no teaching now...
"An analysis by Georgetown University's Edunomics Lab recently suggested
that, at least in theory, districts could save money and improve
student learning by offering the most effective teachers higher salaries
to take on slightly larger classes. A new review of that study,
however, finds significant flaws in the idea.
Patricia H. Hinchey, a professor of education at Penn State University, took a closer look
at the Georgetown report in a paper published by National Education
Policy Center, a research group based at the University of Colorado
Boulder School of Education. She found many of the same problems our
colleague Stephen Sawchuk touched on
when the report first came out: Specifically, that the analysis was
based on a lot of assumptions and relatively little firm evidence.
The authors of the original report make the case that, under a
staffing model where the best teachers took on more students, the
negative effects of larger classes would be outweighed by the benefits
of good teaching. Thus, they say, districts could increase class sizes
for the best teachers without worrying that they're harming student
learning. In the process, they can save millions of dollars that could,
in turn, be filtered to teachers in the form of bonuses.
But, says Hinchey, the authors don't actually have any empirical
evidence to back up their assumptions, while smaller class sizes have
consistently been linked to student success. Besides, she argues, it's
hard to reliably identify the most effective teachers, and many studies have cautioned against using value-added models as the basis of salary decisions.
Furthermore, Hinchey points out that bonuses have a poor track record
when it comes to balancing out poor working conditions, meaning that
teachers would be unlikely to accept this system unless it included more
wholesale changes to schools. And many classes are already
overcrowded—the Edunomics report focused on a district in which the
average class size was 22, ignoring the countless teachers, says
Hinchey, who would likely be grateful to have classes that small.
Hinchey also contends that the authors seem to have made "selective
use of research," ignoring some aspects of the research they rely on—like warnings about VAM's reliability—while quoting statistics that don't actually seem to appear in the studies they cite.
"Rather than a practical response to known issues ... ," Hinchey
writes, "the proposal seems primarily a scheme to reduce the teaching
force. The report is superficial and misleading, and its proposal has no
value as a nationwide model."
The Edunomics report was latest in a string of initiatives tied to
the idea of rearranging school staffing structures in order to maximize
the reach of the most effective teachers. The education consulting firm
Public Impact has put forward several potential models that would have highly effective teachers taking on more work, including a multi-classroom setup already in use in at least one school. These more complex models offer a variety of options for schools—although interestingly, Public Impact also proposes one model that's almost identical to the one in the Georgetown report."
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