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from the those-who-can,-do,-those-who-can't,-teach dept.
In the US: this article presents an analysis how a person's chosen college major corresponds to their IQ. The interesting thing is that the relationship has remained essentially stable over the past 70 years. At the top of the list are math, science and engineering. At the absolute bottom of the list: education.
These data show that US students who choose to major in education, essentially the bulk of people who become teachers, have for at least the last seven decades been selected from students at the lower end of the academic aptitude pool. A 2010 McKinsey report (pdf) by Byron Auguste, Paul Kihn, and Matt Miller noted that top performing school systems, such as those in Singapore, Finland, and South Korea, "recruit 100% of their teacher corps from the top third of the academic cohort."
The article points out that it isn't quite this simple: Top schools place high requirements on all of their students; poor schools generally attract lower quality students in all of their programs. Still, the national averages are clear: overall, the least intelligent students go on to teach. This is an odd priority.
Educational organizations, of course, have a different view. This article claims that teacher quality declined from the 1960s through the 1990s, but has since recovered, with teachers being barely below average (48th percentile) among college graduates.
On a related note, there is a strong international correlation between teacher pay and student outcomes. The (rather obvious) theory is that higher pay attracts better candidates to the teaching profession.
No conclusions - just thought this might spark an interesting discussion...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2016, @04:08PM
One of the primary concerns in the USA is money. Money for teaching! More money per child! Educational budget boosts! That will fix it!
Actually, the USA spends (depending on precisely how you measure the elements) more per child than any other nation on earth (next closest are the swiss, whose strong currency bends the measure a bit). The USA's results are not that great.
So, how much more money do we/should we spend? At what point would we be throwing good money after bad? If the problem is that the money should go to teachers rather than administrators, how can we arrange that?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday July 01 2016, @04:24PM
Teacher pay in the US is rather lousy. However, as you point out, we spend a lot of money per student. So, where's it all going? Simple: not to the teachers.
There's too much administration, administrators are paid way too much, and there's a lot of waste in general.
How do we arrange more money for the teachers and less for the administrators? I'm really not sure. Firing the administrators would probably be a good first step. To build something new, you usually have to burn down the existing thing that's in the way.
(Score: 2) by SecurityGuy on Friday July 01 2016, @04:51PM
I actually looked at my local school district's budget because I had the same concerns. Turns out the physical facilities themselves were a major expense. You're absolutely right that we should get in there and look at where the money's being spent and decide what we actually should be doing for students rather than just say "we need more money", though.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Friday July 01 2016, @05:12PM
The first thing you should do to help education is to separate out the smart ones from the rest. This move is free and it lets the smart ones get even smarter. This doesn't happen because even if the smart class exactly matches the demographic diversity of the whole school you will be called a racist. You could also split up by learning style so all the visual or tactile or auditory or whatever learners are together with a teacher that is good with techniques that are good for that type of student.
If I was in charge I would also crack down on stupid text book purchases. Why are we always buying new algebra books? The only difference between my algebra text book and the ones they have now are nicer graphics and they ask how the person feels when you have more apples.
Building schools isn't for the kids. Lumping kids together isn't for the kids. Leveraging emotion for the kids, isn't for the kids. In short school isn't for the kids. It is a tax based money machine for not the kids.
(Score: 2) by SecurityGuy on Friday July 01 2016, @06:24PM
I've never been in a school that looked like too much money was being spent on it. I never attended one. My kids don't attend one. If there's a problem (which I think there is), it's not that we're spending too much money making the schools too nice. We're spending too much money keeping them adequate.
The trend here is anything but having the latest books. It's more like not having enough of the old ones. I also think that's the wrong problem. We keep textbooks the right amount of time, but an algebra textbook should cost about $15 (or whatever the cost of production, distribution, plus reasonable profit) and pdfs should be available free online. And by "free" I mean districts/states/whatever should buy a package that includes whatever books they want and PDFs to post for free online.
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Friday July 01 2016, @10:14PM
The problem is how that spending is distributed. Because when I was in school, my experience was pretty much the exact opposite of what you described. Every single school I attended underwent massive renovations while I was there...and none of the kids had a clue why because everything seemed to work perfectly well to us. Most of the upgrades for stupid crap like a massive sprawling gym/weight lifting complex that was literally about half of the entire building...for a small, fairly rural highschool whose sports teams would win one game every couple years. Or redesigning the hallways in case of a school shooting...in a town that maybe sees one murder every few years. The only incident they ever had with guns was when the cops shot and killed an unarmed homeless guy on the front steps in front of a bunch of kids. And they pushed through upgrades that *nobody* wanted -- like the fight over whiteboards. Administrators wanted dry erase boards to replace all the chalkboards in every classroom. The teachers almost universally thought that was a terrible idea. A few of the math teachers (since they're using the board all day long) actually scavenged the old chalkboards they were trying to throw out and put them back up. Of course, there were some good and needed upgrades -- like when they replaced all the Apple IIes in the computer labs, sometime around 2000 -- but most of the renovations seemed to be mostly about making the buildings look better. And even though every building I attended was renovated while I was there, and still under construction when I graduated, now only 8 years after I left that district they're starting yet another round of renovations! Some of which is for buildings that weren't done last time, but a few are being redone too.
But between the local college, the county seat and the hospital this was a town with a hell of a lot of doctors, professors, and lawyers. Since schools are funded by property taxes, they had plenty of money. And as far as I could tell they mostly pissed it away on frivolous garbage.
The problem isn't really that we spend too much, it's that the system is specifically structured so that some schools have more money than they know what to do with, while others literally can't afford to keep the lights on. We may spend a lot *on average*, but very few schools actually get that average level of funding.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday July 01 2016, @08:08PM
We should not be so cheap that the schools should be like dungeons. But they don't have to look like museums or mansions either.
The image I had was more like that of a freight train [nytimes.com].
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday July 01 2016, @07:13PM
A lot of admin cost is buried. Look at total number of employees vs teachers, usually thats harder to bury.
Ratios of teachers vs non-teachers are approaching 1:1 now.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by weeds on Friday July 01 2016, @05:36PM
Although that may be an obvious theory (not a scientific theory, but more like a bar room theory) to some. when considering this theory, consider that more highly paid teachers most likely work in districts where the family incomes are higher.
Clearly, if the pay is higher for a job, you will attract more people. You can imagine that of those people, some will be better than what you might have gotten if you didn't offer this higher pay and will be better performers. But, that's not all of it. I don't think the correlation between higher pay and higher performance works only this way, "I pay you more, so you do a better job." I think it works the other way, "You do a better job, so I will pay you more." With a lack of metrics to determine who you should pay more, there is no incentive to do a better job. Since the only metric is longevity, the motivation is solely to stay as long as you can.
With the advent of the intewebs and the great Google, you could do the research yourself, here is one to get you started:
http://cepa.stanford.edu/content/widening-academic-achievement-gap-between-rich-and-poor-new-evidence-and-possible [stanford.edu]
(ad hominem deflector and anecdotal evidence) insufficient to draw any conclusions...
Am I a teacher, no. I am an aerospace engineer. I have spent some time tutoring high school math students. I have the metrics to show that there was an improvement. I can also tell you that the school would not put me on "the list" of tutors because I didn't have a teaching certificate. As I recall, when I pointed out that those who did have certificates were failing to teach these students, they were not pleased.
Get money out of politics! [mayday.us]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2016, @06:06PM
> consider that more highly paid teachers most likely work in districts where the family incomes are higher.
Not all countries fund schools from local property taxes. Heck, not even all US states do it that way.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by weeds on Friday July 01 2016, @07:25PM
Good observation, thanks! If you hadn't posted as AC, I'm sure you'd get modded up.
Get money out of politics! [mayday.us]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01 2016, @10:49PM
Overcrowding the classroom is probably the #1 problem. Tutoring small groups is much easier and more effective. That said, requiring a teaching credential for tutors is the kind of stupid that makes people look down on education as a profession, even though its probably some politician's or parent group's fault.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Friday July 01 2016, @08:15PM
The money isn't going to better pay for teachers (which would help the 50% attrition rate in the first 3 years of teaching) or for more teachers. Well, some goes to hiring more special ed teachers and aides. One program threw millions of dollars to create an Olympic class athletics facility and as you can imagine it had zero impact on student achievement. People pointed to it saying that is proof that money isn't the problem. Meanwhile most schools have lost/decreased their "non-essential" programs like languages, art, music, shop.
Raising teacher pay would be good and would show that we value our children's future. However, a more pressing issue is class size. Most teachers have 30-40 students in each class, and it becomes impossible to give adequate attention to each student. However, hiring at least 2X more teachers would be very expensive and thus it doesn't happen. Since people don't value education it is easy for politicians and administrators to cut costs by increasing class sizes. It is stupid.
~Tilting at windmills~