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Today's Top News
Paying Teachers for Student Performance Didn’t Raise Scores in Study
Offering
middle-school math teachers bonuses up to $15,000 did not produce gains
in student test scores, Vanderbilt University researchers reported
Tuesday in what they said was the first scientifically rigorous test of
merit pay. The results could amount to a cautionary flag about
paying teachers for the performance of their students, a reform strategy
the Obama administration and many states and school districts have
favored despite lukewarm support or outright opposition from teachers’
unions. The U.S. Department of Education has put a great deal of
effort into luring school districts and states to try merit-pay systems
as part of its Race to the Top competition, although teachers’ unions
have often objected on the grounds that they don’t have fair and
reliable ways to measure performance. In most school districts, teacher
pay is based on years of experience and educational attainment levels. The
report’s authors, of the National Center on Performance Incentives
(NCPI) at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education, stress
that theirs is just one approach to giving teachers incentives to boost
student achievement. The Nashville teachers who hit the mark based on
their students’ test scores received a bump in their paychecks for their
efforts but no additional mentoring or professional development.
Neither their principals nor fellow teachers knew who participated in
the experiment or who received bonuses. Matthew G. Springer,
director of the federally funded NCPI, said pay-for-performance is not
“the magic bullet that so often the policy world is looking for.” At least in this experiment, Springer said, “it doesn’t work.” The
study was conducted from 2006 to 2009 in partnership with the nonprofit
RAND Corporation. A local industrialist and Vanderbilt benefactor,
Orrin Ingram, put up the nearly $1.3 million in bonuses. Some 296
middle-school math teachers – two-thirds of the district’s middle-school
math teachers – volunteered to participate in the experiment. Half were
placed randomly in a control group, while the rest were eligible for
bonuses of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 if their pupils scored
significantly higher than expected on the statewide exam known as the
Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program. One third of the
eligible teachers – 51 of 152, or 34 percent – got bonuses at least
once. Eighteen teachers received bonuses all three years. Except
for some temporary gains for fifth-graders, though, their students
progressed no faster than those in classes taught by the 146 other
teachers. The local teachers’ union in Nashville agreed to the
experiment in collective bargaining, according to Erick Huth, president
of the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association. He said the results
were not at all surprising. “I’ve believed for a long time that
what improves instruction is having an instructional leader who is able
to get all players in a school to collaborate,” Huth said The
bonuses amounted to as much as 30 percent of teachers’ yearly salaries
here in the Music City, where the scale runs from $36,000 to $64,000,
Huth said. The nation’s 3.2 million public school teachers earned
$53,910 on average in 2008-09, according to the National Center for
Education Statistics. The study was released at a two-day
conference, “Evaluating and Rewarding Educator Effectiveness,” at
Vanderbilt’s Peabody College that drew participants from Colorado,
Georgia, Tennessee, Washington, D.C. and other places conducting their
own experiments with performance pay. Some states have moved to tie
teacher and principal evaluations to student test scores. The study did not shake the faith of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in merit pay. “While
this is a good study, it only looked at the narrow question of whether
more pay motivates teachers to try harder,” said Sandra Abrevaya, a
spokeswoman for Duncan. It did not address the Obama administration’s
push to “change the culture of teaching by giving all educators the
feedback they need to get better.” The Nashville experiment, known
as POINT (Project on Incentives in Teaching), doled out the $15,000
bonuses to those teachers whose students performed “at a level that
historically had been reached by only the top 5 percent of middle school
math teachers.” Teacher performance was calculated by using a
value-added model, which predicts how students will do in a given year
based on how they performed in the previous year. The teachers had to
hit the 80th and 90th percentiles to pocket the $5,000 and $10,000
bonuses, respectively. The study’s design, in which teachers were
judged against percentile benchmarks rather than their colleagues’
performance, sought to preserve collaboration among teachers. In
surveys about the program, most teachers said they were already
effective without the incentive of additional pay. Eight in ten said
they didn’t change the way they taught to improve their odds of earning a
bonus. Many teachers came close to getting a bonus – so close that they
would have qualified if their pupils answered two or three more
questions correctly on the 55-question state exam. The Nashville
math teachers, according to the study, “expressed moderately favorable
views toward performance pay in general, though less so for POINT in
particular.” The experiment ran smoothly, although the teachers became
less enthusiastic over the three years. “They did not come away …
thinking it had harmed their schools,” the study said. “But by and
large, they did not endorse the nation that bonus recipients were better
teachers.” The fact that many fifth-grade teachers teach multiple
subjects to the same students may have been a reason for the positive
impact of merit pay found in fifth grade, according to the study’s
authors. But “the effect did not last. By the end of 6th grade it did
not matter whether a student’s 5th grade math teacher had been in the
treatment or control group,” the study said. The researchers said
the Nashville experiment didn’t stir the negative reactions that have
attended some other merit pay programs, but it “simply did not do much
of anything.” Springer of NCPI said the study lays a foundation
for further experiments on a topic that educators have been debating
“for over a century.” Tennessee Commissioner of Education Timothy
Webb said the Nashville study shows, “Money alone is not enough to
encourage people to go into challenging schools and teach the most
difficult students.” He stressed the importance of improving teachers’
working conditions, not just their pay. Frederick M. Hess,
director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise
Institute in Washington, D.C., said he does not believe the study says
much of value and worries it will only confuse the issue. “The
fact that that teachers don’t respond to cash bonuses like rats do to
food-pellets does nothing to diminish my confidence that it’s good for
schooling if teacher pay better reflects the contributions that teachers
make,” Hess said. “Serious proponents of merit pay believe the point is
not any kind of short-term test-score bump but making the profession
more attractive to talented candidates.” William Slotnik,
executive director of the Boston-based Institute for Compensation Reform
and Student Learning at the Community Training and Assistance Center,
has argued that performance-based compensation tied directly to the
educational mission of a school district can be a lever to transform
schools. But he said it will take more than financial incentives to
improve student achievement and that merit pay “is hard to get right. …
If all you are doing is focusing on money, there is no track record in
that resulting in the kind of changes needed to do this work well.”
- Posted in
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39 Comments so far
Show AllWell, then.
What is the minimum wage now?
"“Serious proponents of merit pay believe the point is not any kind of short-term test-score bump but making the profession more attractive to talented candidates.”"
The simplest way to make the profession more attractive to talented candidates is to increase the salaries of all teachers. That will produce a shift of talented students from more lucrative careers into teaching.
Merit pay based on students test scores won't work because no one knows who gets the bonuses. If the public thinks that all teachers get paid a respectable salary, more people will be attracted to the profession.
Don't fall for the trick. They only do experiments with munny, and never the alternatives, so there is nothing to compare the result with, so there is no movement away from munny.
Notice the author selected Merkan Enterprize Institute for comment. That's a statement in itself.
US students fall behind other kids precisely because US adults, under relentless oppression by elites, fail to make connections between the school lessons and popular interests, i.e. peace, happiness, equity, justice, the beauty of nature, and the miracle of life. The result is great voids of disconnect in the kids' minds. See for yourself. Compare the average Merkan kid with those in other countries.
What studies have shown consistently over the years is that economic factors, broken families, lack of adequate health insurance, sub-standard living conditions and decrepit neighborhoods contribute more to "poor test scores" than anything else. An effective 'war on poverty' would do more to raise the average test scores than any bonus plan.
In countries like South Korea, where teachers earn around the same as in Nashville, students score much higher than American kids in Math and science. But unlike the U.S. South Korean children have universal healthcare, enough to eat, an advanced infrastructure that boasts the world's longest subway system and the most 'wired' (as in INTERNET) country on Earth.
Instead, in the U.S., corporate agendas have even high-jacked the public education system pushing for 'charter schools', eliminating organized labor from the history books and perpetuating the myth that America offers better opportunities than anywhere else. Until the general population learns to distrust the politicians who call for 'lowering taxes' and 'defending our borders', the U.S. education system won't fare better than the average third world country.
"Until the general population learns to distrust the politicians who call for 'lowering taxes' and 'defending our borders', the U.S. education system won't fare better than the average third world country."
Very good point. I would add that, when the US electorate develops a healthy suspicion of large corporations and their greed-driven operations, things will start to improve in all aspects of American life.
q
This is a remarkable comparison. Can you point me to the source of your figures on South Korea? Thanks.
The results of this study could also be broadened to the traditional Capitalist view that monetary rewards are the prime motive for human innovation and "improving themselves".
So true,Sabo, so true!
I and every other person with experience in the classroom has greeted the news of this study with the same expression: "Duh!"
Whether anyone on the right will admit it or not, nobody goes into education for the money. Conservatives cannot understand the fact that working with and helping children and young adults is very rewarding and fulfilling work.
q
It is a little difficult to imagine going into teaching for the money, isn't it?
It makes sense that if one offers a good commission for teaching, one will attract the types of people who talk and present for commission now: salespeople. I suppose I could picture some of them teaching, but I find it unpleasant.
People teach because they like doing good work, but there is also a less altruistic reason, one that lurks like a shadow behind this debate and seldom seems to surface because the carrot and stick contingent want to deny it, and most teachers just experience it as "I like to teach."
But let's not keep it a secret: teachers have greater autonomy than corporate workers. This is way less true for K-12 than for those who teach adults. K-12 teachers are trapped between states and parents in ways that are almost never productive. But it is certainly true for almost all who teach adults.
That does not mean that one has more time to goof off, incidentally. I have never had so fine a job for goofing off as the Dilbert-esque variety of office jobs I had for a while. Like most tyrannies, corporations force employees to be present far more easily than they can force them to be productive. But institutional attempts to regularize what goes on in a classroom are even more futile. The state can force teachers to use their Columbus-sailed-the-ocean-blue history books, but it cannot easily track what they say while those books sit idly on a few dozen desks.
All that allows a certain amount of autonomy, creativity, personal responsiveness and so forth that cannot altogether be quashed without squashing the teaching process altogether.
I won't likely have a chance to test this, but I suspect that provides a motivation more inclined to attract people who actually belong in a class with students. Further, I suspect that it is exactly this quality of autonomy that those who wish to move to for-profit and pay-as-you-go education really wish to destroy.
I believe the above partly because every single conversation I had about education with banking executives during my several years in that industry always centered around how it did or did not prepare students to serve banking executives. I won't claim that I sampled a representative number of execs, but since this is also the way almost all other industry decisions get determined, I have to suspect that the results themselves are accurate.
By and large, the people who would pay teachers according to student test scores also think that schools should do certain things and avoid doing other things.
I believe I recall the lists I was given well enough to synthesize an approximation:
Students should be --
- Raised and schooled to support the dominant values of the society, particularly that part of the society that predominantly pays for education. I was told over and over again that this is "only natural and right" that an institution should in this way guard its self-preservation.
- Trained in the basic skills necessary to accomplish the tasks for which they might be hired. These include and are more or less limited to basic literacy for the masses, writing competency to about Freshman Composition for executives, and basic arithmetic and fundamental mathematics. Past that, people should be trained in specialities according to corporate need - so some students, presumably the higher testing or higher paying, should pass on to the study of engineering, architecture, pharmacy, medicine, law, and a few others.
- Taught "character." The execs criticised schools for not teaching character, but said that they hired graduates over non-graduates because the graduates showed character. When I asked about the apparent contradiction, most answered confidently that schools filtered out those with no character or poor character: the graduates had been able to "set a goal and stick with it despite hardship." And, apparently, according to the executives, despite the supposed fact that the schooling was largely useless in itself.
I submit that the quality they called "good character" we usually know as "obedience," or even the willingness and ability to sell out. To continue, their complaints against the school system are often that students "get in with those communist | liberal | idealist | eccentric teachers at that college | high school and spend 3 | 4 years engaging with teachers' individual ideas instead of working."
Without pretending that this represents everyone who would test teachers by testing students, we should recognize that the dominant motive of those who would test is not to create creative and resourceful graduates, but to limit the perspectives of a generation of meat-puppets.
Bardamu,
Excellent observations and commentary.
I am lucky to teach a subject-Spanish-that is not "state tested" and that the administrators know nothing about. So yes, I do get in my class, close the door and teach the way I believe Spanish should be taught. Fortunately in one sense and unfortunately in another I've never been motivated by money. I've always felt that no matter the job one should attempt it to the best of one's abilities. As I told my principal today much of what we attempt as "reform" in education is based on a bunch of lies and falsehoods. He was wondering why I didn't try to be an administrator (for which I'm qualified) or why I wasn't in Jeff City lobbying for change. I told him because I love being in the class room and working with the kids and it is absolutely the best job I've ever had (and I didn't start teaching until I was 38). He understood, so even though he's a youngster (35 or so), and he knows that my heart is in the right place even when I challenge his decisions (which really isn't that often).
"Real" teachers don't do it for the money, plain and simple and no amount of "incentives" will ever make a teacher better than if they didn't have said "incentives".
OYE
I am glad that some of the readers, and the article eventually, got to the reality that teachers don't get into 'teaching for the money', and they don't get into teaching to 'teach to the test'. Standardized tests help turn (or continue) schools into factories and do not open an educational environment, but they are handy for NON-teachers i.e. politicians, because numbers are more quantifiable, and 'profit'-view thinking is the current rage for most Americans. Yes teachers would like to be acknowledged and compensated for going above and beyond- but that is best done at the school leve. The Fed/State should give the money and get the hell out. (according to population, with a minimum grant guarantee.)
I've said before, I never criticize our troops because I've never been in battle; likewise, I never criticize our teachers, because I have been there.
“I don't read books, I write them.” -- Henry Kissinger
Schools are not businesses. Business tactics won't work.
No matter how much mayonnaise one adds to chicken shit, you cannot make it into chicken salad.
Let teachers teach.
"Let teachers teach."
A profound sentence, Dwyer. It really is as simple as that.
Business tactics haven't worked out so well for business either. Seems we just came through a massive private sector (bank) melt down.
Maybe we could give each student a stipend, bonus, or whatever based on their scores.
Sounds wacko but what about holding the students accountable? Consider the fact that teachers don't have a lot of control whether or not students choose to pay attention, read material, think, or do their work. The only weapon to date is being a "good" and inspiring teacher.
Maybe some financial incentive would get the parents to bring their kids back from Labor Day vacation on time or become more involved.
This would obviously be fraught with problems, but the point is that good teaching is only "good" if coupled with readiness on the part of the student.
If we are to teach the students to be robots, they can be educated by robots as well.
This may be their plan, resulting in more money for profitable wars, while also creating a surplus of ‘cannon-fodder’.
Market fundamentalism is fundamentally flawed. Economics is not a science with repeatable experiments. At best, economics is an approach to human psychology and behavior. As many know, human behavior can exhibit extremely wild swings.
In current American ideology, money or wealth is the panacea that solves all problems and economics is touted as the ideology's science.
Teachers are underpaid because many are civil servants and historically have voted Democratic.
"Teachers are underpaid because many are civil servants and historically have voted Democratic."
Good point. And add, because most are women.
Our 'leaders' are working on that problem as well. Scalia intends to save us from the horrors of our been-messed-with original Constitution. So, that’ll learn you a lesson, Arizona lady! Get back in your kitchen, fCs.
Even better, The Absolute Deciders, who recently decided on whom would serve them as President, will also guarantee the final elimination of those pesky unions as well.
Arizonally speaking, they are in the process of getting rid of all you cheeky thorns out there in the untamed American Desert.
In my 31 years of teaching I have yet to meet a teacher who went into the profession for the money. Of course we do not want to live in the shabby parts of town--unable to afford a night out, too poor to take occasional vacation trips--but middle class is good enough for us. What we do want is sufficient resources to do the job: a well-planned curriculum, supplies, books, a class size consistent with the possibility of helping every student during a class period, opportunities for professional development and--above all--the freedom to construct lessons according to our best understanding of children and subject matter. Duncan and his crowd don't get it: Because they are motivated by financial gain, they imagine everyone is. Their idea of reform reflects their own values. They do not take the time to ask teachers and administrators what they need, insisting they already know that information. But they don't.
"Duncan and his crowd don't get it: Because they are motivated by financial gain, they imagine everyone is."
The point is that Duncan is not a teacher and never has been one. I doubt that his inner circle contains any teachers either. If he knew anything about education he might have done a better job with the Chicago school system, and he certainly wouldn't have bought into the charter school mythology or the standardized test nonsense.
Obama spent most of his young years in private schools. He is as ignorant of ordinary classrooms as Duncan. That is why he hired him.
HA!
"The U.S. Department of Education has put a great deal of effort into luring school districts and states to try merit-pay systems as part of its Race to the Top competition"
This represents yet another clobbering of the people's dignity, sensibility and sanity by the radical fundamentalism of Das Kapital in the USA.
USan elites are trying to make Pavlov's dog salivate at munny with such programs, like they do with Madison Av marketeering. USan elites need to keep the pressure on the people to race the rat wheels "to the top".
The people don't have a natural greed potential to fuel ekonomic growath suitable to fill the bottomless pits of elite greed. So the elites fabricate funny munny to bribe the people to try to extract maximum "performance". And of course it doesn't work!
The elite enterprise simply doesn't work for the people. Only the PEOPLE'S enterprise works for the people. Can you distinguish the two?
I would like to second just about everything I've been reading on this site. I've never known a young person--and I've know many of them--who went into teaching for the money. They go into teaching because they're motivated to make a difference in the lives of young people.
If teachers were motivated by greed, they could have picked many other professions to go into--including politics, which is still the last refuge for the real scoundrels among us.
Once he is no longer head of the U. S. Department of Education, watch Arne Duncan hustle over to one of the big corporate charter schools or standardized testing companies to work for them as a lobbyist for a multi-million dollar salary.
Obama, Duncan and others in the current administration apparently think because everyone they know is motivated by greed, teachers must be too.
That's just more shallow, moronic corporate thinking.
our schools are only a reflection of our society,
in which everything has a price, and everyone is out for maximum private gain at any cost.
teachers are no different from used car sales people.
i participate in the game on a daily basis, too, however reluctantly.
but i will vote for an alternative way of life if it is offered as a choice.
i doubt it will this november, and i doubt the majority will choose it even if it becomes available.
curioussteve,
"teachers are no different from used car sales people"
How's that??? Obviously we all have basic needs but I do not understand this statement in the context of this article. Please elaborate.
Thanks,
OYE
Public schools should be shut down. They are useless and do great harm to kids. Khan Academy...John Taylor Gatto. All you need to get over the child destruction machine of public school education.
If you pay bad teachers enough money, they will telegraph the test answers to their students, or they will erase bad answers on the students' test papers afterward. A large-scale educational experiment called "Texas" showed that if you tied 10th grade test scores to merit pay or to teachers' jobs, 20% of the students in certain high schools would take the 9th grade for four years.
"First God made idiots. That was for practice. Then He made school boards." -- Mark Twain. Teachers' unions are a response to grandstanding school boards who mostly want perfect production-line educations out of minimum-wage slobs. It's the school board members who believe that first, that you can buy really superman teachers with piles of cash, and second, that in buying up the very few superman teachers on earth, you will gain enough leverage to bust the local teachers' union, and then you can pay superman minimum wage.
In a Los Angeles high school this fall I have four English classes of 40+ students. All talk of "small learning communities," "value-added" teaching, merit pay, and charters becomes irrelevant in such a situation.
According to Davis Guggenheim, Bill Gates, and Michelle Rhee on the Oprah Winfrey show this Wednesday, charter schools are the solution to the problems of public education. Forget equality, forget adequate funding, it's those all-powerful teachers unions that are the problem. I guess that's why schools in the South achieve such dynamic results (oh, they don't? Mississippi isn't leading the national renaissance? Hmmm...).
Such smart people, yet so clueless. Sad.
There is one thing teachers are not paid, and that is respect. No other profession is vilified and scapegoated so much for America's shortcomings. The mainstream media produces report after report that public eduction is in dire straits because unions make it impossible to fire lousy teachers, that if only we could clean house and stack the schools with bright young teachers eager to make a difference. If only we could fire the lousy teachers!
The truth is the turnover rate amongst new teachers is alarming and due to inexperience, they're some of the most incompetent. Many young, idealistic teachers quickly become jaded as reality sets in. Most will leave the profession within 3-5 years. Why? Because the job is difficult, emotionally demanding, and there is little thanks from society for the effort. What is painted romantically as some noble profession slowly reveals its true nature as teachers end up as unappreciated mediators between
a. the conformity mill that seeks skilled workers who unquestioningly meet criteria and respect authority and
b. a restless student body whose lack of interest in being manipulated through a series of predetermined hurdles manifests itself as a general herd mentality of disrespect and apathy
The mainstream media would have you believe we have an epidemic of lousy teachers. The only proof they have to show us is student failure. They refuse to consider any other variables that might be contributing, including variables which scholarly journals have correlated with student success for decades.
Did the child grow up in a household with two parents? Were television/video games limited? Did they get adequate nutrition? Did the parents finish high school or college? Were the children read to as young children before coming to school?
None of this matters. Blame the teachers. Fire the teachers.
individualist capitalism bring the worst out of all participants.
teachers, preachers, social workers, doctors, lawyers, used car salespersons, shop keepers, bankers, insurance company ceos, what have you.
there's no difference. everyone against everyone else.
"The truth is the turnover rate amongst new teachers is alarming and due to inexperience, they're some of the most incompetent. Many young, idealistic teachers quickly become jaded as reality sets in. Most will leave the profession within 3-5 years. Why? Because the job is difficult, emotionally demanding, and there is little thanks from society for the effort."
And, I would like to add, not all of us are "young." Some of us entered the profession later in life, earning advanced degrees and taking on massive student loan debt not even advisable for twenty-somethings. Public schools in my state are supposed to mentor new teachers for the first three years. In my first job in a public school, even though someone was paid extra money to mentor me, I had NO guidance or direction from anyone. I wasn't even given a curriculum until the second semester! Then when budget cuts kicked in, my school eliminated several positions, including mine. I'm starting to think that was a blessing (in spite of losing benefits and being unable to repay student loan debt, which keeps increasing because of interest) because I was not at all happy with what I was seeing, especially how schools are being run with the business model in mind(seems everyone is into Baldridge these days). Utter nonsense. I'm now underemployed, lacking health coverage again, but not nearly as stressed out as I used to be.
This is disrespectful to teachers... who have chosen to invest their lives into helping children about whom they care more than the government ever will.
Teachers rock!
Folks,
The following "logic" amazes me. How stupid is this guy?
"Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., said he does not believe the study says much of value and worries it will only confuse the issue.
“The fact that that teachers don’t respond to cash bonuses like rats do to food-pellets does nothing to diminish my confidence that it’s good for schooling if teacher pay better reflects the contributions that teachers make,” Hess said. “Serious proponents of merit pay believe the point is not any kind of short-term test-score bump but making the profession more attractive to talented candidates.”
So an empirical double blind type study which disproves his way of thinking won't "diminish" his "confidence" in merit pay. Wow, the wall is painted red and he would still insist that just because everyone else says it's white and a color spectrum analysis proved it was red wouldn't "diminish" his "confidence" in believing its white. Is that not a sign that his "take" on the world is wrong?
Or that “Serious proponents of merit pay believe the point is not any kind of short-term test-score bump but making the profession more attractive to talented candidates.” No shit sherlock, "making the profession more attractive" might help but you ain't gonna accomplish that through merit pay. Merit pay diminshes the attractiveness of teaching in my way of thinking.
What we have here is a classic case of a person who is motivated by greed, i.e., his love of money. And a person who can't empathize with/understand those who are not motivated by money-and from experience I would say that 99% of the teachers are not motivated by money otherwise they wouldn't have become teachers-DUH! And these are the people who think they have "solutions" to our problems-which can be solved through that great incentive-money. What a joke!
OYE
Out of all the jobs in America, doctors,politicians,lawyers, bakers, candlestick makers ect, only teachers are threatened with merit pay based on the end results of their work. How about merit pay for politicians who increase living wage jobs to cover all Americans.If the Americans don't do well on the jobs then the politicians get cuts in their pay. Lets try merit pay for lawyers based on successful cases. See how fast it would be against the law to establish merit pay for any occupation.
The results of this study involving middle-school math teachers are politically less important than the reaction of the proponents of merit pay to them: "Facts don't matter, we know it works and we intend to continue as if it does". They have the same reaction to the studies of charter schools showing they don't improve student performance. Improving students' performance was never the point in any case. The point is that merit pay and charter schools do two things well: they lessen the membership numbers of public employee unions and augment the amount of public money flowing into private coffers. Whether it's Democrats or Republicans doing the addition and subtraction this is the kind of math neoliberals love.