Ventana software support forum

Posted by Martin Schaffernicht <martin@utalca.cl>

Hi,

I'm interested in the way teachers ""flow"" in between different types of schools in Chile.

In Chile, good teachers are a scarce resource and schools have to compete for them. Private schools are allowed to hire+fire, to charge fees and to freely offer salaries to teachers. Public schools have (as mean value) 20% of a private schools' budget, have to respect the national salary scheme and their possibility to fire are severely restricted. Under these conditions, one would expect the private schools to ""sort out"" the best teachers, to the detriment of the rest of the school system (which shows huge inequaity in results).

I tried to find system dynamic articles about the subject (or related stuff) but I did not find them. If someone knows of relevant work, I'd be grateful to see the references.

Thanks,

Martin Schaffernicht
Universidad de Talca
Talca - Chile
Posted by Martin Schaffernicht <martin@utalca.cl> posting date Wed, 30 May 2007 12:27:20 -0400 _______________________________________________

Posted by ""Robertson, Pete"" <PRobertson@ETS.ORG>

When California suddenly and dramatically reduced class sizes in 1996, it had unintended consequences: Wealthy school districts desperate to hire enough teachers and able to pay more than poor urban districts stripped the poor districts of their good teachers, increasing the achievement gap. There has been some system dynamics discussion about this, I BELIEVE referenced in Baker, B.D., Richards, C.E. (2004) The Ecology of Educational Systems (but don't buy it on this account, because I'm just not sure). Bruce Baker who co-wrote it WOULD know where to find any system dynamics work on the California teacher case.
Also, it has apparently been simulated as a multi-agent system (SimEd:
simulating education as a multi agent system, Sklar, E. Davies, M. Co, M.S.T Columbia University).

The California experience MAY be a good case study for you, and a good starting point to search for System Dynamics related literature. If you do model, don't forget to look at retirement benefits and their effect on teacher ""stickiness."" In the US it puts significant switching cost barriers for teachers between public and private systems once they've been teaching for 15-20 years (though arguably other barriers are WAY more important, like an ideological commitment to public education versus an aversion to union membership).

Peter Robertson
R&D Development Leader
Educational Testing Service
Posted by ""Robertson, Pete"" <PRobertson@ETS.ORG> posting date Thu, 31 May 2007 11:53:46 -0400 _______________________________________________