Teachers Earn Less According to American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation

Recently, I received an email from Kathleen Marsh.  Kathleen Marsh is a Wisconsin public employee who started a petition to tell our politicians that they should keep their paws out of our deferred compensation or pension as some call it.  It is only a pension if you actually receive your pension.  Well, she provided a link to an article from Andrew Biggs in the Wall Street Journal.  Here is the original paper that he wrote for the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation entitled, Are Teachers Overpaid? (http://www.aei.org/article/education/k-12/higher-pay-than-private-sector/)   If you want to see how a research paper shouldn't be written, this paper is an excellent example.  It would never be published in an actual research journal with standards.     

Here are the horrible highlights of Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers upon which Are Teachers Overpaid is based.

1. Falsely assumes that markets set accurate prices.  If markets accurately set prices there wouldn't be asset bubbles such as the housing bubble, stock market bubble, or tech stock bubble.  Markets require honesty and transparency to work, neither of which has ever happened and will probably never be. 

2. Uses lots of anecdotal evidence to support predetermined conclusions -- also known as dogma. 

3. Cites non-peer reviewed sources, including a blog on page 7 citation #18.

4. Asserts without evidence that the better grades of education majors are a by product of low grading standards instead of the improved effectiveness of people who are experts at instruction or the ineffectiveness of instructors who have no expertise in instruction.   (Page 7 paragraph 6).

5. Uses anecdotal evidence to deny statistical evidence that teachers are in fact underpaid.  On page 6, they state that, "In other words, public-school teachers receive salaries that are 19.3% lower than non-teachers who have the same observable skills."  That is the statistical evidence.  Now here is the anecdotal evidence, "If we added an indicator for architects to the regression, for example, we would find that architects receive a wage premium over similarly skilled workers.  Yet, few people would immediately conclude that architects are 'overpaid.'"  Few people?  Who are these people and where did Mr Biggs find them?  

6. On page 6, Biggs asserts that experience does not have an impact on teacher quality without evidence to back up his assertion.  In reality, the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance states that expertise requires approximately 10,000 hours of effortful practice.  Hardly something a new teacher would possess.  Teachers work approximately 200 days a year.  Multiply this by seven hours a day of instruction, and you get 1400 hours.  It would take about seven years to put in the appropriate number of hours to be an expert and that is under perfect effortful practice conditions, not necessarily a classroom.

News is Entertainment

News media admits it is really entertainment.  In a recent Economist blog, an Economist writer admits that the story and its narrative are more important than the truth.  The reason?  Don't want to waste time on a story that won't be exciting.  

"As Jay Rosen, an NYU journalism professor who understands everything, has explained at great length for years, the media is biased in favour of excitement."
http://www.economist.com/node/21557063

Doctors cite concern for patients, colleagues top motives for working sick

Public Release: 18-Jun-2012
 Archives of Internal Medicine
Doctors cite concern for patients, colleagues top motives for working sick
A poll of 150 resident physicians found more than half had worked with flu-like symptoms at least once in the last year. One in six reported working sick three or more times during the year, according to the survey conducted by researchers at University of Chicago Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital. Nearly ten percent of respondents believed they'd transmitted an illness to a patient and 20 percent believed other residents had passed an illness to a patient.   

Here is what the article states, "Researchers say a physician's sense of loyalty to already-overwhelmed peers, along with a commitment to patient care, often conflicts with an ethical stance against exposing patients and staff to an illness or compromised performance."

Their commitment to patient care includes getting patients sick.

The Dark Side of Animation

The Dark Side of Animation

Everybody seems to love animation.  Watching buttons and images easing-in and easing-out of the screen is, well, easy on the eyes.  However, is spending the extra hour adding transitions to text or graphics really worth it?  No, in fact, it reduces learning by distracting the person from the information being presented.  

In a recent study, researches found that students performed better with static slides than with animated slides.  Why?  Because the animations were distracting the students from the information being presented.  

Animation should be used when it is necessary and only when it is necessary.  For example, an animation that demonstrates how connected gears move in opposite direction works because it illustrates the concept and isn't there simply as eye candy.  

Reducing clutter or fidelity is especially important when teaching concepts to novices who have no experience with the topic and lack a mental framework upon which new information can be organized and built upon.  

"The dark side of custom animation" in Int. J. Innovation and Learning, 2009, 6, 581-592

Rewards

Contact: William Harms
w-harms@uchicago.edu
773-702-8356
University of Chicago 

Immediate rewards for good scores can boost student performance

Study on behavioral economics and educational incentives advances debate on how to motivate students

Dr Montessori's Own Handbook

Dr Montessori's Own Handbook.
This was my largest editing project.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5vtaiLD-WA_YjUzMGViMmUtYWVhOS00OGFhLThjYzItNmRhMmY2NzA1Y2Zh

Less is More

I was at eurekalert.org today and found this press release slash article about physics instructors.  "Use of research-based instructional strategies in introductory physics: Where do faculty leave the innovation-decision process?"  I was reading and ran into this, "However, age (as measured by rank and years of teaching experience) was not correlated with the use of instructional techniques, and it also did not matter if an instructor was in a teaching-oriented job, what type of institution he/she taught at, the size of the classes they teach, or if they were highly productive researchers." (Hendersen, 2012)

Yes, age is not correlated with the utilization of innovative instructional techniques.  Research was also not correlated.  Maybe that is because some instructors just so happen to respect the facts and some do not.  
http://www.per-central.org/press/

The Science of Learning

I was reading Scientific American September issue when I came across this piece by Dan Willingham who is a cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia.  He advocates for a research clearing house for educators, so they can separate the facts from the fads http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-science-can-improve-teaching

From the same article, here is the link to the What Works Clearinghouse
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/ 

Dante - A Lexical Database for English

Dante - A Lexical Database for English.  
Dante is like a dictionary, but much more since you can search for only one part of speech like adjectives, nouns or verbs.  Give it a try at http://dante.skxmlbox.idm.fr/dante/search/Search.html

Better learning through handwriting

Better learning through handwriting. Teachers should know that there is a big difference between typing on a keyboard and handwriting. So, it is best to incorporate both methods by requiring students to take notes or write rough drafts in handwriting and then final drafts should be typed into the computer. 
 http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-01/uos-blt011911.php