Teacher’s pay and educational outcomes

Below is a guest post by Justin

In the past weeks education has become a political platform for our pollies. Kevin Rudd has proclaimed possibilities of a ‘revolution’ in educational reform should his ascendancy land him in the Prime Ministership at the end of the year. But this is nothing new. Over recent years, and particularly the past 12 months there has been heavy focus on educational reform and specifically, the creation of a national syllabus. It’s probably hard to argue against this. Indeed, logic almost demands that Australian students should be taught the same things to the same level across the nation. And in some subjects, such as chemistry and physics, states share around a 90% overlap in course content; a commendable consistency. Yet subjects such as history, English and other humanity-oriented subjects often share less than 40% in common. Clearly Julie Bishop is intent on remedying this. However, she is meeting stiff opposition from the states. 

I was particularly interested to read her comments in the Australian on Friday Feb. 2, 2007. The first comment that struck me was this:

“The quality of our teachers is critical. After parents, teachers are the most important determinant in educational outcomes for school students. Our teachers are a precious national resource. They should be respected and rewarded for their significant role in educating our children.”

To that comment I add my applause. However, Ms Bishop then went on to suggest,

 “But like other professionals they deserve career incentives. That is why I am developing options for greater consistency in professional development for teachers as well as calling on the states to provide higher salaries, with an element of performance or merit-based pay and greater workplace flexibility. For example, we should be rewarding teachers who work in our most disadvantaged schools and achieve outstanding results, or specialist teachers such as in science or maths.”

And how, Ms Bishop, do we measure the performance of teachers in order to best incentivise them? One would imagine it would be based on the outcomes of the students. And student outcomes are measured in one way only. Grades.  You see, grades are a tangible outcome, whereas learning is not. We can’t measure learning except insofar as test performance indicates it has occurred. 

This slippery slope leads to some severe possibilities. Firstly, if my pay were based on a student performing well from a grade point of view, you can be assured I would set a test I know that they can complete. They’ll all get A’s, I’ll get my pay, and the students’ education is dumbed down further. Their actual learning is undermined. Or try this. We introduce standardised testing so all students must be able to perform to an agreed upon standard. Indeed, purely because they’re standardised, these tests are widely regarded as objective instruments for assessing children’s academic performance.  But there is considerable reason to believe that standardised tests are a poor measure of intellectual proficiency. They are, however, excellent indicators of two things. The first is affluence. Up to 90 percent of the difference in scores among schools, communities, or even states can be accounted for, statistically, without knowing anything about what happened in the classroom. All you need are some fact about the average income and education levels of the students’ parents. The second phenomenon that standardised tests measure is how skillful a group of students is at taking such tests – and, increasingly, how much class time has been given over to preparing them to do just that. 

There is specific research that finds a statistically significant positive relationship between a shallow or superficial approach to learning, on the one hand, and high scores on various standardised tests, on the other. I could go on and provide more reasons for my opposition to standardised testing, but ultimately that’s not the point of this post.  

I simply posit the following:  Firstly, a national curriculum is very much in the interests of our children, particularly with the claims that education is the driver of our nations’ economic prosperity.  

Secondly, providing merit pay, or incentive systems, to teachers (or for that matter any profession) is simply the worst way to obtain quality results. It’s a great quick-fix, but for genuine positive outcomes and intrinsically motivated staff, it is a powerful disincentive to do things the right way. Your thoughts?

Joe Hockey on WorkChoices

Joe Hockey* has an opinion piece in today’s Australian, which I surprisingly enjoyed. He started off predictably enough, with rubbish like this: ”10 months of bumper employment growth – 200,000 jobs have been created and 80 per cent of those are full-time positions – and higher real wages exposed those charges [claims that wages and employment would fall] as little more than base scare-mongering.”

The problem here is that no-one predicted mass sackings; they just warned that the low-skilled would be more vulnerable to being sacked. So this is a bit of a straw man argument. And the fact that employment has risen strongly since WorkChoices does not mean much either. And Hockey gets a bit cute when he claims that 80% of the created jobs have been full-time. Technically he’s correct, but that’s because the ABS define full-time jobs as those that require full-time hours. Thus, casuals are in that category too. It’s quite different from the definition of full-time jobs in the traditional sense, which include annual leave, sick leave etc.

But then Hockey gets a lot better. He correctly highlights that average working hours plateaued in the late 1990s and have since fallen, which is a positive development. Of course, over the same period there has been a rise in double-income families, so families are probably no less busy.

What I found most interesting was a number of anecdotes relating to workers who have benefited from AWAs.** It seems that in a number of industries, awards were overly restrictive, and employees have welcomed the opportunity to have more flexible work arrangements. I know a lot people who read this are opposed to WorkChoices (I probably am too, on balance), but I’d highly recommend you at least read Hockey’s anecdotes before criticising the legislation.

*Joe Hockey is the Minister for Human Services and the Minister Assisting the Minister for Workplace Relations. He appears on Sunrise with Kevin Rudd every Friday, and is a leading moderate in the NSW Liberal Party. I’m not a fan – I can’t stand socially liberal Liberals.

** AWAs (Australian Workplace Agreements) are agreements between an individual employer and employee, and allow a lot more flexibility and individual adaptation than awards and enterprise agreements. Obviously this can be a negative thing where the employer has more bargaining power than the employee.

Welfare Dependency Amongst Indigenous People

Michael Duffy has an interesting column in yesterday’s SMH on the welfare trap faced by many indigenous Australians. Duffy quotes a social worker who thinks that the typical welfare approach to Aboriginal people is ”essentially about rescuing people from competition and [from] taking responsibility for their own action”. The social worker argues that the effect of this is to “patronise and infantilise Aboriginal people”.

In this same area, Noal Pearson, a prominent activist and director of the Cape York Institute, has recently been given a weekly column in The Weekend Australian. He’s well worth reading.

Happiness and economics

Brucifer draws my attention to an article in The Economist* on happiness and economics. In typical Economist style, it’s easy to read and very enlightening. Some excerpts:

In general, the economic arbiters of taste recommend “experiences” over commodities, pastimes over knick-knacks, doing over having. Mr Frank thinks people should work shorter hours and commute shorter distances, even if that means living in smaller houses with cheaper grills.

Happiness, as measured by national surveys, has hardly changed over 50 years. The rich are generally happier than the poor, but rich countries do not get happier as they get richer. The Japanese are much better off now than in 1950, but the proportion who say they are “very happy” has not budged….

Lord Layard and Mr Frank both blame habit and rivalry for this stagnation of morale. People grow accustomed to what they have—however much of it there is. Moreover, having a lot of things is not enough if other people have more. A rising tide lifts all boats, but not all spirits.

For economists, this is radical stuff. They traditionally argue that people best serve themselves and the public by minding their own business. Indeed, this laissez-faire attitude is one reason Carlyle attacked them. Economics, he wrote, “reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone”. He was afraid this radical idea would “dissever and destroy most existing institutions of society”.

But Lord Layard argues that we cannot help minding other people’s business, as well as our own. Doing well is not enough: we also want to do better than our peers. This status anxiety runs deep in our nature, he says.

*To all that don’t have much experience with The Economist, I highly recommend it. Its reporting of world news is simply second-to-none. If we had media of this quality covering Australian issues, our democracy would be a lot healthier. And since it’s published in the UK, you don’t get the US bias of magazines like Time.

The Coming Recession

The title of this post isn’t any kind of forecast – more a reflection that inevitably there will be another recession. Below we have a guest post from Mitt’s Mate, who’s been reading and thinking about the topic. 

I was reading the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) today and noticed this article by Ross Gittins. The introductory paragraph is: “I’ve always hoped the next recession, when it comes, will be a mild one. But Ian Macfarlane, recently retired Reserve Bank governor, thinks it will be deeper than last time because households are more financially exposed than ever before.” 

It got me thinking about the level of debt and financial preparedness by members in Australia. Taking Ian Macfarlane’s comments a step further (assuming he is correct) and I wonder how members, in fact all people, would react to a prolonged period of financial market weakness. 

Australia hasn’t experienced a significant downturn in our economy or financial markets for many, many years. Sure, we have had the small speed hump but nothing like you might find in history. Out current level of debt seems fine when property prices are holding, but take away the supportive environment of property prices, and even a strong job market, and it may be another story. 

As I write this my mind goes back to President Hinckley’s speech of some years ago where he likened the dream of Pharaoh interpreted by Joseph (think fatted cows) to our day and asked if we were prepared financially. I think it will require more than 12 months of wheat and long life milk!

[See the bottom right hand graph on page 3 of this RBA chartpack for an illustration of the debt issue Mitt's Mate is referring to - echo] 

Prisoners

Data released today by the ABS indicate that Australia has around 25,000 prisoners. In contrast, the US has over 2 million prisoners, more than 80 times as many. Sure, the US has a larger population than Australia, but it’s not 80 times larger. It’s more like 14 times larger. That suggests that the average American is around 6 times more likely to be in prison than the average Australian.

Some other interesting points:

- 24% of prisoners are indigenous;

- 7% are women; and

- 57% had been in prison previously.

Jobs vs Environment

Andrew Bolt has an interesting column today, where he talks about Greenpeace lobbying multinationals to shut down mines in poor countries. What you find is that the locals actually want these projects to continue, even though it hurts the natural environment, because they want money. But Greenpeace doesn’t listen – apparently they know better than anyone what the locals need.

Now I’m not anti-environment, but I do think we need to recognise the costs of preserving the environment. Certainly in Australia we have enough wealth that we can do a little more, but I’ve got a problem when environmentalists go to poor countries and decide that the locals need a pristine environment more than they need running water, a better diet, and medicine. That’s for the locals to decide.

Cloning approved

Disappointingly Disgracefully, the bill to legalise the cloning (and, subsequently, destruction) of human embryos was passed by the House of Representatives last night. An amendment to stop scientists taking cells from aborted female fetuses was also defeated. This means that scientists can create an embryo whose mother is an aborted baby girl, and then destroy that embryo by harvesting it for stem cells. And all because there’s some chance that it will improve our knowledge of various diseases.

On occasion, newspaper articles cite polls showing a majority of Australians are in favour of this research. The problem is that these pollsters were very selective with the information they gave. See this letter, sent to all MPs, for further information.

Like many of the MPs quoted in this article, I view this as a very dark day for Australia. In contrast, Natasha Stott Despoja is over the moon:

“I’m very proud of the role the Democrats played in this debate. It’s a good piece of policy and it deserved to pass.”

The next election can’t come quick enough for me – whether the Coalition or Labor win, we’re going to see the complete demise of the godless Democrats. Hallelujah.

Actual economic data

Most people rely on newspapers (whether print or on the internet) or TV news for their information. This is a massive problem when it comes to economics-related news, as most articles are just pure rubbish. I’d disregard pretty much any economics-related news item that doesn’t appear in The Australian Financial Review, The Australian, or The Sydney Morning Herald. And even then, front page articles on these publications are often misleading. You often see stuff like ‘building approvals down 56%!’. Well, what on earth does that mean? What period are we talking about? Is such a drop historically unusual? Is the series particularly volatile? You can only really get a sense of this if you look at a graph of the relevant series, and only the AFR regularly includes such graphs.

To this end, I can highly recommend the Reserve Bank of Australia’s website, where anyone can have a look at the actual data and decide for themselves. As well as reams of data in excel spreadsheets, every month a Chart Pack is compiled with a wide range of interesting graphs. I reckon anyone reading this blog is at least as economically competent as many of the journalists who report on data releases, so you may as well go to the source yourself if you’re interested.

Social, Economic and Political Liberalism and the Gospel (Guest Post)

Below is a guest post by Phil Anthropis, our most prolific commenter.

As I read about the teachings of Milton Friedman in his Herald obituary today, I noted with interest his encouragement of reduction of government paternalism including abolition of rules about taking drugs, drivers’ licenses and other social laws and standards. 

I know someone involved in a political movement called the Liberal Democratic Party (www.ldp.com.au).  “The LDP is an Australian libertarian style party promoting individual liberty, free markets and small government.” 

Check out their web site – some of it makes sense.  But then, with that liberalism, they encourage legislators butting out of people’s relationships – they call it the ‘consenting adults’ principle. 

This is interesting to me, because reduction of government interference in business and personal life, (allegedly being anathema to modern progressive governments everywhere) has also been a very important tenet of many successful LDS people that I have known.  

Long ago I recognized a contradiction between the economic liberalism and self-regulation that seems to be the modern way, and the propensity of LDS to favour conservative social and moral laws. 

It makes sense that many multinational-business people take a libertarian approach.  Openness is the modern way and progress can’t really be stopped – only slowed down. 

Now, in the ‘War in Heaven’, which side would have been considered the liberal, and which side the protectionists?  The answer seems clear to me – Satan’s side wanted to force everyone to do right while God’s side – us – were intelligent and free risk takers, willing to chance falling down in the hope of achieving glory. 

Do you see a relationship here with the self-regulation of liberalism as against the unproductive evil of state control? 

Now, let’s take this a step further.  I have said many times that the church would look a lot different today had we truly been granted religious, political and economic freedom in the early days. 

However, regulation against LDS forms of marriage, LDS political interference and against LDS church-controlled business’s vertical integration all amounted to state interference. 

LDS plural marriage became fodder for US legislators to enforce the Victorian ideal of marriage onto society – in an era where four fifths of the world tolerated other marriage forms. 

Therefore, the state took on the big government paternalistic role, while the LDS church would have enjoyed better freedom under a more libertarian regime. 

But remember the pilgrims?  How they fled Mother England to find a place where they could freely believe?  The very establishment of the church was tolerated under a context of religious freedom, enshrined in the
US constitution. 

So in this context I find it interesting that LDS are generally against the legalisation of gay marriage.  I can almost hear your dismay at drawing a link between restrictions on celestial plural marriage and gay unions.  I only do it to point out that they have a common enemy – repressive Victorian-based marriage law.  Believe me, the guys who are banning gay marriage would do Joseph Smith no favors either. 

When studying sociology, we were shown how property and inheritance were a driving force behind formation of Victorian marriage laws.  Today, property, tax and inheritance make Victorian-era marriage a preferable option from a regulatory point of view. 

So what do you think?  Has the devil got it right in this instance?  Should we outlaw gay marriage?  Or should we encourage self-regulation, freedom of choice and facing your own consequences? 

If you can show me rationalizations for liberalism of trade, I can use the same philosophical points for showing you liberalization of marriage styles.  After all, the current Victorian-era marriage structure, as we have learned, is by no means ‘the right and only one’.  Over-regulation is holding back progress which enforces contradictions and abuses, and freedom of choice with facing your own consequences is a correct principle under the gospel. 

It may astound you to hear me say that I could favour economic liberalism, if any government truly has the guts to really carry through with real liberalism.  But none will.  All democratic governments have to survive politically, and play the advantage for their constituents.  So my reluctance to subscribe to Friedman’s extremes is merely a survival tactic until the Saviour comes to show us what freedom is all about, when, ‘without compulsory means’, truth and power shall become part of my crown.