Damn right, this is controversial! If this catches on, who knows where it will lead. Next thing you know, people in all walks of life will want to be paid based on (of all things) ability, the quality of the work they do and job performance. Insanity!
States venture into teacher performance pay
The controversial idea of paying teachers based not on how long they’ve been teaching but on how much their students learn got a boost when a key congressman recently proposed adding pay-for-performance money for teachers in high-poverty schools to the next version of the federal No Child Left Behind education law.
Proponents say merit pay would give teachers incentives to raise the quality of students’ work and could help the NCLB program, which requires schools to show yearly improvement on standardized tests or face penalties. Proposed last month by U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, the merit plan has support from Republicans and U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.
But although some states already pay teachers for performance, the national teachers unions have unleashed a barrage of opposition to Miller’s plan. Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, called it a “deal breaker” that could cost Miller the unions’ support of that version of NCLB revisions. Unions and other teacher support organizations have contended that merit pay relies too much on tests that may not paint an accurate picture of how well someone teaches.
Generally speaking, students don’t fail, it is the people that run the schools that fail. And when they fail, even the good students get dragged into the mud.
Standardized testing serves one great purpose: to measure the ability of the school to teach. Some people complain that teachers end up ‘teaching for the test’ to which I respond “So what? At least they are teaching something.”
Hold school administrations accountable for the performance of the students under their care, and hold teachers accountable for the performance of the students in STANDARDIZED tests.
We have this mentality of hearing that a person is a teacher, and automatically placing them on a pedestal, as if the choice of work automatically makes them a special / superior person, no questions asked.
That photo makes me want to become a teacher!!!! Can i name my performance bonus?
I think the problem comes from the whole ‘standerize test’ bullocks. Really, it should be the principals who ultimately decided who is hired and who is fired, and who get paid what. Somewhere, the bureaucracy has to bite the bullet and actually give someone the power to act, be rewarded when things work well and be thrown out when things go to shit. ’cause things just work better when you do it that way.
From the article… Proponents say merit pay would give teachers incentives to raise the quality of students’ work
Okay… But I would say that only a student can raise the quality of their work.
#7 – Just think now you make more than someone in the private sector with the same amount of education and experience and you get 4 month of vacation!
Teachers do not get paid more than people in the private sector and they do not get four months of vacation. But whatever bullshit you need to fuel your knuckle dragging agenda is okay with me. I wasn’t really expecting facts.
The problem with “merit” based pay is that the only way to gauge it is through the standardized tests that are administered to students. This seems OK at a glance, but there are problems. First this will drive any competent teacher out of low performing districts. No one wants to do this job for a pittance, so good teachers will find schools that will earn them more money ie. high income areas. Second, anyone who has worked in education knows that every so often you get a “bad class.” This is a class that is just chock full of losers who’s parents don’t care about their education. Good teachers can and do end up with classes like this and NOTHING they do can make these kids learn. Third, this will encourage cheating on the part of teachers. Good teachers will want to keep their pay, and bad teachers will want to get paid more.
Further more, all you people who want to blame teachers for poor performance need to remember that teachers have them for at best 6 hours a day. The other 18 HOURS of the day they are in the care of their parents. Parents need to take some personal responsibility for the education of their children and not just claim it is all the teachers fault. If you weren’t going to care for your children, why the hell did you have them? It’s not a teachers job to instill a work ethic and strong desire to learn in a child. That job lands squarely on the shoulders of the parents who are ignoring it for one reason or another.
Try focusing on the social problems that cause low performance and stop blaming teachers for things they have only a limited influence on.
#24 oh they don’t hmmm well June July August no work and 2 wks x-mas 1 wk spring break and a host of other days through out the year. My father is a teacher believe me he makes more than the average college grad in the private sector, gets all that time off, a 90% pension, more job security than you or i could ever dream of, with no oversight of his performance to speak of.
Does anyone else see the disconnect here
#14 – I am absolutely dumb founded that there are people on this site who actually think its bad a idea to pay people who are good at their job more money than people who are bad at their job.
I’m pretty dumbfounded too. Not because we are talking about paying “good” teachers more… But because we are talking about paying “bad” teachers at all… Why are we even employing “bad” teachers? Is it because teaching is treated as a third rate profession and McDonald’s managers make more than teachers, meaning that schools are forced to take what they can get?
And this noble Ayn Rand idea of a meritocracy will last 12 minutes before it is corrupted by nepotism, favoritism, and any number of other -isms…
We simply need to pay these professionals like professionals. And we need to provide them with tools and facilities… and bla bla bla
But what we really need to do is shut up. Most critics of education don’t have a clue what they are talking about, as evidenced here every few days when it becomes open season on teachers…
Look… Rich schools get great grades and ship over 90% of their kids off to college. Schools in the middle do pretty well as well. Poor schools perform badly… and what do you expect?
In my ex-wife’s first year teaching the first grade, she had 37 kids. The oldest parent was 25, the average was 22. Of those kids, 8 had fathers at home, and 10 had fathers who were dead… and 3 of those kids had actually witnessed their father’s murder. There were 2 mothers who could never be reached to sign report cards or give updates to, so I took care of that. I drove a cab in those days so I took whatever material the mother needs to their jobs personally. I knew where to find them because I knew which streets they walked at night.
So my question is… what the fuck do you people want from these teachers? You aren’t saying it, but you are only talking about poor schools. We don’t actually have an education problem in this country. That’s a myth. We have a poverty problem. And unless you can solve it, your are going to have badly performing schools. Also until we stop scapegoating teachers, who did nothing other than dedicate their lives to the thankless job of teaching your kids, we aren’t going to be successful in finding solutions.
Now, faced with reality, and not what the public and politicians think they know about education, how to you award merit pay to teachers? I’d rather award combat pay, frankly…
#26 – I was married to a teacher, she and most of the other teachers in our circle worked year round…
But in regards to those months where school isn’t in session, they don’t get paid for that.
So until you know the job, don’t judge the job.
Can teachers be evaulated objectively to determine who gets the most pay? Yes.
Will teachers be evaluated objectively to determine who gets the most pay? Never in a million years.
Remember, the people who will develop and apply any system that is implemented are politicians & bureaucrats. Objectivity has the proverbial snowball’s chance.
#28 I know the job. they get paid a full years wages for 9 months of work. A starting teacher where i lives starts at $40K. That is a full years pay for 9 months worth of work. Really good pay considering that is no experience and the median home cost in my area is $60K
I think you guys are missing the point when you talk about rich districts versus poor districts. Any school district has more than one teacher. You can pay more within the same school district. Who cares about comparisons to rich districts, where the pay scales aren’t as important anyways. In a poor school, you should be able to pay extra for a math or science teacher vs a kindergarden teacher, etc.
As for more money means better schools. I think this has been studied very well, and little correlation has been found, at least once you get past a certain level which all states have. There is a much higher correlation between education level and latitude, meaning that to get better schools, states should just move north closer to Canada.
To fix education, you have to fix poverty? I think this goes against the examples in the past of poor schools doing well in some areas. Certain methods of teaching and school operation do better.
Let the students with good grades rate the teachers.
$40k isn’t all that much given the college investment- it’s actually on the low end, with little or no chance for promotion or advancement. This makes the pool of available candidates small and the talented folks find better paying jobs. (My husband and I are both college dropouts, and between us we manage better than a teacher with a Master’s- with my husband making double the average teacher salary!)
#35 $40K right out of college with no experience along with a 9 month working year, the great low cost health ins. the job security, the pension, and the scheduled pay increases. I would say that they have it pretty good.
If you cant make it on 40K right out of school then take those summer months (when you don’t have to work) and get another job. I mean come on I have been in my field for 7 years I am not making a whole lot more that that and I have to work all 12 months of the year. No sympathy here
#30 – #28 I know the job. they get paid a full years wages for 9 months of work. A starting teacher where i lives starts at $40K. That is a full years pay for 9 months worth of work. Really good pay considering that is no experience and the median home cost in my area is $60K
$40K isn’t a lot of money for a professional level job requiring the education that teaching does, never mind that our unruley raised by wolves kids ain’t no freakin’ picnic. They are paid for the 9 months, and the checks are optionally stretched to be distributed over the course of a year, as is the tradition in almost all districts. Based on your 60K median housing cost, I can understand why you think most teachers get summers off. Outside of rural America teachers tend to work year round and often do so under very adverse conditions.
#36 – No sympathy here
No lack of jealousy either, it would appear.
A job that is payed based on job performance should rely solely on the person performing the job and their work. In the teaching profession, you can try every method possible and still have a group of students not understand the topic.
Compound this in the context of a subject like math, which I currently teach. Most of my geometry students passed Algebra with a D and scored even lower than that on their standardized tests. I have to teach kids basic algebra, multiplication tables AND what an alternate interior angle is. On top of that, add the English language learners, kids with learning disabilities, and plain old troublemakers. Not to mention that my class 4 over its limit.
There are way to many variables to link teacher pay to student performance on a test.
#39 – I hate to say this after being such a staunch defender of teachers… But your grammar blows goats.