardized tests can be used for this purpose if done in a reasonable way. But, I do not think "if their peers feel them to be under performing" is at all relevant; I would expect members of a union to circle the wagons and try to protect each other, even when that protection is undeserved.

[semeai]

Check this out, in one of my favourite pieces of socio-economic research ever done, Harvard economics professors, in response to being evaluated partly bystudent questionaires, constructed a longitudinal study, which conclusively proved that those first year lectures with the worst evaluations had the highest positive effects on student learning outcomes.

 

The key results are (complete study here)

 

So even students cannot judge who their good teachers are. lol.

 

Your quote is not from the paper you link, which furthermore does not have the conclusions you suggest. Furthermore, the authors are from U of Toronto. The closest they come is that perceived easiness of a professor is negatively correlated with student performance in subsequent courses in the same subject area.

 

The quote is instead from this paper by someone from from UC Davis and someone from the US Air Force Academy, which does have the results you summarize. Namely, student evaluations are positively correlated with student performance in the current course the students are taking, but negatively correlated with student performance in a subsequent course in the same subject area.

 

No comment on the conclusions of the second paper, I was just thoroughly confused when trying to find the results you suggested in the data from the first paper.

[phil_20686]

Your quote is not from the paper you link, which furthermore does not have the conclusions you suggest. Furthermore, the authors are from U of Toronto. The closest they come is that perceived easiness of a professor is negatively correlated with student performance in subsequent courses in the same subject area.

 

The quote is instead from this paper by someone from from UC Davis and someone from the US Air Force Academy, which does have the results you summarize. Namely, student evaluations are positively correlated with student performance in the current course the students are taking, but negatively correlated with student performance in a subsequent course in the same subject area.

 

No comment on the conclusions of the second paper, I was just thoroughly confused when trying to find the results you suggested in the data from the first paper.

 

My bad, when searching for the link I had two blog posts open from Greg Mankiw's blog, who originally led me to that paper, I copied the quote from one but the link from the other. It should be the Caroll/west paper "random assignments of students to professors". Will fixx the link in my post.

 

I remembered the authors as being from Harvard. My bad. Its definitely the caroll/west paper I was thinking of though. Maybe its because Mankiw is from Harvard, and I conflated. Good spot.

[semeai]

My bad, when searching for the link I had two blog posts open from Greg Mankiw's blog, who originally led me to that paper, I copied the quote from one but the link from the other. It should be the Caroll/west paper "random assignments of students to professors". Will fixx the link in my post.

 

I remembered the authors as being from Harvard. My bad. Its definitely the caroll/west paper I was thinking of though. Maybe its because Mankiw is from Harvard, and I conflated. Good spot.

 

Thanks. I didn't mean to come off so harsh. The study you meant to link looks well done and the conclusions are fairly stark. They're from data at the Air Force Academy, where they were able to randomize which professor each student got, ensure that the students took follow-on courses, and had consistent grading.

 

The same sorts of things (and many others) are tracked in the paper you originally linked, at some other university. There the conclusions are all pretty mild it seems. None of the effects of perceived qualities of the professor (perceived by the students) on performance in subsequent courses were significant except for perceived easiness, which was negatively correlated. (They tracked perceived hotness as well, among others!)

 

I'm not sure what all this means. Could we look at teacher performance in terms of how the students do in subsequent years? This sounds exploitable (campaigning for your previous students to your colleagues), but so does everything else.

[Cthulhu D]

All such details can (fairly easily) be worked out: career average of ratings, how many sigma, etc. I think the major point is that doing something is better than not, and standardized tests can be used for this purpose if done in a reasonable way. But, I do not think "if their peers feel them to be under performing" is at all relevant; I would expect members of a union to circle the wagons and try to protect each other, even when that protection is undeserved.

 

No, it's not. The current proposal is a once a year standised test with no socioeconomic controls and fire teachers who don't get good results out of their classes. This is functionally identical to implementing this process: "Do you teach at a poor inner city school? If so, you're fired"

 

Given that will shortly make it impossible to get people to teach at poor black schools, rather than merely very difficult, obviously that is worse than the status quo. There are a number of reasonable arguments in this thread, but none of them are the argument actually being advanced by the employer.

[mike777]

Just so I understand if you are poor and go to school in Chicago you will never do well on these tests?

 

You say the only chance is if we tweek the tests for the poor students compared to the middle class students, otherwise the testing will create victims.

[VMars]

I think you're making this way too complicated, especially for elementary schools. It is reasonable to estimate that each class in a given public elementary school is drawn from the same pool of students. So, start by measuring each teacher's students' progress against the rest of their own school. If your students perform at more than, say, 1.5 standard deviations below the mean of your own school, then you are flagged for scrutiny. If it happens a second consecutive year, when you presumably have a different subset of students within the same pool, you need to find a new job.

 

"It is reasonable to estimate that each class in a given public elementary school is drawn from the same pool of students."

 

That's actually not very reasonable. Some teachers are very good with certain types of students, and so are given more of them. Or some who have a reputation have the more pushy parents make sure that their kids (who they also push to succeed) are in those classes. Or a principal is looking to get rid of a teacher, and gives them more kids with bad behavior, in hopes that they'll quit or get worse scores and thus they can justify firing them.

 

In HS, it can be much the same. There is only one other Geometry teacher at my school, and I know that the students were very unevenly distributed, with most of the pre-judged weaker students being placed in my class. If our CST (CA testing regime) scores were compared, I am sure that mine will be lower. If you say that you want to judge by improvement (rather than absolute), I'd wonder how you intend to do that, since they have not taken a Geometry CST (and I don't know that the Algebra I CST is necessarily a good predictor for Geometry). And even comparing the students repeating Geo, who therefore have a CST result, I had most of them for summer prep, and all those that made the most significant gains judging by class tests (which took place after the initial CST) were put in her classes, I got the others who did not improve as much. So she may get credit for the gains she made.

 

You might say "oh, this means that there should be more testing, to get an accurate picture". I understand that from a data point, but there is such a thing as students being over-tested by standardized tests (especially students of color. There are several good books about this.) You could also ask about teacher's in class tests. I would argue that these tests are not necessarily well-standardized. You'd have to give the same exact tests to all students, but as I've been seeing, that doesn't work as well (but that's a separate issue). Professional test-makers would basically argue that teachers are not good at making reliable assessment measures, and that the conclusions drawn from them are not valid.

[mike777]

Guys can we back up one second.

 

Are you saying students are taking some nat test in every subject, every year?

 

I dont get all this talk about geometry, if they are not learning then you flunk them, right? Dont you ever test them?

 

I took a zillion tests during my one and only Summer Geometry class.

 

How in the world can you get an A and flunk some nat geometry test?

How in the world can you pass reading but flunk some nat reading test?

[awm]

Guys can we back up one second.

 

Are you saying students are taking some nat test in every subject, every year?

 

I dont get all this talk about geometry, if they are not learning then you flunk them, right? Dont you ever test them?

 

I took a zillion tests during my one and only Summer Geometry class.

 

How in the world can you get an A and flunk some nat geometry test?

How in the world can you pass reading but flunk some nat reading test?

 

Students are graded on things throughout the year. However, these grades are highly variable from teacher to teacher (different material is tested, different tests given, different standards for partial credit, different weighting of understanding vs. effort vs. getting the correct answer). Students are also given some standardized tests (normally identical test throughout the state, given once or twice a year). These tests are almost always multiple choice exams, and are supposed to cover the whole year's material according to the state standards. The suggestion is to use these standardized tests for teacher pay and hiring/firing.

 

Teachers are resistant to this, primarily because this form of evaluation is very inaccurate and incentivizes behavior that may not be in the best interest of the students. To give some examples of the issues: not all students are at the same point coming in, and the students a teacher gets are definitely not a random sample. Measuring on "absolute performance" is thus extremely unfair. You can try to measure "improvement" but this really doesn't work; for example suppose you are teaching physics; you may have a bunch of students who've never taken physics before (so no prior score) but their last science score (in biology) was pretty good.. unfortunately they are way behind in math, which is probably a lot more relevant. Of course, in principle you could have some very complex formula for predicted performance based on scores in multiple previous courses, but no real effort has been put forward to do this. Certain material is easier to approach on multiple choice tests than others; for example, a multiple choice test may do a decent job on testing grammar knowledge but is a terrible way to teach writing skills. Using these tests as a measurement tool will greatly effect what an English teacher does in class (likely for the worse). There are a number of test-taking techniques which can be used to improve results on multiple choice tests without much actual knowledge of the material (how to eliminate answers, how to guess, etc) and teaching these might have more benefit than teaching actual material. Further, some students are just poor test takers (especially poor multiple choice test takers) or vice-versa, and again the poor test-takers may be concentrated in certain classrooms for a wide range of reasons. There are further issues... for example, mathematics can be taught in a very procedural way which does not promote understanding. The course becomes straight memorization, and kids who learn algebra this way (for example) can score okay on standardized tests especially with a lot of review just before the exam. However, the lack of understanding shows up later on and makes it very difficult for these kids once they hit pre-calculus or physics (for example); it's almost impossible to test for this especially in a multiple-choice test. Finally, if this testing data is used to measure schools (as it is, under current federal law) it de-emphasizes classes which aren't tested (such as art or physical education). These classes are being neglected in terms of time and funding (some schools don't even offer them), but they are important to producing well-rounded individuals and for kids' self-esteem and interest in school.

 

Most teachers aren't really opposed to data-driven education, or to having some amount of testing. They're opposed to having a poorly-designed mechanical system for evaluating performance. While in principle "anyone can be fired" in the private sector, barring major corporate restructuring (massive layoffs, new ownership) or substantial incompetence, it's actually quite rare for people to be fired. It's even more rare for people whose direct supervisor and colleagues think they're doing a good job to be fired. Yet these testing regimes create exactly that scenario for teaching. It's also worth mentioning that teaching has an extremely high "wash-out" rate of people who just quit, especially in the first five years. This gets rid of a lot of the "bad teachers" (and some of the good ones) and gives strong evidence that it's not an easy job or a great paycheck. Starting teacher salaries are in general lower than starting salaries for others with comparable preparation (four year college degree), and the teacher pay-scale is also much flatter than what you see in the private sector. However, usually teacher complaints are not about pay so much as about respect. They are professionals working in a demanding field that requires a lot of different skills, where experience is valuable and a lot of people quit because they can't deal with the pressure... yet decisions about their field are being made by highly paid "experts" with no classroom experience and minimal knowledge of leading research in the area, who want to substitute highly inaccurate tests for peer evaluation (which is not 100% accurate either, but seems substantially better than some multiple choice exam given once or twice a year).

[kenberg]

Guys can we back up one second.

 

Are you saying students are taking some nat test in every subject, every year?

 

I dont get all this talk about geometry, if they are not learning then you flunk them, right? Dont you ever test them?

 

I took a zillion tests during my one and only Summer Geometry class.

 

How in the world can you get an A and flunk some nat geometry test?

How in the world can you pass reading but flunk some nat reading test?

 

Mike, at the lower end of the educational system, almost nothing is impossible. Here is a story from my wife. She is a truth teller, but really no one could make this up.

 

A (former) neighbor tutored high school kids. He couldn't keep an appointment with one of his kids, and asked Becky if sh would do it. She did. The kid brought in the assignement that he had received back from the teacher. Every problem had a check mark by it indicating satisfactory performance, which apparently meant that there was something down on paper for every problem None of it was correct.

 

The kid was taking geometry, a course you mention above. This was an advanced course , they were studying the sine law (part of trigonometry, really). For those who have forgotten, an angle A has a number associated with it called the sin of A and written sin A. If a triangle has angles A,B,C and sides a,b,c with side a opposite angle A etc (and with a,b,c designating either the sides themselves or the lengths of those sides, as needed by context) then then (sin A)/a=(sin B)/b=(sin C)/c. For example, if you have two observation posts a known distance c apart, and if the line of sight from these posts to an interesting object makes angles A and B with the line connecting line between the posts, then angle C can be calculated so A,B,C and c are known and thus the distances a and b can be calculated from the sine law.

 

Of course "can be calculated" providing a person can do some very elementary algebraic manipulation and some arithmetic, with or without a calculator. The student had only the haziest idea of what to do. For example, the angle C is found by subtracting A+B from 180 (when degree measure is used). The student knew that something was supposed to add up to 180 but he was a little unclear whether it was the angles or the sides, and, anyway, getting from A+B+C=180 to C=180-(A+B) was a serious stretch for him.

 

His solutions had been deemed acceptable by the teacher (they were not correct but in some sense they were done). I of course cannot say if he got an A for this course. But he was in the course, and surely this is bad enough. A kid who should be reviewing arithmetic was studying the sine law, and with absolutely predictable results. He was learning absolutely nothing. At the end of the tear he no doubt was certified as having completed an advanced geometry course, and it would not be surprising at all if the grade was an A if he kept on handing in assignments.

 

People in charge just don't know what to do so they pretend these things don't happen, or they kick it down the road to the next teacher. At the University a student came to me who had all As in geometry, algebra and trigonometry. She planned to be a math major. The unfair (from her viewpoint) advisers had placed her in a non-credit remedial course and, in fact, in part 1 of a two part remedial course. She thought that at least she should be allowed to take parts 1 and 2 at the same time and was hoping I would intervene. It seemed right and I was about to call someone when I decided to first check her skills. I asked her to solve x^2-3x+2=0. No problem x=sqrt(3x-2). I told her she should continue on in the first part of the remedial course and take the second part when (don't hold your breath) she successfully completed the first part. I also suggested she might want to consider a major other than mathematics. Ah yes, old guy discouraging eager young female from pursuing her dream. Shut my mouth, I did.

 

I could easily go on for quite a while. There was the student flunking pre-calculus for the second time. She had made her way through the non-credit preparatory course with a D, so clearly she didn't need to go back and retake that! Her intended major was nuclear engineering. Oh my, this time it was older white guy discouraging an African-American female from following her dreams. "I can be anything I want to be" she told me as she left my office in a huff.

 

There are more than a few out there in the low income schools who should not be teaching. This is not because they have not mastered the latest educational techniques, it's because they have no clue whatsoever about the subject that they are teaching. They give good grades for writing something, pretty much anything, beside every problem number.

Routinely certifying students as having learned a subject when they absolutely have done no such thing should be a criminal offense. Any thought that these teachers are doing the students a favor is highly misguided.

 

Of course maybe they do such things in Chicago.

The winter is forbidden till December

And exits March the second on the dot.

By order, summer lingers through September

In Camelot.

[awm]

There are more than a few out there in the low income schools who should not be teaching. This is not because they have not mastered the latest educational techniques, it's because they have no clue whatsoever about the subject that they are teaching. They give good grades for writing something, pretty much anything, beside every problem number.

Routinely certifying students as having learned a subject when they absolutely have done no such thing should be a criminal offense. Any thought that these teachers are doing the students a favor is highly misguided.

 

While this is true, the problem has little to do with teachers unions. The turnover in many of these schools is extremely high -- these teachers quit or get fired. But teaching in a low income school is a job that few want. The school is physically crumbling and the resources are poor. The pay is equal to (or in some cases, less than) the pay in a much better school in the same general area. Seeing the difficulties that the kids go through in their lives is depressing and frustrating, and in some cases the job may even be physically dangerous. Many of the students are simply not focused on their schoolwork because of issues in their family and community, lack of good nutrition, lack of faith in school as a way to succeed, or bad coaching from (bad) previous teachers. Even those who are really altruistic and eager to work with these kids often burn out and switch schools (or professions) after a few years.

 

The solutions mandated from on high involve cutting funding for these schools to give them "incentive to improve", forcing firing of all school employees and reorganizing the school (which gets rid of the few strong individuals who would stay voluntarily and might help the situation), and closing down the schools entirely to replace them with for-profit charter schools (which often emphasize profits over teaching and perform even worse on standardized tests than the failing public schools that were shut down). Oh, and demonizing the teachers union so it becomes easier to reduce the pay and job security of those who teach in low-income schools (with the opposite effect on those who teach at the better schools).

[mike777]

"Teachers are resistant to this, primarily because this form of evaluation is very inaccurate and incentivizes behavior that may not be in the best interest of the students"

 

 

btw I think the Mayor wants to only use these standard tests as roughly 30% of a teacher's evaluation.

 

As Adam points out the complaint seems to be that these tests are inaccurate.

[kenberg]

While this is true, the problem has little to do with teachers unions. The turnover in many of these schools is extremely high -- these teachers quit or get fired. But teaching in a low income school is a job that few want. The school is physically crumbling and the resources are poor. The pay is equal to (or in some cases, less than) the pay in a much better school in the same general area. Seeing the difficulties that the kids go through in their lives is depressing and frustrating, and in some cases the job may even be physically dangerous. Many of the students are simply not focused on their schoolwork because of issues in their family and community, lack of good nutrition, lack of faith in school as a way to succeed, or bad coaching from (bad) previous teachers. Even those who are really altruistic and eager to work with these kids often burn out and switch schools (or professions) after a few years.

 

The solutions mandated from on high involve cutting funding for these schools to give them "incentive to improve", forcing firing of all school employees and reorganizing the school (which gets rid of the few strong individuals who would stay voluntarily and might help the situation), and closing down the schools entirely to replace them with for-profit charter schools (which often emphasize profits over teaching and perform even worse on standardized tests than the failing public schools that were shut down). Oh, and demonizing the teachers union so it becomes easier to reduce the pay and job security of those who teach in low-income schools (with the opposite effect on those who teach at the better schools).

 

I agree that this is what often happens. Nonetheless, I believe that there is a serious problem with minimum standards for teacher knowledge that often gets less attention than it should have.

 

 

I lived in Prince George's County in Maryland (the Univ of MD is there) until I retired. When school systems are ranked by student achievement, Baltimore has last place nailed down, no contest, but PG is next in line.How does this happen? I just checked at http://quickfacts.ce...s/24/24033.html and I see the median household income is a little over $71,000 per year. The statewide Maryland figure is a little over $70,000. Some of the teachers in PG are very fine. Some, more than a few, are not. What has happened? I do not entirely know.

 

One thing: For many tears PG has had a cap on property taxes. The school system no doubt could use more money, the property tax keeps this from happening.It is a heavily minority county, and so there have been proposals, and some successful legislative effort, to bring in additional state funding. But people who live in districts with higher property taxes are naturally not thrilled to have their state taxes go to help a county with a cap on property taxes.

 

I haven't followed developments since I moved some five or six years ago, but when I was there, the scene went like this. In the spring there would be announcements of new teaching positions and it would be emphasized that applicants were expected to be of the highest quality. Somewhere around mid-August there would be a large number of unfilled positions. These positions were filled. Somehow.

 

So some teachers are very fine. Many more are perfectly acceptable and a student (and his parents) needs to be told to stop griping and do his homework. Some should be working elsewhere. There are many things, of course, that go into successful teaching. I believe that doing a first sort on getting rid of those whose knowledge base is simply too low for them to possibly be effective would be a good start. Trust me, I am not one of those college profs (I have known some) who gripe that their kid's teachers don't always say things just right. I don't always say things just right. Teachers need not be of expert status in the field that they teach, but that's not remotely the sorting out that I am suggesting. Of course then these teachers would have to be be replaced by more knowledgeable teachers, that requires money, that requires raising property taxes, that they won't do.

 

So it's a mess. But accepting that a person who does not know algebra cannot teach algebra would be a decent start at seeing what needs to be done.

 

I don't know how much of this applies to Chi, but I guess it is not completely different there.

[y66]

By Noreen Ahmed-Ullah, Joel Hood and Diane Rado Tribune reporters 6:25 p.m. CDT, September 16, 2012

 

Chicago teachers will remain on strike at least through Tuesday after members of the union’s House of Delegates said they wanted more time to review a tentative deal reached over the weekend.

 

After meeting with teachers for more than two hours, Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis said delegates could vote as early as Tuesday to end the strike, meaning classes would not resume before Wednesday.

 

Members want the additional time to digest the details of the contract offer, Lewis said.

[Mbodell]

I think governments can do the following things well:

(1) National defence and foreign policy

(2) Providing universal education.

(3) A single payer Health service.

(4) Creating a functional legal system that constrains the ability of money to buy influence.

(5) Constructing transport infrastructure.

 

I agree.

 

<list of things including ACA, FOMC, infrastructure, debt ceiling, bank fees>

 

I could go on with this list. I know this board knows plenty of ridiculous stuff republicans have done/said, so I started off with three issues that the democrats are wholly or partly responsible for.

 

I think you have a mostly wrong view of US politics if you blame the Democrats much for FOMC and infrastructure and debt ceiling. And might be wrong on ACA (might be right, I certainly would rather the starting dem position was no private insurance, medicare for all - but it isn't clear if this would have passed even at the start of the administration). I think you are also wrong if you think the Republicans would have been even marginally better at any of these issues. And I think the idea (possibly consistent with your post about incompetent implementation, but quite possibly not the view you were advocating) that ACA is so incompetently implemented that we would have been better with the prior status quo (I.e., repeal the ACA) and then used that as a starting point for single payer health service is woefully naive to the dynamics of the US political system or the widespread meme that gov't can do little right and the private sector is always the efficient and effective way to do anything. I mean look how long the US went with less coverage than now (many decades) even with folks in the interim trying to do somethings to expand coverage (Clinton health care, healthy children, etc.).

[phil_20686]

1347845990[/url]' post='667009']

 

I think you have a mostly wrong view of US politics if you blame the Democrats much for FOMC and infrastructure and debt ceiling. And might be wrong on ACA (might be right, I certainly would rather the starting dem position was no private insurance, medicare for all - but it isn't clear if this would have passed even at the start of the administration). I think you are also wrong if you think the Republicans would have been even marginally better at any of these issues. And I think the idea (possibly consistent with your post about incompetent implementation, but quite possibly not the view you were advocating) that ACA is so incompetently implemented that we would have been better with the prior status quo (I.e., repeal the ACA) and then used that as a starting point for single payer health service is woefully naive to the dynamics of the US political system or the widespread meme that gov't can do little right and the private sector is always the efficient and effective way to do anything. I mean look how long the US went with less coverage than now (many decades) even with folks in the interim trying to do somethings to expand coverage (Clinton health care, healthy children, etc.).

 

The current state of infrastructure is the result of bad policy over at least thirty years. There have been plenty of democratic governments who could have done something about it.

Fomc: my reading is that Obama basically didn't understand how important it is, and was not prepared to expend political capital on controversial picks. This was a massive error. The deficit would be fraction of what it is if we had moved to better monetary policy earlier in the cycle.

Theaca. Yes I think it was a bad policy move. The problem with these things is that it becomes impossible to further reformit for a period of ten years or so, as there is so much political capital invested in the ideas. We all know that Obama was forced to make concessions to the insurance companies because he could not afford their opposition. Universal healthcare Is such an obviously good policy that if they had simply kept it as a major policy issue for a few years they could have convicted enough of the republican voters to have enough bipartisan support to make a good stab at it, without needing to pander to so many interest groups. Now you are going to be stuck with the Aca for decades when a single payer system is trivially better.

Ps:any policy move that can persuade Catholics and Protestants to put aside five hundredd years of antagonism to provide a united opposition has been incompetently managed. The us bishops conference has been campaigning for universal healthcare since A1997, it should not have been a challenge to keep them on board.