
To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destroy It - sasvari
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/print/2012/04/to-fix-americas-education-bureaucracy-we-need-to-destroy-it/255173/
======
DanielBMarkham
After reading yummyfajitas' comment, I wish I could take back my upvote,
because he's right: it's one thing to say the structure of the process itself
is so byzantine and brittle that schools suck, but it's quite another to say
we should remove measurable goals as well.

If I didn't know better, I'd call this a disinformation piece: deliberately
conflating two concepts into one large rant in order to try to join the two.
The subtext goes something like this: _we know Joe Sixpack has finally figured
out how terrible the education system is, so let's throw together a big pile
of things we don't like, stick a label on top (something like "bureaucracy")
and that way we can get rid of pesky measurements at the same time we free up
execution.)_

The author isn't good enough to pull that off, though. I think it's much more
the case that it's just a populist rant from somebody who already has a big
label he wants to stick on things that don't work. That is a non-starter.

To continue the programming analogy, as a customer you guys are delivering
crap all the time. I pay ten times as much and the crap just gets worse. Now
we can sit around and dicker all day long about the process you have for
making crap, but one thing we are not going to do is remove the testing at the
end that makes it obvious to everybody just how shitty the whole thing is.

~~~
cynicalkane
The thing about measurable goals in teaching is that all of them are awful.
Economic psychology teaches us that bad incentives are worse than no
incentives. The incentives being promulgated are things like "higher test
scores" or "more kids graduating" so the system aligns itself towards teaching
the test while simultaneously lowering the bar for everything else.

So let's talk about the software analogy. In software, the bar for formal
acceptance usually really low. Do test cases pass? Maybe there's an auto-
integration test that also must pass, and some requirements checkout QA has to
do. You can write terrible code and have it pass the formal process, which is
why you see a lot of terrible programmers coasting along at some of the worse
companies. Some teams might have more formal requirements but that goes team
by team. If you're working anywhere worth working, there'll be a much higher
non-formal bar set by your manager, your team, your customers if you're in
contact with them. So the incentives are there but they're personal and
informal. The 'waterfall' pattern is one example of a misguided attempt to
formalize the software dev process and align it with goals.

How would software devs feel if some perverse, untouchable bureaucracy
measured their code according to ridiculous formal measures from the Central
Bureaucracy and arbitrary rules that changed according political whims? That's
what teachers are facing. I know some software devs face the same thing, but
we always give them the same advice: find a better job. Teachers don't have
that option because the bureaucracy is everywhere; but they can go to better
(generally richer) schools, where it's a little mitigated, or they can drop
out and leave that gaggle of little Kafkas behind forever.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
"...The thing about measurable goals in teaching is that all of them are
awful..."

I learned to fly people around in airplanes using various instructional
techniques, including at times studying for the test. So do most airline
pilots. Seems to work for them. The military has been training people for over
200 years with measurable teaching goals. In fact, some of the best teachers
are ex-military. I could continue if you'd like.

"...if you're working anywhere worth working--there'll be a much higher non-
formal bar set by your manager, your team, your customers if you're in contact
with them..."

You are throwing out all requirements from any outside bureaucratic structure
and then assuming that some informal standard of quality is going to fill the
void. I don't know what your experiences are, but this kind of "let's see what
happens" mentality doesn't trend toward good things. It's a tragedy of the
commons problem. Why do a little bit extra here if somebody else in the
organization is going to look at it anyway?

Instead, we find that really smart people are great at arguing on and on about
technical stuff that has nothing to do with delivery. _The only thing that
naturally limits this is having testable work due on a fixed date._ Otherwise,
people would much rather create little complex systems that mirror their
favorite technical book or management philosophy. There are no fights that are
as vicious as academic fights over the smallest things.

The answer here is simple: if it's not measurable, we do not pay for it. I am
sure there are lots of teams of really great people leading fulfilling lives
creating quality in an ad-hoc manner that will continue doing so. We call
these folks artists. There are also people who live the same kind of lives but
have measurable results at the end of their creative process. These folks are
usually called artistic professionals.

Teachers cannot be artists. The public cannot afford them to be so. They can
certainly be artistic professionals, but like other artistic professionals
there will be some kind of loose structure around their work product and it
will be judged at regular intervals. This measure will be centered solely
around students, which is natural because the only reason any teacher would be
paid would be because of a student.

There might be a great argument about how the current tests are bad. But I
think that's another discussion.

As a side note, and I want to make sure I hit this the right way, I do not
care about teachers as such. Yes, I care about the dignity and humanity and
kindness we show to all people, but teachers do not get some special place
above, say, policemen. Or doctors. They're just like the rest of us. If you
try to split up each profession and say we should treat them all in special
ways due to the nature of their jobs, it gets much too complex for me to
manage. Instead, when I meet somebody we pay our taxes to help us out, I
usually try to say "thank you"

It doesn't matter to me whether we employ one teacher or ten million. If we
could teach all of the students of the country with one teacher, that would be
fine with me. The same goes for those other professions.

~~~
cynicalkane
You're not arguing against the point you think you are. You're talking about
the setting of micro-incentives to meet a goal by someone interested in a
domain. I'm talking about generalized goal-setting by bureaucrats. I'm talking
about why the bureaucracy isn't necessary and why we need that individual
touch to decide what our goals are or if any are needed. I even admitted that
certain subdomains are conducive to goal-setting. I generally include these in
'non-formal' goals because you don't take them from the Central Bureaucracy,
you make them up as you go.

For instance, say you proposed creating music according to micro-goals. Say we
live in the late 1800s. You look at the classical music and you come up with
goals regarding tempo, intonation, meter, and some higher goals regarding fit
and feel of the music. Then your Central Bureaucracy says, ok, this is the
goal for creating music. Congratulations, you just killed jazz, and rock and
roll to follow. All musical producers will have their acceptance criteria for
recording a track, but it will be different from producer to producer, from
musical style to musical style, more formal or less formal, and in general
musical innovation comes from moving the goalposts or tearing them down. And
yet these are the "creative professionals" you talk about.

~~~
yummyfajitas
By his definition, musicians are artists. Their goal is to create unique
products which satisfy unknown consumer desires.

In contrast, teachers are "artistic professionals" (except maybe at level of
PhD advisers). Their goal is to use artistic techniques to create products
which have achieved a fixed set of goals.

Bureaucratic goal setting is not desirable in all circumstances, but it is
useful in some.

~~~
cynicalkane
Actually, I was talking about the producer-musician relationship. The
producer's goal is more clearly defined than that of the teacher--"help us
make money"--and yet you don't see the RIAA sending down standardized tests
for musicians.

------
yummyfajitas
The article unnecessarily conflates two separate pieces of the bureaucracy.

The first is management of inputs - work rules, prescribed teaching methods,
etc. The second is management of outputs - measurement of student performance
and penalties/rewards for teachers who harm/improve this.

The first can certainly be scrapped at the global level (though of course
experimentation should continue at lower levels). The second, not so much.

By analogy to programming, it would be silly to hire a programmer and tell him
to use Eclipse and make sure all work is performed between 9AM and 6PM. On the
other hand, it would be moronic not to give him a detailed description of what
you actually want him to build, and put a clause in the contract tying his pay
to his product meeting the specs.

~~~
wisty
Yes, but you wouldn't want to measure lines of code.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Nor would you want to measure student performance by class attendance. What's
your point?

~~~
wisty
That many of the metrics the school system uses are terrible ones, which lead
to pathological behavior.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Ok, so fix the metrics.

Something interesting that I've observed is that most of the people
complaining about metrics are really complaining about the goals of the
system. I.e., many people want the school to increase mean(student scores),
and then complain when the school attempts to increase count(student score >
CUTOFF). If you want the school to have different goals, say so. Don't blame
the goals of the system on the existence of metrics.

~~~
jbooth
You fix the metrics.

You can't argue that metrics should be the be-all and end-all of everything,
and a teachers' intuition should count for nothing, when there are all these
problems with the metrics we have. Here's a good story:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/creative--
moti...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/creative--motivating-
and-fired/2012/02/04/gIQAwzZpvR_story.html)

This teacher was by all accounts a phenomenal teacher, but she was fired
because her batch of kids came from a school that had suspiciously high scores
the year before, and is currently under investigation for cheating. She didn't
maintain that high level of scores so she was fired.

Our police system is dominated by metrics and we got The Wire as a result. In
education, you hear about cheating scandals in DC, good teachers being fired
due to unfortunate statistical conflagrances.. if you're gonna advocate
turning your brain off and delegating all decision-making to your metrics,
they have to be good.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The next time you hire a freelancer, why don't you use his intuition about his
own performance rather than measuring whether he actually built what you
wanted him to build?

 _...good teachers being fired due to unfortunate statistical conflagrances.._

How do you know they were good? Because they said so, and one of their cronies
agreed?

This link is relevant: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal-agent_problem>

I'll note that you want to scrap objective metrics because they have some
problems, but you don't seem to realize "teachers' intuition" also has
problems. One of the biggest is comparability - how I can compare the
intuition of teacher A with the intuition of teacher B?

With standardized tests, the answer is simple arithmetic.

~~~
jbooth
The teacher in question was given high marks on review by all her superiors,
not just herself. On a freelancer's results, I'm not applying a standardized
test to their results so yeah, I am in fact using my intuition an brain about
what they built.

Metrics are fine, they just shouldn't be fetishized, and we shouldn't allow
them to make us fire good teachers. They also shouldn't dominate what's taught
to the extent they do. Nation of multiple choice test-takers? That's what we
want out of our school system?

~~~
yummyfajitas
_The teacher in question was given high marks on review by all her superiors,
not just herself._

If the students didn't perform, but her superiors liked her, why are you
assuming the superiors know what they are talking about?

Again, how can I compare the opinions of heterogeneous superiors, and why do
you believe the opinions are correct and objective metrics are wrong?

Opinions fail on many counts - comparability and objectivity being the most
obvious. Why do you fetishize opinion, and assert it as being more accurate
than objective metrics?

 _They also shouldn't dominate what's taught to the extent they do._

All standardized tests do is measure whether a school is meeting their goals.
If standardized tests are preventing schools from ignoring their goals and
teaching whatever they feel like (or perhaps nothing at all), why is that a
bad thing?

~~~
aestetix
Why do you trust a standard the federal government has set over what a teacher
says? After all, the teachers are the ones who have hands on experience with
how the students are actually doing.

Further, standardized tests don't really measure much, except for how well
student can take tests and regurgitate information.

------
ChristianMarks
The Atlantic ought to read this NY Times article:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/business/college-costs-
are...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/business/college-costs-are-rising-
amid-a-prestige-chase.html?_r=1)

Busting unions and destroying bureaucracies isn't going to change the way
teaching is done fundamentally. What it will do is make teaching even less
attractive as a profession. Most teachers I know value job security in
exchange for salary. Take away security and you are left with little economic
incentive to stay. And economic incentives are essential:

 _Some of that [tuition] growth has resulted from a phenomenon called Baumol’s
disease, after the economist William J. Baumol, who described it in a 1965
article he wrote with William G. Bowen. The basic idea is that while
productivity gains have made it possible to assemble cars with only a tiny
fraction of the labor that was once required, it still takes four musicians
nine minutes to perform Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 4 in C minor, just as
it did in the 19th century._

 _College instruction more closely resembles a musical performance than an
auto assembly line. Although information technologies have yielded some
productivity growth in academia, instruction still takes place largely as it
always has._

 _To recruit professors, universities must pay salaries roughly in line with
those made possible by productivity growth in other sectors. So while rising
salaries needn’t lead to higher prices in many industries, they do in academia
and many other service industries._

While the Atlantic story seems to comport with the frightening startup idea to
"Replace Universities", it is crucial to recognize and deal with Baumol's
disease.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_What it will do is make teaching even less attractive as a profession. Most
teachers I know value job security in exchange for salary. Take away security
and you are left with little economic incentive to stay._

That's ok, there is already a mismatch between supply and demand in teaching.
Apparently there is a surplus of at least 280,000 teachers, according to the
Department of Education [1].

This indicates that teachers are currently overcompensated - if comp were
reduced, supply would come closer to meeting demand (at least if
Keynesians/Monetarists/Austrians are to be believed).

Further, if union influence were reduced, then administrators would be able to
force out the low performance and keep the high performers, rather than merely
keep the teachers with seniority.

[1] [http://www.ed.gov/blog/2011/10/keeping-teachers-off-the-
unem...](http://www.ed.gov/blog/2011/10/keeping-teachers-off-the-unemployment-
line/)

~~~
ChristianMarks
If one were to follow the link, one would find the following:

 _The American Jobs Act proposes a major investment that will modernize at
least 35,000 public schools, and support 280,000 teacher jobs nationwide. See
what impact the Act will have in your state, and read a complete overview of
the American Jobs Act here._

There is nothing about a surplus of 280,000 teachers. This is a libertarian
distortion. Disgusting.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The claim is that there are or will be 280,000 unemployed teachers.
Unemployment is surplus labor. The standard prescription for surplus labor is
to reduce the cost.

~~~
jordanb
A great many teachers have been laid off due to the funding crisis in local
government. That crisis was caused by a decline in tax revenue, especially
property taxes due to the housing bubble. It was delayed by funding from the
Recovery Act but RA payments ended a long time ago.

The result is that this country's local governments are spending much less on
education than they were a few years ago, and therefore employ many fewer
teachers. Because they have a mandate to educate basically the same number of
children as before the crisis, this means larger class sizes, etc.

To suggest that these unemployed teachers are 'surplus' in this environment is
to mis-characterize the situation almost to the point of dishonesty.

~~~
yummyfajitas
If you have a fixed amount of money to spend, you can either buy fewer items,
or pay less per item. It's due primarily to union contracts that schools are
buying fewer items.

If they reduced the compensation of teachers (i.e., reduce price in response
to a demand decrease), there would be no need to reduce the number of
teachers.

~~~
vannevar
But there is no decreased demand. In fact, in many communities there is
_increased_ demand. Education (like health care) is not amenable to overly
simplified economic models, because (like health care) it's not an optional
expense. The right answer might be to increase teacher salaries, bringing
compensation on par with other professionals and thus attracting more
qualified people, who in turn produce better-educated students, who in turn
improve the local economy, providing greater tax revenue and more money to pay
for the higher salaries.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_But there is no decreased demand._

Of course there is - the quantity demanded at a fixed price is set to go down
by (according to the DoE) 280,000. I.e., the demand curve has shifted left.

~~~
vannevar
You're making the mistake of inferring demand from the budget, which is
exactly the overly simplistic economic analysis I was warning about. If
inflation raises the price of all goods, does that show increasing real
demand? Of course not. In this case, not only are there not fewer kids
demanding education, there are actually _more_ of them, and offering
(proportionate to the tax revenue available) the same 'price' as they were
before. The fact that the tax revenue contracted does not in any way indicate
a lessening in real demand, any more than inflation reflects a real increase
in demand.

------
v0cab
Getting rid of unions just sounds like a recipe for abuse. Management simply
cannot be trusted to treat employees fairly.

~~~
Shivetya
unions certainly do nothing to protect the students from the teachers, if the
NYC area is any example. They exaggerate the costs of educating students and
usually exert too much influence over local elections thereby insuring their
continued existence and near immunity to control. Unions operate to serve
themselves, their political contacts next, then their members; they certainly
could care less about the business.

There are more than sufficient laws and with our well connected society there
is means to protect both teachers and students. We just have to get the
bureaucracy out of the system and that includes the unions.

public employee unions should never have been allowed.

The Department of Education is a good place to start when it comes to fixing
the system, it needs to go. Since Carter implemented it the only noticeable
increase in regards to education has been cost per student, it certainly has
done little if anything to improve their outcome.

~~~
v0cab
I thought public school teachers in the US were considered to be underpaid?
Certainly compared to public school teachers in South Korea, they don't earn
that much compared to the national average salary.

I don't believe there are sufficient laws in the US to protect teachers. The
US's employment laws are poorly-regarded in the rest of the Western world. And
what about at-will employment states? Teachers would be fired just because of
accusations of wrongdoing. Cheaper to just get rid of the accused teacher and
get a new one in.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Teachers would be fired just because of accusations of wrongdoing._

It would be so terrible if a teachers who rub their genitals against students,
mock homosexuals and simulate sex acts, or stalk their students were fired.

Thank goodness we have unions to protect these teachers and keep them in the
classroom.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/nyregion/found-to-have-
mis...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/nyregion/found-to-have-misbehaved-
but-still-teaching-in-new-york-city.html?_r=1&ref=education)

Meanwhile, everyone besides teachers can be fired if they grope their
customers. The world hasn't ended for them.

~~~
v0cab
From the nytimes article:

"But to union officials, the right to an impartial hearing is sacrosanct, to
protect teachers from losing their livelihoods because a principal or a
student might have an ax to grind."

An impartial hearing -- sounds good to me.

We don't know that all the teachers in that article did those things you said.
You're implying that we should fire them and make them leave that career, just
because a kid and his friends said they did? Kids can lie, you know.

[EDIT: After reading further in that article, I see some of the teachers did
misbehave, but they were punished for it.]

Without unions, teachers can look forwards to as much protection and fairness
in the workplace as your average US restaurant server. Get on the wrong side
of your boss or his son? Fired. Too many complaints from customers about you
in one week? Fired. No proof required.

~~~
yummyfajitas
While putting teachers in the same boat as waiters, programmers and CEOs does
sound awful, I think children will still wind up being educated.

Remember, the goal here is not to ensure teachers are never incorrectly fired,
it's to educate children. If a few teachers are incorrectly fired, but student
performance goes up, that's a win.

This is what happens in many industries. For example, if a trader or hedge
fund manager gets unlucky and the market moves against him, he can be fired.
Unfair individually, maybe, but in aggregate the net result is that the
traders who aren't fired tend to perform better.

~~~
v0cab
CEOs? Bad example there.

I am very concerned about labour rights, as that will be very important in a
world of ever-fewer jobs with more competition for those jobs, for the
students when they grow up, and for now, when their parents need jobs to
support their family.

If students can get teachers fired with just an accusation,

* The students will end up with a fragmented education from a chain of supply teachers and replacements.

* Teachers will have to pander to students even more than they already do, for fear that a disgruntled student will decide to cry wolf. Lessons will focus on fun, not education, and teachers will be unable to stop students from disrupting class.

The comparison to a trader or hedge fund manager doesn't stand, as the market
cannot decide to deliberately move against him out of spite, a need for power,
or boredom.

[EDIT: Forgot to mention that private companies are more motivated to care
about the product. Public school administrators would be more concerned about
'liability' and eliminating a source of 'hassle', than with the quality of the
product. There's little incentive for them to work to keep a good teacher
who's been unfairly accused.

The comparison to programmers is also not appropriate, for those same
reasons.]

~~~
yummyfajitas
_The comparison to a trader or hedge fund manager doesn't stand, as the market
cannot decide to deliberately move against him out of spite, a need for power,
or boredom._

Others in the company can and often do. You seem unfamiliar with corporate
politics.

 _Public school administrators would be more concerned about 'liability' and
eliminating a source of 'hassle', than with the quality of the product._

This is why I favor holding them responsible for outcomes as well, and
allowing them to be fired if things don't turn out well.

------
MaysonL
The way to fix the American educational system is to teach teachers better
ways to teach. Teaching is a learnable and teachable art, even though like all
arts, some people will be better (sometimes much better) than others. See
"Building a Better Teacher":
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&pagewanted=all)

------
mcmSEA
ironic how education systems with "unions and bureaucracies" like Finland seem
to do fine, and are best in the world.

------
jeremys1
Bobby Jindal is helping fix education by destroying the bureaucracy. Jindal
triumphed this past Thursday in his bid to embark on an historic overhaul of
public education in Louisiana, receiving final House passage of his
centerpiece proposals. In a state where student performance lags the nation,
the complex bills will make it harder for teachers to gain tenure while
establishing a statewide voucher program for private school tuition and
multiplying the ways to create charter schools. The bills also lessen local
school board authority in hiring and firing decisions, expand online schools
and restructure public financing of education. The measure also creates new
paths to start up charter schools, which are publicly funded but run with
broad autonomy from state and local education officials. Nonprofit
corporations with an "educational mission" will be allowed to authorize
charter schools, rather than just the state or local school boards. It also
will be easier for the state to take over a failing school. Local school board
authority will be lessened, strengthening the hand of superintendents and
principals in issues of hiring and firing and giving the state education
superintendent more review of local school board contracts with their own
district leaders. Current teacher tenure practice will end. Those with tenure
now — or who are poised to receive it before the fall school year begins —
will maintain the job protection as long as they aren't rated ineffective
under a new evaluation system tied partly to student performance on
standardized tests. Anyone without tenure or who loses it because of an
ineffective rating would need to be rated "highly effective" for five of six
consecutive years in order to reach the job protection. Statewide salary
schedules for teachers will be scrapped. Teachers won't lose any of their
current pay, but raises will be tied to decisions by individual principals and
school leaders. Seniority won't be a primary factor in layoff decisions.
Source: [http://www.nola.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/final-
passage-...](http://www.nola.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/final-passage-for-
historic-jindal-education-reform/83852fea976348dd811494da06d738cd)

