Open market teachers
Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 06:00AM 
Caption as printed in the New York Times, March 7, 2011: A statistical model the New York City school system uses in calculating the effectiveness of teachers. http://tinyurl.com/4ssvkbz
(via Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice)
Here is a modest proposal - let the market evaluate teachers. It would work something like this ...
Every school would hire a few more teachers than it needs. Each spring/summer parents would rank preferences for the teacher(s) they want their children to have. (There would be a drawing if a teacher was overly popular.) The teachers with the lowest number of parents choosing them would be released.
Teachers would need to figure out how to market themselves. Citing test scores/graduation rates/college performance of past students, perhaps? Promising special teaching philosophies or techniques such a constructivism, collaborative learning, or cultural literacy, maybe? Including testimonies from former students and parents, advisable? Eventually reputation in the community would help continuously effective teachers and quickly drive out of the profession those not performing.
Teachers could get so many points per student enrolled. These could either be kept and redeemed for extra salary or be spent on support services - library and technology access; music, art and PE specialists; additional custodial or administrative services; better physical facilities such as AC or square footage. (If library, tech and specials were optional for teachers to choose and salaries were based on number of teachers taking advantage of such services, a more customer-driven attitude may result.)
Just thinking aloud here. But this seems to make more sense than "school" choice or the Calvin-ball type proposal of the New York City school system shown above. And aren't other professionals such as accountants, doctors, lawyers, etc. evaluated in a similar fashion?
I'd be willing to continuously improve my skills in order to compete in such a system.
OK, have at me.
Reader Comments (11)
OK Doug, I appreciate you are thinking aloud and playing devil's advocate here, but I think there are some issues that need to be addressed. The overarching theme of my rebuttal is that education is not a business and that business initiatives designed to increase "productivity" and "efficiency" in fact have little to do with real learning.
Requiring teachers to market themselves to parents within their school communities in order to keep their jobs means that teachers are more likely to view their colleagues as competitors, rather than partners in the learning process. Although Hollywood films usually tell us otherwise, a good education is rarely the result of an individual teacher. The best learning occurs when teachers work together to share their expertise, encourage one another, and work with students to achieve goals.
Furthermore, many of the ways to measure teacher effectiveness are fraught with controversy. Test scores? I'm not even going to touch that can of worms! College performance by graduates? This could perhaps be a more authentic form of measurement, assuming that the majority of graduates fo on to college, that is. However, there is really no way to attribute college success to any individual teacher. Students choose such a wide range of colleges, select different majors, and act in different ways once arriving at college (e.g. the "A" student with helicopter parents who parties a bit too hard once given a taste of freedom) that it is virtually impossible to control the variables. Parents may be pleased to know that many students in a particular school go on to have successful college careers, but allowing teachers to market themselves based on this criteria ignores the complexity of college preparation and performance.
Another potential problem is also relevant to the voucher schemes or choice initiatives; these reforms often favour the middle class and ignore the most vulnerable students and their families. Not every parent has the ability, language skills, time, or inclination to sift through piles of data to rank individual teachers. They may end up choosing the teacher with the best website, the prettiest smile, or the one their child has deemed "cool."
I am also not convinced that allowing teachers to use their points to choose between a salary bonus or money to spend on services such as library or technology is really an advisable policy. Sure, it might encourage librarians to drum up more business for their libraries if their salaries are based on teacher take up, but a modern library service should emphasise quality over quantity. A librarian motivated to earn a higher salary may simply offer shallow, skills-based lessons in an attempt to reach as many teachers as possible. A librarian committed to working on longer-term, more engaging projects to build a culture of research and inquiry over time would likely lose out under this arrangement, but which one would you rather have educating children?
Of course, we all want teachers who are motivated, committed to the profession, and care about children and lifelong learning. However, I am not sure that this is the best way to do it. I would prefer to see a renewed sense of respect for the teaching profession and more trust in educators. I don't know anyone who went into the teaching profession for money, so why would offering bonuses motivate people to work harder?
I could go on, but I think I've said enough for now! I'm not sure I really agree with anything in your proposal, but thanks for starting such a provocative debate. I look forward to reading others' responses. :)
Many principals act as marketing directors for their teachers. But thats not true everywhere. Wouldn't it be nice to see?
Its a nice discussion game. Of course, it may be hard to decide who gets the votes. Parents, students, alumni, fellow teachers, the principal? All may have competing ideas.
Really, to a degree, this already happens. Though no apparent firing or incentives result. The best teachers already brand themselves with their performance and reputation and are heavily requested by parents and even students. What teachers do we request when OUR children come through our own school? Parents and students talk, requests are made to principals, and they know who has their game on and who doesn't . . . especially in a small town! That NYC teacher effectiveness formula is scary! Is caring and rapport part of the "total classroom effect" ? Great post!
Please keep giving us your honest opinion! Teachers should be marketing themselves and should be held accountable for what they do. I know that public school teachers and private school teachers are in different environments, but I believe in order to make our profession more professional, we should be held to the same standards (or higher) that "normal" people in "normal" jobs.
In response to your question about doctors, lawyers, and bankers being evaluated in similar fashion...Your system reminds me more of how politics operate. I think the political system might be the worst as the congressional bunch worries what the public opinion will be and not what is really needed for the best of the most. Imagine teachers acting to please parents and children versus doing their job which by necessity comes in conflict with pleasing others.
I do appreciate the shout out to become better known and understood to parents. And I am curious how NY would give those categories a numerical rating for their statistics. However, your inspired idea needs some sort of standards.
I find the idea of the parents doing all the voting rather scary, particularly among the middle school grades where the stories going home often do not hang terribly close to reality. Free-market thinking, though, definitely has its place in school.
As complex as education is, some complexification of the process you describe here is very much in order. I would add to your voting scenario input from colleagues and students alike, with a serious de-emphasis of parental judgement, as they are typically not in the classroom. Were teachers supported in their community of professionals and given the chance to interact and grow, the best informed voters would be colleagues. Having a strategic initial oversupply of teachers would be a cruel diversion of energies, and would be quite destructive, but a more fluid in & out process regulated by those who are judged as a community, the teachers, could be very transformative.
Erin above points out that a child's success is not the product of one teacher in a single year, but is certainly the product of the learning environment as a whole over many years. To put the fate of those accountable in the hands of other teachers and those being served, the kids, (with modest but not decisive parental input) would be a major step forward.
From Nick Kearney
In much economic thinking, particularly whenever the sacred cow of the "market" is invoked, the assumption is that the buyers/clients have full knowledge of their own needs and full understanding of what the supplier has to offer.
This is a wrong assumption. Commerce is based on the idea of incomplete knowledge, and needs it to prosper. Transparency kills commerce. Imagine if every buyer knew the seller´s profit margins....
But in education it is not merely wrong, it is ridiculous. The "client", or learner, comes to education precisely due to a lack of knowledge and understanding. How then are they to evaluate the central elements (pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge - the how and the what) of the "service" provided. It is simply impossible. The nature of the "service" makes it impossible.
The "market" metaphor is destroying education. Because it forces educators to dance the wrong dance in order to please the "invisible hand" of the market. But the market is an ass. Learning is not efficient, it is too complex for the Procrustean bed of efficiency. But it is necessary.
Doug´s "modest proposal" (see J.Swift) is akin to asking the partially sighted to evaluate the painter´s choice of palette. (Not the blind , the partially sighted)
There are many ways of evaluating educational interventions. They are messy and complex. Unfortunately the brute simplistic scalpel of "market forces", in this context, is only destructive
Erin,
Thanks for writing. I am not sure how this proposal would work either, but what we have now seems very broken. How do we empower great teachers and get rid of the duds? How do we honor parents who know exactly what they want for their kids?
Doug
Hi Brandt,
I didn't see this as voting at all - just letting parents pick the teachers they want their kids to have. Simple as that.
Doug
Thanks, Jennifer. I agree this already happens and unfortunately it is the "power parents" who get their wishes.
I also see this happening when kids take an online class to avoid a bad F2F teacher. That will grow as more online opportunities become available as well.
Doug
Hi Chris,
Doctors and dentists need to be licensed by the state to possibly more rigorous standards than teachers. That doesn't keep them from operating autonomously (professionally.) Oh, I would have loved as a parent to help decide the kind of math and writing skills I wanted my kids to learn. I disagree with much of state standards (and the Common Core).
Doug
Thank, Bill.
My sense is that over a period of time, an accurate view of any teacher would emerge from such a system and keep the process from favoring those teachers who simply tried to please parent. But yes, this is a very bare outline. (I'd give parents with children with special learning needs more points to spend on special services, for example.
Doug
Hi Nick,
Funny. We allow parents to choose a child's doctor and dentist, but we don't trust them to choose their child's teachers. Why is that? Aren't we all operating with only partial information all the time?
Doug
From Nick
Hi Doug
Currently most dentistry and medicine focuses on cure rather than prevention. Interventions produce short term results or lack of them, so decsions can be made with information about results (though I grant you imperfect understanding of the processes) . Education is a long term intervention, that changes the whole person and results may not become evident for 20 years. To subject these interventions to short term evaluation processes, carried out by non-experts, is to complicate unnecesssarily, and I would argue dangerously, the work of the teacher (who unfortunatley is not viewed as expert except maybe in Finland). But it happens a lot already and that is why so many teach to the test.
Best
Nick
I think that parents selecting teachers is a proverbial slippery slope, in that it allows for parents to potentially select teachers on the basis of superfical and even racist factors. For example, I don't want my child to have the Black teacher or the homosexual teacher. Deny it or not, it would happen. We're not post-racial yet. Not. even. close.
Hi teacerhmrw,
I suppose this could happen. But think of all those parents who could chose not to place their children with teachers who are racist or homophobic!
Doug