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So true. It's easier and more intuitive for most people to help those different from them to become like themselves. Hence raising below-grade-level students toward grade-level, and not supporting above-grade-level students any further beyond.
Educators are also, as is frequently mentioned, not routinely trained in GT, let alone 2e. A subset are specifically trained in disabilities, and most have had some exposure. Current best practice teacher prep programs actually require at least one course in disabilities education. So most educators respond to 2e needs based on their personal experience, which is statistically going to be very limited, or out of their disabilities training, which biases them toward looking at weaknesses.
Individual staff continue to be the most important factor...my parents used to select placements year to year based on where a specific, most accommodating, administrator was.
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From the perspective of socially and educationally optimal outcomes for all students, it's still striking to me that the lists we're producing would benefit *all* students. I have had a bee in my bonnet about this recently, but it would not be unduly costly - and potentially cost-saving - for schools to implement a few broad-brush changes to teacher competencies and curriculum choice that would mitigate risks downside for LDs and 2es, while also offering further reach for gifted students.
Low-hanging fruit like...
Standardizing OG reading instruction for all elementary teachers. The estimates I'm finding vary, but they seem to coalesce around 5-10% of the population with dyslexia.* If we save that 5-10% of the population the discomfort and learning loss of delayed identification and remediation, with the SAME amount of teacher time on reading instruction, that seems like an obvious win out of the gate, and especially equity-based. My DS has a family member who has dyslexia, and I used an OG system with him when he learned early spelling for that exact reason - prophylaxis cost the same as the standard approach out of the gate.
Standardizing, at a minimum, elementary math curriculum, avoiding the verbal diarrhea garble that has come in vogue recently among math-phobic instructors. Singapore Math is evidence-based, has a bunch of different regionally-linked curricula, and the text books are dirt cheap (as in, and I'm going from memory here...$20 or less.) Get the basics right, then delve into individualization off a stable, well-researched method. Ideally, math teachers would be specialists, but I think we could cover 90%+ of learners even by having teachers qualified to teach +/- 2 grades around their placed class.
And instead of obsessively testing students, why not have annual credentialing check-ins for teachers during summer months to ensure they're still effective. I'm not talking a cursory checklist of CPE credits or a box tick for a diploma. I'm thinking fulsome evaluations of teachers on the subject matter AND related pedagogy, anonymized and conducted by independent assessors outside the school district. What would you need per-capita, a half-day? IMO, far better cost-wise than subjecting students to multiple weeks of standardized testing, instead of offering the students a more streamlined pulse check and putting the focus where it belongs: on what teachers are teaching, and how well they do so!
Implementing vigorous daily physical education with specialist phys-ed instructors, ideally for an hour. ADHD accounts for between 8-10% of students, depending on estimates I've seen.** The CDC produces estimates of childhood mental health prevalence, which is on the rise. And 18.5% of US children are obese. What ALL these conditions have in common is that, with limited medical exceptions, the prognosis improves with exercise! This is such a no-brainer it doesn't even require further explanation.
**Sources embedded in the above paragraph. Excuse any wonky duplicate words.
With a stable base in literacy and numeracy, and healthier students who are less "behavioural", we could then start getting fancy and address cross-grade-grouping, models of teacher partnerships in the class (I particularly like DS' class, which has a core teacher and a specialist assistant trained in special education, and specials taught by specialists). I wonder what share of behavioural "presentations" in classes would disappear by eliminating these basic issues.
One of the lessons I believe we *should* be learning in this pandemic is that virtual learning and grouping is a tool that can be used in brick and mortar schools to support student needs. It avoids the awkwardness of being singled out if all students can migrate to their devices and plug into a synchronous lesson at the appropriate level, with a teacher in their home school.
There is a lot of need out there. We need to land the basics and not squander children's lives, or taxpayer money, on programs of dubious value, which often have (unintended) socially regressive implications. Then, with less waste and a better foundation, we can design more intelligent individualization for those who need it.
/off soapbox Thanks to everyone who has contributed to informing these opinions over the years, whether in PMs or threads.
Originally Posted by aeh
Individual staff continue to be the most important factor...my parents used to select placements year to year based on where a specific, most accommodating, administrator was.
I can believe it. I feel like a bit of an itinerant parent/home educator myself and suspect that will be our approach.
Standardizing OG reading instruction for all elementary teachers.
Yes! Likewise why I used OG for spelling instruction with my children, even for ones who were early and very effective readers. The statistics on reading disabilities/dyslexia are somewhat ambiguous, due to the nebulous and varied definitions being used by researchers. 15% is also a number that floats around the literature, but tbh, that's largely because the 16th %ile is -1SD. In any case, your original point remains: we have to use some kind of reading instruction with the majority of early readers, so why not use the one that's effective with the widest range of learners (including those who might otherwise emerge with reading disabilities).
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...elementary math curriculum...Ideally, math teachers would be specialists, but I think we could cover 90%+ of learners even by having teachers qualified to teach +/- 2 grades around their placed class.
I'd be pretty happy if we started with elementary math teachers who didn't fear math...but yes, get the basics of numeracy right, and the rest will follow much more easily. Thinking of the absurd number of students I see who complete single-digit addition by rote, count backward (on their fingers) to do single-digit subtraction, and skip counting/repeated addition to multiply...in high school.
And finally, yes, replacing recess, gym, art, music, and free play with more academics and test prep has already collected a body of evidence regarding its counterproductive effect on academic achievement.
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A key attribute that is NOT associated with successful student outcomes or efficient resource utilization is my perennial whipping boy, teachers' unions.
(It's at this point that any unionized public school teachers should promptly hit the "ignore" button on my profile. I can guarantee: you will vehemently dislike me, unless you are a passionate educator who feels held back by the teamsters around him/her.)
;tldr, unionization is associated with higher district expenditures, particularly on (tenured) teacher salaries, lower high school graduation rates, neutral to lower academic achievement, and lower graduate earnings (particularly among visible minority males) in the long run. While conventional research suggests that, across unionized and non-unionized populations in aggregate, higher teacher salaries produce better quality teachers, the mere presence of unions undoes this effect! Unionization also fosters greater inter-district competition for education resources, and penalizes smaller/less affluent districts.
If you want to get into the nitty gritty, let's start with the usual political arguments we hear from teacher's unions, and discuss them each in turn...
[1] The effect of collective bargaining is to increase resources available to students.
Cowen and Strunk (2015), "generally find that the preponderance of empirical evidence suggests that teacher unionization and union strength are associated with increases in district expenditures and teacher salaries, particularly salaries for experienced teachers."
Moreover, they state that, "The empirical patterns are consistent with a rent-seeking hypothesis." In other words, premium pricing on salaries as an additional wage-based profit, not funds directed to infrastructure or non-salary expenditures.
Hoxby (1996) finds "that teachers' unions increase school inputs but reduce productivity sufficiently to have a negative overall effect on student performance. Union effects are magnified where schools have market power."
Rose and Stonstelie (2010) determine that larger school districts are associated with a greater degree of unionization in California. "Teachers’ salaries rise and the ratio of teachers per pupil falls with increasing district size." Yes, you read that right: unions actually increase class sizes AND cost more. Great bargain, that.
[2] Higher union salaries attract more qualified teachers.
Figlio (2002) studies the association between teacher salary, unionization, graduation from selective colleges, and university studies in the subject taught. Higher pay among non-unionized schools does carry this relationship, but this relationship does not hold for unionized schools.
West and Mykerezi (2011) reinforces the idea that teacher collective bargaining is profit-seeking and "unions tend to encourage teacher bonuses that are based on additional qualifications or duties, but discourage bonuses that directly reward improved student test scores."
The research seems to suggest that unionized environments do not attract objectively more qualified candidates, but do drive post-university credentialing as a key factor in compensation policy.
Note that there is ample evidence that higher teacher pay attracts higher quality teacher candidates, reduces teacher mobility, and contributes to better student outcomes. Note that this is blunted in unionized environments! Isn't that telling? Unions actually detract from benefits that would otherwise occur in non-unionized environments.
Lovenheim and Willen (2018) find damning evidence of sustained negative effects on earning power and skills development among students who attend K-12 in a unionized system, with minority males most adversely affected.
"We find robust evidence that exposure to teacher collective bargaining laws worsens the future labor market outcomes of men: in the first 10 years after passage of a duty-to-bargain law, male earnings decline by $2,134 (or 3.93%) per year and hours worked decrease by 0.42 hours per week. The earnings estimates for men indicate that teacher collective bargaining reduces earnings by $213.8 billion in the US annually. We also find evidence of lower male employment rates, which is driven by lower labor force participation. Exposure to collective bargaining laws leads to reductions in the skill levels of the occupations into which male workers sort as well. Effects are largest among black and Hispanic men... we demonstrate that collective bargaining laws lead to reductions in measured non-cognitive skills among young men."
Hall et al. (2016) study the impact of collective bargaining agreements on the proportion of ninth graders passing the state's math proficiency exam. In Ohio school districts, the length of a union’s collective bargaining agreement was linked to lower math scores. The authors state, “It would seem that more stringent negotiations lead to less productive education production."
Cowen and Strunk (2015) find that higher unionized teacher pay is not associated with the lift in academic performance we would hope is achieved. The authors state, "The evidence for union-related differences in student outcomes is mixed, but suggestive of insignificant or modestly negative union effects."
Brunner et al (2020) assess the impact of school finance reforms and intergovernmental transfer regimes on a host of student factors. In more unionized states, increases in funding tend to increase average teacher compensation, but do not reduce class sizes, suggesting the benefits accrue to teachers. Moreover, larger union districts bargain away resources and reduce new teacher hiring in smaller, less well-resourced districts, magnifying inequality by district size.
"We should therefore expect to find greater class size reductions in states with stronger teachers' unions if unions do not alter the allocation of school resources between teacher hiring and raising teacher salaries. On the contrary, we find no statistically significant difference in the effect on class size by teachers' union power. If anything, there is suggestive evidence that there was less of a class size reduction in the stronger union states by 0.144 pupils (standard error of 0.118), suggesting that unions alter the allocation of resources away from teacher hiring."
"Furthermore, the school spending in strong teachers' union states was allocated more toward increasing teacher salaries, while districts in weaker teachers' union states spent the money primarily on hiring new teachers."
[4] Teachers need collective bargaining agreements to be compensated fairly.
This appears to be untrue in the United States, though higher teacher salaries in non-unionized settings would be beneficial (on net) to students. This argument is offensively untrue in Canada.
Median teacher wages in the United States are much lower than in Canada - I was quite surprised by just how much. When I benchmarked posted full-time teacher salaries for all the districts in Canada, a teacher with 10 years of experience in 2016 - depending on age - is between the 80th and 90th percentile among individual incomes, or about $84,200 CAD.
However, it looks like Canadian teachers often pro rate their salary and work fewer hours than full time, in addition to not working in the summers. Average elementary + secondary teachers salaries are $60,744, suggesting that Canadian teachers work about 72% of a full-time load. Because teacher benefits in Canada - from my research- account for an additional 15-20% of compensation when you factor in benefits, this is an extremely inefficient and expensive way to amortize fixed labour costs over work hours. I would expect Canadian data on teacher productivity (weighted by income) would be much lower than in the US.
As does the National Centre for Education Statistics, which shows that median teacher salaries in the US in 2016-17 were $58,950, approximately the 55th percentile, roughly on par with average earnings for Americans with a bachelor's degree.
So the take-away here is that teachers are paid commensurate to their level of education and are on-track for population-wide norms for bachelors' degree holders in the US. Canadian teachers earn a significant premium over US teachers, and appear (based on actual vs posted salary data) to only work 72% of the time, yet collect full-time benefits.
In Canada, this speaks to excessively high unionized teacher salaries creating a surplus of teachers, and well below-average teacher income among non-tenured / itinerant teachers. This is the same effect we see of unions magnifying the receipt of increased salaries at the top of the teacher salary table, and reducing hiring.
There you have it - teachers' unions are a political cudgel used for resource hoarding among the most senior teachers and affluent districts, with no attendant benefit to students or teaching productivity.
I found a few interesting articles down another rabbit hole discussing lower pay and the link to factors (which appear to be strongly correlated to the presence of collective bargaining) lowering teacher quality over time. IOW, unionization drives away high quality teachers, and may be contributing to a lower average quality in the teacher talent pool over time...will definitely be digging into this bit of the literature with interest!
Thanks for the exposition. Full disclosure: I have, at various points in my career, been part of collective bargaining units for teachers--which, of course, is true for nearly all public educators in my region, and actually the default. Some years ago, it became possible to opt out, but it requires a fair amount of initiative to do so, and the union will still take bargaining fees out of you.
I can point to specific exceptions in places I've worked, including currently--but I think we've established that my public school place of employment isn't entirely typical. (For example, the union agreed several years ago to tie certain teacher bonuses to student outcomes standardized test performance.)
The group data, though, are difficult to wave away. Interesting that Canada and USA teacher conditions are much more different than I would have expected. With reference to the earlier discussion on the miseducation thread regarding access to psychoed evals, it also sounds like the perennial shortage of school psychologists everywhere is dramatically more severe in CA than in USA. NASP, the largest US school psych org, recommends 500-700 students per school psych. The actual US average is about 1400:1. My very non-comprehensive survey of the Toronto board website (I recall that's where the private psych firm mentioned previously is located) suggests that school psychs there are running a ratio of around 2500-3500:1 (5-7 schools per person, with schools ranging from 200+ to nearly 800, clustered around 500, in my unscientific sample). That's more intense than the most intense job I've had, which was about 2000:1, with about 140 evaluations a year (yes, I did almost one every single school day). I wonder if psychs are in or out of the teacher unions in Canada. In my US experiences and observations, when there is a union, most school psychs are in the teacher union, with some districts classing them in a different, non-teaching staff union, and a few districts placing them on the administrator scale, or some other independently negotiated schedule.
...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
Thanks aeh - I will reiterate your point that the above is average, not universal trend, and psychologists would not be considered in that discussion.
That's an interesting observation re: school psychologist coverage ratios. I seem to remember you saying the upper limit on completing evaluations in federal US law is 60 days, right? With the Canadian schools in the board you scanned running at one fifth capacity, that would translate into a 10 month turnaround equivalent in Canada, plus the wait time on the front end to be placed on an evaluation list. That seems just a touch light, so I suspect our school psychologists are not, on average, working full time case loads in the schools, and I would be *very* interested what the total count of school psychs is on an FTE basis in school settings.
I just checked the public register of active school psychologists in Ontario, and you'll be pleased to know your back of the envelope numbers for Toronto are pretty accurate when extrapolated across the province. There are 1,009 active licensed school psychologists for a total K-12 aged population of 2.04MM students, for an average of 2,022 students per school psych. The data I have don't show the split by in-school vs in private practice, but I suspect the ratios in public schools will be closer to your estimates once the private practices are netted out.
The average school psychologist salary I'm finding in the province brings in one quarter the average private billable rate per hour recommended by the provincial college of psychologists. I imagine there is a LOT of moonlighting and incentive to switch to private practice...
As employees of the boards, I suspect the full-time school psychologists would also be unionized here. I know that, at least for secondary school psychologists, they are grouped in the secondary school teachers' union in Ontario.
I am not a teacher, or close enough teacher's financial information to be able to say much very useful about Australian teacher's unions and their impact. But it certainly is fascinating to me how different the US and Canadian situations are, and I believe the Australian situation is quite different also.
I have long noted comments here about private school teachers generally being lower paid in the USA. That is certainly not the case here. Possibly in the catholic system, but not at "independent" schools.
There are certainly semi-regular discussions in the media / govt about how to raise the standard of teaching, how to attract a higher standard of student to B/Ed in the first place, etc. How to attract quality industry specialists to jump tracks and become teachers... Is it pay? Is it respect? etc.
With regard to psychologists, I believe the education departments in each state do have psychologists, maybe. They might even do individual educational assessments on children sometimes but I can't think of ANYONE I know who has a child that has been assessed by an education department psychologist. I think their role is primarily to advise schools from afar (ie phone and email) about reports already done, or managing behavioural issues and decision making. I am not actually sure what they do, but I believe they exist...
Private schools routinely have school psychologists, I don't believe I have ever heard of one doing an IQ assessment, they seem focused on counseling (ie social, emotional, behavioral and usually short term)...
Educational assessments are recommended by schools, public and private, and then you are expected to organise them... Wealthier families will just pay (possibly after a 6-9m wait). Other families will go onto a very long waiting list for a public hospital based assessment (more likely 2yrs), which I think are probably also only available if there is also a developmental or behavioral issue being addressed (ie not an option for a supected gifted child with suspected dyslexia). In some scenarios it might be possible get medicare to help pay for a private psychologist IQ assessment if a pediatrician has requested a psychologist assessment for a developmental issue and the psychologist uses and IQ test as part of their assessment... We did this once, but I am no sure if you can still do it, even so there is still a decent out of pocket.
Given that any time you change schools, or states, or maybe it's just been 2yrs, or now you want yr12 exam provisions... You will be asked to do this again and again. I have at this point paid for at least eleven full ed psych evaluations. And I am not sure how many OT evaluations. What is really fun is that it is very common that psychologists who like to do assessments will not want to engage with school advocacy at all, beyond some recommendations in the report. Or they will charge by the hour if willing (I have never succeeded at actually having a psychologist who had done a test intervene with a school directly).
