73 responses to “Ruminations – 23jan2012”

1. 

   billy T

   26 January 2012

   Mr Keachie, you need not be offended by my remarks. Not even one as educated as yourself could never defend a single bad teacher. While horrible burned out bad teachers are not the only problem with what our California public schools churns out will regularity and certainty,, bad teachers are more than predicable. A true national abortion of our educational system. What you sow is what you reap. How do we banish them from ever coming in contact with our youth? As Obama says “Fire them!” Ok, there are laws against busting their knee caps, so maybe we can make them wear signs and clean up the litter on the sides of our roads. We already do that in some areas for those convicted of far less crimes. We know about people wearing “I am a drunk driver” signs as they pick rubbish. Perhaps making them wear signs that say “I WAS a bad teacher in my former vocation”. It would give them a chance to pay their debt to society. We have laws and court orders barring child molesters from being so many feet from from a public school, so it should be a rather easy transition to bar Satan’s spawn, the bad teacher, from our schools to protect the innocent. I can imagine there might be one or two in our diverse society than might be so brain dead they would defend a bad teacher or the status quo, but I am not even sure of that. That hypothesis is for philosophers and psychologists to ponder.

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2. 

   billy T

   26 January 2012

   Of course I know every thing I write is posted for all time for all to see. And the more that see, the more likely change will come.

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3. 

   Douglas Keachie

   26 January 2012

   The problems here, Mr. T, can be broken down into several parts:
   How do you identify a “bad” teacher?
   Are “bad” teachers really that responsible for all the evils in the world as you post of 11:04 pm suggests?
   Your article suggests “better education” as a cure for income inequality. You suggest getting rid of “bad teachers” as a means of achieving better edu8cation, and Obama and I think you rewarding good ones. I point out that “rewarding good K-12 teachers never happens. [You’ll note I leave out higher ed, where there are countless MD professors in med schools to inflate public employee pension calls, I avoid that trap] Instead of saying anything nice about rewarding good teachers, you go off on a total tirade about “bad teachers” without ever quantifying the situation, mentioning where the replacements will come from, or most importantly, how your “better teachers” are going to be rewarded.
   You also fail to mention how you are going to ID these teachers. Are you going to randomly yake every 20th teacher out behind the gym and shoot them? Are you going to use test scores? How are you going to avoid firing a very dedicated teacher, who, at risk to life and limb, chooses to teach in a ghetto school? I served along side a teacher in the heart of Hunter’s Point, who choose to live there, walking distance to the school. After a bullet flew through her living room at chest eight, she choose to line all her outer walls on the inside with concrete blocks. Her kids, on average, scored well below your beloved norms.
   You see, in a ghetto school, there are real disconnects between how some of the parents perceive society, and how you and I do. There are literally kids who are raised such that they believe it is the God given mission to go to school and disrupt it. These may not necessarily be the dumbest kids either. In fact, techniques of disruption, are learned, and strategies of of disruption have evolved into cyberbaiting* today. Their parents [in many cases, relatives of their parents, real parents separated, drug incapacitted, locked up, or dead] of several generations back have learned all the in’s and out’s of finageling the system against itself, and they pass it on.
   Based on my experience in Hunters Point, I would say maybe 3 to 5 percent of the students fall into this category. Add in another 3 to 5 percent who have serious untreated medical conditions, another 35 who are willing to play along with the ringleader(s) [one to three per classroom], and you have a recipe for disaster for the remaining 55% who are desperately trying to anything and everything to learn and get the hell out of Hunters Point. Would you like to try teaching in such a zone?
   Most importantly, would you like to be fired for not fixing what you never broke?
   Teaching is about the only profession where if you are not hired by September, you will have to wait an entire year for another chance at a real paycheck. Substitute teachers make typically one THIRD what a regular teacher does, and there are no benefits, not even unemployment over the summer.
   Once again, what real rewards are you proposing for good teachers? Will the “best” teacher in the nation ever make one one thousandth of a CEO making $25,000,000 per year?
   And tell me again, is it the teacher who gives birth and raises all these abject rejects for the American Corporate machine? Or is it the parents, who earn a supposed living from the American corporate machine?

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4. 

   Douglas Keachie

   26 January 2012

   Are you upset that I mention rewarding teachers? Golly, you want the best, right? The best CEO’s and other “leaders” in their fields, all expect to get paid very well. Why? because that how you get them as “employees.” Why wouldn’t the same human dynamics apply to teaching? Maybe “American Teacher: should be the new reality show, with the winner taking home $1,000,000. We just heard Gingrich or was it Paul wanting the government to offer prizes for the best moves by private corporations involved in space exploration, why don’t they call for the same for teachers? Why is the psychological makeup of a teacher so different from the rest of us mortals?

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5. 

   Douglas Keachie

   26 January 2012

   I also note that a certain “more educated than thou” poster has gone into hibernation, now that he’s been hoisted up by his own table of numbers, that show gas under Obama at 2.90, and under Bush at 2.74, thus proving that Gingrich LIED when he claimed gas price doubled under Obama when compared to Bush. Said poster does not seem to risk a lawsuit for libel and to be so stupid as to call my photo a fake either, so a few of his neurons are still functioning, despite the shock of discovering the Keach can and does use spreadsheet functions.

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6. 

   Douglas Keachie

   26 January 2012

   The last batch of my posts have been re-posted at http:/farstars.blogspot.com, so that they show up on http:/www.ncvoices.us, one of the more popular home pages for citizens of Nevada County. It is now remarkably easy to do this, very few formatting errors. I do credit Rebane’s Blog as the source.

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7. 

   George Rebane

   26 January 2012

   DougK 941am – A worthy discourse of the problems indeed. But do I understand you to conclude that nothing can be done to improve the K-12 situation? Throwing gobs of money at it has not brought better results; is there nothing else we can do? BTW, I am much in favor of drastically reducing school administrative staffs, retaining budget levels, and paying good teachers a lot more. Now how do you suggest we pick out the good ones?
   Comparing teacher pay to that of CEOs is a red herring that contributes nothing to the development of this excellent thread. Compare teacher compensation instead to department managers, engineers, technicians, … .

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8. 

   Douglas Keachie

   26 January 2012

   You could, of course, let the test scores be one of those 10 to 20 areas for evaluation, but they should by no means be dominant.

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9. 

   Douglas Keachie

   26 January 2012

   I think all CEO’s salaries should be compared to those of the occupations you list, as well as teachers. As for teachers themselves, shouldn’t those 2 standard deviations above the average be as well paid as a beginning graduate from a technical school? Normally it take 20 years to get up to $60,000, like these graduates start with.
   http://www.rose-hulman.edu/news/on-campus/90-percent-placement.aspx
   What a thrill as a first year teacher to get that kind of boost, for your second year. And for those that score only 1 standard deviation up from the norm, let them jump to year ten on the local scale. That’s what I would call rewarding teachers. How about you? “A Golden Brass Apple, how nice….I think I’ll try law school next. This teaching job can pay my tuition, and guess where I’ll pay my attentions…” (you did want to know where “bad” teachers came from, didn’t you?)

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10. 

    Douglas Keachie

    26 January 2012

    I have a major post on evaluating teachers, which your blog has refused to accept three times now. Here is the link to the original which need a bit of editing, editing which I’ve done on Rebane editing box twice now, only to see it vanish.
    http://farstars.blogspot.com/

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11. 

    Douglas Keachie

    26 January 2012

    I tried again, and again the post has vanished!

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12. 

    Douglas Keachie

    27 January 2012

    Wow, it is not quantity, it appears to be the fact that I am bringing it in from my Google blog account. I just tried posting 1/3 of the material, again poof, so I will now first transfer it into WordPad, and then see what happens.

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13. 

    Douglas Keachie

    27 January 2012

    Nope, your blog is NOT going to allow this information up, no matter what. Just go to http:/farstars.blogspot.com [it is posted below. gjr]

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14. 

    George Rebane

    27 January 2012

    This is DougK’s 1119pm teacher evaluation post from farstars.
    First I would insist on a truly representative sample of the teacher’s teaching performance.
    Then I would have an initial judging done by three teachers, who teach populations of similar socio-economic backgrounds, located at least 2 or more school districts away from the teacher being judged [the judgee] district.
    I would have the results of the initial judging reviewed by 3 professional judges, teachers already rated excellent, on leave for a year of judging, who rate the teacher in 10 to 20 areas, on numerical scales. There would be an overall rating and recommendations for areas where improvement is needed, and suggestions as to how to go about making such improvements. These judges might not necessarily teach kids of the same socio-economic background, but could not, all three, share just one socio-economic teaching population background.
    The evaluation would be done in the second semester of teaching. The results would come back to the teacher, no penalties, but a clear indication of how well they are doing, referenced to other teachers. In the second year, the classroom would again be rated, but this time, those rating 3 standard deviations to the low side would be let go in June. Those 2 standard deviations below would get a warning, and would be tested again in their third year, unlike the rest, who get a pass until year 5.
    50% of teachers self select to quit on their own, within five years of starting teaching.
    How to capture a truly representative sample of a teacher’s performance?
    Closed circuit surveillance systems are readily available to handle multiple cameras and multiple sound tracks, wirelessly, recording full fidelity images and sound, such that the viewer can choose which camera to watch and which mic to listen to. A rig, cameras and software, mics and computers, can be had for under $2,000. The teacher works with a tech to set up his classroom for optimum recordings. Dummy versions of the gear can be placed initially to get the kids through their initial curious and screwup phases. Then the teacher records up to ten days worth of teaching over a three week span, max. The teacher can then edit out 20% of the material recorded. If the teacher can get what he feels is necessary in 5 days, so much the better. Three weeks is more than enough time to get a representative sample.
    The teacher can then pick out 3, 20 minute sections that he feels represents good teaching. A computer will pick out 7 more 20 minute blocks at random. The three initial evaluators will thoroughly review the teacher’s choices, and can skim or closely review the computer choices, and will need to write up and evaluation of each of the teacher choices, and 4 of the computer choices.
    All of this information is passed on to the Pro judges, who review the materials and video, alone, and come up with independent ratings and suggestions. Then they meet as a group, and assign one final set of ratings and an overall rating. The teacher [judgee] gets to see both sets of ratings, and all recommendations.
    This would not be cheap to do, but it would be far more accurate than letting school politics be the real determiner, or all mighty test scores, which tell very little about a teacher, especially in a school with disadvantaged kids.
    I think all CEO’s salaries should be compared to those of the occupations you list, as well as teachers. As for teachers themselves, shouldn’t those 2 standard deviations above the average be as well paid as a beginning graduate from a technical school? Normally it take 20 years to get up to $60,000, like these graduates start with.
    http://www.rose-hulman.edu/news/on-campus/90-percent-placement.aspx
    What a thrill as a first year teacher to get that kind of boost, for your second year. And for those that score only 1 standard deviation up from the norm, let them jump to year ten on the local scale. That’s what I would call rewarding teachers. How about you? “A Golden Brass Apple, how nice….I think I’ll try law school next. This teaching job can pay my tuition, and guess where I’ll pay my attentions…” (you did want to know where “bad” teachers came from, didn’t you?)

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15. 

    Douglas Keachie

    27 January 2012

    Thanks, George!

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16. 

    Douglas Keachie

    27 January 2012

    This would not be cheap to do, but it would be far more accurate than letting school politics be the real determiner, or all mighty test scores, which tell very little about a teacher, especially in a school with disadvantaged kids. Another aspect of this process would be a publishing of the evaluations and scores, by District, with all the names blacked out. In addition, by District, a summary of all teacher’s scores would be also published, and so the public could quickly see how many top notch teachers have been attracted by a District,. This would serve as feedback to the District, to improve working conditions and wages to attract the best teachers. We all know how important money and perks are for attracting the best talent for CEO’s, the same logic applies here.
    BTW, for those who claim Obama is not up to his job, I would submit that the head of BP was not up to his. Making it to the top in business is no guarantee of quality. The Peter Principle is alive and well. The picking of District Superintendents is prime proof of it. There is a very small pool to choose from, many with bad track records, so some local subordinate fills in for awhile. If they don’t screw up, they eventually get the job locally, or some other District hires them away. Why? Because it is an impossible job in all Districts except those where all of the kids are well above average, in which case 50% of the time it is doable. No District wants to hire someone with a known bad record, so they take chances and either hire from way far away (where news of their sins has not had a chance to make it across the country), or “give somebody a chance.” In either case the school board and personnel office is safe from criticism.

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17. 

    Gregory

    27 January 2012

    Someone needs to change the Keachiebox, the litter is all clumped together.
    Keachie never gives as much thought to reality as he does his visions. There is a way to effectively use test scores to tease out which teachers are among the best and which ones are among the worst. Teachers have been fighting it tooth and nail.
    Google ‘value added teacher assessment’. Louisiana is an early adopter.
    http://doe.louisiana.gov/topics/value_added.html
    It isn’t judging teachers by how high their student’s scores are. It provides an indication as to which teachers are associated with the growth of student’s scores over the years, teased from the data by known statistical techniques.
    Folks comfortable with terms like “Bayesian” may enjoy reading
    http://www.itp.wceruw.org/vam/jebs-4218-final.pdf

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18. 

    George Rebane

    27 January 2012

    Gregory 1221pm – Good citation on the Bayesian assessment approach. For readers wanting an introductory view into how Bayesian analysis and assessment works, take a look at ‘The Value of Stereotyping’.
    http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2012/01/the-value-of-stereotyping.html
    The formula there is a Bayes theorem that I restructured to explain its use in the cited work by Kahneman. (Later I’ll add a little pdf showing how I dervied it and relating it to a more normal expression of the involved conditional probabilities.)

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19. 

    Douglas Keachie

    27 January 2012

    “Someone needs to change the Gregorybox, the litter is all clumped together,and is becoming positively buggy.”
    Has Greg’s system ever been tried? Outside of LA, please. Where are the LA results? How many teachers were fired? If so, how many teachers from suburban schools were found lacking, vs how many from inner city schools? If someone was really serious about this, the Koch Brothers or some other similar group should have at least tried it out, the report is several years old. My guess is it has one huge problem:
    IT CAN ONLY BE APPLIED WELL AFTER THE FACT, only after the horses are long gone from the barn, and years of students have had to deal with bad teachers, and it has no way of improving teachers who are not doing well. Nice try, Greg, next time you want help, don’t get it from such a highly educated state as LA.
    My system works very close to real time, and provides information to improve bad teachers, and incentives to teach well.

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20. 

    Douglas Keachie

    27 January 2012

    So you actually have two trains running. The more academic one from the RAND Corp requires years to work. LA takes the shortcut, and guarantees that teachers heads will roll, based purely on test scores, with a few exceptional finagle factors every year. Thus if after a couple of years of this goes by, the teachers that saw their jobs saved by the bottom scorers, will now lose their jobs, unless new bottom scorers are hired to replace them. Also, since this is a pure numbers game, random chance will be sure to come along and boink a few teachers who would have otherwise been perfectly fine.
    Test scores have a place, but it is as only a portion of the story of education. What do you do about the teacher who inspires, amuses, and relaxes students in a gym, music, or art class? Are they going to be indirectly screwed by core subject teachers whom their kids are unlucky enough to wind up with? How about the English teacher who serves the same functions listed above, but doesn’t have high scoring kids? Babies and teachers, out with the bathwater, I suppose. School serves more societal purposes than creating citizens who score high, especially if attempting to wring high scores out of them results in vicious cold hearted study/cheat nerds, who’ve learned that numbers, be it scores or cash, is all that matters, and how you achieve them is immaterial. They’ll have a fine role model, their teacher, trying to save his/her job.

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21. 

    Gregory

    27 January 2012

    While the more data the better, it works as soon as the 2nd year of testing, Keach.
    Keach would rather wait forever for the perfect system, which he knows will never be developed. Just give the schools as much money as you can give, and then some, and trust the Keachies of the world will do good things with it.

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22. 

    Douglas Keachie

    27 January 2012

    There is no reason my system cannot be implemented tomorrow, most new teachers are quite familiar with being videotaped while teaching. The LA “system” is a feel-good solution that only costs a couple of hundred thousand in consultants’ fees and allows them to fire a bunch of teacher to prove to the public that they are “doing something about getting rid of “bad” teachers” when in fact they are doing zilch to improve the quality of education. What person, smart enough to be a better teacher, is going to go into a system where a random statiostical IED may make them both unemployed and probably unemployable elsewhere? Net result LA will be allowed to process every poor teacher in the country, forever replacing the ones they’ve already got. What a system!

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23. 

    George Rebane

    27 January 2012

    I’m a bit intrigued why the authors of Gregory’s 1221pm citation did not use one of the many available sequential estimators (e.g. various flavors of Kalman, all based on Bayesian methods) whose validity instant is at worst the time of the last observation (data input), and, if believable transfer functions exist, then they could also yield current time validity instants. Perhaps, that technology has yet to transfer to the education field.

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