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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]PP, you keep going after this golden carrot of rewarding the "good" teachers.  How do you know if a teacher is good?  Research shows that there is no way to determine that quantitively and in an unbiased way.

There is no effective way to evaluate teachers because there is no effective way to equalize the product, which is students.

Research shows that students from high socio-economic families do appreciably better on standardized tests than students from low socio-economic families.  Therefore, teachers who teach in high socio-economic schools will always outperform teachers who teach in low socio-economic schools because teachers in high socio-economic schools are working with a population that is already ahead.

Then you must consider other factors that can negatively or positively impact students, and teachers working in low socio-economic schools always come out on the bottom.  You can have the greatest teacher in the world but put that teacher in a classroom with students who are worried about where they're going to sleep that night, or who are so hungry they are about to faint, or who slept outside and don't have access to a toilet so they have to poop so badly that they can't concentrate, or ... well, you get the picture.

It is an uphill battle.

Great minds have been working at the teacher evaluation process for decades and have been stymied.  Even the Gates foundation attempted to do refine the teacher evaluation process and had to stop in defeat.  In fact, the ASA put out a study two or three years ago that shows that teacher quality accounts for only 18% of student performance; the rest of student performance is determined by other factors.  That's pretty staggering.

Instead of beating the dead horse with your "we'll only pay the good teachers" bit, you should be more focused on how we improve the whole system.  When you open your mind, PP, and look at the research, you'll see that your method won't work.  So take some time off, readjust your attitude and come back with you're in a more open frame of mind.

DP[/quote]
how do we evaluate doctors and nurses? [/quote]

Judging from online reviews, it's a popularity contest. I'm afraid I'd rather get the [b]Dr who catches the nuances of my nascent disease[/b] than the one who can tell a good joke and makes me feel sunny, thank you very much[/quote]

But would you tell the doctor who makes you feel sunny more details about your current state and they will catch more nuances of your disease?
[/quote]

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