How are Teachers Evaluated?

The following is an email I sent to a student who wanted to know what I thought about high school students evaluating teachers.

High school teachers have many stakeholders. From the top down, they include the Federal government (No Child Left Behind Act) which mandates continued test score improvements, the State of California, which tells teachers what to teach, the District, which hires and pays teachers, and the taxpayers (the parents), which support the school district. Those actually being taught, the high school students, have no voice in the process other than choosing which classes to take. Even then there are many mandatory classes, and students can perhaps select a certain teacher, but they cannot avoid the class. Why is that? The State has determined that students must learn certain things, and that the State (thinks it) knows better than the student what those things should be. If the parents disagree, they can homeschool or send their child to a private school, but the students still need to learn certain subjects, like it or not. Since that is the case--students learn information that they may not be interested in (Shakespear, geometry, Reconstruction)--it does not make sense for students to be involved in the teacher assessment process. Should slaves assess their masters? Note, however, that students already evaluate their teachers informally on the internet. Comments I have read on RateMyTeacher.com do not give me confidence that high school students can assess teachers properly (even though I do well there, personally). Additionally, all teachers get a reputation and are sought after or avoided based on these rumors, fair or not. 

 

Teachers are evaluated by principals using fair but strict standards based on equity, preparation, engagement, safety, etc. Most students don't pay much attention to these things but they are the essence of good teaching!

 

I would be more comfortable including student ratings in teacher assessments if they were in elective, not mandatory classes, and answered (on a Likert scale) items such as "does this teacher teach to standards" and "did this class prepare me for a career or college?"

Thanks for the opportunity to respond to your query.

Review of Jim Rogers' Investment Autobiography, Street Smarts

credit: sg.asiatatler.com

Famed investor Jim Rogers has published a book that is part autobiography, part geopolitics, and part investment wisdom. Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets (Crown Publishing, 2013) gives his views on investing, which countries are growing more powerful and which are declining, what America must do to reform its society, and the value of raising children. Despite its wide scope, the book does not meander. Rogers engaged me throughout with his ideas about television (like me, he avoids it), politicians, ethics, and what it takes to succeed.

As an autobiography, the book reveals that Rogers single mindedly tried to understand how markets worked and struggled without pause to do so. He enjoyed learning how the world works, so he was motivated to understand markets as well as wanting not to lose money. He worked on holidays and through weekends. He had few distractions as none of his earlier marriages lasted long or produced children. The picture on the left shows Rogers with his third wife, Paige. He now has two Mandarin-speaking daughters as well. Rogers insists that he was successful because of his ability to think independently and willingness to travel and look at  information sources himself.

The two main themes of the book are the transition to Asia as the economic powerhouse as American leadership declines and "a cyclical shift away from financial firms as a source of prosperity" (P. 5) in favor of producers of real goods, especially foodstuffs. (As an aside, brick and mortar education may be replaced by distance learning, and Rogers predicts many of today's elite universities will go bankrupt.)

Rogers states that the United States needs to do five things to be saved: change the tax system, change the education system, institute health-care and litigation reform, and bring the troops home" (P. 241), but he is doubtful that these reforms will occur because of the power of special interests. He suggests that the legislative branch  no longer meet in Washington, D.C., and instead the representatives and senators should in their local areas and meet virtually, avoiding the power of the special interest groups.

Since Rogers conducts his business dealings ethically and believes his good name is invaluable, I found it interesting that he glosses over human rights violations in many of the leading Asian countries, comparing these problems to those in early America:  lack of real democracy in the early years of the American Republic and the existence of a late 19th-century plutocracy. In other words, according to Rogers the United States committed many of the same sins now found in Asia. I find this comparison unfair as our government has committed crimes of omission (because the Constitution limits its powers) rather than commission, such as throwing people in prison because of their beliefs. Rogers' unwillingness to come to terms with Asian oppression is the weakness of this book. He feels that China, Myanmar, and North Korea will eventually change for the better. So invest today! Despite this flaw, the book is well worth reading.

I have previously recommended Rogers' Investment Biker book to my economics students and will add this book to my list of recommended books as well.

See my previous blogs about North Korea here and food prices here and here.

The Biggest Urbanization Program Ever and Food Prices

Source: NYT

According to the New York Times (link here), China is in the midst of a program to move 250 million people from the countryside to cities, joining the 450 million that already live in Chinese cities. China's goal is to be 70 percent urban, and therefore modernized by 2025. A quarter of a billion people will be watching their ancestral villages return to the earth and are pushed into modernity "replacing small rural homes with high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering the lives of rural dwellers"

(China’s Great Uprooting: Moving 250 Million Into Cities, June 15, 2013 New York Times)

The building frenzy is on display in places like Liaocheng, which grew up as an entrepôt for local wheat farmers in the North China Plain. It is now ringed by scores of 20-story towers housing now-landless farmers who have been thrust into city life. Many are giddy at their new lives — they received the apartments free, plus tens of thousands of dollars for their land — but others are uncertain about what they will do when the money runs out.

Aggressive state spending is planned on new roads, hospitals, schools, community centers — which could cost upward of $600 billion a year, according to economists’ estimates. In addition, vast sums will be needed to pay for the education, health care and pensions of the ex-farmers.

While the economic fortunes of many have improved in the mass move to cities, unemployment and other social woes have also followed the enormous dislocation. Some young people feel lucky to have jobs that pay survival wages of about $150 a month; others wile away their days in pool halls and video-game arcades (ibid).

Economically, city dwellers create demand for goods and services and country-dwellers do not.

The primary motivation for the urbanization push is to change China’s economic structure, with growth based on domestic demand for products instead of relying so much on export. In theory, new urbanites mean vast new opportunities for construction companies, public transportation, utilities and appliance makers, and a break from the cycle of farmers consuming only what they produce. “If half of China’s population starts consuming, growth is inevitable,” said Li Xiangyang, vice director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics, part of a government research institute. “Right now they are living in rural areas where they do not consume” (ibid.)

In addition to moving people from rural to urban areas, the Chinese government is trying to get rid of unsightly hamlets and make way for large industrial projects such as dams. My uncle, fresh from a visit to China, writes: 

Mike,

Here are a couple of pictures of Chongqing showing the poorer area that will soon be demolished and replaced by modern high rise apartments. The other [third picture] shows a modern 'village' on the Yangtze River that replaced a village that now is under the river since the dam was completed. 1.5 million people were relocated when they built the dam.

Will this great experiment work? Will China succeed in creating a massive modern economy, dwarfing the demand for goods and services enjoyed in the United States, or will it create a large underclass of unskilled, slum dwellers? I don't know. I will guess, however, that this urbanization program will create greater demand for food. City dwellers tend to eat more animal and processed products, creating more demand for grains, sugars, and other basic foodstuffs. Farmers, rapidly decreasing in number, eat closer to the base of the food chain. I also believe that China's gamble on urbanization will decrease the supply of food. The government is paving over farmland or giving it to local governments and agribusiness. Meanwhile, brilliant investor Jim Rogers writes:

Until prices  reach a point where growing food is profitable, the world's farmers, who are currently aging and dying, are not going to be replaced. Prices must rise, and they will. In recent years, the world has been consuming more food than it has produced. Those inventories that were so high in the 1980s are now historically low, somewhere near 14 percent of consumption. The world is facing drastic shortages. Food prices are on the way up (Rogers, Jim, Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets, Crown Publishing, 2013, P.28).

Look for food prices to increase, whether inflation appears or not. (See my previous blog on this issue here.)