8/6 Republican Presidential Debate

I have yet to talk to even one teacher at either of my kid's schools who are in support of common core as it is today or how it was rolled out. 45 states.....who want federal money.

Quite the contrary....it is highly predictable.

Cheating is cheating, absolutely. Walk further back the line to find out WHY. If there were no financial incentives, schools, administrators, and teachers don't behave this way.

And yet one causes the other so......

Incentives are great for the short term where unintended consequences can be managed or kept to a minimum. But there is plenty of historical evidence to proved that over the long term, incentives actually reduce overall performance and clog the system with unintended consequences.

"Incentives also run into trouble when they signal that the employer mistrusts the employee or is greedy. Close supervision of workers coupled with pay for performance is textbook economics—and a prescription for sullen employees."
https://hbr.org/2009/03/when-economic-incentives-backfire

"Behaviorist theory, derived from work with laboratory animals, is indirectly responsible for such programs as piece-work pay for factory workers, stock options for top executives, special privileges accorded to Employees of the Month, and commissions for salespeople. Indeed, the livelihood of innumerable consultants has long been based on devising fresh formulas for computing bonuses to wave in front of employees. Money, vacations, banquets, plaques—the list of variations on a single, simple behaviorist model of motivation is limitless. And today even many people who are regarded as forward thinking—those who promote team-work, participative management, continuous improvement, and the like—urge the use of rewards to institute and maintain these very reforms. What we use bribes to accomplish may have changed, but the reliance on bribes, on behaviorist doctrine, has not.

Moreover, the few articles that appear to criticize incentive plans are invariably limited to details of implementation. Only fine-tune the calculations and delivery of the incentive—or perhaps hire the author as a consultant—and the problem will be solved, we are told. As Herbert H. Meyer, professor emeritus in the psychology department at the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of South Florida, has written, “Anyone reading the literature on this subject published 20 years ago would find that the articles look almost identical to those published today.” That assessment, which could have been written this morning, was actually offered in 1975. In nearly forty years, the thinking hasn’t changed.

Do rewards work? The answer depends on what we mean by “work.” Research suggests that, by and large, rewards succeed at securing one thing only: temporary compliance. When it comes to producing lasting change in attitudes and behavior, however, rewards, like punishment, are strikingly ineffective. Once the rewards run out, people revert to their old behaviors......

Incentives, a version of what psychologists call extrinsic motivators, do not alter the attitudes that underlie our behaviors. They do not create an enduring commitment to any value or action. Rather, incentives merely—and temporarily—change what we do......

As for productivity, at least two dozen studies over the last three decades have conclusively shown that people who expect to receive a reward for completing a task or for doing that task successfully simply do not perform as well as those who expect no reward at all. These studies examined rewards for children and adults, males and females, and included tasks ranging from memorizing facts to creative problem-solving to designing collages. In general, the more cognitive sophistication and open-ended thinking that was required, the worse people performed when working for a reward. Interestingly enough, the researchers themselves were often taken by surprise. They assumed that rewards would produce better work but discovered otherwise.

https://hbr.org/1993/09/why-incentive-plans-cannot-work

You have no information to back that up. None. All we know is how many get caught. It's like drunk drivers.

Lol. When you introduce greed, a lack of trust, and the threat of income loss, people behave accordingly. And if someone decides not to cheat or sandbag or manipulate, they don't remain employed for long, eh?

"Invoking such terms as “tougher standards,” “accountability,” and “raising the bar,” people with little understanding of how children learn have imposed a heavy-handed, top-down, test-driven version of school reform that is lowering the quality of education in this country.It has taken some educators and parents a while to realize that the rhetoric of “standards” is turning schools into giant test-prep centers, effectively closing off intellectual inquiry and undermining enthusiasm for learning (and teaching). It has taken even longer to realize that this is not a fact of life, like the weather — that is, a reality to be coped with — but rather a political movement that must be opposed.
http://www.alfiekohn.org/standards-testing/

And this because it's a thorough and well thought out analysis from an expert.
http://www.alfiekohn.org/standards-and-testing/case-tougher-standards/

 

Yes, it's just me with these "glasses" on. I've given plenty of other documented sources and among the group of teachers with whom I have had contact, about 22, none of them give their support.

Read what I wrote. Cheating is cheating.....it should be punished accordingly. Individuals still make choices. That doesn't make their choices unpredictable. And I was specific to say financial incentives, such as spiffs and bonuses, etc.

Not what I said. The system is producing expectable results. And it also produces a lot of unintended consequences. Achievers will achieve no matter what. They don't need the extra incentive. Their "reward" needs to be taylored to their motivation. Wasting time running around to catch and fire the cheaters is a total waste of time and a self-creation of incentive-based systems.

Nope. A fast start bonus is what causes a salesman to sandbag at the end of the prior month. Pay the salesman what he is worth and there is no need and they can focus on the job at hand, rather than their own individual earnings.

Short term results, yes. Long term behavior and performance? No.

More people cheat and some people actually produce less.....because of the psychology of motivation. That is what's clear. And let's not forget, it's based on the behavior of animals, not humans.

That actually made me laugh. I don't need to google shit, amigo. And the heart of our reward-based system sure has created a lot of wealth......for Wall St, venture capitalists, CEO's, big pharma, oil companies.....you name it. Corruption and absurd wealth.
And let's not forget what people were willing to do to phony up VA statistics. Fear of punishment can have the same effect.

Two different concepts. I'm not suggesting communism.

You said most districts don't cheat. Prove it. Simple. Don't you understand the absurdity of instituting a system where you must inspect everything to identify the wrongdoing? Waste....of.....time.

I am saying far more cheat than are being detected because those test scores mean federal money for the district/school and teachers can avoid being punished if their scores are too low.

You didn't read the links. If a company says to an employee, "we will only pay you "x" amount if you work hard", it is saying "we don't believe you will work hard....we believe you are lazy." Lack of trust. If an employee believes they can earn "x" amount but barriers beyond their control keep them from doing so, then it is clearly a loss of income. Why go to work every day for a company that doesn't trust you, that believes you are lazy, that doesn't clear barriers to your earning potential?

Meanwhile, the bulk of the employees, as a group, actually produce the most output. That is where the focus should be. Not on the top performers who will do so anyway, nor on the bottom performers because they will weed themselves out.