My husband is a veteran teacher who would benefit from merit pay but he doesn't want it....

[ourbluenation]

the merit system that is.

He says there are too many factors affecting student performance beyond the classroom and therefore the playing field is unfair so a merit system cannot work in a fair way.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

1. Ask Him If He Feels That The Current Fixed Pay System Of Experience/Education Without Regard To

performance is any more fair, and if so; how?

[msongs]

2. when teachers can fire underperforming students, merit pay might have value nt

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

4. Completely Irrelevant Response To My Post.

Not to mention that the argument within your response itself is quite silly.

[tonysam]

48. Are You a Teacher? Of Course Not.

Your first reply gave away your total ignorance of the subject.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

50. Yet Another Irrelevant And Nonsensical Reply To My Post.

First of all, one need not be a teacher to discuss this. It's asinine to suggest otherwise.

Second of all, there was nothing ignorant whatsoever about my reply. It's a valid question with a valid point.

Either address the merits or begone.

[Winterblues]

17. It is a poor craftsman that blames their tools

For a teacher to blame the students for not learning is like Bush* saying none of it was his fault.

[EFerrari]

19. A student is not an object that can be manipulated. n/t

[skooooo]

20. You can't teach someone who isn't ready to learn.

And it's not totally within the purview of the teacher to prepare that person. It's up to parents and society as well. That part is lacking.

[ourbluenation]

26. Yahtzee! We are putting a huge burdon on the schools to make up for a lot

of nonsense that happens in the homes. The fact that schools need to be fixed means that at some point they worked. So what went wrong and when?

[skooooo]

41. Students also bear responsibility to learn.

I know, some of you will think that's just totally absurd. Well....it's true, especially the older they get. Obviously, a 1st grader isn't responsible. But at what point is someone at least partially responsible for their own learning? Certainly by high school, a student should have it figured out.

[Fire1]

120. When the value of education declined.

[wickerwoman]

37. Especially when in most districts you have limited control over the curriculum.

If I'm handed a curriculum of mostly irrelevant and boring texts which I *must* teach to prepare students for a test which I am not allowed to design is it really *my poor performance* that should be the issue when students become disengaged and either drop out or bomb the test?

You can't have it both ways. You can't take 99% of the control of the material out of the hands of teachers by instituting standardized tests that are completely inappropriate in many contexts, creating a McEducation, and then blame the fry cook teachers when the food sucks.

[Winterblues]

59. Can't never did anything....

Everyone can learn if the right person teaches them..

[skooooo]

60. Nice play on words..

...to bad in reality it falls apart.

[Winterblues]

64. Maybe you could enlighten me as to what "can't" actually does..

I know of nothing "can't" accomplishes. :shrug:

[skooooo]

73. Well..

..if a kid's hungry, you CAN'T take time out of a lesson plan to feed him/her. How's that for an example?

[ourbluenation]

24. good christ - you need a reality check. please come and walk a mile in my husbands shoes.

[Joe Fields]

25. Thank you! Blaming the students and parents is de rigeur on DU these days.

I sometimes wonder about us "progressives." On this site, there are no bad teachers, just bad students and parents. There are no bad doctors, just bad patients. There are no bad mortgage holders, just evil lenders. We live in an era of "not my fault, not my responsibility," where we constantly look around for others to blame.

It is easy to do so, while ignoring our own culpability in many life situations, and with regard to numerous issues. And while blame or responsibility should never be placed solely on any one aspect of these issues, progressives, at least from my point of view simply refuse to own their part of the mess we are finding ourselves in.

[ourbluenation]

31. Bwahahahaaa!

My husband has parents who show up to parent teacher meetings drunk off their asses or high, parents who are in jail and missing mtgs all together, parents who are beating their kids, molesting their kids, sellling drugs out of their homes, and one who thought it would be a good idea to burn his house down. Not exactly nurturing homes where education is a priority.

Thank goodness they at least get several hours with a man who cares for them and their well being. And yes, as a mandatory reporter he has had to call CPS many times and the majority of those cases are not followed up on by social services, so the kids are not removed from the homes and the beat goes on.

Merit pay does nothing to address any of this.

[Dorian Gray]

74. Oh come on

There are, of course, bad teachers. And there are bad students.

There are bad doctors and bad patients.

People need to take responsibility for their own actions. When I had bad teachers (I had quite a few), I studied as hard as I could to understand the subject. I was a motivated learner, as I wanted to go to a decent college.

For a good teacher, an unmotivated learner can really make a huge and negative difference in the classroom. And vice versa. But both parties need to be responsible and put in their own efforts in order to succeed. A teacher and students need to work together to be successful. If one of them sits down on the job, they'll both fail their goals.

[proud2BlibKansan]

51. That's one of the worst analogies I have ever heard

Comparing kids to hammers and screwdrivers :crazy:

[QueenOfCalifornia]

75. Awww, come on....

You know how often you say "that little doofus is about as sharp as a bag of ball-pean hammers." :rofl:

My sons math teacher called my husband at work today to tell him that our son had the highest score on a school wide math test today... Little stinker.

It scared the heck out of my husband when the teacher called - he was thinking "The school's calling, this can't be good." - It was last year when we were urged to get him to the psychologists office for his Asperger's - We did, it helped with some of the anger issues. He hasn't had any significant problems this year - but his teacher, who he adored, left 3 weeks ago to take a non teaching job with a better salary and less hours. I hated to lose her.

I was staying out of this thread because I don't know wtf anyone is talking about - thought I'd leave it to the teachers..

[proud2BlibKansan]

81. Congratulations

Tell your son good job. :)

[Raineyb]

85. That is a bizarre analogy

The students aren't the teacher's tools.

And a student that doesn't want to learn isn't going to learn no matter how good the teacher is. A student that wants to learn but isn't prepared to do so isn't going to see much success either for a teacher cannot take time out of the lesson to do the extra prep work for that student when there are 30+ other students who want to learn who are waiting for instruction.

Regards

[proud2BlibKansan]

83. And when teachers can choose students

or parents :)

[Pale Blue Dot]

7. What you're talking about is a myth.

I am a teacher and I am in a union. Evaluations are done every year, for every teacher, and if a teacher does not perform well he/she can be removed. Because of the union, administrators simply have to make sure that all of the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. The fact is that many administrators do not want to go through this "hassle", so they pass poor teachers through the system year after year.

Now, in this economy, teachers in my district are being laid off. The union contract specifies that these layoffs are done through seniority. Unions have these rules in place to prevent school districts from cutting older, higher paid teachers simply for that reason. If administrators were doing their jobs properly, poor performers would have already been evaluated out of the system. however, since many administrators are NOT doing their job properly, some very, very good teachers at my school are about to lose their jobs and will be replaced by teachers with more seniority who may be great or who may be terrible.

Is there going to be merit pay for administrators?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

9. Nothing In Your Response Addressed Mine, Nor Rendered It Myth.

I spoke nothing of layoffs or the ability for teachers to be fired.

What I did talk about was the fixed pay scale based solely off of longevity and education level, without any attention to actual value/ability.

[tigereye]

93. yes, but who gets to decide what that value and ability is?

it's a highly complex question. Many businesses have seniority rules as well as higher pay for folks who have worked there the longest, that isn't anything new.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

109. Wrong Point.

I didn't claim to know all the answers. What I questioned was how he could think the current pay scale is any fairer, and if he does than why.

If you would like to address how it is more fair than the one being proposed, than I'm all ears. But saying "well, other places do it tooooooo!!!!" doesn't quite cut it.

[tigereye]

118. are you aware of the variability in teacher pay scales across districts?

Several people who are teachers in a variety of settings have addressed that point in this and other threads on this topic. One good analysis talked about the willingness of teachers to take on the toughest types of students, or teach in more challenging settings - people deserve credit, be it assignment choice or monetary compensation, for that.


The question of fairness is in how people/school districts analyze what merit pay should award - length of service, test scores, moving kids to a new academic level, projects they have created, creative use of materials to challenge student interest, trainings attended, lack of disciplinary problems, parent-interaction, mentoring skills and meetings with experienced teachers? In any business (and I don't necessarily agree that schools should adopt a "business-type" model - that's one of my pet peeves) when employees have their yearly evaluation all of those goals and factors are taken into account.

I think the point the teachers are making is that all of those factors should be considered, with their input and not simply by politicians, administrators or parents. To be fair, I'm not sure what you are referring to as a proposal. I don't think it should be federal, frankly. There are too many unfunded mandates, and regulations that stifle creativity in teachers and students as it is...

[JerseygirlCT]

28. Administrators

seem to me to always be in danger of the lure of bureaucracy.

I've seen excellent ones, and some real doozies. Our HS is run by one of the doozies. It's all about shuffling paper, and doing anything to stay behind the desk. Good teachers can try their hardest in this situation and still have their work undercut.

I like the idea of merit pay. But I totally agree that's got to include administrators - in fact, they ought to be held to even higher standards.

[proud2BlibKansan]

82. Merit pay for administrators

Now there's an idea I support.

[B Calm]

119. BINGO!

[ourbluenation]

21. He's not saying that it's a perfect system either. But let me tell you, by and large most teachers

are good at what they do. Most likely merit pay will cost the districts a buttload of moola.

[tonysam]

47. It IS. Again, More Ignorance.

Years of service CAN be measured. Educational credits CAN be measured.

Stop with the nonsense, please.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

54. How So? How Is It More Fair?

Just because something can be measured doesn't make it more fair as a direct tie to compensation.

Hell, I can measure teachers' heights can't I? Should their pay be based on how tall they are? I mean, it CAN be measured right? How bout on how much they weigh? Like, their weights CAN be measured too and stuff, no?

Using the fact it can be measured as the cornerstone of your argument makes for one hell of a poor foundation. Your argument has no merit nor logic. Ironic that you speak of nonsense as if you hadn't been the perpetrator of it.

I'll give you another try: Why is that way more fair of a method of determining a teacher's compensation, when it can lead to many teachers who are fractionally as good or effective as others being paid more than teachers who excel and are above average?

[tigereye]

94. do you know for sure that there aren't standards like those in some school

settings? :shrug:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. Well, yeah. It's a clear anti-labor scam.

If you want to improve education, listen to the teachers unions.

It's really that simple.

[el_bryanto]

5. That sounds like a cop out

I mean I hear what he is saying; but there must be some way of determining who the great and who the crummy teachers are.

Bryant

[ourbluenation]

23. yep and merit pay is not the answer. n/t

[el_bryanto]

40. Why isn't it?

If one teacher is doing better than another why shouldn't he or she be rewarded for making an extra effort or having extra skills??

Or if failure pays the same as success why bother to succeed?

Bryant

[ourbluenation]

55. How do you know the other teacher is doing better? That's the problem. There are so many other

factors involved in performance beyond a teachers control.

[el_bryanto]

61. Well I'm not an educational expert

That said I think there have to be performance measures that could be implemented, and that teachers could be rewarded based on meeting those performance measures.

From what I understand I don't favor a testing system where the students are just tested and the teachers/schools are rewarded on meeting those tests.

Bryant

[Dorian Gray]

76. Because

in faculty rooms the nation over there will be brawls every year for the teachers to get the AP and Honors class if it's about test scores only.

[el_bryanto]

77. I don't think Merit Pay should be over test scores only. n/t

[Dorian Gray]

80. If it does happen

then I don't either. But that type of evaluation is difficult to do.

[noamnety]

6. Thank you for that.

I think I'm as unbiased as a teacher can be, since I'm in a content area that doesn't have standardized testing - those tests aren't part of my life except the few days a year I have to help administer them as a staff member.

There are a few things I've learned about them.

1. I used to think that if a student knew the information they'd score well on the test. Either you know it or you don't. That's from my perspective as someone who is a good test taker. I had to learn what stereotype threat is and read the studies on it to understand how it works. My new perspective is that the system of testing - in our culture with our history - incorporates institutional racism.

I would never have imagined this - but the studies bear it out. If you tell a group of historically poor performing minority students that a test is super important, they will score lower than a control group that's told it's just a practice test - and told that this test is being used because it doesn't show any difference between minority or white scores. Just the knowledge that they are in an underperforming group makes them score lower, statistically. The same phenomenon appears in any group, white, nonwhite, male female - you can drag a group of white men out to an athletic field, have them perform a task and imply that they won't do as well because they are white. As fucked up and racist as it sounds, if you plant that suggestion in half of them, that half will underperform the other half. The more important the test, the larger the racial gap is. Psychology is a crazy thing, and believing it "shouldn't" work that way doesn't change the fact that it DOES work that way.

Knowing this, I can see that the importance we place on testing under NCLB is inherently racist. Not deliberately so - but intent doesn't always translate to results in the real world. Institutional racism is not always the result of intent. More often, it's the result of benign neglect. "We didn't CREATE the conditions that make this racist, so we have no obligation to address them."

2. The data doesn't show what people think it shows. In our school, we have a relatively even mix of white girls, white boys, black girls, and black boys. One subgroup, black boys, is causing us to fail AYP. If you look us up on the internet, you'll see we have a D+ and have an AYP alert. What you don't see is that overall, we're passing just fine, and that score is the result of the one subgroup. And what you also wouldn't see from that grade is that the average test scores for that subgroup are higher at our school than at the home schools those students came from. If they'd stayed at their old school, they may have been reading at a third grade level, and at ours we've gotten them up to a 6th grade level, 3 years ahead of the peers they left behind. But we're a high school and by test scores we are failing that group - even though we're seeing more improvement in that group than any other group in our school. (That's not an exaggeration - we do have a lot of students arriving at our high school with a third grade reading level).

[tigereye]

96. thanks for bringing actual facts and research info to the table!

(as well as info about testing effects and bias. Fascinating) :hi:

:toast:

[KittyWampus]

8. My father & all his teaching buddies support merit pay. Teachers need to acknowledge

those in their ranks who don't deserve to be on the same pay tier.

Those who don't admit this or refuse to deal with that fact are as bad as doctors who refuse to deal with those in their midst who end up being in a lot of malpractice suits.

If you don't want to use test scores to determine pay tiers:

#1 Come up with a different way to determine pay tiers
#2 Start advocating heavily for a return to the mentoring system

When my father and his teaching buddies started, all teachers were put under a mentor. Apparently this no longer holds.

[JerseygirlCT]

29. I think there's lots more than tests

to evaluate teachers' performance. Peer evaluations, the evaluations of administrators. And yes, I think parents ought to be included in the whole picture.

Part of the problem is the inequality in school districts, because schools are funded on a local level. Rich town A has excellent schools, and can afford high property taxes to fund them. City B has cruddy schools, and a diminishing tax base. Why should those kids be denied an education equal to that of their suburban peers?

I think the third part of the problem is involving parents. Schools won't work at their best until parents are really brought in to the process, and understand how important their support and involvement is to their kids' success.

[proud2BlibKansan]

68. That's not true

Many states have mentoring programs. My district has one.

[jody]

10. Merit pay sounds good but it is easy for cronies to game the system. n/t

[cobalt1999]

11. There are many factors affecting students performance

However, all teachers over time would have similiar students. In effect, the factors would be randomly assigned over many students over many teacher over time.

If one teacher consistently can improve their classes grade level performance by 1 and another consistently improves their classes grade level performance by only 0.5 year and year, then the effects of any one student or situation is minimal.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cobalt1999]

13. Yes, statistics is stupid.

:eyes:

[HereSince1628]

15. One assumption you have probably isn't true; the philosophy behind your position may be unacceptable

Students aren't randomly assigned to schoolrooms, or schools. Simply running replicates will not "average" out comparisons between classroom performance records.


Your argumen also assumes a philosophy that students should be randomly assigned is not what many parents and school administrators think is best. Main-streaming the learning disabled has been set aside in many disctricts and those students are provided special instruction. Similarly classes and even entire schools for the "gifted and talented" are found in many school systems. I question whether communities would find it desirable to remix all students for the benefit of random-assignment and non-violation of statistical assumptions. Even if that could contribute to percieved improvement to the fairness of instructor assessment (and I am not sure fairness wouldn't remain confounded by many other problems).

[ourbluenation]

18. yes and affluent areas vs rural and poor - how will that factor in?

and if anyone doesn't think economic disparity doesn't factor into performance in school, I got a bridge I'd like to sell ya.

[cobalt1999]

35. Doesnt' matter

I'm talking about merit raises for how well the students improve in a class.

For both a poor school class or a gift school class, you'd expect a consistent grade level improvement year to year.

The kids coming into a 6th grade class at a gifted school are probably entering with a tested grade level of 7.1 whereas the kids entering 6th grade at a poor school may be entering with with tested grade level of 5.2.

In both cases the teacher would be expected to improve their ending scores by a full grade level regardless of the starting point.

If one teacher at a gifted school only improves their class .5 grade level over the entire year and another teacher at a poor school improves their class 1.1 grade levels in the year, then the higher INCREASE should be rewarded regardless of starting point.

I'm proposing to reward teachers not on the pure test scores but on how well they improve the performance of their overall classes year to year.

[wickerwoman]

38. Many classes have high turnover though because of students' disrupted lives

Let's say I have a class of twenty and I work my ass off with them but my best student is an army brat who moves away just before the test (some other teacher reaps the benefit of my work) and then the week before the test I get a foster kid who was just yanked out of an abusive situation who completely bombs the test.

Most of my classes when I was in school had at least three or four students leave and three or four join mid- or late semester. That's 20-25% of the total class who have I have not had access to for the full semester.

Also, would you factor in attendance? Is it my fault that a student who misses 30-50% of my classes (because his parents are meth heads and don't give a shit if he goes to school) does poorly on the test?

[cobalt1999]

43. Over the entire school system, every teacher would be faced with similar situations though

Statistically, it would average out across the entire population of teachers. All of them eventually will have good and bad situations arise.

Especially if merit raises aren't given for one specific year, but the average of how well that teacher performs. Some years the army brat moves away, another year you get an hard working army brat transferred in.

Overtime and over a large population and using only the net increase regardless of starting point will average those single specifics out.

[wickerwoman]

58. But few teachers teach the same class in the same school year after year after year.

I almost never taught the same classes every year. I started off teaching mainstream. The next year I taught honors. I got bored with rich kids crying because they got a B+ so I switched to remedial. Then I did ESL. Then I moved to another school with a totally different system and kids from a completely different background.

Also, it's not that much of a consolation that it averages out over the whole teaching population when it's my paycheck being docked (or bonus being lost) because of circumstances I have no control over.

So merit pay isn't going to accomplish the goal of fairly rewarding the best teachers.

[cobalt1999]

65. Again, it wouldn't matter.

In each class you should be expected to improve the kids in whatever class by one full grade level.

Say you taught 5 years, each year with a different class at a different school with a different mix of kids.

Year 1 you improved your classes scores by 1.2 grade levels
Year 2 you had a bad situation and only improved your average by .9 grade level
Year 3 you improved your classes average by 1 grade level
Year 4 different class, different school, with a group that started well below grade level, but you got them up where they needed to be an increase their overall grade level 1.5
Year 5 you did as expected and improved the class by a single grade level

You had improvements of 1.2, .9, 1, 1.5, and 1 for a career average of 1.12. Another teacher's lifetime average also teaching different classes and different schools was only 0.8.

That's why over time and over a population, using the net increase vs. the pure test score, you can statistically quantify the performance of different teachers.

[wickerwoman]

71. But half of all teachers quit in the first five years.

So it's not very motivating to say "you got screwed this year but if you teach for twenty more years it will probably, statistically speaking, work out eventually."

And you still haven't addressed the issue of attendance. Is it really the teacher's "merit" that is being evaluated in cases where students have high levels of truancy? Can you evaluate teachers on their effectiveness with students who are almost never there?

Are you comparing each teachers' performance in context? It's a hell of a lot harder work getting 75% improvement from some groups of students than it is getting 150% improvement from others. And if you're not including socio-economic factors in the evaluation then in does matter that teachers frequently change schools and classes. If you are including them, you're creating an extremely byzantine system which is only dubiously more effective than the old school inspection system.

[cobalt1999]

72. Not at all.

If 1/2 the teachers can't even get their classes to improve a single grade level year after year for 5 years, maybe they need to quit because they probably aren't very good at it. At a class level of 25 per year that would be 125 kids all not improving. That's a sign of bad teacher.

As for attendance, all teachers over time will have that situation dealt to them so it averages out.

[wickerwoman]

88. Not at all

because if I choose to teach remedial and at-risk kids, I'm going to have a lot more truancy problems than my coworker who snatched up all the honors courses because she doesn't like a challenge. And you can't really compare my inner city at-risk kids to the at-risk kids in the suburbs. All teachers over time will not have to deal with homelessness, drug abuse, gang violence, lack of adequate equipment and textbooks, PTSD kids, fetal alcohol syndrome kids, ESL kids, etc. in the same percentages. The same teachers will get the same troubled kids over and over again because they chose the tough assignments. And this system disincentivises the best teachers from picking the hardest classes where they are needed the most because they'll be penalized for things that are outside of their control.

All classes are absolutely not alike in difficulty and therefore you can't compare a teacher who gets a 1.1 rise from an easy class to a teacher who gets a .8 rise out of the class from hell. Probably the teacher with the .8 is a better teacher who took a tougher class, not a "bad teacher". If they traded classes, maybe the "bad" teacher could have gotten a 2.0 rise from the easy class and the "good teacher" might only have managed a miserable .4 rise out of the hard class.

For example, in ESL, any fucking idiot can teach advanced level students. You could pick a random person off the street and have them "chat" with the student or go over a newspaper article and the student will be fine and probably learn something. The sign of an actually good ESL teacher is whether or not they can teach true beginners because when you're trying to teach someone with no common language you can't fall back on lazy teaching crutches (like "let's just have a chat"). But something like the merit pay system would say "The advanced teacher gets a bonus because he taught his students 700 new words and the beginning teacher gets a pay cut because she only taught the students 60 new words." Sure but the beginning level teacher's job is intrinsically 200 times harder than the advanced level teacher's job.

[tigereye]

101. God bless you for all you do!

thanks for taking the time to explain things from the inside. I wish people would actually listen to you folks before they make all those arcane and damaging laws.


Hang in there. Most folks outside the system or who are unaware of all the problems today's students face should learn what is actually going on before they judge.



:yourock:

[cobalt1999]

110. I understand there are "easy classes" and "classes from hell".

However, those "tough" students didn't all become "tough" in the same year. They had issues and problems in the year before and will again in the year after. The easy students didn't suddenly all become easy either, they were easy the year before too.

It's impossible for an easy class to consistently be increasing each and every year by 2.0 grade levels. A "easy" class will be performing well above their grade level at the beginning of the year, but it will take extraordinary effort to take a class already performing 1 grade level above at the start of the year and finish 2 grades levels above level at the end of the year each and every year. That would have an easy 6th grade class finishing at 12th grade levels. Impossible OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME. That's why I was referring to a multi-year average of the NET increase, NOT a one year window.

Hence, the measuring the net increase OVER TIME. Sure there are easy classes and difficult classes. I'm not denying that. However, the measure is how much a teacher can build on the EXISTING beginning average grade level.

That entry average grade level will be much lower for "hard" classes and much higher for "easy" classes. Each teacher will have to work hard to build on the pre-existing level. The teacher that begins a 6th grade class already performing at 7th grade levels will have to work just as hard to have that class finish at 8th grade levels as a teacher that starts a 6th grade class that is performing at 4th grade levels to finish at 5th grade levels.

Each teacher will have to work to raise the level of performance 1 grade level in one school year. Each will have the same challenge. A "idiot off the street" will not be able to take an already advanced class and improve it 1 full grade level over it's entering level consistently. Like I said above, it's statistically impossible.

[wickerwoman]

116. I don't think you're appreciating the level of complexity/bureaucracy involved

Classes don't stay together year after year. Let's say I teach 7th grade English. The first year of middle school students are drawn from four different elementary schools plus transfer students from god knows where. From this pool of students, I take a remedial class of the 15 weakest students and another teacher takes an honors class of the top 15. My students are reading at an average level of, say, 4.0 and the honors class reads at 8.0. There's no such thing as an "easy" class that stays together year after year and a "hard" class that stays together year after year so that you could compare my performance with the "hard" class to another teacher's performance with the same class. Even within the class over the same semester, there is likely to be 15-20% turnover as kids move in and out.

There's a reason why the remedial kids are in remedial classes. These reasons include learning disabilities, disruptive home lives, lack of motivation, frequent changes of school, abuse and neglect, language problems, drug use, etc. There's a reason why the honors kids are in the honors classes. They are bright, motivated and/or their parents really give a shit about their education. If I choose to teach remedial classes, the kids I get will be harder to teach year after year after year. They are not spread evenly across the general population of teachers and I won't get a crack at the "good" kids unless I ask for it.

Is it, then, really the same amount of work to take the remedial class from 4.0 to 5.0 as it is to take the honors class from 8.0 to 9.0? Not in my experience. Plus the demands on the remedial class are unlikely to be "take the kids from 4.0 to 5.0". It's more like "take the kids from 4.0 to 8.0" and if you don't manage that you're a "bad teacher" and who cares if you burn out and quit, right?

In most schools, the most talented, experienced and dedicated teachers are usually teaching the most difficult classes. The teachers closest to burn-out will gravitate towards the easier classes. So the statistics that show two teachers each raising a class by a grade level in a year will not tell you who is a "good" teacher and who is a "bad" teacher because the difficulty of the task in each case is not equal. And what metrics are you supposed to use to measure class difficulty so you can factor it into the equation?

And as a side note, the bureaucracy involved in testing every kid every year and keeping records and sharing those records with schools in other states is another argument against this system. When a kid transfers from Texas to Seattle how is the school district supposed to work a TAKS score into a class level average when all the other kids took the WASL? What am I supposed to do with my kids from Japan or China or El Salvador who have never been tested before? I might have a core of ten kids who were in a "hard" class together last year but then five or six transfer/new kids who totally change the dynamic of the class and whose previous success can't be easily measured. It's never the same class year on year (and often not within the same year).

[tigereye]

98. didn't you listen to what she said at all?

:banghead: Poor attendance and missing the instruction, leading to low scores doesn't make her a bad teacher!


She is saying why should she be responsible in that wonderful NCLB way for kids who never come to class? It's a poor system.

[cobalt1999]

111. Didn't you study statistics?

All teachers over time will be faced with the same attendance issues. It is statistically irrelevant over a large population and over a period of time.

[tigereye]

114. yes, I did. Life isn't just about statistics.

That's the kind of attitude that horrifies people who work with real people. :eyes: That's why many people hate the NCLB laws.


Data rarely shows the full picture.

[tigereye]

97. but the state or school district doesn't average it over 5 years, nor does

NCLB seem to allow that.


She's got a point. The stats don't tell the whole story and that's the problem with only looking at stats.

[cobalt1999]

113. They should though.

Stats usually do tell more of the whole story when used correctly.

If the states and NCLB did average over 5 years or a teachers lifetime track record, then it is statistically more valid.

The problem isn't using statistics, it's not building a system based on a good statistical model.

[tigereye]

115. well, my husband just told me during our debate about this issue

that the problem would be solved by there being no autonomous school districts and everyone having to pay the same amount of taxes into the same pot so that financial discrepancies between districts would be eliminated.


Part of me was horrified, although it does make a certain sense. For a minute there, I wondered if I sounded like a Republican. :scared:



Are you a statistician by any chance? :D You will note that I answered your other response by telling you that life isn't just about stats.

[ourbluenation]

57. IN our district we have a large group of migrant workers who yank their kids out of school every

year. Which leads to another factor. What about districts with large amounts of non english speakers. Think that might effect performance? Think the affluent areas w/ english speakers might have better test scores?

MERIT PAY SOLVES NOTHING!

[cobalt1999]

66. see my post above

Statistically it wouldn't matter.

[ourbluenation]

78. Not all our schools in the district are designated english immersion

so the results would be skewed.

[HereSince1628]

92. Today, I had 7 of 31 first year college students not know the meaning of "halts"

The quiz said, "During photorespiration oxygen is fixed rather than CO2 and the production of G3P halts." How does a teacher anticipate that "halt" is a word that is outside the vocabulary of college 1st years or high school 10th graders? In the midst of the quiz I got seven hands in the air about the word "halt."

I don't care if you are using sign tests to show posttreatment improvement, or chi-square matched pair tests, or any other statistic that gives an administrator some crazy notion that circumstances are comparable. When a teacher must solve 3 language interpretation problems before beginning to teach item A to thier assigned students and another teacher's only preclass problem is which Alterra coffee shop to stop at before school, the two teachers aren't working on a level playing field.

Holding your own can be a HUGE accomplishment. Falling back only slightly can be a victory.

Forget the brave notion of the arithmetic of quantifiable delta's. The educational value isn't in the statistical comparison, it is on the frigging worn out linoleum where a teacher's effort to retain 2 kids throughout their pregnancies can significantly change an entire class average.

[tigereye]

102. that's amazing!

It's those awful Language Arts books (shudder) and too few classics being read. Also there are few grammar classes anymore.


Again my hat is off to all of you who work so hard to teach our youth. :thumbsup:

[HereSince1628]

105. Halt is in a classic? Please send me a link!

Whaterver it takes................

[tigereye]

108. I guess my point was that some of the classics have a more complex way

of using language, not that the construction you used was that complex per se. Maybe I'm thinking of Shakespeare using the word halt. :rofl:


Haven't they seen any films about soldiers? ;) Suddenly I'm thinking of all the ways in which the word halt can be used... I didn't really think about it's use in the sciences or experiments, since I'm a humanities and social sciences person and haven't taken a hard science class since high school.

[cobalt1999]

112. So, a large group of students entered the year already performing BELOW where they should

Fine. That happens all the time.

If your class on average is performing below grade level at the beginning and finishes merely at grade level at the end, then you have done an exceptional job. You have, in one year, taken students and brought them up OVER 1 grade level. That should be rewarded.

The teachers that couldn't those students to perform up to expected grade level in the first place shouldn't get any merit increases.

It's that simple.

BTW, my wife teaches undergrads at the local university. She has many similiar stories of students coming into college without basic knowledge of math, English, and science. Someone along the way failed them.

[etherealtruth]

14. is there nothing to be done to weed out poor teachers and reward excellent ones

The problem that I see reading through many of these threads regarding merit pay is there is absolutely no acknowledgment that there are some very bad teachers out there. There are excellent teachers out there, as well ; they need to be acknowledged and rewarded. Most teachers fall into the category of adequate with specific areas in which they excel and areas in which they are less than stellar.

I agree completely that tying teacher's scores solely to student test scores is ridiculous (and harmful) there needs to be some objective measure of a teacher's performance and rewards (or lack of) need to be tied to performance.

What can be suggested to improve the performance of teachers? (yes, I am aware that there are bad/ disinterested parents .... ). I would like to see some knowledgeable agreement that there are some teachers that "suck" and see some suggestions to improve their performance or get them out of the field. If merit pay is such a bad idea (I don't deny that it might be) what does someone that excels in the field think would work?

[HereSince1628]

16. What is the license for? What is the probationary period for? What are annual reviews for?

There are many mechanisms that help "weedout" bad teachers, help improve poor teachers, and reward good teachers.

Unfortunately, most of these things aren't, and maybe can't be done with any really trustworthy objective measure.

I think it is questionable whether educators are really even motivated by money.

Prima facia it seems they weren't motivated by money when the entered the profession. If they were motivated by money they would have chosen careers that paid much better.

Why does everyone assume that money will drive them later in their careers?

[etherealtruth]

27. Ah yes, licensing, probation periods, annual reviews = no "bad" teachers

The same holds true for nursing; therefore, there must be no bad nurses (?). I worked as an RN for over a decade, much of that time in nursing supervision, until I "retired" to have children and raise my family. Even with a nursing shortage, there seems to be more efforts made to oust "bad" nurses. Believe me, no one is drawn to nursing because of the great pay and working conditions, either.

As I asked earlier, what tools can be used to measure success and reward it. What measures can be used to measure failure and get "bad" teachers out of the classroom?

I refuse to accept "and maybe can't be done with any really trustworthy objective measure." Are we just to accept that everything is in place to remove "bad" teachers from the classroom ... accepting that implies that the bad teachers are gone and we are left only with "good" teachers.

I would love to see knowledgeable conversation about improving teacher performance rather than the blind "all teachers are good" refrain.

[tigereye]

104. it's interesting - this "bad" teacher meme is very powerful

but is it accurate? Are there that many bad teachers out there, and are they fully responsible for all the complexities that learning entails?



Are they bad? Or bored? Or burnt out? Are there so many of them that the school system needs a total overhaul? All of the ones on this thread seem highly motivated, caring and knowledgeable. All of the ones I know in my personal life are the same- it's a calling that they take very seriously.


Somehow I think it's a very complex equation, and focusing on just one part of it simply won't yield the answer.

[etherealtruth]

106. It is a very complex issue

Soley focusing on one part won't "fix" the problem .... nor will ignoring a part.

[tigereye]

107. why do you think people are ignoring it?

most of the teacher's comments I have seen here seem highly concerned about the problem and are trying to explain why some of the simplistic language used here overall (not you specifically) doesn't really analyze the problem.

[hugo_from_TN]

32. If educators are not motivated by money it would be stupid to increase salaries.

But I don't believe that.

Also, I don't believe teachers have to be assessed by objective standards. I'm an engineer and most of the time I am assessed by subjective standards from my boss, my peers, and my subordinates.

Teaching professionals (like peer teachers, school admins, and trained assessors) can sit in on classes and grade teachers on how effectively they plan lessons, teach the lessons, handle questions, handle disruptions, encourage learning, and interact with parents. Some of the assessors can be from outside the school in order to mitigate problems with internal politics. None of this requires standardized test scores and all of it can be subjectively assessed whether they teach in the hood or the best school in the burbs.

Teaching is not like building widgets where you can count how many are built in an hour. Most professions in industry are the same.

[HereSince1628]

103. There ARE many levels of assessment for teachers.

I can't comprehend how it is that in all the conversation over the last few days so many are so unaware or so dismissive of d that reality.

I've been teaching in classrooms since 1978 I really just don't believe money is going to turn out to be the answer. I also think that monetary incentives lead to bad outcomes...look how well that system has worked in the Banking industry.

[ourbluenation]

22. Most teachers are good at what they do. Merit pay will bankrupt districts.

This is alot of hulla ballaoo to weed out a few bad apples that in the grand scheme of things has little to do with failing schools.

[etherealtruth]

30. Most teachers are adequate

Showing up to work and doing the job you are paid for = adequacy. This holds true in any profession. in other professions there are rewards for going above and beyond and there are consequences for under-performing.

I do not hold teacher's solely responsible for the poor state of many of our schools, as a matter of fact there are so many other people and factors that I believe are more deleterious. The problem I have is what appears to be the 'all teachers are wonderful and do not need to improve' refrain.

[TwilightGardener]

33. In Lake Wobegon, maybe, where all the children are also above average...

[ourbluenation]

34. I can only go by my experiences as a teachers wife and the parent of two kids

who came up thru the public school system. Both are/were honor students who worked very hard for their A's and B's. They both had really good and passionate teachers through the years except for a couple of really awful ones (who aren't teachers anymore).

Very few who I would describe as "adequate".

[TwilightGardener]

36. If you had a child who had ADHD and/or learning difficulties, you

might see things a little differently in terms of teacher quality. I have an older son who is a teacher's dream, self-motivated (like your children), hard-working, honor student, polite, etc. I have a younger son who is not quite a nightmare, but difficult to motivate, difficult to keep on task. THAT's where the good and the bad teachers are weeded out, as far as I'm concerned--as a nurse, I would look like a great nurse compared to my colleagues if I had easy, cooperative patients who recovered without complications, wouldn't I?

[etherealtruth]

39. I had to smile as I read your response

Your "story" seems identical to mine. My 15 year old is nothing short of a "wunderkind" and my 13 year old is challenge to my (and his teachers') balance. Regarding nursing, I left the field when my two younger children were born. When it was time to return to work (following a divorce) I returned to school and earned a degree in environmental science.

Back to the topic at hand ... I actually like and respect teachers. My problem here is that there is absolutely no acknowledgment that "bad" teachers exist or that anything can or should be done to improve the profession. There is almost always room for improvement .... denying this possibility obstructs the potential for improvement.

[ourbluenation]

44. I know teachers who were fired. I think this problem is greatly exaggerated.

I do.

[etherealtruth]

56. I have no doubt that you do ....

If you read through my responses you will find that what I would really like to know, from people in the profession (those close to the profession, those knowledgeable about the profession) what suggestions might they have to improve the profession? Again, there is (almost)always room for improvement ... simply stating "all teachers are "good" is not helpful. Teachers, like any other profession, fall under a bell curve .... they can't all be good (or bad).

[EFerrari]

67. I've read too many of these threads and have yet to see an "all teachers are good" post.

What am I missing?

When I was teaching, mentoring was very helpful to me and I was happy to return the favor. That's an activity that could be supported (not inflicted) to good purpose.

[etherealtruth]

69. My perception is that that is in fact the attitude

I understand the defensive responses. It is a hard job (after years away from the nursing profession I find myself feeling a little defensive r/t criticism of the profession)and it is difficult to listen to criticism from people that are not aware of the challenges and obstacles you face; however, there needs to be some honest discussion about improving the profession.

[EFerrari]

90. I've found plenty of patient posts explaining the state of the schools

and none claiming beyond reason that there are no bad teachers.

[proud2BlibKansan]

70. There have been many reasonable posts

But these threads are full of folks who are just there to bash teachers.

[EFerrari]

91. Yep. Strange hobby if you ask me, which nobody has.

:)

[TwilightGardener]

52. Yep--pretty identical, my sons are 14 and 13, and I'm not in nursing

at this time, either (not sure if I'm going to re-enter the field or do something else in future--I have my license on "inactive" for now). I can't believe there's not some way to give merit pay, bonuses, whatever, to those who are found deserving (whether via test score improvement, willingness to participate in continuing education, creativity in teaching methods, etc.) without damaging the whole profession in terms of fair wages or effectiveness in teaching. Just because it's a challenge to reward the good (I'm not even talking about "punishing" the bad) doesn't mean it shouldn't even be attempted.

[wickerwoman]

53. No one is denying that there are "bad" teachers

but merit pay isn't going to weed them out.

Administrators getting off their asses and observing classes and starting the process of actually investigating complaints against teachers and then doing something about them will get rid of bad teachers.

The last school I taught in it was bizarrely almost impossible to get the education director to actually sit in on anyone's class. We had seven teachers - two very solid, three inexperienced but with pretty good attitudes, one lazy as all hell and one incompetent and borderline crazy. I would say that ratio is pretty typical of other situations I've worked in. The two of us who were experienced and qualified heard constant complains about the two weakest teachers. We knew they had problems because we knew how they prepared and how they talked about teaching in the lounge. We campaigned like hell to get the administrators to observe their classes and do something about it.

If you know anything about education and you actually physically observe a teacher it's pretty easy to judge their caliber in a very short period of time. Bad teachers don't "fake it" very well, even when the boss is sitting in. The problem is that the boss never sits in.

This is a case where local action will solve the problem much better than an ill-fitting bureaucratic "solution" being imposed on everyone. Parents need to have some recourse for dealing with administrators who aren't doing their jobs. But we don't need to institute a byzantine merit pay type system to address it.

[etherealtruth]

62. This is what I have been looking for ....

... an actual response sharing a knowledgeable opinion that provides some suggestions to improve the profession (provide a mechanism for reward and remove those that don't perform). Thank you.

[ourbluenation]

84. The problem, by and large, is not with the profession. This is the part people are not getting.

Our schools have problems for other reasons. Save learning disabilities, follow the under achievers home and that is where you'll find the root of the problem on the whole. Take me for example. I was a less than stellar student in school and every year my teachers would tell my parents the same thing..."she has the potential but she doesn't apply herself". My parents were not active in my education. Part of is was because they were immigrants who didn't understand our school system, and part was laziness I suppose for not riding my ass, and of course a lot of it was driven by me. I wasn't interested in homework when there were ditch 'em games to be played, etc... Study? You've got to be kidding. As if.

Why should any of my teachers be held accountable for my time after 3 o'clock? My missing homework assignments that affected my grade? My lack of studying that affected my test scores? See what I mean? My lack of interest, in a merit system, would have directly affected my teacher' ability to get merit pay. That's just not fair. And this is so provable that I have no doubt if it's institutionalized the unions will sue and they'll win.

[etherealtruth]

87. Is the converse also true then?

If a child is (as you described yourself)unmotivated to learn and a teacher makes an effort and really "speaks" to this child .... motivating her, engaging her .... if this child turns her academic life around ... becomes engaged and seeks out learning experiences ... are we to say "Why should any of my teachers be held accountable for my time after 3 o'clock? My completed homework assignments that affected my grade? The to study that affected my test scores? See what I mean? My excited interest, in a merit system, would have directly affected my teacher' ability to get merit pay" in a system involving merit pay this teacher might be rewarded as she deserves to be.

Teacher performance isn't the entire problem, but it is a part of the problem can be addressed.

My experience with the US education system (parochial grade school, public 6-12)was fairly good I had some excellent teachers (a shout out to Mr. Dante Chini, for whom my oldest child is somewhat named: Mr. Chini you changed my life) and some very poor teachers (boo to my high school Algebra II teacher: you convinced me I was not very good at math, it turns out the converse was true). Many of my peers had the exact same experience with these teachers .... the sad part is that the two teachers I hold as examples were treated (remunerated)in the same way. One was never rewarded for his excellence and the other was never moved to improve. this is a problem.

Most of my teachers were adequate ... meaning they showed up to work everyday and did their job (taught students adequately and accurately).

[ourbluenation]

89. I guess I just think it's less of a problem. To me teachers can only do so much.

I had some great teachers (shout out to Mr Zahn!), in fact most of my teachers I liked quite a bit and was engaged when I was in the room...it was just the after school part where it all went south and that part of the equation is a large part of performance.

And let me say again that I have seen bad tenured teachers get the boot. Some of them the union fought for and some they did not but there is a myth out there that there's a great sea of bad teachers pulling down the system. They're aren't. There's a few. The problems with education have little to do with teachers. You will see that when the merit system doesn't improve things.

[ourbluenation]

42. My husband is a special ed teacher. Been at it for 15 years.

His informal assessment is that a little over 50% of his students would not need his assistance if it weren't for the f'ed up homes they come from. A little under 50% are kids who were born with learning disabilties who come from loving, nurturing homes. My sister is a college graduate with dislexia and who was ADHD. I know a little on this subject.

Parents of special needs kids are quite diverse in terms of the needs of their kids and their level of advocacy. I remember one parent, this attorney woman, who insisted her daughter with downs syndrome be taught things she was not capable of doing. This sweet child used to literally pull her hair out with frustration. My husband used to take her and the other kids once a week out to a farm where they had a little plot for veggies and what not and they would take it back to the school and sell their produce. They were little lessons in basic science, commerce, counting change, etc. There were a few other kids like this girl and she was never so happy as when she was with her peers. The mother wanted her pulled from the class. Lawsuits, etc. The district had to buy the child a laptop at the womans insistence (this was over 10 years ago when they were a lot more expensive)and the kid had no idea what to do with it. The mom had every intention of having the girl go to university. I can't tell you how many meetings, consultations with lawyers, etc...were spent on this girl.

The joy though, in having parents work with teachers like my husband as a team, advocating for the needs of the kid together, makes it all worth it to him however, the increasing he layers of bureaucracy in special ed he finds incredibly frustrating.

[TwilightGardener]

63. Your husband sounds like a very creative and caring teacher--

I think he should be rewarded in pay for going the extra mile for his students, because perhaps colleagues would see what he does and adopt his methods and attitude in order to earn their own bonus. However, a special-needs teacher expects that the kids in his class have...well, special needs. My son gets some extra help (IEP and all that), but he's not special-ed, he's in regular classes, and in these regular classrooms, you see very clearly which teachers give up on him early in the year out of frustration or lack of interest in understanding him (some of them even downright dislike him, or mock him in class), and which ones make even the slightest extra effort to engage him and come up with solutions that keep him motivated and focused in class. Not sure test scores are universally the way to measure this, but there must be a way to reward the extra dedication.

[ourbluenation]

79. INteresting. My husband would be your sons teacher now....he's switched over to resource a few years

ago from special day class. The worst experience he ever had was an opportunity class. They weren't learning disabled, they were pretty much just delinquents. It was their "last opportunity" before they were kicked out. He had a lot of desks picked up and hauled across the room that year. Very challenging, tough year.

The main reason merit pay won't solve anything is that there are too many things beyond the individual teachers control that effect performance. Kids homelives, bad administrators, access to resources, etc. Merit pay won't do anything but discourage potential teachers from entering the field.

[tonysam]

45. The ONLY Fair System of Pay is the Current One,

which is step pay based on years of service and education. It isn't subjective, it isn't biased.

Furthermore, the lies about "tenure" being "permanent employement" need to stop. It's flagrantly untrue, especially for those of us sacked because we were just a few years away from retirement.

[ladjf]

46. The problem with the merit pay idea is that it is very difficult to

objectively evaluate who should receive it and how much. nt

[lumberjack_jeff]

49. Here's the simple reason that merit pay is a bad idea;

Teachers are prone to blame the students, especially students with disabilities.

If you make it profitable to vote the weak links off the island, that is exactly what will happen.

[noamnety]

86. adding to that

the most challenging districts with the lowest achievers have the most urgent need for the best teachers.

If equitable education is our goal, we shouldn't be creating a situation where financial rewards come from getting placed in a district or classroom with the highest achievers.

[ColbertWatcher]

95. Off to the greatest! Kick & rec! n/t

[BoneDaddy]

99. If merit pay could possibly be fair...sure but it cannot

I work in a high school. We have teachers who teach across a spectrum of different academic levels. The teachers who teach at "higher levels" (College prep, Honors or Advanced Placement) will "show" more because their students by their very nature are more prepared, motivated and have a level of ability that is consistent with higher grades (generally speaking). On the flip side you have your general education students and your special ed that will struggle more.

Merit pay cannot be implemented fairly and this was just ONE example. Sure we need to reward good teachers and we need to weed out bad teachers. This is obvious. My issue is the focus is ALWAYS on teachers and public servants. Perhaps if it was on the Madoffs of the world, we would have, at least, some parity.

[mopinko]

100. has your husband read the whole proposal?

it is not a lot of money- 1%. and it goes to 50% of teachers. it has nothing to do with test scores. teachers who choose to teach the tougher kids get credit for that. hard to fill specialties will get incentives. i just have to reject wholeheartedly that we cannot draw a midline and reward those above it. if you are a principal, and you can't do that, you should be fired.

i think that people are reacting to language that st ronnie and frank luntz used to cover their attempts to destroy public education. that rhetoric got as far as it did because people agreed with what they thought the words meant. i think obama means the words to mean what they mean. context and all that. the knee jerk reactions here have been downright depressing.

[aikoaiko]

117. Rewarding merit pay does not require a "fair playing field".

All your husband's students have different situations, but yet he grades their work, does he not?

Or does he give them all the same grade?

[Fire1]

121. Apples and oranges.