Baseball as an analogy for teaching, or why economists are dumb

Teaching as a baseball analogy?

Good teachers are better than average teachers and average teachers are better than bad teachers, seems pretty simple right? Well this is also what passes for scientific research these days and unfortunately the recent study confirming above by Ivy league economists is getting more than a collective, duh, as education deformers use it to prove their preconceived notions and the authors use it to get their names in the papers.

In case you missed it a pair of economists from Harvard and Columbia Universities recently concluded a study where they examined twenty years worth of data which said the difference between an average teacher and a poor teacher was students in the average teachers class were one percent less likely to become pregnant, one percent more likely to go to college and may make as much as 250 more dollars a year than the students in the classroom with the poor teachers.

Their conclusion after all this research was school districts should use multi variable calculus to create value added measurements which could then be used to fire bad teachers sooner than later. Let’s ignore for a moment that often rookie teachers are the worst performing of all and if we followed the studies advice very few would make it to their second year and lets also disregard the fact that they just use one measurement, test scores, to determine the quality of teachers, then lets pay no attention to how their methodology has been questioned, the study has not been peer reviewed or even printed but what’s worse of all is the authors used a baseball analogy sell their point.

Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman write: The manager of a baseball team pays attention to a player’s batting average even though it too is an imperfect statistic that bounces around over time. If a new player gets no hits in his first month, one option is waiting to see whether he is just in a temporary slump. Another is more coaching. But on occasion, the best option may be to let that player go and call up a replacement.

Yes the best option may be to let the player go and call up the replacement or what I like to call more “duh”! The thing is baseball like teaching should be more than just tests, is more than just batting averages. What about the power hitting first baseman that belts forty dingers, the slick fielding golden glove short stop, the rocket armed rookie filled with enthusiasm, the grizzled vet that the other players look up to and so on and on. None of their averages may be setting records but a good manager knows he needs them all to make a championship team. If like Chetty and Friedman propose and batting averages are to baseball, what standardized tests are to education, then they are concentrating on just one measurement and ignoring thousands of others that also help determine success or failure. Should one thing determine your child’s future? What about a teacher their job?

Chetty and Friedman reduce teaching to one number, a standardized test score. That’s it, nothing else matters.

Let me ask you a couple questions. Just who do you want teaching your student, the teacher who constantly tests and drills which may mean a few percentage points more on the test or the teacher who teachers their students to question and think and who makes school worth going to? Would you be willing to take that one percent risk to put your kid in the latter’s class? Even using multivariable calculus I don’t think Chetty and Friedman have a chance figuring out that teaching is infinity more complicated and nuanced than “pay the best and fire the rest.”

Unfortunately the damage may already be done and this despite the fact the authors themselves talk about the study’s flaws, good teachers will lose their jobs being the biggest and various other mathematicians, economists and education experts have debunked the report, then like I said their study hasn’t been peer reviewed or even printed yet. Their study has already been prominently displayed in the New York Times, PBS and numerous other news outlets, the Times Union even referred to it in an editorial. Politicians seeking to break teachers unions, privatize public education and to take the teaching profession back a hundred years are already using it as ammunition because to them the sound bite “fire teachers sooner rather than later” has more value to them than actual evidence or workable solutions.

What we ultimately learned from the study isn’t that good teachers are better than average teachers and that average teachers are better than poor teachers, no, we already knew that, what we learned is that economists should stay away from both baseball and education, they don’t understand either. Maybe they should work on the economy instead. It seems like we could use some help there.