Merit pay for teachers? Will any of them get as much as Wall St. parasites who broke world economy?

[yurbud]

I don't like the idea of merit pay for teachers, but in normal times, it is at least something that people of good will can disagree about amicably.

In our current circumstances though, it seems like a slap in the face after giving trillions in tax dollars to assholes at investment banks who then distributed it to their cronies as millions in bonuses--for destroying the world economy to the point that the bailouts already cost more than World War II.

So if the same standard were used for giving out ''merit pay'' to teachers as Washington just did for Wall Street, the the teachers would have to make a third of their class stupider, kill a third, and not be able to account for the whereabouts of the last third.

If they really cared about improving education, they would fight for smaller classes, better pay to attract smart teachers rather than merit pay that rewards toadying to dim bulb administrators, and more autonomy for teachers, so the smart people in the classroom won't feel micromanaged by legislators and fundamentalist parents.

And they would fight the steady growth of administrative positions and spending that siphon funding out of the classroom.


Does anybody bother to talk to good teachers or do they just believe what self-appointed reformers say solely because they were successful in business and made some campaign contributions?

[Locrian]

1. nope

Somewhere along the way, it became the "smart" thing to work doing nothing productive. To gather the "crumbs" off the cake of productivity - and what LARGE crumbs they are.

And the rest of us "working" class became the suckers. As in you're a "looser" and a "sucker" to not be able to make a ton of money doing nothing. All because they were able to divide and conquer us - take away the working peoples ONE big weapon: The ability to group together to fight against the wealthy.

They did it by tricking us into the belief that the MARKET decides all. That it is the "populist" way for the little guy to get rich, beat the system. Lies, lies, lies, sucker, sucker, sucker....

[MadHound]

2. Given Obama's record and remarks

I have the distinct feeling that he wants to continue the switch to a two tier education system, one tier that is well funded and well paid, but consists of a network of charter schools and other public/private configurations and a second tier, the purely public side that isn't well funded, the teachers aren't well paid, and that unless you have the money to pay for the private option, your child is consigned to a poor public school education.

This is the direction we've been headed in for over ten years, and given his remarks and his appointment of Duncan, seems to be the direction we're going to continue.

[yurbud]

3. Duncan was the worst appointment after his financial team

[mopinko]

5. well, that sure isn't how arne did it here.

sigh. i would have to bet that a lot of what you know about arne duncan isn't so. the greg palast article that keeps floating around about him is completely untrue.
i wish i had the time to do a nice photo essay about the changes in chicago schools under duncan and mayor daley. they took a terrible system, full of filthy, crumbling and overcrowded school, where parents moved to the burbs when the first kid turned 5, and turned it completely around.
i cannot emphasize enough the effect this "white flight" was having on the city. it was hollowing out whole neighborhoods, and leaving the city with nothing but the hard cases. and no property taxes to pay for it.

the system was run by a bloated board that was there to deflect the responsibility for schools from the mayor, and to hand out contracts to cronies. ritchie daley took this on, and with his first super, paul vallas, and later arne duncan, they put their necks in the noose, and rolled up their sleeves and turned it around. they have built many, many new schools, including math and science magnets in all 5 districts, and added resources to existing schools to create many special emphasis schools.
yes, there are charters. but they get the same money as any school, unless they can raise some themselves. they are free. and many of them are designed around catching the kids who are falling through the cracks.

he also held some bad schools accountable, which is where a lot of the animosity comes from. people say they want accountability, but see what happens when you close a bad school.

in order to really fix our schools, we have to get over our knee-jerk response to raygun era code words, and think about what those words really mean. what they have been euphemisms for in the past is not what they actually mean.

the bleeding has stopped. people are actually moving BACK to the city. i am a happy parent of a cps kid.

i could go on and on here, but i have to get some work done. but these smears are just driving me a little nuts. please bother to read more about chicago schools, and arne duncan, and make up your own minds.

http://www.newschoolschicago.org/
http://www.learnaboutcharters.org/

http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/

[4_TN_TITANS]

13. Wow....

thanks for the perspective. I was believing the anti-Arne threads going around.

[mopinko]

14. i could have posted this in all of them, and still

all the tired old knee jerk reactions would have drowned me out.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. If that is so, why does he not care about poor kids and their education??

[PVnRT]

4. Those CEOs don't have a union to destroy

[bbgrunt]

6. great points, all. nt

[struggle4progress]

8. Average public school teacher pay in the US is a bit below $48K: so a billion dollars

would pay the salaries of over 20K teachers. Wall Street paid out $18 billion in bonuses last year: that would have paid the salaries of over 380K teachers, which would increase the number of US teachers by about 10%

... The estimated average salary of all public elementary and secondary school teachers in the 2004–05 school year was $47,602 ...
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos069.htm

... Wall Street gave out $18.4 billion in bonuses last year ...
http://www.theweek.com/article/index/92833/Wall_Streets_bailout_bonuses

Projected U.S. school-age population, by race/ethnicity: 2000–50
... 53,005,348 ...
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind06/c1/tt01-04.htm

Projections data from the National Employment Matrix
... 3,954,000 ...
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos069.htm#projections_data

[EFerrari]

10. LOL! I was wondering about EACH of those numbers!

:yourock:

[struggle4progress]

11. search engines rawk!

:D

[EFerrari]

12. Still practicing the search engine as I once practiced the piano.

:)

[ddeclue]

9. Merit pay for teachers IS a good idea Wall St. not withstanding..

The Wall Street guys should get a lot less than they do and teachers salaries should be roughly double what they are now but that does not negate the concept of merit pay (bonuses) for better performance.