Let's see how DU feels about merit pay for teachers.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

Poll question: Let's see how DU feels about merit pay for teachers.

Are you for it or against it?

I'm absolutely against it. I think there is no way to accurately assess teacher performance and I think it would create an atmosphere of favoritism, backstabbing, and behind-the-scenes politicking.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Merit pay is political pay.

When they start paying bonuses for children learning how to CRITICALLY THINK, I might come around.

[EFerrari]

4. I saw on CSPIN that some venues actually do use that.

Maybe it was a DC district?

[XemaSab]

2. I am for firing bad teachers outright

n/t

[EFerrari]

6. Right -- so then we have a fucked up, underfunded school system

that has little political support and you got rid of a few outliers. :shrug:

[XemaSab]

11. We have a fucked up, underfunded school system

Where burnouts, child haters, and other bad eggs are no longer dragging down the whole school.

[EFerrari]

12. You can't drag down what is already scraping the floor.

Do you remember that joke that, if there were two alcoholics at a convention, they'd find each other and try to reproduce?

That's how our school system is right now. I don't even know how folks deal with teaching K-12 in what remains of our public ed system. And it's just too easy to blame teachers, the GLUE, for the screwed up policy and withdrawn resources of the last thirty years. There aren't that many child haters and burnouts in the country.

[XemaSab]

13. From 5-8

I had 2 child haters and 3 burnouts.

A patch like that can really warp a kid. :(

[EFerrari]

19. Oh, I hear that. There are @ssholes in every profession.

:(

I had to fight a group shaming my kid for having a reading problem. He was nearly expelled before I figured out what the problem was and it was years of fighting. :(

But if you put people into an insane environment, they tend not to do well.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

60. Child hating teachers, eh?

Riiiiight.

[Donnachaidh]

114. yeah -- they DO exist.

And while I will wholeheartedly praise the very FEW outstanding teachers my kid has had (we also keep in touch, because they are STILL interested in hearing about former students) there were a small percentage who were BAD with a capital B, and should not be in the school system.

Kids emotionally damaged by bad teachers early on have a really hard time with trust issues later on. These *teachers* can inflict irreparable damages to youngsters. And sticking your fingers in your ears and singing lala la when people point this out does NOTHING to solve the problem.

[DKRC]

119. My mother used to come home from teaching

and slap the shit outta me each day because she couldn't hit the kids in her classes. Three of my aunts were teachers, but only one of them hated kids. You've no idea of some of the twisted feelings hidden behind smiling faces in the classroom.

[readmoreoften]

7. I'm with you. If they're not doing their job, fire them. If they are, pay them. (modified)

It's really simple.

Let me modify this: if teachers are SO TERRIBLE that they can't get it together in their first 5 years, fire them. Then perhaps have post-tenure review every 15 years. Beyond that, pay the damn teachers.

[EFerrari]

3. I think it is possible to assess teachers but that's nowhere near

where we need to start the repair of our schools. And, yes, this is political red meat and I wish Obama's people wouldn't drag our teachers into their strategy after the decades of cr@p said teachers have already been dragged through.

[JuniperLea]

32. I think too many are assuming what those merits might be

And it has never been clearly stated.

[EFerrari]

36. It's a little weird to start off with teachers and not with the political

erectile dysfunction when it comes to public ed that we've been dealing with for all these years. :shrug:

[JuniperLea]

40. Yep, I'll agree to that...

This is by far the least explained suggestion, program, or comment to come out of the Obama administration. But then, he does listen, and he does make himself clear.

One thing I know for sure... school administrators should not be the people making the decisions... I've never met one who had two brain cells to rub together.

If this is going to be an Obama plan, I think he's smart enough to come up with the criteria and means. I hope he does it soon.

[EFerrari]

41. He's sitting a whole buffet of problems, that's for sure. n/t

[phantom power]

5. I think merit pay is just fine.

I also think that teacher salaries should all be double what they are. Or more. It's a highly skilled job, and a valuable job.

[anigbrowl]

16. Me too. Many of the arguments against are specious.

'teachers of less gifted kids would suffer'

Only if you reward people based on absolute academic achievment. It is perfectly possible to reward people based on relative improvement. To my mind,being able to consistently lift weak students from a D to a C is just as worthy of reward as being able to Keep the A students at the top of their game.

'there's no fair way to assess it'

Says who? I can think of lots of ways to assess it, with checks and balances to prevent any one factor from being over-weighted.

'every student is different, some are hard to teach'

But every teacher is equally effective? I don't think so.

I'm strongly in favor of public schooling. I'm also in favor of it being done to a very high standard, and of constantly looking for ways to improve it.

[Maru Kitteh]

100. Many teachers face classrooms where 1 out of 6 kids is homeless or for other reasons

have very high rates of mobility.

Merit pay would financially incentivize the wholesale dumping of children facing any challenge whatsoever - far beyond the damage already done by NCLB. Merit pay is absolutely the worst possible thing that could happen to students.

[PassingFair]

8. No two students or two classrooms are exactly alike.

It will be impossible to establish
fair guidelines.

[anigbrowl]

18. So what?

this is true in many other contexts, but we find ways to measure productivity.

[EFerrari]

20. Teachers are evaluated all the time. I don't know where people

get the idea that they're not.

[JuniperLea]

29. Maybe it's all the bad apples we encounter?

I dunno... just saying.

[EFerrari]

39. This is a snipe hunt. People who don't do their jobs

especially in settings like ed that depend so much on collaboration, get gone.

This is the same argument as the car manufacturers are going broke because of unions and that Americans have no jobs because of Mexicans. The problem is systemic, not a few bad actors. :shrug:

[JuniperLea]

44. Oh, I agree! It's systemic...

And it starts with the individual states.

The only problem with the "get gone" situation, is that school administrators are the ones who set up the political atmosphere... and they don't do their jobs when they overlook problems and don't get the bad apples gone.

[EFerrari]

47. In some cases, they collect them. That's right!

It kills me to see what effing RAYGUN et all have done to our schools. :grr:

[anigbrowl]

52. Exactly!

In addition, because we don't have nationwide administrative standards for education, there are also places where administrators are limited by the rules of their school district and can't always make changes that might benefit the students. It's a multi-dimensional problem.

[TahitiNut]

57. "a snipe hunt"! Yup! That's a VERY apt characterization.

The idiocy I'm reading on DU regarding this 'phantom menace' is truly bizarre.

[EFerrari]

59. 30 years of Republican predations. In a way, I don't blame people.

It just wouldn't even occur to us or to Obama to reward A SCHOOL for doing well. When asked to agree to punishing INDIVIDUALS, suddenly that makes sense to us. :shrug:

[anigbrowl]

97. Ahem

I'd like to see one place where someone has mentioned schools should not be rewarded or that merit pay should only be used as a stick with which to beat teachers (rather than reward them). At least some of us on the other side of this debate have also grown up and/or had kids elsewhere besides the United States, and might just have some other basis for our views besides Republican conditioning.

It saddens me that because you don't like the direction of the discussion, you're so quick to ascribe behavior and conditioning to the abstract 'other' to pre-empt and refute opinions which nobody has actually expressed. It's a 'straw man' style of argument, and frankly it's patronizing. Clearly, you feel strongly on behalf of teachers, but neither the form nor the content of your argument do any credit to the profession of teaching.

[EFerrari]

110. Have you read this board today?

I don't have to ascribe anything to anyone -- there's a brallion posts out there about getting rid of bad teachers, firing bad teachers and holding bad teachers to account. The entire day has been focused on the individual as if teachers are somehow freestanding magicians that teach one child at a time in a bubble.

Sorry, I'm not the one dancing around with strawmen here.

[anigbrowl]

118. Yes, and you keep avoiding the fact that some teachers are bad.

There are systemic flaws in the education system to do with lack of money and poor policy making. Nobody denies this. However, there are ALSO some bad teachers who are secure in their positions and reflect poorly on the profession. Everyone who has been to school can remember teachers who were particularly good and teachers that were not. It's one issue, among many, that needs dealing with.

[EFerrari]

120. I've not avoid any such. It's just STUPID to start mid food chain

if you really want to reform the whole system.

[sense]

109. From the toxic teachers we experience

9 years after my son's last toxic teacher she's still there and I hear from kids and parents that she's still abusing children.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

21. This isn't a business though.

It can't be run on a corporate model of "productivity".

[anigbrowl]

26. Productivity isn't a corporate model

I've worked for myself, in business, and in the public sector. I have encountered laziness and productivity in all 3 contexts. It's not meant to imply an assembly-line approach.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

28. I just think the art of teaching

is not cut and dry enough to have a fair merit-based system.

[anigbrowl]

31. Why not?

Lots of professions are complex, but we find a way to discriminate between good and bad practitioners. I don't think the seniority system is particularly fair either.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

34. If someone can come up

with a fair system, I'm all ears.

[EFerrari]

33. Yes it is a corporate model. How would you measure the number

of budding critical thinkers in a classroom? You can't count their brain cells pulsing, how hard or how often they pulse.

We're talking about teaching kids to learn here, not about how many units you got out the door today.

[anigbrowl]

48. One small improvment...

would be to administer more written exercises in tests and homeworks, and drastically reduce the use of multiple-choice testing. I mean, if I followed your argument to its logicial conclusion, I might just as well say taht since no test or even teaching assessment can fully identify the degree of learning taken place by an individual student, we might as well scrap all academic evaluation, give everyone a degree for showing up, and wait to see who excels in the post-academic world.

Of course, I'm sure you have no intention of abolishing all evaluation, but I frankly don't understand this resistance to trying to measure the effectiveness of teachers over the period of a semester or a year, or longer for that matter.

[EFerrari]

54. I'm only saying that corporate models are not flexible or sensitive enough

to really work on a classroom where so much of the work isn't even expressed out loud. That little girl in the back that didn't raise her hand may have had a thought that will allow her to do better in Algebra next year but, there's no way to measure that.

Imho, it's fine to continue to evaluate teachers. They need the feedback. But to introduce merit pay on the premise that it will improve our schools is sort of cheap and badly thought out.

[PassingFair]

25. Children are not products. Schools are NOT businesses.

Any "handicapping" system will be abused.

[anigbrowl]

30. And the system we have now is never abused? Come off it.

Nobody said that children were products or that schools were businesses. That doesn't mean education, alone among human endeavors, isn't subject to assessment (which as EFerrari points out, already takes place).

[PassingFair]

55. Of COURSE there is some "assessment" now!

Come off it yourself...

If teachers are consistently late,
if they are abusive, if they are
new,if they work for inner cities
or suburbs... lots of variables already
contribute to pay scales.

But every class is a mixed bag --
impossible to pay on "merit".

It's not a matter of how many widgets
they screw into how many whatknots...

[anigbrowl]

96. Er yes, that's what I said.

What's impossible about it? why isn't it possible to look at where the class is at the beginning of a semester or academic year, and compare how they are doing at the end, and compare that with how other classes do as well as how that class (or the aggregate of its members) have performed in the past? This is something that would work as well for special needs kids or failing students as for A students.

Some people keep posting over and over again that it's 'undoable' as if there were only one way of examining productivity. What I'm sensing is a resistance to ANY kind of measurement. Come to think of it, I mentioned once before that perhaps students should have some small input into assessments of teacher quality, and that went down as if I'd suggested birds should fly backwards and rivers run uphill.

[rwheeler31]

9. Been there done that it is never decided fairly.

We had administrators giving points for Church attendance, it was a joke. They scraped it about 3 years in.

[XemaSab]

14. Scraped it?

:shrug:

[ProdigalJunkMail]

22. You're all about spotting the typographical errors today.

Fun...

sP

[noamnety]

58. I prefer to think of it as performance art

She's demonstrating what the world would be like if we all focused on NCLB standardized testing criteria, rather than critical thinking skills. :)

[XemaSab]

101. Au contraire

I am demonstrating what the world would be like if we focused on real learning instead of bullshit tests.

Being able to put together and dissect a sentence are essential for critical thinking.

[noamnety]

102. Heh.

Tell it to my husband, the dyslexic engineer, who couldn't dissect a sentence to save his soul. :)

The most brilliant person I know has some kind of magnetic force field that pulls typos to his fingertips every time he touches a keyboard.

Correcting typos on the internet is not as close to real learning as some would have us believe. I think it has far more in common with the bullshit tests than it does with any real critical thinking.

It's late, I'm reading some favorite blogs and I've stumbled across this, which is also appropriate, lest we get too full of our own intelligence and notions of superiority:

"Haitians are largely poor and illiterate, but their knowledge of their environment – physical and cultural – is manifold and deep. During my 21 different visits to Haiti (I returned often after I left the military), my own ineptitude at pretty much everything was always a source of amusement – especially to women and children. They are illiterate for the most part; but they are far from stupid."

- http://www.insurgentamerican.net/2009/02/25/stay-in-love-with-god-%E2%80%93-wesley-haiti-and-the-withered-hand/

[XemaSab]

103. Actually, you're totally right

Some people are gifted thinkers, but not gifted writers.

Sadly, I have spent the week editing behind people who are neither gifted thinkers nor gifted writers.

Honestly, how can someone say "Water quality in the Sacramento River is basically good," then back that up with 15 pages discussing the various toxins the river is heavily polluted with? :banghead:

There are people who have legitimate problems with writing, and I cannot fault them for true disabilities, but it seems to me that careless spelling and grammar often go hand in hand with careless logic and reasoning.

[noamnety]

115. I thought the same before I became a teacher

I was used to thinking that reading and writing were absolutely linked to intelligence.

If I were an English teacher, I might still believe that, I'm not sure. But I teach in the arts and sometimes in the community with my students, and I have the luxury of working mainly with a different part of people's brains. I have a far better understanding of multiple intelligences than when I was younger. I've had kids who had cognitive impairment from lead poisoning or fetal alcohol poisoning, who honestly had more maturity and ability to see the big picture - and talk persuasively and movingly about it on film - than some of the students who get A's and can write with proper grammar, but can't seem to demonstrate any critical thinking skills at all. Unfortunately, our testing counts the first two kids as failures and the third as a "success" - but my real success and impact is with those first two kids, and they have a type of intelligence the tests don't measure which is likely to result in them having far more positive impact on their communities. There is no test to measure for that.

I've written about him before here, but one of the people I value most in my life is a guy who I think was homeless, I know had a drinking problem, and could barely read. When someone in his community had his house lifted off their foundation in the Katrina floods and didn't have the insurance money to hire a contractor to move his entire house 6 inches back onto its foundation, he figured out a way to fix it using scavenged fence posts, some carjacks, and no heavy equipment.

I wouldn't refer to people with different sorts of intelligences as having "true disabilities," as if you either are smart and can write well, or you are in special ed. People don't come in binary modes like that. We would be poor teachers if we prejudged our students based on their spelling and grammar and assumed they were less intelligent or less capable of reasoning because of that.

[Ohio Joe]

10. Against

My mother teaches "emotionally disturbed" children in a NJ inner city.

[ColbertWatcher]

15. Against.

This is a simplistic "solution" to a very complex problem.

[fed_up_mother]

17. I am for merit pay but not based on test scores.

Or test scores should account for no more than a very small percentage of the overall evaluation. Superior, innovative, creative teachers deserve to be rewarded for inspiring their fellow students and teachers and you can do that in all types of environments. It might look totally different in an inner city school from a rich suburban school, but that's just the point. The innovative teacher who can work within his or her particular environment and do a superior job relative to that environment deserves to be recognized.

Can an element of unfairness slip in? Sure. but life sucks. Deal with it. In the end, however, most of the teachers who deserve to be rewarded will be rewarded.

[Deja Q]

23. The teaching profession involves too many ambient variables...

Not to mention that the students would all have to love the teacher, which means the teacher in turn might fudge some numbers too to engender false popularity, which in turn cheats the students out of a proper education. :(

[Ian David]

24. I'm still undecided. n/t

[JuniperLea]

27. My pay and my bonuses are purely merit based...

And there's none of those things you mention in our company, even though there is one bonus pool from which we are all paid, and for which we are all striving.

This is a broad-brush question. You can't really know for sure unless the criteria of merit is clearly noted, and none of us know what it is, so anything we say is pure speculation.

[EFerrari]

56. The thing is -- and this is so funny -- that building a community

is all about not measuring, isn't it? All about not looking to see if that other guy got a bigger piece of cake than you did? lol

It's about contributing all you can for the greater good. Sometimes if you do it right, no one will ever see you doing anything.

So, that's another place where there is tension. How do you measure a good, consistent and mostly invisible contribution that bolsters an academic community?

Imho, a better idea would be to reward a school as a whole. Because that would really foster the kind of team work that is needed day to day.

[JuniperLea]

73. Reward schools as a whole... excellent!

Have you read anything about my former employer, Eli Broad, and the charter schools around Los Angeles? He also awards other public schools who have shown solid achievement. EB is one of the most brilliant men I've ever had the pleasure to meet.

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS209612+17-Jan-2008+BW20080117

[EFerrari]

75. I haven't but thanks, I'd like to.

:hi:

[JuniperLea]

77. Google his name...

And be amazed at what a progressive billionaire can do with money! Working for his (second) company was by far the most rewarding experience in my life... career wise as well as personally enriching.

:hi:

[EFerrari]

76. You also made me get something else that may be key here.

When people try to participate in an academic community and are let down, are failed, then the betrayal of trust is just so much, much deeper than it would be if you could just blame one asshole.

So, when the Republicans started to take our schools apart, in a very real way, they were also dismantling our communities and our ability to trust our communities.

Mofos.

If that is true, no wonder DUers feel so strongly about being failed. They were failed by a community they were asked to trust. It doesn't get worse than that unless you drag a lover into it.

[JuniperLea]

78. OMG! This post gave me chills!

You really did hit on something here. It truly is hard to trust once you've been wronged. Spot on.

We lost our sense of community when the busing started. Instead of wasting money on traipsing poor exhausted school kids around town, adding to the pollution and the kids' exposure to same, they should have used that money for the schools! If anything, change the teachers around, not the students? That money could have been used to make sure that all of our schools were equally staffed and supplied.

I feel betrayed by my early academic experience, as do my kids. They can all read and write, more because of their parents than their school. There were several stand-out, wonderful teachers, no question. But the damage done by poor administration, and horrific laws, can't be overcome by a few good teachers. Sadly.

[EFerrari]

80. And busing (sic) didn't work. Our school system was never integrated,

not really. What happened was the "black" schools were closed down and black kids were shoved into white schools. And then a new cycle of cr@p just started, all over again. :(

But, the Republicans aren't stupid. And their idea to tear our school system apart was a very successful and disruptive one, for sure, whether we were dealing with the issue of race or not.

They have taught a whole generation of parents that the school system is not their partner and in that way, degraded our communities. :shrug:

eta: thanks, my friend, for letting me think along with you. :pals:

[JuniperLea]

81. It was a disaster!

Kids left home too early, didn't get enough sleep, didn't have time for breakfast. There was a lot of resentment. I sent my kids to some very rough schools because it was the only place they could take programs like computer science and advanced language.

FYI... and not in a snarky way...

Both are correct... busing and bussing... though MS Word, and the DU spellchecker don't like the later;)

Main Entry: 2bus
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): bused also bussed; bus·ing also bus·sing
Date: circa 1909
intransitive verb
1: to travel by bus
2: to work as a busboy
transitive verb
1: to transport by bus
2 a: clear 4d <bus dishes> b: to remove dirty dishes from <bus tables>

I'll think along with you any day, pal! Brainstorming is an art-form. There are a lot of people who just can't do it.

:hug:

[EFerrari]

84. "Bussing" means "kissing" or, it meant kissing in standard English

until we sent the kids all over the place.

:crazy:

[JuniperLea]

91. LOL!

Yeah, I'm sick of the changes those Webster peeps have made in the dictionary too! Then Microsoft follows suit... everyone is so wishy-washy! I'm sure it comes from bussing... or busing... or kissing... I hear a girl can get preggers that way too!

haha!

[Uzybone]

35. If a teacher sucks, they should be outta there

Let people who know what they are doing teach our kids. If we can find a reasonable way to measure teacher performance, I'm all for merit pay. Those who care, work hard and effectively shouldn't be dumped in with the minority of slackers just there to collect a paycheck.

[Incitatus]

37. I am against it. Just pay them a decent salary to attract better qualified teachers

and fire the incompetent ones.

[TahitiNut]

38. It's sure easy to see those whom the public education system has failed.

Reading comprehension, critical thinking, and analytical skills are sadly absent in the postures taken by too many.

Fallacious 'reasoning' seems to be a plague these days. Some don't even seem to have the foggiest idea what's meant by a 'fallacy.' Sad.

[EFerrari]

64. A fallacy is a fashion error committed after Labor Day?

:silly:

[Donald Ian Rankin]

42. I would be for merit pay for teachers if someone can come up with good measures of merit.

I think that the big problem with merit-based pay for teachers is with the likely execution rather than the concept - paying teachers according to the test scores of the children they teach will lead to them teaching to the test, and the current tests are such that teaching to the test will lead to omitting all sorts of vital things.

I don't think that that problem is ever going to be totally solvable, but I think that if better ways of measuring merit than pupils' test scores are used then merit pay might have a lot to recommend it. I don't know of any such methods of measuring, but that doesn't mean they don't exist, and while I'm not certain they do that's the way I'd bet.



Teaching is a profession with a great tendency to burn people out - I've seen several friends go into it bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and get increasingly disillusioned over just a few years.

Rewarding teachers for keeping doing well at their jobs is a good way to keep even burned-out teachers teaching as well as they can.

[mwooldri]

43. In principle I am for merit pay.

Why? I simply don't know any other system that is around to reward successful teachers or any mechanism that could inspire average teachers to become successful teachers.

Sure there's plenty of teachers in the job because they love to teach and that is what drives them. But there's nothing better that will help morale - even in those who love to teach - than some kind of reward for a job well done. How do you do it? Sure the PTA could work and create some Teacher Appreciation Day event and that'd be nice... but this isn't always teacher specific.

I think a lot of teachers when they think of merit pay think that only the teachers who teach at top flight schools that are well funded, have engaged parents and students, are the ones who are going to benefit. Surely the teacher who accepts an assignment at a school like Eastside High in Paterson, NJ and manages to improve their students X% as a whole - now that's success in my eyes.

I work in business as a call center coach - and yes "teaching" is in my job description. I'm held accountable to my "students" and I am paid if overall they improve or not if they decline. I'm no way near as qualified as a school teacher but in my field my results are easily quantifiable and I am paid for improvements not just achieving set targets (which happens when released back to the production environment). In school teaching things are just not that easily quantified and "teaching to the test" really isn't true teaching at all.

So if no merit pay, how do you reward the successful teachers?

Mark.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

45. It's a good question.

I really don't know and am up for hearing ideas on how to fairly implement a reward system.

[bridgit]

46. 'I am against merit pay' unless teachers receive merits for passing through, say, oh, 2-3 ...

metal detectors just to get to their rooms while shelling out their own money for supplies I'm sure there's other ways to factor merit too :thumbsup:

[Bluenorthwest]

49. Teachers should get Wall Street style merit pay

Piles of money just for showing up. Destroy the world, get a performance bonus!

[Fresh_Start]

50. other

many professions which have merit pay don't have any accurate way to assess performance.
Likewise there is favoritism, backstabbing, and behind-the-scenes politicking.
Its just the real world.

Nothing unique about the teacher situation.

[EFerrari]

61. Well, yes and no. Teachers are up to their eyebrows in the real world.

Remember? We're supposed to introduce our students to the "real world" in such a way that they can understand it, figure it out and learn to deal with it themselves.

And, there really is no cognate in our society for what teachers do. So, yes, there is something unique about what teachers do.

[Fresh_Start]

67. I stand by my statement

the objections raised by the OP to merit pay for teachers
there is no way to accurately assess performance
it would create an atmosphere of favoritism, backstabbing, and behind-the-scenes politicking.

are in no way unique to the teaching profession.

[EFerrari]

68. But the atmosphere of trust, of cooperation and safety is unique

to the risk taking that learning requires.

[Fresh_Start]

69. no, many professions require trust and cooperation

between a wide group of people who's interests are not perfectly aligned

[EFerrari]

70. Baloney. Doctors, lawyers, researchers, other professionals

are dealing with their peers, not with students, with children.

Any collaboration requires a degree of what our kids classrooms' require to work. That doesn't make them cognates.

[Fresh_Start]

83. You don't know what you are talking about

if you believe all collaboration within business or government or the non-profit sector is between peers.

[EFerrari]

85. How many 10 year olds have you sat with in conference?

[Fresh_Start]

86. Only a few 10 year olds

but many teenagers.

How many regulators, officers of the court, vendors, competitors and customers have you conferenced with?

[EFerrari]

87. Lots. 10 years in commercial real estate, 10 in city government

translating in federal courts.

YOU don't know what you're talking about. There is no comparison between the classroom and the market place expect by someone who has a stake in the latter.

[Fresh_Start]

89. so in all your vast experience you were always the "peer"

of everyone you had to work with?

[EFerrari]

92. In all my vast experience, I have always been more of a peer

to other ADULTS than I would be to a child, yes.

[Fresh_Start]

93. Peer in business is not a matter of age

its a matter of position or authority. Every 25 year old is not equal, nor is every 45 year old or every 65 year old.

[EFerrari]

95. Right. And the power diferential is nothing like it would be

between you and a five year old.

[stray cat]

51. I'm for keeping good teachers and firing bad teachers just like any profession

On the East coast at least in places teachers make almost 100,000 a year for a 9 month appointment - less than I make year round teaching medical school. That isn't a bad salary and teachers should be competent.

[burning rain]

53. I'm inclined to oppose it.

Merit pay is pushed by the GOP in general, Southern Republicans in particular, as a way to try to weaken teachers' unions. I doubt the intent has anything to do with improving public education. Since when have Republicans ever concerned themselves with that? It's surely more about making public education more business-like and saving money on teachers' pay on balance.

[etherealtruth]

62. If there was some quantitative way to weigh

a teachers performance as compared to a merely adequate teacher's performance I would be all for it. Sadly, it is pretty apparent when a teacher sucks (for lack of a better word)and it is measurable (by any measure of student learning). Too many variables come in to play when attempting to measure student learning and without a quantitative measure a merit pay system would be open to far too many abuses.

Like medicine and nursing teaching is an art .... and like physicians, teachers do an extremely poor job of "policing" themselves.

I voted "other" because I don't have a clue.

[Still Sensible]

63. i am for merit pay, but I haven't seen a merit pay plan that

makes sense--for many of the reasons others have stated here. The common problem most public schools face is an incredibly broad range in the quality of teachers. Most schools have some great teachers, some very good teachers, some average teachers and some poor teachers. And of course you sometimes come across the unbelievably poor teacher.

All of the "...atmosphere of favoritism, backstabbing, and behind-the-scenes politicking" exists now in every school I have come across. Would a merit pay system make those phenomena worse? Hard to say, but it certainly wouldn't appear to be something that would make it any better.

Teachers are terribly underpaid. The most cited reasons for this come from "conservatives" who blovate about teachers only working nine months, having shorter work days and the like, which is pure bullshit. My wife is a teacher with 25 years experience and I assure you it is more than a full time job. She spends more than half her summer preparing for the upcoming school year and attending classes and workshops. Schools are very often overstaffed in administration and understaffed with teachers. This is because the "admin" avenue is one of the very few ways people in the field have any chance for advancement. Many good teachers leave the classroom and enter administration because it is the only way they have to get a promotion. These two issues must be addressed in any new, large scale plan.

The other problem that complicates all this is that it is very hard to remove a "tenured" teacher even if that person's performance is questionable or downright weak. Once a teacher earns tenure, often the only way they can lose that job is by downright immoral or illegal behavior.

All that said, I keep an open mind hoping for some measures that can deal with these issues and improve the public school systems.

[EFerrari]

65. There's something really gross about offering "merit pay"

to underpaid public servants. It's just creepy. It's like offering to not beat someone if they're "good".

[LanternWaste]

66. If students were as standardized as the tests...

I cannot in good conscience allow merit-based pay any consideration. If students were as standardized as the tests, I would allow greater reconsideration of my position.

Yet as every student is as unique as every snowflake, I would hazard that part and parcel of merit-based pay would be based on factors wholly outside of the educators technical duty and moral responsibility.

Factories that receive sub-grade material send that material back to the supplier. Schools do not do this-- indeed, schools spend additional time, effort and money on this very same "sub-grade" material, oftentimes hoping against hope that the material may be molded into what society expects from this "factory".

[petronius]

71. I wouldn't oppose merit pay raises if there was a system for equitably determining merit,

clear expectations, and an appeals process for those who are denied. However, those things are huge difficulties and points of contention here at the university level, so I imagine it would be even harder at the el-hi level.

Personally, I'm going to keep thinking that teacher merit pay is a bad idea until I see crystal-clear evidence of some sort of fair workable plan...

[Bill McBlueState]

72. I'm against it

There *has to* be a way to accurately assess teacher performance, just like we can accurately assess someone's performance in anything else.

But I have no reason to believe that instituting merit pay will actually accomplish this.

[Edweird]

74. Against. Merit pay is just another tool for the admins to screw over the teachers.

It may work in a factory, but not in a school.

[Midlodemocrat]

79. It would completely work if site based management was eliminated.

Same as answering to a board of trustees or directors or shareholders. WHich, as parents and taxpayers, we are, sort of.

Frankly, I'd rather eliminate tenure. Because the easiest way to give out merit pay is to use standardized testing and that is simply not fair.

The best teacher can't get a child who doesn't 'get it' to get it and the teacher suffers? That's wrong.

WHen I was evaluating my department, there were numerous things I had to critique them on which, interestingly, 20 years later, still resonate with me when I am filling out my own evaluation for my raise.

[readmoreoften]

82. And if kids really hate a teacher than gives them too much work, they can screw up the test

so the teacher loses her house. Democracy! :sarcasm:

[file83]

112. Exactly. Stupid/disruptive kids will revel in knowing their stupidity will hurt the teacher

financially. Merit based pay is a very dumb idea.

[proud2BlibKansan]

88. Against

There was once upon a time a bonus pay system in my school district that the teachers liked but of course it was eventually eliminated.

We got an extra $350 if we met an attendance criteria (don't remember exactly but I think you could only be absent twice all year); you had to have 90% of your parents attend PT conferences and you had to contact each parent at least once a month.

Something like that might work. Of course it would need to be a much larger bonus than $350. LOL

[TBF]

90. This would be a better poll if only teachers would be asked

whether they are for or against it. I know what merit pay does in the corporate environment so I'd be against it in theory, but I'd be interested in how teachers themselves view the topic.

My daughter attends an excellent public school (believe it or not here in Texas!) and I'd pay her teacher whatever she wanted.

[baldguy]

94. How about merit pay for administrators?

For parents?
For students?

If it sounds absurd for these groups, why isn't it absurd for teachers?

[mykpart]

98. How about merit pay for members of Congress?

[mwooldri]

105. Congress kind of get to set their own pay anyway. Plus they do get reviewed...

... periodically by their end "customers". Perform well enough, keep your job. Be absolutely appalling, lose it.

Well that's how it's supposed to work but some Congresscritters have jerryrigged it so that no matter how poorly they perform they get to keep their jobs for life.

Mark.

[EFerrari]

106. Mike Moore once pointed out that their return rate is higher than

the Politburo's was. Something over 95%.

[aikoaiko]

99. if its true some teachers are better than others & quality of teaching impacts student learning,

then I support assessing and rewarding merit.

[QC]

104. It was a lousy idea when the Republicans pushed it, and it's still shit.

Just more of the corporate model, the notion that competition is always and everywhere a good thing. Free market education! It never occurs to these people that there can be such a thing as collegial and cooperative relationships--everything is about competition.

[last_texas_dem]

107. Against it

As I commented the other day, merit pay would be a good idea if every teacher's classroom consisted of equal numbers of like-minded robots from the same background, of the same intelligence level, with the same experiences, etc. Or perhaps simply equal numbers of students possessing the ability to start every year as a completely blank slate. Otherwise, yeah... I think the idea of "merit pay" sucks.

[Radical Activist]

108. I had too many mean, spiteful, innefective teaches who made me hate school

and who should have retired long before I was in their class for me to believe that seniority is the best way to reward teachers. The teachers I have positive memories about were all under 40. Low starting pay is keeping new teachers out of the profession and the seniority system is keeping in teachers who should be doing something else for a living.

[file83]

111. Okay then, bump up starting pay, then problem solved.

[Radical Activist]

113. Bumping up starting pay is a must.

But you know that's only half the equation.

[Eryemil]

116. Against of course -- What a stupid idea n|t

[Lisa0825]

117. Other. I would be for such things as...

paying more for advanced degrees and certifications, and other items that are easy to view objectively. I would not be for measurements that are flawed due to things like kids with learning barriers, overcrowding, etc. I don't like trying to measure the success of a teacher by testing students, but I think there are things we can pay them more for fairly.