The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers | Hacker News Reader

The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers

finance.yahoo.com

33 pointsmerlin201133 comments

One of the interesting things they're saying in this article is that you can tell from test scores when a given kindergarten teacher is very effective, in that their class will perform well above the average (or at least improve at a rate well above the average improvement). However, then in junior high to high school, those test scores then fall back in-line with the average. But then after that, when the class of people enter adulthood, the difference resurfaces in the form of higher wages. That seems to beg the question, are good junior high teachers less effective than good kindergarten teachers (or even effective at all)? We need more data!

Perhaps the material taught/tested in high school just isn't correlated as highly with success in the workplace as a good early-childhood education is.

Or maybe the lessons that are most important in high school aren't measured effectively on the test. They could be intangibles that are untestable, or the tests could just be flawed.

Of the middle/HS teachers I know, those in nice school districts regard tests as a pain and a distraction, but the ones from poor school districts hate them. Apparently the way the tests are written, your typical black or ESL city-dweller could understand the material extremely well but the questions are very much in white suburban english, and reference cultural context that they're unlikely to understand. Add in a little intimidation and mistrust, and you've got test results that are basically irrelevant to whether the kids know the material.

My understanding is that a lot of good teachers would rather have more autonomy in their jobs than more money.

My son’s first preschool teacher was superb, because she paid enough attention to the kids to know when not to follow the Ph.D.-approved paint-by-numbers curriculum that was mandated by the school. Her contract didn’t get renewed (since she was a new teacher, she had no kind of tenure protection).

Speaking as an ex-teacher, more money is also direly needed.

I suspect that the two are related. If the people setting your salary see you as a cog who is expected to do precisely what you’re told, they will see your labor as cheap.

It's been shown that the most effective teaching method is to treat teachers as cogs and provide them with scripts for teaching their classes.

http://www.jefflindsay.com/EducData.shtml

The unions oppose it in spite of the proven educational benefits. They don't seem to have an objection to "whole language", though.

From my observations, I would surmise that in a school of mediocre teachers, the direct approach is probably better; a more flexible approach to lesson planning would just gives those teachers an excuse to throw up their hands and say “follow your bliss, kids”. But the constraints that provide necessary support to mediocre teachers are a straitjacket to the good teachers... thus encouraging good teachers to abandon the field.

When I was an ed student, the guy who taught the reading-methods class said that direct instruction was absolutely an important part of a whole-language classroom; if you see that kids in your class are having trouble reading words with “th”, then you are doing nothing wrong in the sight of God and Dewey by taking them aside and presenting them with a lesson on “th”. But a teacher in a whole-language class who isn’t paying attention will not realize what kids are getting stuck on and therefore will just assume that everything is going to work out, somehow, eventually. A good teacher in a class that is all phonics phonics phonics, on the other hand, will be aware that a lot of the phonics lessons are wasting everyone’s time on unnecessary drills.

"An educational technique that [...] shows that even the most disadvantaged children can excel"

I would argue that any program that lets disadvantaged children excel should automatically be viewed with suspicion.

Is there a good book about these studies though?

Money ~= autonomy in the rest of your life.

I don't believe the conclusion that excellent teachers should be paid 320k per child can follow from the premises in the article. You don't pay for the full value something adds. Otherwise, by definition, you might as well just not buy it and be in the same position. You pay what the market will bear, which for publicly-funded teachers is what we pay them now.

The market might even bear less than what we pay now - due to teachers unions, we can't find out.

Actually the market would probably bear more unevenly. I am sure there are some teachers which could probably command higher salaries, and some that are protected by the union and couldn't.

The biggest problem with unions is the last-in, first-out rule. Most union contracts are structured so that when the municipality has shortfalls and has to let teachers go (i.e. most municipalities in America over the last few years), the most recently hired teachers are the first ones to be let go, regardless of competence. This is doubly damaging to the municipality in question, because those are the cheapest teachers, so more need to be let go in order to balance the budget.

But, as I said in the other thread, as long as the teachers' unions are the only ones sticking up for teachers while the taxpayers want to drop their kids off at school, drive to work on clean, safe streets, and then bitch and moan about the nerve of municipal workers actually expecting a paycheck, well.. I'm sympathetic to the workers, and if the union's the only one standing up for them, then they're doing more good than harm.

...as long as Dick Cheney is the only one sticking up for military contractors while the taxpayers want to protect their oil supply and rebuild Iraq, and then bitch and moan about the nerve of Halliburton to get a no-bid contract at above market rates, well... I'm sympathetic to the contractors, and if Dick Cheney is the only one standing up for them, then he is doing more good than harm.

[edit: not actually defending Cheney, just pointing out flawed logic.]

Ha.

A friend of mine worked for Raytheon right out of school. Really good paycheck.

At the end of his first couple months, his boss was flabbergasted because he insisted on actually getting something done every week. He was on the fast track immediately.

And, by all accounts, Raytheon is significantly less crooked than Halliburton.

I take it you don't favor giving no-bid military contracts to politically favored service providers at above-market rates? In that case, why do you favor doing so in education?

When did you stop beating your wife?

If you'd like to rephrase your question, I'll respond.

EDIT: Ok, I'll respond. For both you and me, a position as a math teacher would involve taking less money, working harder, and contributing more to society than we do now. I don't feel the need to kick public servants in the teeth that you apparently do. If you're outraged by government spending, go after the big dollars that don't accomplish anything first. Then you can worry about small dollars for people who do accomplish things.

a) As I already explained to you yesterday, teachers don't work as hard as other professionals (and certainly less than I do right now): http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf

b) Teacher and other govt employee pay is hardly a small portion of state and municipal budgets, and the upcoming pension crisis is going to be a huge problem for the entire country. This is not a small problem.

c) I have criticized other big spending as well (e.g., assorted bailouts).

Also, you seem to have no compunctions against "kicking public servants in the teeth": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1557874 You only seem to object when the "public servants" in question are your political allies.

I object to the blanket characterization of defense contractors as public servants.

I mean, you wanna complain about crooked unions -- let's take the dollar figures, multiply by about a million (literally), and there you are with the defense contractors. And most of them never even deliver a product, or deliver a crappy unwanted product years late and billions over budget. If teachers operated like defense contractors, we'd have spent a trillion dollars over the last 10 years on a system to blast knowledge into kids brains using lasers and have nothing to show for it.

It's not about political allies. Eisenhower told us the same thing, there's a republican-approved stance for you.

I mean, geez, I'm all about more efficiency in government spending. I'll go for the higher dollar figures for things that don't provide anything for the country first, and get to small dollar figures in the education system about 10th.

Also. I think, not to put too fine a point on it, but you're likely either ignorant or lying when you claim that you work harder than teachers. You're on hacker news right now. Teachers have 6 hours of teaching with 3 minute breaks, followed by curriculum development and grading. I don't care what the study says, that's more work than the overwhelming majority of office jobs.

let's take the dollar figures, multiply by about a million (literally), and there you are with the defense contractors.

A quick googling shows that military and educational spending are on par with each other (about $500B). [edit: circa 2004-2005]

http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index.html#not...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Defense_Spending_Tren...

But I guess the department of education is lying just like the BLS?

I'll go for the higher dollar figures for things that don't provide anything for the country first, and get to small dollar figures in the education system about 10th.

Really? It looks to me as if you are defending wasteful spending on education rather than simply criticizing it less than other wasteful spending: "...as long as the teachers' unions are the only ones sticking up for teachers...they're doing more good than harm."

I don't care what the study says...

That seems to be the trend here.

500 is the new 700? We definitely spend over 500 billion on the military.

For the last 8 years or so, national education spending has been pretty much flatlined, or even declining in real dollars. Military spending has been skyrocketing.

And yes. I don't believe kicking teachers in the teeth is a good idea. If you have a math degree, you can get paid twice as much to work on some non-functional crap for a defense contractor as you can as a teacher. That's not the same thing. Defense is far more bloated. Meanwhile, we're sliding on every international metric of education. I'd suggest reading Kristof today if you want some neat statistics.

The data I found was from 2004-2005. For 2008 (the last year for which full data is available), the relevant numbers are $730B defence, $860B education. You could have discovered this yourself if you spent even a minute or two googling.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_education_spending_20...

It would appear that education is even more bloated than the military. As you say, "we're sliding on every international metric of education," but the military is still #1 (by a wide margin). Abiding by your philosophy of targeting the big ticket items for criticism and leaving the smaller ticket items alone, will you now focus your critiques on education and disregard the military?

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown

http://www.christopherchantrill.com/

http://www.deathandtaxesposter.com/

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=711

If you download the actual research linked from the article then one of the findings was that higher years of experience in the teacher predicted better outcomes in the pupils. So in this case the data supports the union. (Though, if you don't give the new teachers any work then how are they going to get the years of experience?)

I agree, I think many people would pay more for their children to be taught by a teacher who has demonstrated superior results. Which is different from paying for private schools, because as a parent you still aren't sure by whom your children will be taught.

Additionally, there is the political issue that proponents of more egalitarian and redistributive systems will claim that this would be disadvantageous for those who can't afford expensive educations. Those children would be left with the bad teachers, reinforcing their lower social position. I presume we won't find out anywhere in the lifetime of anyone reading this now.

There's a point where diminishing returns sets in. My guess is that anything over 140k a year would result in the same, if not, lower test scores. Read the first chapter of Dan Ariely's book: The Upside of Irrationality. Like so many best selling authors, he's simply taking research and dumbing it down for everyone else to consume.

It's hard to tell from the article but is the quality of kindergarten teachers being measured by the increase in test scores between entry and exit a year later? And are the kids grouped so that the teacher is correlated with the average of their classes future performance, or is it just individuals that do well (or at least improve most) at kindergarten that are doing well later.

That seems all kinds of dubious to me, but I suppose all research, good or bad, does once filtered via the media.

This makes sense for a variety of reasons: 1. Kindergarten is the first formal educational experience most children are exposed to. 2. The more experienced/effective the teacher, the better the foundation the students will develop. 3. The better the foundation, the better prepared they will be at every level later on.

The middle school issue could use more details as to the variables in play there.

If early learning experiences are that important, then surely the best investment you can make in your child's future is to have one parent stay home and teach them stuff for the first five years of their lives before they get shipped off to kindergarten, rather than shipping 'em off to daycare while both parents work?

I'm shocked by the number of children who show up to kindergarten unable to read.

I'd argue we need to ship them off to pre-k programs that emphasize reading and writing and basic math. socializing the kids a lot at an early age is also critical.

the large number of kids coming in lacking reading/writing skills could be due to the parents not feeling comfortable enough to teach them those skills.

Interesting, but not quite satisfying. For example judging a teacher just based on one random class seems insufficient, even if the class consists of random students. There might still be random factors that make a class good or bad, for example some individuals that are trouble makers and infect the whole class. So one would have to study the performance across several random classes.

I believe they did that in this study. It's not a single class, but many classes.

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