From a union supporter who's spent some time reading about anti-union sentiment here, I've found it generally boils down to a few things:
1) A large portion of users on this site are entrepreneurs or in higher-level tech. For the former, unions can be seen as getting in the way of the startup lifecycle; for the latter, many believe that the value they provide makes them untouchable, or believe that the supply of high-level tech workers will never meet demand so they will simply be able to move to another company if needed without much friction.
2) Many people believe that unions spend too much time protecting "low-performers," and that a union enacting barriers to protect employees from quick firing for performance will hurt the overall team/company.
3) Many people also believe that both paying union dues, and a union negotiating for the "average" worker will lead to them making significantly less money. IE, say your company was split 75% junior/25% senior devs, and paid junior devs $75k and senior devs $300k. If the union put pressure on the employer to raise the minimum salary to $100k, then they believe that money will come out of the senior devs salaries (reducing it to ~$225k).
I can say in my experience, the first point is at least somewhat true right now (I had no issues moving to a more senior and better paid job after my last company sold out). I personally think the sentiment of point #2 is interesting; I generally don't view this as "protecting" those who should be fired, and more view it as a public defender ensuring everyone receives legal representation, even if they are clearly guilty.
I'd also just note that even I'm not blanket pro-union; Police unions are a prime example of what happens when unions consolidate too much power because they went decades without any pushback. I'd consider that an extreme outlier though.
Public unions seem to be a special case and, while I generally support unions, I can understand the perspective that public unions bring about specific problems.
E.g., a strong bargaining chip for a union is the right to strike. The idea that a public service can strike creates problems. As another example, I witnessed changes in competition and economics force auto unions to compromise for the business to remain solvent; in the public sphere there is not the same competitive pressure.
Another reason police unions are entirely different, even from other public sector unions, is that the police are used to break strikes. They're structurally antagonistic to every other part of the labour movement.
This is right, but the national guard are often used as well. I alluded to these points in a comment below before noticing that you posted this first.
I would caveat it to say they are used to break illegal strikes, which I think is an important distinction. Their job is to uphold the law, regardless of the side that labor is aligned.
The main problem with the police union (in the US) is that they have been able to repeatedly stop officers who have done horrible things from being fired or even truly punished (paid leave is not punishment).
People often say "there should be a register of police offers nationwide that records officers who were terminated for cause, resigned in lieu of termination, etc."
And there is.
But in the very vast majority of police departments, the CBA with the police union prohibits the use of this register for hiring decisions.
>CBA with the police union prohibits the use of this register
Have they explicitly state why? It seems strange to the uninitiated that more information about the performance of the same job would be considered irrelevant.
I think the union's position is that the register doesn't "discriminate" against officers who were terminated in spite of the union's "disagreement" that it was justified, and those who the union represented but recognized that the termination was valid.
This is the same argument about unions protecting bad employees or low performers. It seems to be an underlying problem of organizational power and not a distinction between public/private unions.
The issues I was pointing out are somewhat different. For example, there are unique problems if a police force tries to strike. In the private sector, there is the opportunity for other organizations to fill that void due to competition within the market. There is no such mechanism for most public services, public unions may have disproportionate power.
Can you explain a check that prevents the same abuse from happening in other settings?
I'm always very wary of the arguments that somehow police are a special industry where unions are bad. I don't really see any logical reasoning put forth to support that. Just evidence on how things have gone. :(
Public services are a special industry (not unique to just police) so the dynamics of unions are different.
For one, many public services exist because they are critical to the functioning of society. You can tell this is fundamentally special case because the govt carves out special mechanisms to mitigate the risk (see the the current threat of a rail strike). Secondly, the government doesn't allow competition, so there is not the same solvency problem that a private union has to address. This second point exacerbates the first. A private police force can't just come in and out-compete the existing one to show that they can work better or more efficiently.
This still feels like a bit of a stretch. In that I can almost certainly list reasons why a big industry in a city is critical to the functioning of said city. All the more true for all too many cities around here.
Again, the govt restricts the ability for those unions to do things like strike (existing rail union or previous air traffic controller unions as an example). The govt can also threaten nationalization which adds some leverage against either side holding the other hostage. I would argue that is harder to do when the govt is restricting itself. E.g., if the police go on strike, who is going to enforce it? Possible the national guard but that brings about a host of additional issues. Nationalization is no-factor because it's already nationalized. My main point is that these additional nuances make public unions create problems that don't have the same mitigating factors.
But a lot of those problems that you are painting for "public" unions seems to just be one of scale. If $BigCorp were to go on strike in a city, it would similarly cripple many of them.
Now, I grant that state sanctioned monopolies are special items. But the hand waving away of why "corruption" is somehow more likely to happen in unions for certain workforces, just feels off to me. So, back to my original question, why do you not think the same corruption can happen in other settings?
(Note... I hate that this can be seen as an anti-union argument. I am not really intending it as such. I do view all unions as a mini representational government with their own taxing mechanism in dues. As such, I view all unions as prone to corruption as all governments. )
Yes, many union problems are essentially problems of scale. However, a subset is unique to public sector unions. I feel like I addressed this distinction multiple times. Note, I'm not making a case that public unions are any more corrupt than private ones, just that they play by a different set of rules.
Consider a large corporation goes on strike, like a Boeing or Raytheon or a public utility, that is considered "essential" to public safety or national security. If the union isn't at least somewhat reasonable, it will cause the business to risk going under, or the govt to nationalize its property, or them to succumb to competition. It's a form of mutually assured destruction. This is exactly what happened to the automotive unions after the 2008 financial crises. They re-negotiated existing contracts to ensure the viability of the business. Many hourly rates were slashed to less than half of what they were just a year prior.
Contrast that to something like a police union. What is the backstop to prevent union demands from getting unreasonable? Essentially very little. We can't just stop having a police force. There's no competition to go hire the next contract with better terms. If the union knows they can't go under, their demands can get more extreme. Plus, they work with a captured market. A private business has to essentially woo customers to remain viable, public organizations have established clientele that have no other options and limited oversight compared to regulated monopolies in the private sector. It's also already been said multiple times that police are the very mechanism often used to break up strikes, so who prevents an illegal police strike? They are also well equipped so the threat of sanctioned violence by something like the national guard is not a good option. None of these issues are generalizable to private organizations of large scale. There's just less mitigation to keep public unions reasonable because public services are different in their application.
Ah, apologies then. I setup a situation where we were talking past each other.
My main question was meant to be what sort of checks prevent corruption in unions that can't be used in public sector unions. Having seen entire police forces disbanded and such, I don't accept that we have very little we can do to keep their demands from becoming unreasonable. I can accept that it is a very blunt weapon and will be hard to do.
That is, I can appreciate the idea that they, almost by default, start on the heavy end of the problems that come with scale. I'm not clear on why that makes their unions a bad idea. I am clear on why that makes their failing a bad idea.
What worries me, is that I am not sure I agree that corporations folding is honestly that much easier for most places to take. The odd partisan relationship so many places build with the corporations that make up their job market strikes me as a different kind of danger.
I do think corruption is inherent in most human endeavors to some degree and easier to continue in organizations of scale. So from that standpoint, I don't think there's any difference between corruption in private or public unions. There may be some argument that since public unions have greater leverage, they can tolerate more corruption. That seems like a reasonable hypothesis to me, but I don't know if there's research to support it.
The disbanding of police departments is a thing, but I think you'll find it's mainly relegated to smaller communities where they can rely on alternate policing (county and state) until they restructure their local police force. Of communities with appreciable size, where those other departments can't absorb the additional policing, it hasn't really been tried. (Minneapolis considered the idea, but it was ultimately rejected in a popular vote).
I do agree that the govt/corporate entanglement is a risk that can prevent corporations from folding, but I think that's a different issue. Going back to the automotive example, the federal govt prevented General Motors from folding but it also came with changes to the union contract driven by bankruptcy negotiations. So govt bailouts don't preclude unions from compromising.
There are a lot of people here who see themselves as temporarily disenfranchised members of the ownership class, and so unions are a negative thing for them because some day they'll hit it big and be rewarded for their steadfast adherence to greed.
There are at least a few of us that view unions as just a smaller extra government entity, and would prefer we rather had stronger governments. To wit, I don't want folks dependent on their job. Period. And unions often do give workers better conditions, but only so long as they are workers.
That said, I typically fall on the pro-union side of most debates. Often is a better alternative than where we are.
It would be great if benefits unions are known for fighting for like health care was guaranteed by the government, but there's some things that a union closer to the workers, which is focused on one thing, can better fight for than the government, like standards for safety beyond OSHA, standards for scheduling, training, discipline, etc. If I understand what you're saying right.
If you think unions are a smaller extra government entity, how do you view Apple in that same lens? Likely, the unions have the least power in this triangle (besides individual employees not covered by a union), and Apple has more power than the government in some, but not all, respects.
I'm not clear what you mean "safety beyond OSHA." Training and such can feel better tailored to the company, I suppose?
I'm not sure what your point is on companies regarding smaller extra governments. I do think corporate power needs checks. My view is that that is best done by governments. I'm also game for training and other benefits, but I don't like them being tied to employment. Especially not a particular employment. Health care is a good example of how that goes wrong.
Unions are odd because they are setup as representative governments. Complete with elections and essentially taxation of the represented individuals in the form of dues. Note that I am explicitly not arguing against the dues, necessarily. I would instead argue that those should go to make the entire community stronger in the form of general taxes.
And again, with the current setup, I would likely fall fully on the "pro-union" side for most debates.
>2) Many people believe that unions spend too much time protecting "low-performers," and that a union enacting barriers to protect employees from quick firing for performance will hurt the overall team/company.
This is not a "some people think" issue. This is a reality of running an organization like a union.
Literally every low barrier to entry organization from unions to political parties to organized religion to organized crime has to invest a significant amount of resources in giving a good chunk of its "dolts" a better deal than they could get anywhere else (even sometimes going to an extent that is not sustainable in order to advertise to other members how far the organization can/will go for you) because that ensures that those people will 100% go to bat for the organization. It is a necessary part of operations at scale.
This is especially true of teacher's unions, who have been openly hostile towards any meaningful way of measuring teacher performance, and have made it astronomically expensive to fire any teacher no matter how bad or incompetent. The world would be a much better place if teacher's unions didn't exist.
How do you measure teacher performance? Have you looked at the actual proposals? They're atrocious, as if education needed to be any more of a rat race of chasing idiotic """performance""" metrics.
The short answer is you measure student progress over time via standardized testing. Someone was able to obtain anonymized per-teacher data via FOIA request and verify that some teachers perform consistently and significantly better than others in terms of helping their students progress, and that this performance was stable across time and even when teachers moved to different schools. At one point, schools were required to provide this data until the law was successfully repealed at the behest of teacher's unions.
Teacher's unions pay mainly based on seniority, but this same data showed that, after about 5 years, teacher performance didn't really improve much. The unions also pay more for higher degrees, but there was no association found between higher degrees and teacher performance.
The book also discusses how different types of testing have been shown to be strong predictors of both future academic and professional success. You should not be so dismissive of objective numeric testing, whose results can be tracked and compared over time. No metric is perfect, but just about any metric beats that of the unions, who, in one area, had 99.8% of their teachers rated as "proficient". The union's metric is useless, and that is a feature for them, not a bug.
If the grades given by unionized teachers is a better prediction of future academic and professional success than standardized tests, would you switch your support to unionized teachers over testing?
See, the thing is, high school GPA is a better predictor for academic success than standardized testing. Here are four quotes from the many relevant papers found through Google Scholar:
> Research has consistently shown that high school grade-point average (HSGPA) is the best single predictor of academic outcomes in the first year of postsecondary education (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009). Given that HSGPA is not a standardized measure of academic achievement—and is not therefore perfectly comparable across students or high schools—it likely incorporates information about college readiness beyond academic knowledge and skills.
> Results indicated high school GPA to be a significant predictor of persistence to degree attainment while the ACT Composite score was not a significant predictor. Implications from this study suggest that admissions officers may want to emphasize a student's high school GPA in determining if the student will complete a bachelor's degree program.
> High school GPAs (HSGPAs) are often perceived to represent inconsistent levels of readiness for college across high schools, whereas test scores (e.g., ACT scores) are seen as comparable. This study tests those assumptions, examining variation across high schools of both HSGPAs and ACT scores as measures of academic readiness for college. We found students with the same HSGPA or the same ACT score graduate at very different rates based on which high school they attended. Yet, the relationship of HSGPAs with college graduation is strong and consistent and larger than school effects. In contrast, the relationship of ACT scores with college graduation is weak and smaller than high school effects, and the slope of the relationship varies by high schoolYou write "objective numeric testing", but tell me, what is the objective reason those tests tend to focus on math and short-form English comprehension? Why do they omit art appreciation, musical skills, physical education, essay writing, and other topics that students learn at school?
> Both SAT or ACT scores and high school GPA are associated with the likelihood that students at four-year colleges earn a bachelor’s degree. But when considered together, the predictive power of high school GPA is much stronger. Figure 2 shows that, among students with similar SAT or ACT scores, those with higher high school GPAs are much more likely to graduate. But among students with similar high school GPAs, no strong relationship exists between SAT or ACT scores and graduation rates (except that those who score below 800 are noticeably less likely to complete college).
> This makes sense given that earning good grades requires consistent behaviors over time—showing up to class and participating, turning in assignments, taking quizzes, etc.—whereas students could in theory do well on a test even if they do not have the motivation and perseverance needed to achieve good grades. It seems likely that the kinds of habits high school grades capture are more relevant for success in college than a score from a single test.
> ... And the relatively weak predictive power of SAT or ACT scores vanishes entirely once the student’s high school is taken into account, suggesting that the test scores serve partly as a proxy for high school quality.
Sure, you can claim I'm cherry-picking. But the same holds for the book you pointed to. And given just how many papers there are which argue that GPA is more predictive than standardized scores, it's certainly nowhere near as clear-cut as you appear to believe.
Does this start to make you reconsider your opposition to unionized teachers now? If not, why not?
You're conflating things together and missing the plot. I was comparing the teacher evaluations given by teacher unions to the evaluations of teachers based on student improvement over time on standardized tests. You, on the other hand, changed the subject slightly, which is fine, but then you use the phrase "grades given by unionized teachers", which makes no sense. All the studies you cited talk GPAs in general. Whether the teachers doing the grading are unionized or not is not mentioned or relevant. If you're going to have a discussion, you should take care to use more careful language. It looks like you're trying to be deceiving in order to prop up teacher's unions.
I clicked on your first study and it doesn't even do any analysis on GPA as a predictor of future success relative to other standardized tests. In fact, it assumes this as true and then tries to explain why. It also looks like a low-quality paper published at conference without peer review.
I clicked on your second link. It's not peer reviewed. It only examines data from one university. It has a very small sample size. It has zero citations. It reaches conclusions that are contrary to existing literature. It does not look like it should be taken seriously.
I decided at this point to stop wasting my time. If your first two citations are so weak, I don't have much confidence in the others.
> I was comparing the teacher evaluations given by teacher unions to the evaluations of teachers based on student improvement over time on standardized tests.
Wait. You were comparing the evaluations of teachers based on how teacher unions ranked them, compared to the evaluation of teachers based on the standardized test scores for their students?
How is that at all useful?
Why are teacher unions ranking teachers? How does that affect anything? How are standardized tests - which aren't designed as a measure of teacher effectiveness - at all relevant, and not full of noise?
We know methods like VAM (Value-Added Models) are extremely easy to misuse - so easy the American Statistical Association points how how it's difficult to apply them to ranking teacher effectiveness (see https://www.amstat.org/asa/files/pdfs/POL-ASAVAM-Statement.p... ). Why should I believe this book you cite - which seems to be written by a journalist and not a statistician - does a good job of it?
> then you use the phrase "grades given by unionized teachers", which makes no sense.
That's because I didn't understand what your argument was. The usual argument is "teachers unions mean teachers are bad at their jobs so we can't trust their judgement and GPA. Instead, we need to look to standardized tests." That's the argument I thought you were making.
> it doesn't even do any analysis on GPA as a predictor of future success relative to other standardized tests
If you want to argue that the summary of the citation I gave is a poor interpretation of the research, then go ahead. But then I can say that your summary of the book you read is also wrong.
A book which I also cannot read.
And which does not appear to be peer reviewed.
> It's not peer reviewed. It only examines data from one university.
Thing is, the second link also gives citations to other research.
] If standardized testing is not as reliable a measure of student success, as proposed by the
researchers previously cited ... Hodara and Lewis (2017) concluded that HSGPA was a better predictor of college performance than standardized exam scores, especially for students who enter college within a year of completing high school.
These are not meant to be read in a vacuum, but as an indication that the certainty you state is far from established.
It seems like you're not at all understanding what I've been saying. The measure of teacher performance was based on student improvement over time on standardized tests. It is incredibly valuable to measure a teacher's capability in actually helping students learn and improve. After all, isn't that the sole purpose of teaching?
> That's because I didn't understand what your argument was. The usual argument is "teachers unions mean teachers are bad at their jobs so we can't trust their judgement and GPA. Instead, we need to look to standardized tests." That's the argument I thought you were making.
Yes, and we've also gone pretty far off-topic from what I was originally talking about at this point.
> No, it doesn't. It does give the citation:
Then why not lead with that citation and not the very weak conference paper that you chose to lead with?
"In an extended version of their essay, Kuncel and Sackett acknowledge that GPA is the best predictor of student success, but they add: “Even better prediction is obtained by the combination of test scores and high school grade point average.” “Human behavior is notoriously difficult to forecast,” they write, “it would be strange for a single predictor to be the only one that matters. So it is also valuable to consider, whenever possible, how predictors combine in foretelling student success.”
"Although the test-optional movement has received ample attention, its claims have rarely been subjected to empirical scrutiny. This volume provides a much-needed evaluation of the use and value of standardized admissions tests in an era of widespread grade inflation. It will be of great value to those seeking to strike the proper balance between uniformity and fairness in higher education."
One person is quoted as pointing out that an advantage using the SAT is that it can help combat grade inflation because it looks bad to have a really high GPA but really low SAT score. It's also been shown over time that the average GPA keeps going up while SAT scores are flat or declining. Grade inflation is a major problem, and the use of standardized test does help with it.
> The measure of teacher performance was based on student improvement over time on standardized tests.
Except 1) those tests weren't designed for that purpose, and 2) they are a worse measure of student preparedness than GPAs, and 3) they only test those topics which are easy to test in a standardized setting.
And as I pointed out, the statistic methods used to find these patterns, like VAM, are intrinsically difficult, and easy to misinterpret.
> Then why not lead with that citation and not the very weak conference paper that you chose to lead with?
Because it was more informative than the citation you presented, which was a non-peer-reviewed book that I couldn't easily read by a journalist whose results as you presented are contrary to my (limited) understanding of the topic.
> I'd probably start with this book
Since you think peer review is important, why do you point to non-peer-reviewed sources?
Just looking at the authors shows that I expect them to have a pro-standardized testing viewpoint. All three of them work/have worked for a standardized testing company.
Sean P. "Jack" Buckley is an Institute Fellow and works with AIR on several projects in the areas of applied statistics, social sciences, and education policy. He is also President and Chief Scientist for Imbellus, a California-based assessment company ... he helped lead the redesign of the SAT at the College Board
Lynn Letukas is an associate research scientist at the College Board
Ben Wildavsky is/was a senior fellow and executive director of the College Board Policy Center.
> Except 1) those tests weren't designed for that purpose
I don't know if that's true. And even if it were, why would they need to be designed for that purpose to be successfully and correctly used for that purpose? In fact, at one time the federal government required this data to be provided by schools. However, the teacher's unions lobbied hard, and the 2015 "Every Student Succeeds Act" barred the government from requiring this data: https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/essa-loosens-reins-on...
"But the teachers’ unions see an opening to change policies their members have broadly rejected. They are also far more powerful among state legislatures than in Congress."
"The American Federation of Teachers plans to bring its political clout to bear on the issue, too."
"The main lesson of this study is that value-added models which control for a student’s prior-year test scores provide unbiased forecasts of teachers’ causal impacts on student achievement. Because the dispersion in teacher effects is substantial, this result implies that improvements in teacher quality can raise students’ test scores significantly."
"This paper has shown that the same VA measures are also an informative proxy for teachers’ long-term impacts."
> 2) they are a worse measure of student preparedness than GPAs
GPAs are highly subjective, and more importantly, harder to compare across schools and even across classes. By using standardized scores, for instance, one could track successfully that a teacher's performance remains consistent as he or she moves across schools. Remember, this was about measuring teacher performance, not student performance. That said, if GPAs really were better for teacher evaluation, there is nothing stopping you from measuring student GPA improvement instead of student standardized test score improvement, so I'm not sure what you're really arguing against at this point.
> 3) they only test those topics which are easy to test in a standardized setting.
Many important topics taught in secondary school are well-understood and amenable to standardized testing, including: math, reading comprehension, grammar, some aspects of science and history, etc.
> Since you think peer review is important, why do you point to non-peer-reviewed sources?
These books cite peer-reviewed sources and are a great starting point before digging further.
> Just looking at the authors shows that I expect them to have a pro-standardized testing viewpoint.
Everyone is biased. The NEA spends millions convincing people to drop standardized tests through their advocacy group, FairTest, which serves as one of their front organizations. Much of education academia is biased against standardized testing. Biases are everywhere, and were fairly obviously present in your sources that I checked. At some point, you have to pick a bias you trust more, and I trust the bias that says standardized tests are useful over the bias that says they should be entirely done away with.
> "This paper has shown that the same VA measures are also an informative proxy for teachers’ long-term impacts."
Ah, as I figured, you are promoting VAM. I already mentioned how it's a difficult tool to use. And there are well-known problems with using VAM which aren't mentioned in that paper, which you don't seem to be aware of.
For example, a Texas court threw out EVAAS, as a way to evaluate Houston teachers, because of due process concerns, like how teachers are unable to have their score independently re-evalauted. The judge also points out the "house-of-cards" nature of VAM, and the ongoing academic debate about its applicability. https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ho...
1) Large-scale standardized tests have never been validated for this use.
2) When tested against another VAM system, EVAAS produced wildly different results.
3) EVAAS scores are highly volatile from one year to the next.
4) EVAAS overstates the precision of teachers' estimated impacts on growth
5) Teachers of English Language Learners (ELLs) and “highly mobile” students are substantially less likely to demonstrate added value
6) The number of students each teacher teaches (i.e., class size) also biases teachers’ value-added scores.
7) Ceiling effects are certainly an issue.
8) There are major validity issues with “artificial conflation.” (This is the phenomenon in which administrators feel forced to make their observation scores "align" with VAAS scores.)
9) Teaching-to-the-test is of perpetual concern.
10) HISD is not adequately monitoring the EVAAS system. HISD was not even allowed to see or test the secret VAM sauce.
11) EVAAS lacks transparency.
12) Related, teachers lack opportunities to verify their own scores.
Here's one paper analyzing the specific details of the EVAAS numbers SAS generated for Houston - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341532272_Methodolo... , with citations of its own about various issues with VAM. More below (via Google Scholar 'EVAAS houston effective').
> consistent as he or she moves across schools
Here's another paper: https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/2750/275022797012.pdf . "Almost half (46%) of a sample of HISD teachers who moved to different grade levels reported switching value-added ranks after the move, from “ineffective” to “effective” or vice versa, also across grade levels that were adjacent ".
If it's not consistent when moving grade levels, why do you think it's consistent moving across schools?
Is it because "Dr. William L. Sanders, the developer of the SAS ® EVAAS®, claims that teachers who move from one environment to another, even if radically different, continue to do just as well (LeClaire, 2011)"?
> GPAs are highly subjective, and more importantly, harder to compare across schools and even across classes.
And yet are a better predictor of future academic success than test scores. As I highlighted.
It appears you prefer to use use a worse predictor, one which requires an artificially imposed "high-stakes" testing environment, because it lets you do fancier types of data science that appeal to your sense that numbers are objective.
> strong research exist to show that SGPs are a valid and useful measurement
Remember earlier how you implied these methods were objective?
Odd that the paper you linked to says the other VAM methods didn't factor for a "drift in teacher quality".
Almost as if there's no agreement on what the model should be.
Almost as if the choice of model to use was also "highly subjective."
If they aren't subjective, then different VAM models should make the same predictions for the same population, right?
Points #2 and #3 above should be very rare, right?
And if they are not rare, they should not be used to determine who to fire, right?
> Remember, this was about measuring teacher performance, not student performance.
And VAM has not proved useful at measuring teacher performance, because of the flaws I quoted above.
I believe you approve of the idea of firing teachers with low VAM scores, which Houston and other school districts have done. Yet, quoting now from "All sizzle and no steak: Value-added model doesn’t add value in Houston" at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00317217177341...
] while EVAAS was in use for educational reform purposes in Houston (i.e. to increase student achievement), Houston students saw no improvements of the sort that had been promised in grades 3-8 in reading, grades 4 and 7 in writing, grades 5 and 8 in science, and grade 8 in social studies (Figure 1, blue trend lines). In those subject areas and grades, tests scores declined overall from 2012 to 2015, as compared to other similar students throughout the state (black trend lines).
Almost as if VAM-based firing isn't a useful tool.
> and amenable to standardized testing
Yes, that's exactly my point. You highlighted the areas which are easy to test.
Composition is not easy to test, and it's also important. Being able to write an essay on Populism in the late 1800 US is not easy to test (not impossible - the AP American History tests do this, but it's expensive). But this is also a skill taught in school. My school required students take a practical art course. Yet testing for drafting skills, or wood working, or auto repair, isn't included in the high-stakes testing.
Why does it just happen to be that only those things which are easy/cheap to test are coincidentally the right topics to test?
> Everyone is biased
Film at 11. I don't listen only to Philip Morris scientists to judge if smoking tobacco has health problems.
> I trust the bias that says standardized tests are useful
So far it doesn't seem like you are aware of the evidence that VAM is not an effective method for deciding if a teacher should be fired. That would easily explain your comments.
> If it's not consistent when moving grade levels, why do you think it's consistent moving across schools?
Some models have been shown to be consistent across both grade levels and schools.
> And yet are a better predictor of future academic success than test scores. As I highlighted
And as I highlighted, GPAs are too subjective and in control of the teacher. If GPAs were used for teacher evaluation a teacher could write his or her own pay check via grade inflation. Standardized tests also act as a counterbalance in general to slow down grade inflation.
> Almost as if VAM-based firing isn't a useful too
Neither is trusting the teacher's unions to decide who to fire, because they fire virtually no one and even protect known incompetent teachers. We need a better solution than what we have now, and SGPs/SGMs have been shown to be far more effective than what we have now.
> So far it doesn't seem like you are aware of the evidence that VAM is not an effective method for deciding if a teacher should be fired
There is also plenty of evidence for using student growth measures as part teacher evaluations. You seem happy, however, to ignore the evidence I've given you that goes against your own bias. A little self-awareness might be in order.
I noticed that one of those two methods you linked to is the VAM method used in Houston, EVAAS.
> Some models have been shown to be consistent across both grade levels and schools.
So said the creator of EVAAS. However, the EVAAS method has not been published, the algorithm is proprietary, and the results of the Texas trial showed the limitations of EVAAS.
Your citations in support of your view are either published by people trying to sell you their testing system, or were published during the hype phase of VAM, before there was evidence that they were not able to do things like identify poorly performing teachers for the purposes of firing them.
> If GPAs were used for teacher evaluation a teacher
Like, duh. That's why GPAs aren't used for teacher evaluation.
You can't seriously think that 50 years ago there were no effective ways to evaluate teachers.
> Standardized tests also act as a counterbalance in general to slow down grade inflation.
And yet grades are still more effective at predicting college success than standardized tests.
Huh.
And we've had a full student generation of students required to do high-stakes testing, yet the decades of yammering about grade inflation is still going on, as if the two really coupled at all?
Huh.
And, umm, standardized tests are normed. If students or teachers across the US were getting better, norming would hide that improvement.
We know this because of the Flynn effect. Unnormed IQ scores have improved by about 15 points over the decades. Shouldn't this be reflected in improved overall school grades?
> Neither is trusting the teacher's unions to decide who to fire
We don't trust teacher unions to decide who to fire.
School districts decide.
Unions can slow it down, or provide legal support to stop it. They are their to help the teachers.
It's not like principals and school districts always follow the law and employment contract requirements. And never pressure teachers to give better grades to the football team, or the kid of the head of the school board.
> We need a better solution than what we have now
Non-union charters schools haven't proved any better.
We now have, what, a full generation of students that have gone through high-stakes testing?
When do we decide it's not worthwhile?
In my view, all this noise about testing and teacher evaluation is meant to justify school privatization, so private companies can profit from all that public school money, and rich people can get tax-payer subsidized good private school education while poor people are left with the dregs.
In my view, if you want to improve grades and future success then don't look to high-stakes testing. Look to free breakfasts and lunches for everyone, low limits on class size, more teaching aides, school nurses who can provide basic health care support, and more.
But those are expensive. So instead we punish the teachers which some secretive black box say are under-performing.
> using student growth measures as part teacher evaluations
That statement alone is meaningless. It could mean anything from "huh, your XYZ scores are a bit low, so we'll provide additional training for you" to "your XYZ scores are a bit low, we're going to fire you."
So when you say "as part teacher evaluations", you need to clarify just what you mean.
VAM has been used to fire teachers - which is what its supporters often want - and in violation of their due process rights.
VAM has not been used to provide more funding to lower-scoring schools to help with staffing or facility issues. Yet it could also be used for that.
> I noticed that one of those two methods you linked to is the VAM method used in Houston, EVAAS.
Yes, and the other method mentioned on the same page was student growth percentiles, which is much closer to what I have been advocating. You seem to have a habit of focusing on what you want, regardless of what the person you are talking to is actually saying.
> And yet grades are still more effective at predicting college success than standardized tests.
I'm not sure why you say this like it's a mic drop. The point of saying "standardized tests help anchor GPAs" is to say that, without standardized tests, GPAs would become a worse predictor of future success. So, even if GPA alone is better, standardized tests help it be that way. More importantly, GPA+standardized test is better than either alone. You keep conveniently forgetting that last part when you advocate for the removal of standardized testing.
> We don't trust teacher unions to decide who to fire. School districts decide.
Now you're just getting into semantic games. Unions help define the regulations that make it impossible to fire teachers, and they also use their money, influence, and legal might to fight against many firings.
"They argue that existing public schools are not beyond saving. They suggest that reformers “commit to taking the tenure process seriously, rather than rubber stamping every eligible teacher for approval” and explain how this has been done in some New York City schools, where teachers immediately granted tenure fell from 94 percent to 56 percent. Such reforms are welcome, but they usually run into roadblocks from unions and stubborn regulators."
> Non-union charters schools haven't proved any better.
Some charter schools in New York produced 10x or more as many students proficient in math and reading relative to nearby public schools, including public schools that shared the same building. There was no socioeconomic or racial diference between the schools.
> We now have, what, a full generation of students that have gone through high-stakes testing? When do we decide it's not worthwhile?
When do we finally settle on the fact that it is in fact worthwhile?
> In my view, all this noise about testing and teacher evaluation is meant to justify school privatization, so private companies can profit from all that public school money, and rich people can get tax-payer subsidized good private school education while poor people are left with the dregs.
Your world view is corrupt. You think private organizations are greedy and evil and yet somehow public organizations are magically saintly. You think apparently standardized scores in the U.S. are getting worse over time, despite there being more welfare programs than ever before, because kids aren't getting enough food benefits. Even the left-leaning Brookings institute can do better than that: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2016/12...
"Over the last 30 to 40 years, the United States has invested heavily in education, with little to show for it. The result is a society with more inequality and less economic growth; a high price."
One of my parents grew up in the 1950s before welfare reform. He got C's and D's in school because he spent most of his time working jobs to feed himself. Very few children are starving today at the level my parent did. Most of the "poor" today are richer than the middle class of 100 years ago. The reasons for lack of achievement go far beyond alleged malnutrition and far beyond an alleged lack of funding in schools.
I suggest you read "Life at the Bottom" by Dalrymple to get a better understanding of what many students are up against. The greatest predictor of academic success is whether or not the child is growing up in a stable 2-parent home. But that doesn't fit the progressive leftist narrative that seeks to destroy both religion and family.
Some claim that socioeconomic status is the greatest predictor. But, guess what? 2-parent households do better socioeconomically. And, studies from countries with universal daycare like Sweden are showing that generations of students suffer from psychological problems due to not having a mother in the home: http://www.imfcanada.org/archive/1107/swedish-daycare-intern...
As one person I admire has said, errant do-gooderism is akin to straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic. If you are a bad doctor, you see symptoms, diagnose the wrong illness, prescribe the wrong medication, and make your patients sicker. This allegory aptly describes the modern progressive movement, as well as most modern education fads.
The best thing we can do to improve education in the U.S. is school vouchers. This will allow more diversity in school makeup, better support religious schooling, which religion correlates with improved education, increase competition, which almost always benefits society, and improve the lot of socioeconomically disadvantaged parents who are currently stuck with poorly-performing public schools.
> That statement alone is meaningless.
Meaningless and high-level aren't the same thing. A statement doesn't need to go into specifics to provide meaning.
I can be kind of mixed from a union standpoint. It really just depends on the goals and outcomes of a particular union. Airline unions tend to be particularly bad when it comes to controlling internal dissent against the union, and regulating peoples pay and flying hours (especially around furloughs). Things may have changed since I heard this criticism, but I'd hate to have this happen in software.
That said, we could use standardization in pay, better and more standardized promotions, and someone to tear down the existing LeetCode interview process. I have not seen any software unions that aim to do this though.
I see unions as mostly other entrenched institutions that add their own layers of bureaucracy and politics. They aren't any better or worse than corporations and governments, but simply by having a place at the table, things move slower and with less efficiency than they could. Of course, if the alternative is abuse of power by corporations and/or governments, they are a necessary evil.
The government artificially grants corporations power by virtue of creating the concept of a corporation and limited liability, so to me it seems only fair for them to grant a collective of workers power as well.
> Basically, I'm opposed to unions as they exist in the US because of the government being involved and "artificially" granting them power.
Artificial is an unfair characterization of history. The President didn't just descend from on high and grant unions powers out of magnanimity. At one point the unions were extremely powerful to the point that they were able to codify in law the rights they had attained.
Rights they had to fight for, in many cases _die_ for. Corporations and the government were not above using police, private firms to do violence, even fatal violence, to employees who were not willing to bend over backwards (unsafe, unhealthy, inhumane working conditions) for their employer.
To add to the other good comments, unions existed and were effective before there were any laws specifically enabling or regulating them.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_v._Hunt . There was no law which "artificially" granted the Boston Journeymen Bootmaker's Society power. The "five or six good workmen" who would have walked out should Horne continue to be employed, were exercising their right of free association.
And, fundamentally, that's where union power comes from - the right to collectively decide to quit.
Union laws give unions specific powers, it's true. But they also restrict union power. If you oppose the artificial granting of power, then you should also oppose the artificial restriction of power, and allow "jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns" [1] -- once-legal practices banned by Taft-Hartley and all fundamentally based in the power to collectively decide to stop working.
most american laws around unions are actually prohibitory and limiting. if legal recognition and regulation for organized labor were eliminated, i don't think it would result in less power wielded by unions.
1) A large portion of users on this site are entrepreneurs or in higher-level tech. For the former, unions can be seen as getting in the way of the startup lifecycle; for the latter, many believe that the value they provide makes them untouchable, or believe that the supply of high-level tech workers will never meet demand so they will simply be able to move to another company if needed without much friction.
2) Many people believe that unions spend too much time protecting "low-performers," and that a union enacting barriers to protect employees from quick firing for performance will hurt the overall team/company.
3) Many people also believe that both paying union dues, and a union negotiating for the "average" worker will lead to them making significantly less money. IE, say your company was split 75% junior/25% senior devs, and paid junior devs $75k and senior devs $300k. If the union put pressure on the employer to raise the minimum salary to $100k, then they believe that money will come out of the senior devs salaries (reducing it to ~$225k).
I can say in my experience, the first point is at least somewhat true right now (I had no issues moving to a more senior and better paid job after my last company sold out). I personally think the sentiment of point #2 is interesting; I generally don't view this as "protecting" those who should be fired, and more view it as a public defender ensuring everyone receives legal representation, even if they are clearly guilty.
I'd also just note that even I'm not blanket pro-union; Police unions are a prime example of what happens when unions consolidate too much power because they went decades without any pushback. I'd consider that an extreme outlier though.