Government Employees Are the Scum of the Earth

[KrazyHorse]

Teachers are pieces of trash whose entire existence seems geared toward avoiding accountability while maintaining that what they do is tremendously important. In general, teachers are drawn from a pool of mediocre students in ****ty majors whose performance once they start has almost no impact on their continued employment or compensation.

**** teachers.

[MRT144]

You guys are ****ing idiots. If teachers have little to no impact then why should we ****ing pay them? If they do have impact then we should be able to measure it and discriminate based on this. WE ALREADY MEASURE HOW MUCH STUDENTS LEARN THROUGH THINGS CALLED TESTS.

The impact a teacher has is not binary. In a school system where the vast majority of students and parents are motivated, do you believe that successful student outcomes are the results of the teachers primarily? In a school system where the vast majority of students and parents are not motivated do you believe it is a teacher's failing alone?

I mean, it seems like you'd look at a situation, say like inner city Baltimore, and be like, "Naw see, it's not the kids fault or the parent's fault that the test scores are below average. It's those lazy teachers who just don't want kids to learn enough to make a difference. Throw them in the stocks and bring us the rotten fruit!"

What is your ultimate expectation for a teacher? Not only to teach but to motivate? How do you measure success as a teacher? Outperformance of peers at same school? Outperformance of peers in same school district? State?

I mean you're smart enough to come up with a system that takes multiple factors into account and measure the impact, but you haven't even tried. You've stopped at test scores and rage.

[Lorizael]

I'm starting to believe KH had an inappropriate experience with a teacher at a young age.

[MRT144]

Teachers are pieces of trash whose entire existence seems geared toward avoiding accountability while maintaining that what they do is tremendously important. In general, teachers are drawn from a pool of mediocre students in ****ty majors whose performance once they start has almost no impact on their continued employment or compensation.

**** teachers.

Good teachers feel emotional attachment to the outcomes of their students. Also, they are accountable, not only to their students (if they have any decency), but parents who will be on them to fix their special little snowflake's problems, administrators, public goodwill.

[notyoueither]

The impact a teacher has is not binary. In a school system where the vast majority of students and parents are motivated, do you believe that successful student outcomes are the results of the teachers primarily? In a school system where the vast majority of students and parents are not motivated do you believe it is a teacher's failing alone?

I mean, it seems like you'd look at a situation, say like inner city Baltimore, and be like, "Naw see, it's not the kids fault or the parent's fault that the test scores are below average. It's those lazy teachers who just don't want kids to learn enough to make a difference. Throw them in the stocks and bring us the rotten fruit!"

What is your ultimate expectation for a teacher? Not only to teach but to motivate? How do you measure success as a teacher? Outperformance of peers at same school? Outperformance of peers in same school district? State?

I mean you're smart enough to come up with a system that takes multiple factors into account and measure the impact, but you haven't even tried. You've stopped at test scores and rage.

It can't be that difficult to compare student achievement with other groups of students in a given area and over time.

[MRT144]

It can't be that difficult to compare student achievement with other groups of students in a given area and over time.

Obviously part of the problem is teachers don't want that, but also that complainers think they are too busy to actually give a **** about fixing it and would rather reside in a world of outrage, scotch, and smug self satisfaction.

[notyoueither]

So you concede that measuring teacher performance is possible.

The rest is just smoke as to why we do not do it.

[MRT144]

So you concede that measuring teacher performance is possible.

The rest is just smoke as to why we do not do it.

It is possible, but it's more than just saying test sores answer everything. Because currently test scores and the way that people who throw them around as the end all be all don't have any idea of the most useful way to utilize that info.

[notyoueither]

What is the most useful way to use it?

[giblets]

You guys are ****ing idiots. If teachers have little to no impact then why should we ****ing pay them? If they do have impact then we should be able to measure it and discriminate based on this. WE ALREADY MEASURE HOW MUCH STUDENTS LEARN THROUGH THINGS CALLED TESTS.

Well, I'm not convinced that tests are a great way to measure how much students learn instead of simply being a device that punishes students who sleep in class and copy their homework off of others.

[MRT144]

What is the most useful way to use it?

Using it as a baseline for which we explore and mine the data deeper. Taking an aggregated test score and saying that it is either success or failure is ridiculous. Even comparing test scores between schools doesn't paint an accurate picture.

Imagine you're at a school where 80% of students are reading at their grade level. You are one of 3 teachers who teaches reading, writing and grammar. Are you a success or failure based on that? How do we know?

If we break down it down further, 75% of your students are reading at their grade level, 80% of Teacher B and 85% of Teacher C. Are you a less good teacher than the other two? How do we know?

Let's go back a year or two years and look at the students in your class. Two years ago only 65% were reading at their grade level, while a year ago, only 68% were. Now in your class you've brought them up to 75%. Meanwhile Teacher B had 85%, 82% and C had 80%, 83%. Are you a less good teacher than the other two? How do we know?

Going forward we measure those same students in a similar way. now they're at 75%, 75% and 80%. Who is better?

Some of the problem is that students become self selecting for academic outcomes via Advance Placement when they reach high school. If you rewarded purely on baseline test score numbers, those students who are already at a high level will be more valued, possibly to the point that nobody wants to educate marginal kids because they risk being fired and there is less monetary reward for it.

Fundamentally are we rewarding teachers for baseline or for delta? What incentive is there for teachers to teach tough cases?

Even when taking these questions into account, we need to also think about how people respond to incentives or disincentives. If the baseline score is all that matters, and your job is on the line due to it, it wouldn't be a reach to consider fraud. This already happens where testing influences school funding. Is this something that can be eliminated by third part proctoring? What is the cost?

Finally, what if the same individual students are the ones that are constantly doing poorly on the scores? Do we place their consistent under performance on the head of the 12 teachers they encounter over the course of primary education. Is their problem with achievement primarily affected by a systemic failure?

So when KH says, "test scores goddamnit", he's just being a crotchety old man without any ideas. KH has a few issues where they're just annoying enough to spur vitriol but not enough for him to think about solutions to it on a deeper level.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Some how I doubt the idea of improvement in scores is a foreign concept when utilizing scoring as a metric.

Its not as if every company is judged on anticipated future earnings.

[MRT144]

Oh, and one other thing - do test scores trump other considerations in teaching? Say someone gets all their students to perform admirably, but they do so while employing questionably ethical methods like verbal abuse, or using subject material such as drugs as analogs to teach a general principle (Imagine teaching molar mass by using cocaine and cutting agents because that's what the kids are receptive to, because drug trade is a daily part of their life). Is this acceptable?

[MRT144]

Some how I doubt the idea of improvement in scores is a foreign concept when utilizing scoring as a metric.

Its not as if every company is judged on anticipated future earnings.

What happens when test score improvement stops after a 10 year period and hovers around a 1-2% difference YoY? Is that what the pay ceiling is barring COLA adjustments? Or is that when we **** can them and hire another person for a lower amount of money?

[notyoueither]

Standardized testing could reduce the chances for fraud.

I am not buying that you cannot compare the achievements of a class with: the past performance of the students in the class, the past performance of students of the same teacher and others in similar classes, and similar classes the same year.

I don't think anyone suggested using this as a pass/fail for every teacher on a yearly basis. It might be useful to recognise the outstanding teachers who consistently have classes do better than expected and those whose students consistently crater. Over time it would be evident which teachers deserve performance bonuses and which teachers should be reassigned and if necessary, fired.

I think we all had older teachers who were on cruise control and heading for the pension cheques. Personally, I'm thinking of one old fart who 'taught' social studies by spending the entire class writing essays on the board with the class hurrying to make notes. He would fill every board and then erase from the beginning to fill yet more boards. There was zero discussion. It would be helpful to weed teachers like that out, assuming his students did as poorly in general over time as I suspect they would.