To be honest, there's no great story that led me to this book. If I recall correctly, I may have picked it up at a semi-annual Friends of the Mount Prospect Library sale as a deep discount hardcover. At the time I may have had some interest having read some excerpts and sampling a page here and there. Chapter titles like "What Do Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have In Common?" also piqued my interest at the time. However, the volume ended up at the wrong end of my "to read" list and eventually found its way to school among other various titles I make available for students to read.
Until now! I picked it off the shelf (or it picked me!).
First, incentives. There are currently a few grading policies that our district mandates that speak to the subject of the first chapter of Freakonomics. The controversy that was explored in the book concerned rampant teacher cheating on standard tests in the Chicago Public Schools in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, schools in CPS could be closed if schools did not show adequate yearly progress. Teachers would be placed on probation if patterns of low reading scores brought the overall grade-level scores down. The incentive to "fix" the scores to save jobs was there - Levitt explored test answer patterns from thousands of tests from 1993-2000 and applied a complicated algorithm that finds anomalies in the data. The cheaters left telltale signs of changing student answers.While this study tests the faith we have in our teacher corps, there was a silver lining: "In addition to detecting cheaters, the algorithm could also identify the best teachers in the school system. A good teacher's impact was nearly as distinctive as a cheater's. [Students would demonstrate] real improvement on the easier types of questions they missed...and carried over all their gains into the next grade" (31).
This idea of incentives has me thinking about the reasoning behind D207's "no zeroes" poilicy. No assignment can be entered as a score of below 40% regardless of the status of the assignment. This policy has been instituted in other districts as well, but not without opposition. Incentives lie at the heart of this change. First, the "killer zero" can bring a student's average down so low that he/she may lose incentive to try to bring the average up. A "what's-the-point-I'm-going-to-fail-anyway" cycle begins as averages can plummet below 20% or lower as zeroes pile up. The 40% "floor" provides some hope (a strong incentive that passing is still possible) for the struggling student, but may it also deincentivize a more accomplished student who may skip an assignment or two, losing what could be valuable learning experiences and opportunities, realizing the grade loss is marginal and won't impact an already solid A, B, or C grade. Incentives lie at the core of human decision-making and behaviors, so this chapter really made me think.
Information - who has it and how do people use it to their advantage? Levitt also goes into an idea called "informational asymmetry" - this is where experts use their superior knowledge to take advantage of those (usually consumers) who don't have the same information. I've always felt this way going in to get my car fixed. They always seem to find something that I wasn't expecting. Last time all four of my brake calipers had frozen up (I had only taken my car in for a squeaky AC belt). Anyway, I demanded to see the problem and talk with a technician. Then I would consult the internet to see what the relative cost was and if it was something I could fix myself. Here's where the experts play on my fear - "this is an unsafe car - those calipers lock up, and you will lose your ability to brake." They've got me - I don't have the expertise to fix it or the foolishness to keep driving it, so I foot the bill...again! The internet, Levitt notes, has decreased the level of informational asymmetry in many fields, but still it acts as another incentive to both take advantage of those who don't know, and to resign yourself to the expertise of those who do.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interestingly enough, there WAS a film version of Freakonomics. Here's the trailer:
I believe that the best teachers deserve recognition for being good at their job. Good teachers are a blessing but very rare to find. I'm glad you included this into your blog because this is a pressing issue to find better teachers and also give recognition to the person that created the algorithm to separate the good teachers from the bad.
ReplyDeleteThe algorithm was designed to detect cheating patterns. It also detected improvement over time on particular skills. A LOT more goes into quality instruction than results on a test though.
DeleteI like how you mentioned that students with lower testing scores often falls to the blame of teacher. Teachers in my opinion help gives us the building blocks to be successful but then it falls on the students to put the blocks together to become successful. I also liked to you mentioned about our districts 40% tolerance. And what you said was true also by the " I'm going to fail anyways", all of these apply to our day to day bases as we are attending school at the moment. Very well written.
ReplyDeleteR-Code "responsibility" is coming through strong in your response! Depending on the student, teachers need to give much more than building blocks. We sometimes have to model the building process, supervise the building process, help with planning the building process, etc. (I'll stop witht the metaphor!). Thanks for the complement on the writing - one aspect of establishing ethos is to write in an engaging manner in consideration for the reader.
DeleteBased on what you've written and the embedded video, I'm also interested in Freakonomics and how it talks about how the world works. I think the example used of incentives is really accurate in showing why people make decisions and how hard they work for something. I really like how you included the links for the CPS teacher that was caught cheating and the 40% rule that was implemented for many schools, including Maine East. Along with this, I really like how you included Maine East's policy in your blog because it helped me understand the incentive idea that's used in schools and made me relate to it more. The idea of information and the quote used also showed that along with incentives, experts use their knowledge to take advantage of people. Overall, I found this blog very interesting!
ReplyDeleteOne aspect of reading about incentives is that it makes me take pause and think about what drives my decisions. Decisions in personal interactions, decisions in the marketplace, decisions about time management, decisions at the dinner table, etc. Behind each decision lies some incentive, positive or negative or somewhere in between, that is weighed sometimes in the moment or over longer periods of time.
DeleteIs every decision basically self-centered then? Hmmmm.
Just by looking at your blog and seeing the highlighted words and videos. There is a lot of information and I really enjoyed all of it. Even though it was a bit long, you presented some interesting points about the education system. For example,teachers change a student's test score because if the scores are low the" Teachers would be placed on probation if patterns of low reading scores brought the overall grade-level scores down". I found that statement quite alarming but also justified in some form. As its a way for the teachers to keep their jobs but its also not justified to cheat.
ReplyDelete