When the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer left Ann Arbor, Mich., more than three years ago, it left behind the equivalent of a small town: A collection of 30 buildings, including science labs, a water plant and drug factory, scattered across nearly 200 acres.The former research park is on land that had been owned by the University of Michigan, so the university decided to buy it back and turn the facility into a kind of business incubator on steroids.
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(As I mentioned before, there is reason to believe that this research is biased in favor of charter schools.)But for all their support and cultural cachet, the majority of the 5,000 or so charter schools nationwide appear to be no better, and in many cases worse, than local public schools when measured by achievement on standardized tests, according to experts citing years of research. Last year one of the most comprehensive studies, by researchers from Stanford University, found that fewer than one-fifth of charter schools nationally offered a better education than comparable local schools, almost half offered an equivalent education and more than a third, 37 percent, were “significantly worse.”
Although “charter schools have become a rallying cry for education reformers,” the report, by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, warned, “this study reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well” as students in traditional schools.
For a variety of reasons, analyses of VAM [Value Added Modeling] results have led researchers to doubt whether the methodology can accurately identify more and less effective teachers. VAM estimates have proven to be unstable across statistical models, years, and classes that teachers teach. One study found that across five large urban districts, among teachers who were ranked in the top 20% of effectiveness in the first year, fewer than a third were in that top group the next year, and another third moved all the way down to the bottom 40%. Another found that teachers’ effectiveness ratings in one year could only predict from 4% to 16% of the variation in such ratings in the following year. Thus, a teacher who appears to be very ineffective in one year might have a dramatically different result the following year. The same dramatic fluctuations were found for teachers ranked at the bottom in the first year of analysis. This runs counter to most people’s notions that the true quality of a teacher is likely to change very little over time and raises questions about whether what is measured is largely a “teacher effect” or the effect of a wide variety of other factors.
A study designed to test this question used VAM methods to assign effects to teachers after controlling for other factors, but applied the model backwards to see if credible results were obtained. Surprisingly, it found that students’ fifth grade teachers were good predictors of their fourth grade test scores. Inasmuch as a student’s later fifth grade teacher cannot possibly have influenced that student’s fourth grade performance, this curious result can only mean that VAM results are based on factors other than teachers’ actual effectiveness.
If new laws or policies specifically require that teachers be fired if their students’ test scores do not rise by a certain amount, then more teachers might well be terminated than is now the case. But there is not strong evidence to indicate either that the departing teachers would actually be the weakest teachers, or that the departing teachers would be replaced by more effective ones.
The study was conducted by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt. The center, which takes no advocacy position on the issue, was created at the university's highly regarded Peabody College of Education and Human Development in 2006 with a $10 million federal research grant.
In a three-year experiment funded by the federal grant and aided by the Rand Corp., researchers tracked what happened in Nashville schools when math teachers in grades 5 through 8 were offered bonuses of $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000 for hitting annual test-score targets. About 300 teachers volunteered. Researchers randomly assigned half of the participants to a control group ineligible for the bonuses and the other half to an experimental group that could receive bonuses if their students reached certain benchmarks.
Researchers designed the bonuses to be large enough to function as a legitimate incentive for teachers whose average salary, according to a union official, is between $40,000 and $50,000. There were no additional variables in the experiment: no professional development, mentoring or other elements meant to affect test scores. The bonuses, totaling nearly $1.3 million, were funded by businessman Orrin Ingram, according to news reports. A university spokeswoman said Tuesday evening that she could not confirm those reports, and Ingram could not be reached for comment.
On the whole, researchers found no significant difference between the test results from classes led by teachers eligible for bonuses and those led by teachers who were ineligible. Bonuses appeared to have some positive effect in the fifth grade, researchers said, but they discounted that finding in part because the difference faded out when students moved to the sixth grade.
The problem with our nation's educational system is not that teachers don't care about students or money. Rather the issue is that too many educators don't have the support, tools or proper incentive structure to succeed. In fact, the teachers in the study told the researchers that the prospect of bonuses didn't change their behavior because they were already trying as hard as they could.
Indeed, previous, smaller-scale studies of performance pay for teachers have shown that the reforms do work, but only if teachers receive support and targeted incentives to improve their skills.
Reforming the way teachers are paid signals to teachers that their performance matters -- that educators should be treated like other professionals.
The study was conducted by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt. The center, which takes no advocacy position on the issue, was created at the university's highly regarded Peabody College of Education and Human Development in 2006 with a $10 million federal research grant.
In a three-year experiment funded by the federal grant and aided by the Rand Corp., researchers tracked what happened in Nashville schools when math teachers in grades 5 through 8 were offered bonuses of $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000 for hitting annual test-score targets. About 300 teachers volunteered. Researchers randomly assigned half of the participants to a control group ineligible for the bonuses and the other half to an experimental group that could receive bonuses if their students reached certain benchmarks.
Researchers designed the bonuses to be large enough to function as a legitimate incentive for teachers whose average salary, according to a union official, is between $40,000 and $50,000. There were no additional variables in the experiment: no professional development, mentoring or other elements meant to affect test scores. The bonuses, totaling nearly $1.3 million, were funded by businessman Orrin Ingram, according to news reports. A university spokeswoman said Tuesday evening that she could not confirm those reports, and Ingram could not be reached for comment.
On the whole, researchers found no significant difference between the test results from classes led by teachers eligible for bonuses and those led by teachers who were ineligible. Bonuses appeared to have some positive effect in the fifth grade, researchers said, but they discounted that finding in part because the difference faded out when students moved to the sixth grade.
This prompted the following memorable bit of edu-speak from the administration:
"While this is a good study, it only looked at the narrow question of whether more pay motivates teachers to try harder," said Peter Cunningham, assistant U.S. education secretary for communications and outreach. "What we are trying to do is change the culture of teaching by giving all educators the feedback they need to get better while rewarding and incentivizing the best to teach in high-need schools, hard to staff subjects. This study doesn't address that objective."Definitely a strong showing by Cunningham but he didn't mange to work in the word 'excellence.' That's going to cost him some points
For a variety of reasons, analyses of VAM [Value Added Modeling] results have led researchers to doubt whether the methodology can accurately identify more and less effective teachers. VAM estimates have proven to be unstable across statistical models, years, and classes that teachers teach. One study found that across five large urban districts, among teachers who were ranked in the top 20% of effectiveness in the first year, fewer than a third were in that top group the next year, and another third moved all the way down to the bottom 40%. Another found that teachers’ effectiveness ratings in one year could only predict from 4% to 16% of the variation in such ratings in the following year. Thus, a teacher who appears to be very ineffective in one year might have a dramatically different result the following year. The same dramatic fluctuations were found for teachers ranked at the bottom in the first year of analysis. This runs counter to most people’s notions that the true quality of a teacher is likely to change very little over time and raises questions about whether what is measured is largely a “teacher effect” or the effect of a wide variety of other factors.
A study designed to test this question used VAM methods to assign effects to teachers after controlling for other factors, but applied the model backwards to see if credible results were obtained. Surprisingly, it found that students’ fifth grade teachers were good predictors of their fourth grade test scores. Inasmuch as a student’s later fifth grade teacher cannot possibly have influenced that student’s fourth grade performance, this curious result can only mean that VAM results are based on factors other than teachers’ actual effectiveness.
If you concede that employers need to be able to fire bad employees, then you can't fully defend the role of the unions. You can defend the concept of unions, and you can believe that some of the things unions do, like bargain for higher aggregate wages, help society. But most unions demonstrably make it very difficult to fire bad employees. That is currently a core function of unions, and something that must change. You're also going to need higher salaries to attract a better caliber employee into the workforce, and that's something unions could potentially help. But being "treated like professionals" has to mean both the opportunity to earn a good living if you do well and the potential to be fired if you fail.And here is the passage Jonathan Chait (that's right, Jonathan Chait) originally posted in his blog:
If you concede that principals need to be able to fire bad teachers, then you can't fully defend the role of the unions. You can defend the concept of unions, and you can believe that some of the things unions do, like bargain for higher aggregate wages, help education. But most teachers unions demonstrably make it very difficult to fire bad teachers. That is currently a core function of teachers unions, and something that must change. You're also going to need higher salaries to attract a better caliber teacher into the profession, and that's something unions could potentially help. But being "treated like professionals" has to mean both the opportunity to earn a good living if you do well and the potential to be fired if you fail.There are obviously two possible responses Chait could make here (three if you count ignoring it entirely). He could say he agrees with the general statement or he could argue that teachers are a special case and should be granted less union protection than, say, policemen.*
The median cumulative debt among graduating Bachelor's degree recipients at 4-year undergraduate schools was $19,999 in 2007-08.
If I were Levin, I’d want a three-year contract commensurate with the sale price of Dealbreaker. Say a $100,000 signing bonus, and then a salary of $200,000 a year for three years. Contracts by their nature have to be lucrative things, because they carry an opportunity cost: if the Daily Show, say, came calling offering a television-size salary, Levin would have to say no if she was already under contract.
UNEMPLOYMENT, in this context, is like battlefield triage, leaving some severely injured soldiers to die so that medics can keep as many as possible in fighting condition. But, of course, such a harsh practice may not contribute to the best morale among those chosen to survive.
Unfortunately, managers often lay off more people than necessary, to ensure that they don’t have to repeat the ordeal anytime soon. The remaining workers must work harder, taking on some of the work of their missing colleagues, and productivity rises. (The economy today shows both increasing productivity and increasing corporate profits.)
Those relegated to unemployment can’t directly “poison the atmosphere” in their former workplaces. But they remain friends and neighbors of the employed, and their anger and distress, repeated in thousands of communities, contribute to a poisoning of the atmosphere of the entire nation.
Moreover, managers interviewed by Professor Bewley in the 1990s said that employees who hold onto jobs often suffer “survivors’ guilt.” They are genuinely pained, experiencing empathy with the less fortunate. In this troubled state, they don’t think about taking extravagant vacations, or buying new houses or fancy new cars. And this frugality detracts from demand that might produce jobs for others.
Similar thinking underlies the relatively low level of business expenditures today on buildings, equipment and software. Lower-level managers won’t ask for scarce resources for such things, because those items look like luxuries to fellow employees, who worry that there won’t be enough in the company budget for them to keep their jobs.
One top manager told Professor Bewley that he had to compensate for the reticence of lower-level managers, who won’t ask for anything. “I tell them to put in a few dreams for equipment they would like, because if they don’t try, they’ll never get what they want,” this manager said.
Of course, while that reticence may preserve jobs in one’s own company, it works against job growth elsewhere. A result is a loss of vigor in the aggregate economy, and the sapping of the very kind of creativity that might spur a recovery.
Professor Bewley shared with me a passage from an interview in July with a manager of a large manufacturing company. “There is more uncertainty, and everybody is afraid,” this manager told him. “Do your job. Keep employed. Don’t come up with a new idea.” In his own company, the manager said, “Everybody is doing the same thing.”
Although it may sound more sci-fi than sci-fact, a commercially developed jetpack is actually being eyed for mass production, with plans to eventually release it to the public. Let that sink in for a second. Jetpacks are real, and you might be able to buy one someday soon. Or at least see them among the skies.I don't think we'll need the full second since jet packs have been around for between fifty and seventy years and you've been able to buy them for much of that time. The Germans had a prototype in WWII (Not surprisingly, Wikipedia has an excellent write-up on the subject). By the mid-Sixties they were flying over the World's Fair and showing up in Bond movies (yes, that was an actual Bell Rocket Belt).
In 1992, one-time insurance salesman and entrepreneur Brad Barker formed a company to build a rockeltbelt with two partners: Joe Wright, a businessman based in Houston, and Larry Stanley, an engineer who owned an oil well in Texas. By 1994, they had a working prototype they called the Rocketbelt-2000, or RB-2000. They even asked [Bill] Suitor to fly it for them. But the partnership soon broke down. First Stanley accused Barker of defrauding the company. Then Barker attacked Stanley and went into hiding, taking the RB-2000 with him. Police investigators questioned Barker but released him after three days. The following year Stanley took Barker to court to recover lost earnings. The judge awarded Stanley sole ownership of the RB-2000 and over $10m in costs and damages. When Barker refused to pay up, Stanley kidnapped him, tied him up and held him captive in a box disguised as a SCUBA-tank container. After eight days Barker managed to escape. Police arrested Stanley and in 2002 he was sentenced to life in prison, since reduced to eight years. The rocketbelt has never been found.
Arthur Penn, the stage, television and motion picture director whose revolutionary treatment of sex and violence in the 1967 film “Bonnie and Clyde” transformed the American film industry, died on Tuesday night at his home in Manhattan, the day after he turned 88.When I saw this obituary in the New York Times a few days ago, it got me to thinking about the Golden Age of Television. Penn made his bones as a director of live dramas and had his big breakthrough with the Miracle Worker which he directed first for television in 1957, then on Broadway and finally on film.
If you concede that employers need to be able to fire bad employees, then you can't fully defend the role of the unions. You can defend the concept of unions, and you can believe that some of the things unions do, like bargain for higher aggregate wages, help society. But most unions demonstrably make it very difficult to fire bad employees. That is currently a core function of unions, and something that must change. You're also going to need higher salaries to attract a better caliber employee into the workforce, and that's something unions could potentially help. But being "treated like professionals" has to mean both the opportunity to earn a good living if you do well and the potential to be fired if you fail.I welcome comments but please don't include the source of the passage. Obviously that would undercut the point of the experiment.
If managers free to engage in insider trading know that the next piece of news to be released will cause the stock price to rise, they will buy. If they know that the next piece of news to be released will cause the stock price to fall, they will sell and then buy back later. They don't care whether the news is good or bad--either way they will profit, and either way they will profit equally.
What the ability to engage in insider trading does is that it gives managers an incentive to make the price of the stock vary--they don't care which way. Thus it cannot "serve a useful purpose as an executive compensation device" and cannot "motivate managers to maximize the value of the firm" to shareholders.
Insider trading makes executives' portfolios' long not the company but long the volatility of the company. And shareholders don't want executives making decisions that make the value of companies they own more volatile: stock market investments are risky enough as it is without giving executives reasons to boost the volatility pot.
