
Paying teachers more results in higher pupil performance - robg
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2011/12/28/pupil-performance/
======
tokenadult
This is not time-series data. The study design here (a cross-sectional survey
of varying countries, showing a bare correlation between two variables) is not
adequate to show causation.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

(By the way, the scatter of data points around the regression line in their
plot suggests that the model is subject to large degrees of error in
prediction.) It would take an experimental design (randomly assigning one
group of teachers in the same country to receive pay raises while another
group does not, with before-and-after comparisons of pupil performance) to
show that paying teachers more results in higher pupil performance.

<http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz>

There have been hundreds of studies of educational interventions over the
years,

[http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-
Analys...](http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analyses-
Achievement/dp/0415476186)

and many thoughtful international comparisons of teaching practice,

[http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-
Class...](http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-
Classroom/dp/1439143137/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-
Mathematic...](http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-
Understanding/dp/0415873843/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Making-Learning-Whole-Principles-
Trans...](http://www.amazon.com/Making-Learning-Whole-Principles-
Transform/dp/0470633719/)

but none of those conclude that simply raising teacher pay, without changing
teaching practices and perhaps also the composition of the teaching workforce,
will have much to do with raising pupil performance in any place. Raising
teacher pay systematically has been tried in the United States (notably in the
state of Connecticut) and has not been shown to markedly raise pupil
performance.

An economist who closely studies education policy has suggested that pay and
other incentives be used to encourage the least effective teachers to seek
other occupations while rewarding the most effective teachers with increased
compensation and more professional support.

[http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads...](http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads/Hanushek%202009%20CNTP%20ch%208.pdf)

Such a policy, he estimates (showing his work in his article) would raise
United States educational achievement to the level of the highest-performing
countries. This is something worth verifying by experiment, although that will
be politically difficult in any state of the United States

<http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj30n1/cj30n1-8.pdf>

and perhaps in Britain as well.

<http://www.economist.com/node/17849199>

P.S. I'm curious about why the United States underperforms so much compared to
salaries paid to teachers in the chart shown in the submitted blog post.

~~~
qdog
Everyone in the US has the opportunity (or close to everyone) to attend a
near-standard public school in the US. Not all countries subscribe to this
model, I believe. Although the US average is low, I strongly suspect that the
top 10% of US students perform at or above the levels of all other countries.

As for paying more, this increases competition as stated, but you'd need all
other factors to remain equal. The class size in US public schools is now
ridiculous, 30+ kids per teacher at the local elementary here. Education
funding should basically be doubled imho, and the number of teachers per
student dropped to 17 or 18 maximum.

~~~
petervandijck
Agree. Triple it, 10 students per teacher, and see performance shoot up.

------
TomOfTTB
This seems like they walked in looking for proof of their already established
conclusion. If you look at Finland, Australia, Korea, Japan and New Zealand
you see a cluster of countries who are paying their teachers well and who
aren't getting results (Edit: By this I mean the countries below them aren't
getting results yet are paying the same amount). Compare Denmark to Finland or
Spain to New Zealand and then explain to me how the authors' thesis rings
true.

Plus we have anecdotal evidence that contradicts their conclusion in the U.S:
Individual State salaries vary pretty significantly ($37,000 to $59,000) yet
education results don't seem to reflect those salaries

Teacher Salary By State: <http://www.teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-
state>

State Education Rankings: [http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/september/state-
education-ran...](http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/september/state-education-
ranking-shows-vermont-1-south-carolina-last)

I don't entirely disagree with the thesis that making "teacher" a more revered
position will draw better people to it. But there are clearly other factors at
play that the authors chose to disregard because they wanted to prove their
already established conclusion.

(If it were me I'd be comparing Switzerland, Germany and Sweden and trying to
figure what the differences are there)

~~~
wwweston
"If you look at Finland... paying their teachers well and who aren't getting
results."

I'd been given to understand Finland is generally regarded as one of the
better education systems in the world.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm>
<http://siteselection.com/ssinsider/snapshot/sf011210.htm>
[http://schoolmatters.knoxnews.com/forum/topics/how-does-
finl...](http://schoolmatters.knoxnews.com/forum/topics/how-does-finlands-
education)

~~~
TomOfTTB
You could very well be right. My point was the authors' conclusion didn't
match their underlying data. So the validity of their underlying data didn't
come into play.

------
jmilloy
Let's be clear: both explanations are that higher salaries result in better
teachers which in turn results in higher student performance. It's not that
saying that paying _a_ teacher more results in higher performance.

~~~
orbitingpluto
My first thought when I read the article title is that teachers would have
more money to pay out of pocket to get materials for their students.

A lot of teachers do this, from kindergarten to high school. I've had to hang
out in a educational supply store more than once in my life when I and <pick
any friend that is a teacher> have passed by one. That teacher then blows a
sizable chunk of coin without fail.

Arts & crafts, books, lined paper, sci calculators, and of course... stickers
for that job well done.

~~~
Drakeman
Some US states have 60/40 plans built into their education budgets. What that
means is 60% of the money the state gives to local schools must go to the
"classroom." Now, how a state defines classroom is very loose. Most of the
time, supplies, working facilities, new desks, books, and teaching materials
fit into it. What is the other 40%? Administrative and teacher salaries, lunch
programs, and transportation.

In my experience, schools in the US actually waste a huge sum of money because
they have incompetent administrative staff (with the added bonus that they're
overpaid).

------
iterationx
I found the conclusion of the movie "Waiting for Superman" interesting
basically the major obstacle for improving education in the US is that you
can't fire bad teachers because of union contracts.

~~~
TomOfTTB
Well Yes but there's a backstory to that.

If you talk to teachers who worked in the pre-union days they'll tell you it
was a nightmare. Because it was run by low-level politicians (school board
members) who were cowardly to the point of causing havok.

Put it this way. Most people don't know the political positions of their
individual school board members. So if someone comes to their house and says
"this member is bad" they'll generally vote against them on the theory of
"better safe than sorry". Which meant every crazy parent who thought their kid
was treated unfairly would raise a fuss and get teachers fired because the
Principal answered to the School Board members and those members had extremely
tenuous holds on their position. Meaning teachers were getting fired fairly
regularly, often for doing nothing wrong.

Teachers Unions were born out of that abuse. The problem now is we've swung to
the other extreme. Where even teachers who are bad can't get fired. But I
wouldn't say the problem is the union contracts. If anything it's that we
haven't found an appropriate metric for measuring teacher performance.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_If anything it's that we haven't found an appropriate metric for measuring
teacher performance._

Modern VAM (Value Added Modelling) methods tend to work well. This is
basically building a statistical predictor of student performance, and then
measuring whether individual teachers students meet this predictor.

The teachers unions fight tooth and nail against using them, but they work
well.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Care to provide some evidence for this assertion?

I am aware of the some of the research into building multilevel models of
student and teacher performance, but one of the issues here is that if these
metrics are used, there is no test set which can be utilised to validate the
model. This is an absolutely huge issue when you are essentially hiring and
firing people based on the metric.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...there is no test set which can be utilised to validate the model._

The collection of students used to develop the model are randomly partitioned
- one partition is training data, the other validation data. This is
regression 101.

This publication goes into detail:
<http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2004/RAND_MG158.pdf>

Note that if you believe VAM doesn't work, you must also believe that we have
no statistical evidence that teacher quality matters at all. Is that actually
your belief?

------
paulhauggis
I know everyone seems to want to pay teachers a higher salary, but in most
school systems, they are already guaranteed a pay raise every year through the
unions. Even if they did nothing to deserve it.

Most jobs tech jobs start out high, but plateau at a certain salary range (you
also don't automatically get a raise every year). If you are a teacher long
enough (10+ years), you will get up to the $70-80K range (I know a couple of
older teachers that get paid this much). With summers and many more vacation
days, it evens out in the end.

If you want better performance, we need better teachers. Because the unions
will not allow us to put a measure on performance, the result is bad teachers
getting into the system with the inability to fire them.

I'm also finally glad they are putting an end to "rubber rooms". If you don't
know what they are, take a look here:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/education/29rubber.html>

Another waste of our tax dollars that has been going on for years....

------
donpark
I agree with the general notion but don't think raising _all_ teachers' salary
will lead to better result. While Korean public school teachers are relatively
well paid, top private 'Hakwon' teachers are paid several times more. Private
education is a hot 'business' in S.Korea.

Sad part is that the goal of private education in S.Korea is to enter good
universities, not to get good education. Sadder part is, after graduating,
many can't find jobs and those that do usually don't work in the field they
majored in because they picked their school by reputation and their majors by
ease of entry.

------
Symmetry
I bet that the correlation is much stronger for teacher starting salaries than
for the 15 year in salaries that the study mentioned. What really matters is
attracting the best people to be teachers, and when people look at jobs they
mostly look at starting salaries.

But for some reason in the US we tend to have a very steep seniority based pay
scale, with a far greater inequality between old and young teachers than you
see in pretty much any other industry. You could argue that more experienced
teachers are better, but studies show that experience stops mattering after 5
years, and it was also my subjective experience in school that older teachers
didn't seem to be any better at teaching.

------
keithpeter
UK note: over the last couple of decades there has been a _lot_ of effort to
'raise standards' (contested vocabulary) in teaching over here. Partially pay
awards, but also degree only recruitment, only certain kinds of degree
accepted for Secondary school subject specialism, staff development
requirements &c

Public sector pay and conditions will drop relative to private sector in the
UK over the next 10 years or so. If and when the business cycle picks up, you
might see the 'quality' (contested vocabulary) drop again.

------
hamidpalo
Figure 1 above provides an insight into the relationship between teacher
salaries and pupil outcomes, showing a clear statistical association between
higher relative teachers’ pay and higher standardised pupil scores across
countries.

Aaaah! Correlation again being confused with causation. Omitted variable bias!

------
moreorless
They do this in China. IMHO, it is a pretty mixed bag. Mostly they teach kids
how to take tests.

