About Teachers, Merit Pay and My learning experience.

[BlueJazz]

This whole Deal about Merit Pay is one of the most unfair practices I've ever heard in my short 33 years of Life.....
..And I'll tell you Why...

When I was in College, I had the questionable experience of driving a school bus in the early morning and late afternoon.
(I needed the money).

My Route in the morning was a Pleasure. The Kids I picked up were (mostly) polite, respectful and caused very few problems.
They would get on the Bus and say something like "Morning' Mr. Bluejazz" (Me) and act like well-behaved children should act.
If there was any trouble..(Yelling or whatever)....a stern look from myself would be all that I had to do to restore peace and quiet on the Bus. ....needless to say, they were from good middle-class families and lived in a "Nice" part of town.

And then there was the afternoon route...
The Kids came from the lower end of the "scale" and obviously had more problems then I (sometimes) care to think about.
Their greeting was usually a scowl or a look of distrust and hate. They would start throwing things, screaming obscenities the moment they boarded the bus.
I remember the first day I had the route...I had a 11 year old Girl yelling and being disruptive...I calmly asked her to "Hold it down".
Her reply was "Bite it, Mother Fucker..You're not my boss"..
My thoughts were (to myself) "What!!!! Did this 11 year old just call me a Mother-Fucker!!???????".
What an eye opener.
I soon found out that perhaps 80% of the Kids on that bus had these same sort of Social Skills.
I could relate numerous other Horror stories but needless to say, every single day was a Nightmare.

I suppose my point is: So the Teachers who instruct the "Morning route Kids" get merit pay because the children actually WANT to learn.....and the Teachers who instruct the Afternoon Terrorists :) are punished because the Kids won't even obey the simplest instructions and have the attention span of this sentence.??

In short..Merit pay is Grossly unfair.

[MercutioATC]

1. Merit pay, regardless of profession, is only fair when the people doling it out understand

the profession (from direct experience).

A school administrator who hasn't taught for 20 years (or ever) has no idea how a classroom runs. They're completely unqualified to set standards for merit pay.

I'm an air traffic controller and we have a "merit pay" situation since the FAA imposed a set of work rules on us 19 months ago (we've been working without a contract for 19 months). Upper management, mostly made up of executive-types who haven't worked an airplane in 20+ years (or never) have dictated a completely irrational merit system that's costing many controllers thousands of dollars a year and subjecting them to unwarranted discipline.

I'm not against some degree of performance-based compensation, but I've rarely seen it done intelligently.

[BlueJazz]

2. I understand...I was speaking of Teachers but I've seen numerous occasions...

...where people with "easy work loads" get merit pay and patted on the back and folks (doing almost the same job) but who work under horrendous conditions get Written up for not "Performing the required tasks"

ARGGG!.. :puke: :)

[skooooo]

4. Cost of living increase is important too..

There are plenty of teachers who do a very good job that deserve a living wage. They may not be in the top 5-10% who will earn merit pay, but they still deserve to earn enough to live comfortably.

[madokie]

3. I would suspect that the time of day had more to do with it than the teacher

or merit pay or the lack of, but thats just me :-)

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

5. I agree, it's a difficult thing to administer properly

but at the same time, I think there should be something. I'm sure everyone has had experiences with both exceptionally good and exceptionally bad teachers in school. I had a couple of teachers in high school who inspired me and encouraged me enough that I still think about them 20 years later. I also had a few who were absolutely horrible and had no place in a classroom. I certainly believe those great teachers deserved something more than the average or bad teachers.

Edited to add: Those great teachers I mentioned left my district for another school the year after I graduated, because the pay they were getting in my district was so uncompetitive and the residents refused to vote for a pay increase.

[patrice]

6. In something like 50 minutes a day (IF THEY'RE LUCKY), for 9.5 months a year,

teachers CANNOT un-do the DAMAGE that parents and our culture have had every second of the child's life, for the child's entire life, to do.

Yes, there are BAD teachers; they are people who got into teaching to evangelize their own agendas, people who are not well enough prepared in their own content areas so they really CAN'T answer the students' questions, people ( :rofl: ) who want to work only part of the year, pardon me . . . . :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: .

But something all of these pseudo-conservative voters keep shrugging off is their OWN responsibilities for who the child is and what the child is doing. I know they say they are living up to their responsibilities, but from experience in secondary education, I also know that WAY toooooo often their idea of their responsibilities is not a genuine intimate engagement in identifying the ways in which they themselves need to change in order to respond functionally to the child's needs, but rather some hot cookie cutter idea, such as: "tough love" or "abstinence only education" or DARE or other forms of more or less covert absolute authoritarianism. In short, many, many parents are FUCKING CLUELESS and they don't have the time nor the inclination to get a clue, so they abdicate to others (a minister, medications, the Bible, TV, the peer group, social-economic class ...). They put up some idea or concept of their role as window dressing, blame everyone and everything else for the trouble and then they get to engage in self-righteous, self-reinforcing pity-parties with other parents while the children regress more and more.

It IS the parents who impart attitudes such:
Any content area that I don't like or find entertaining is abusive;
Any content area that does not directly result in the possibility of earning more money is a waste of my time;
Grades and or Sports are THE most important products of "education";
I don't need to do this assignment; I'm "gifted";
NOTHING should ever compete with parental "control";
"Dreams", idealism, and a "good" (read that - inflated) self-concept are to be preserved at ALL costs . . . .

Certainly!! not ALL parents are dysfuctional, but there is enough STUPID parenting going on out there that a critical mass has been achieved and, hence, those in all levels of the eductional system are being affected. And of course, none of this even addresses the financial limitations on what is going on.

Teachers should not be held to merit systems until Parents buy into their own criteria in those merit systems.

:rant:

[madeline_con]

16. Then there's the NCLB which I think may be where some of this

crazy stuff started. Written by someone who:

A. Has never had kids

B. Has never taught

C. Has no experience with Ex Ed

[patrice]

22. I'm out of it now, so, sorry, I can't comment on NCLB, other than that

the teachers I still know, universally hate it.

I taught AP Psych, so I suppose teaching under NCLB would be a little like teaching for the college boards. But I didn't teach the test; my students were assigned to read the whole book; chapter tests were over the entire chapter and I taught them how to write for short, timed essays, not what to write.

You know what they say about legislation . . . legislation is like sausage, you don't want to know how it's made. You're right about how NCLB was created. It's truly amazing anyone ever thought it would work - prooves most of them never taught.

[margotb822]

7. How's this for merit based incentives?? (sarcasm)

My mother is a high school English teacher. She teaches in a lower-class suburb and her classes are for kids that are most likely not going to college. She has been teaching 12th grade and liked it because she had the ability to treat people like the adults they thought they were (as in: I told you when your work would be due and you didn't turn it in. So, that is a failure on your part). But, she is a great teacher and people learn a lot when they do the work. So, needless to say she's the strict but fair teacher. Well, her class is mandatory for graduation and when people started to fail her class (we're talking a handful out of 100+ students) the administrator told her she needs to correct that. When she told them that it was her job to teach people, not just pass them, the discussion got more heated.

At the end of the 2006-2007 school year, she was told that she was being moved to the 10th grade because that is a testing year and they need her to help teach the struggling students. And, oh by the way, that teacher who just plays movies and passes everyone is going to take over her 12th grade classes (presumably to bump the graduation rate). No pay raise, just more work of revamping a curriculum and preparing students for the test.

SInce when does everyone have to pass? What about the people who actually don't do anything? I guess they pass too. So, it's no longer a teacher's job to teach, just to put the information out there and pass people whether they deserve it or not.

[patrice]

8. Been there . . .

I also taught Senior English. You're completely right; I've sat in staffing meetings where some vice-principle is sitting there telling us how much "Johnny" really NEEDS to succeed.

They truly hate to admit after 12 years of "education" there are students who cannot write and they will do anything they can do to avoid that.

Fortunately, I always had my spreadsheets, so I could show (in way more detail than most of them wanted to know) why and how Johnny was failing. And I also took unlimited make-up work (which declined in value the later it got, but didn't go below 50% for very very late work), so I was always able to show them how if Johnny would give me x, y, and z (NO "extra-credit" work that moves an overall grade hundreds of %s), Johnny WOULD "succeed". Funny, how rarely anyone ever took advantage of my un-limited late work policy . . . !!

[knitter4democracy]

11. Two of my three years, I taught seniors.

I taught in Catholic schools where there is no fifth year option. If a student failed, she flunked high school. You can imagine the pressure I was put under.

Then, there's the pressure from (some--not all of) the coaches. If the star players didn't have high enough grades in my classes, by state rules, they had to be benched. Yeah, that was fun. *sigh*

More than all of that, I hated teaching AP English. The students didn't realize (probably by not ever listening) that the Lit/Comp test really takes four years to prepare for, so they wanted me to get their skills set and ready in less than a year so they could get a five. This from kids who didn't turn work in, refused to actually read anything, and flat-out balked at doing practice in-class essays to practice for the timed essay section.

I walked away. I'll admit it. I couldn't take it anymore--the nasty phone calls from parents late at night, the principals who could harrass me with impunity, the students who tried to get me fired because they didn't like how much homework I assigned, and all the constant, little interruptions. Ugh.

[patrice]

15. Been there too . . .

I also taught AP Psychology; did pretty well actually, all things considered, but I REALLY identify with what you are saying about how they want you to tell them everything, so they refuse to read anything. And they balked big time when it came to practice writing essays (using a nifty ((if I may say so myself)) little model I developed out of Bloom's Taxonomy of Thought) - even group writing practice - the whole class working together with me using the overhead projector - they'd bitch and complain about it every step of the way.

I also let all of my Psych classes bring their reading notes to my chapter tests, as long as those notes were done in an analytic outline format. You'd be amazed at how few students took advantage of that, because it meant they had to read the book and outline it.

Most of them made 4s anyway on the Psych college board. There were a few 5s, but I always wondered how many more 5s there could have been.

[madeline_con]

18. It makes me frustrated, too, but...

I think the kid finally gets his just deserts full in the face when he hits the real world. When he has no social skills, can't fill out a job app or make change, he goes nowhere. Those who did the work and earned the grade out get somehwhere in life.

Sadly, it seems to be coming to that, no matter how bad that attitude sucks. :(

[MonkeyFunk]

9. No rational merit pay system

would be based entirely on which students do better relative to other students.

How about which students improve relative to themselves?

I refuse to believe education is the one and only profession in which competence cannot be measured.

[MaryCeleste]

10. The rest of the professional world works on some sort of merit pay system.

To say that one can not be worked out for teaching is a bit hard to believe. The unions and teachers need to get involved in how to structure one that works. The current flat model of teacher/instruction management could use some rethinking as well. Lets not give the admins all the power (which they have now) and find solutions, not just stone wall until a solution is forced upon us.

And yes I have taught and will be returning to is again soon.

[knitter4democracy]

13. But they have easier ways to measure.

The only way to know how students are doing is to check on them five or ten years down the road. Think about it: if a student really learned how to write the business memo in the Ohio 8th grade English curriculum, you won't really know until the student's in a job and writing business memos.

Standardized tests are crap. I've had tremendously talented writers fail the writing proficiency just because they tackled it a bit more creatively than most do. I've had brilliant students consistently get low SAT scores (after taking it four and five times) just because they don't test well. There's no way we can test how every brain works in an accurate fashion.

The reality is, we don't know how kids are really doing. I've seen students who can't read develop pretty solid coping skills and get passed on through but fail when directly observed in a way none of their friends or usual skills can help. Directly observing takes time, and in big classes, it's not all that feasible on a regular basis.

[MaryCeleste]

14. Some do, some don't.

I believe merit pay is coming, NEA stonewalling not withstanding. The teaching professionals need to work out a viable model before one is imposed on them.

[madeline_con]

19. Have you seen the classrooms lately?

Spell edit.

I don't know how long ago you left, but...

There is a certain percentage of students who do NOTHING, literally, all day. They sleep, mess around in their backpacks, throw stuff in the garbage, sharpen pencils and talk to other kids who are trying to work. When called on it, they get loud, disruptive, and disrespectful.

If they're sent to the Dean, they either come back in 10 minutes or they get a detention, Saturday school or suspension and start over where they left off when they return.

If they're sent to the Dean too many times, the teacher's classroom management skills are questioned. If they stay in the classroom, no one can learn anything because of the little show they're putting on.

We're supposed to get better pay if we have none of that type in our class, through the luck of the draw, I guess. :(

[underpants]

12. Nutrition

prenatal, newborn, pre-K, and childhood nutrition has a lot to do with this.

[trayfoot]

17. As an educator of over 3 decades.....

I can say that you are absolutely correct! Something else about Merit Pay that is seldom mentioned is that it is so corruptible through politics. I have seen teachers who could not teach their way out of a wet paper bag who were the "darlings" of the administration simply because they became "gofers" and professional slaves to the "powers that be". So, merit pay sounds great in theory, but in practicality there is no fair way of implementing it.

[alarimer]

20. Typically merit increases are never done fairly

In my agency there was a one-time bonus (of a quite substantial sum) doled out last year. I never even knew anyone that was nominated for it or by what criteria they were judged to deserve it. I never even knew if I was up for but I heard some interoffice email of people who did get it. Needless to say, I have been at my job 10 years and have NEVER received a merit raise. No one I know has. It almost always goes to headquarters people, not field staff. Lots of unfair stuff anyway. It isn't tied to performance reviews although that is the only remotely objective criteria they could use. In any case, my boss always underrates me because he wants me to have "room to improve" while there are some people whose bosses are too lazy to do it right always getting top marks. Always. So they would get the merit raises instead of me.

Anyway there is no way this can be done fairly. Not as long as people are doing the judging.

[aikoaiko]

21. The problem isn't merit pay, its how merit is defined.

Pay should be tied to performance, especially if you want to keep good people.

[ulysses]

23. but how do you measure performance?