> I'm not very familiar with the field, unfortunately, but it is my understanding that there is not much of a scientific method applied to teaching theories. As in, not just armchair theorizing, but more like A/B testing. I know, it's a hard problem, but so are many science problems, and Rome doesn't have to be build in one day. But where is the progress?
There isn't much, for a multitude of reasons:
- teachers are overloaded with non-teaching related bullshit. Tons of standardized tests, school excursions, extracurricular activities, enforcing disciplinarian measures, working as an effective social worker for students in need, fundraising, classroom repairs, organizing basic supplies, filing exceptions for books to be in school libraries, dealing with absolutely moronic parents (both those that refuse to discipline their children and those who flood teachers in bullshit complaints because "muh religion"/"freedumb")... with the exception of discipline enforcement and the standardized test flood, none of this should be done by teachers but by admin staff. But there isn't much admin staff in schools, there isn't much assistance or building maintenance/cleaning/upkeep budget, and so teachers do it on their own just to keep the lights on, if barely.
- there aren't many teachers in the first place, and the older ones often lack the motivation to further their own knowledge - some of them actively discourage new teachers from trying out what they learned in university because "we always did it this way".
- closely related to the above: "concerned parent" activist groups disrupt that as well, for a multitude of their reasons. Some because "we had to go through the same shit in my time", "what doesn't kill you makes you harder" (I'm referring to corporal punishment here, which is shockingly legal for private schools in 48 states, in public schools in 18 states of which 15 still practice this barbarity [1]), some because they object to basic stuff such as sex ed on religious reasons... the list is endless.
- frankly said, no one cares about education. Big Labor doesn't care, they need dumb grunts for slaughterhouses, farms, restaurants and other menial work who don't object to exploitation. The Army doesn't care, they need dumb grunts to send into the meat grinder. And there are enough privileged children where the parents take care for good private schools to fulfill the needs of employers needing actually intelligent people.
- there are almost no feedback loops in the system other than the standardized tests, which are problematic on their own.
- a lot of school students' performance is related to poverty and hunger - what few scraps of improvements have been made in the last decades have been long since eroded because poverty has exploded...
It's hard to fairly measure and evaluate "merit" for teachers. You can be the best teacher of the world, prepare every single lesson for hours according to the most modern scientific standards - and yet have half your class fail in tests because they literally didn't have anything to eat since the warm school-provided lunch yesterday. Food scarcity is a problem affecting at least 75% of US school districts [1], it's gotten way worse since the COVID assistance ended [2], and it has been shown in studies to be closely linked to performance [3] (hardly a surprise for anyone who ever had to experience food scarcity).
The teacher unions do have a point there, because introducing anything "merit" based only punishes those teachers and school districts for stuff they can't control, much less actually solve.
Unions are on the rise, and we need them to seize more power in every sector of labor to fight against extreme wealth inequality. I fully support the teacher's unions. More often than not, they include resources for their students in their negotiations.
There isn't much, for a multitude of reasons:
- teachers are overloaded with non-teaching related bullshit. Tons of standardized tests, school excursions, extracurricular activities, enforcing disciplinarian measures, working as an effective social worker for students in need, fundraising, classroom repairs, organizing basic supplies, filing exceptions for books to be in school libraries, dealing with absolutely moronic parents (both those that refuse to discipline their children and those who flood teachers in bullshit complaints because "muh religion"/"freedumb")... with the exception of discipline enforcement and the standardized test flood, none of this should be done by teachers but by admin staff. But there isn't much admin staff in schools, there isn't much assistance or building maintenance/cleaning/upkeep budget, and so teachers do it on their own just to keep the lights on, if barely.
- there aren't many teachers in the first place, and the older ones often lack the motivation to further their own knowledge - some of them actively discourage new teachers from trying out what they learned in university because "we always did it this way".
- closely related to the above: "concerned parent" activist groups disrupt that as well, for a multitude of their reasons. Some because "we had to go through the same shit in my time", "what doesn't kill you makes you harder" (I'm referring to corporal punishment here, which is shockingly legal for private schools in 48 states, in public schools in 18 states of which 15 still practice this barbarity [1]), some because they object to basic stuff such as sex ed on religious reasons... the list is endless.
- frankly said, no one cares about education. Big Labor doesn't care, they need dumb grunts for slaughterhouses, farms, restaurants and other menial work who don't object to exploitation. The Army doesn't care, they need dumb grunts to send into the meat grinder. And there are enough privileged children where the parents take care for good private schools to fulfill the needs of employers needing actually intelligent people.
- there are almost no feedback loops in the system other than the standardized tests, which are problematic on their own.
- a lot of school students' performance is related to poverty and hunger - what few scraps of improvements have been made in the last decades have been long since eroded because poverty has exploded...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_in_...