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Comment by thr0wawayf00 | Hacker News Reader

You're absolutely right, and I've heard firsthand accounts of this.

My sister-in-law is a middle school counselor at a large midwest US public school system and her stories about kids dealing with the pandemic are heartbreaking, the mental health support system in some US schools is completely falling apart due to the workload.

She's never seen a mental health crisis on this scale in schools in her entire career. She remarks that kids really weren't able to learn much during the pandemic due to remote learning and in many cases are now playing catch-up to get back on track. The school system she works for basically didn't hold anyone back for a year because they had no real way of knowing who progressed as her school district cancelled standardized testing.

Anyone who believes that the pandemic wasn't a serious setback for many kids developmentally is woefully out of touch with reality.

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> they had no real way of knowing who progressed as her school district cancelled standardized testing.

The schools want to remove all evidence that would contradict their claims of doing a great job.

...or they lacked the resources and infrastructure to accurately assess students as nobody had been prepared to move the entire public education system online for an extended period of time.

The drive to eliminate all standardized testing has been going on for many years.

That's true, but what does that have to do with automatically passing every student during the pandemic? It's just one cynical take after another with you.

It's tragic to see someone so intelligent being so bitter about a thankless job like working in public education.

Bitter? Not at all. There are some good teachers deserving of thanks. Some I was fortunate to have as a teacher. But I am cynical of an industry that demands 6 figure salaries along with no accountability. Where teachers are rewarded for length of service and educational attainment, not success in educating the students.

Want to improve education for the kids?

Give teachers a base salary, plus $X for every student of theirs that meets grade standards at the end of the school year.

----

A long time ago, the company I was working for hired a team of 6 or 7 older contractors to do a special job for IBM. They completed it on time, under budget, and IBM was completely satisfied. They also each received a $10,000 bonus for meeting those conditions (a lot of money in those days). I asked them if the bonus had any relationship with meeting that goal, and they were offended, saying they were professionals and gave it their best regardless.

Haha, I didn't buy that. Do you?

Remember that earthquake in LA where a freeway interchange collapsed? They offered the contractor $1,000,000 for each day ahead of schedule the reconstruction was finished. I don't recall the exact details, but they finished it months ahead of schedule.

Money talks. Want results? Pay for results.

Are talking about software or teaching? My accountability is quite low compared to teachers and i make significantly more. I do believe those IBM contractors because it wouldnt motivate me. I'm already doing quite well so you have to get to 1/3 my yearly salary to actually change my behavior but Im a professional so i already give it my all. I do think teachers should make more and software devs should make less but it is not the world we live apparently.

> software or teaching?

Any profession.

> it wouldnt motivate me

You're a unicorn, then. Pay for results is a big reason why the free market works so well. Socialism relies on altruistic self-sacrifice, and we both know how well that works.

> Give teachers a base salary, plus $X for every student of theirs that meets grade standards at the end of the school year.

Wouldn't this cause misaligned incentives leading to teachers going out of their way to game the grade standards, similar to what has happened with No Child Left Behind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act#Gamin...

https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/gaming-the-nclb-syste...

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-educator-ch...

Not that there probably shouldn't be experimentation with compensation to create incentives, but $X per head is overly simplistic and is the sort of thing that gets gamed all of the time.

I know it doesn't boil down to a sentence. Actually implementing it would be more complex.

Will it be gamed? People will surely try. People try to game the SATs all the time, with some small success. But the SATs are still very useful and effective.

The bottom line is, will better results be achieved with this method? Almost certainly.

P.S. Much of the cheating from on the NCLB system was the people who were affected by the test results were the ones administering the test. Of course that won't work. An independent organization has to administer the tests.

> The bottom line is, will better results be achieved with this method? Almost certainly.

That's a tautology, though. It seems like this is a hypothesis that should be put to the test.

It gets put to the test every day in the free market.

Because it's being directly tied to funding. Do well, more funds. Tests are low, less funds. It's completely ass backwards. Teachers aren't afraid of being graded, the issue is what's being done with that information.

How about a gymnastics coach? The ones who get results from their students get paid a lot more than the ones who don't.

Isn't that how it should be?

The result you want from gymnastic coaching is well aligned with what the test measures because, well, the test and the desired result are the same thing.

This is not the case with standardized testing in education, is it? It's a lot like these tech interviews people keep complaining about that test a knowledge bunch of bullshit you have to cram for but have nothing to do with the actual job.

Are you suggesting that it is not possible to test students on things like reading, riting, and rithmetic?

   7 + 3 = ?

is a bullshit question?

Are you suggesting that the only thing worth learning in school is reading, writing, and arithmetic?

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