What good teachers should be saying...

[ncteechur]

I am a good teacher. I am a professional--an expert in instruction and pedagogy. I bust my ass for my students. If they don't get it one way, I will try 50 other ways if necessary. I push them farther than where they thought they could go and make them grow. I want a merit pay system because I will do well within that system. I don't want substandard teachers to drag down this proud profession. If a merit pay system will make that happen-let's get to it.

[Luminous Animal]

1. Merit pay has gone in and out of fashion

for 300 years. It has not once been proven a success.

[NYC_SKP]

2. I like you, ncteecher.

Preface: "Merit Pay" is a really loaded term. I prefer "honors pay", "incentive pay", or some other term that doesn't have the history that "merit pay" has. :P

I like practically all teachers, love them in fact.

The best teachers pour hours into their work that they don't need to by contract, because they love their students and want them to succeed.

But there are a number who find the easiest ways to just get by.

It's not fair that both groups get precisely the same pay and benefits and, largely, job security.

:loveya:

Disclosure: I'm a "highly qualified" former classroom teacher with Masters in Education, and I currently teach teachers in many, many districts and schools, so have exposure to all types of classroom settings and educational approaches.

[Lorax]

21. How many hours?

<i>"The best teachers pour hours into their work that they don't need to by contract, because they love their students and want them to succeed."</i>

So to be one of the best teachers, I need to pour hours into my work, above and beyond my contract. Ok, I can almost buy that. How many hours? Where does it become enough?

I've written in another post about the number of times I literally pulled all-nighters to get things done for my students. Working 24 out of 24 hours. I did that many times which eventually led to major health problems. I loved my students. I wanted them to succeed. And I was told by many that I was a good teacher. But I just couldn't do it anymore.

Now I'm just angry because it seems like no matter what I had done, it would never have been enough. I'm sorry but I didn't sell my soul. Why don't teachers get to have a life too?

[NYC_SKP]

22. You raise a couple of very important points that are usually missed.

One is the vast difference between the contract day and what is really needed to do the job well.

Teaching is so unlike other professions in this regard that it's shocking to anyone who knows about the hours needed to do it right.

Plumbers and Lawyers are paid by the hour. Teachers are given an odd population and an impossible list of expectations and inadequate time.


The present system preys on teachers who care. They work their hearts out and spend hundreds of dollars of their own money.


Meanwhile, many just put in their contract hours and go home, and keep their jobs.

Where is the justice?

:shrug:

[roguevalley]

34. as a teacher, I prefer good pay. that way all boats rise. as for the bad ones,

have them mentored and give them a chance to do better.

[ColbertWatcher]

3. I disagree.

A good teacher would ask that others respect his/her professionalism and stay out of the classroom.

A good teacher knows the difference between practical and theoretical and facts and propaganda.

[roody]

4. How is merit decided? I am a Title 1 teacher busting my ass as

well. I serve 60 kids daily for varied amounts of time.

[msongs]

5. if you luck out and get more motivated/prepared kids you do better and get merit pay :-) nt

[roody]

6. Since I am the Title 1 teacher, I get all the "behind" kids.

[Orrex]

17. Well, then you clearly don't merit a pay increase

See how simple it is?

:puke:

[Emit]

12. If merit were based on improvement --

-- how much a child progressed over a set period of time, rather than comparing the child to an overall standard, would that be fair?

I have a child who has a reading/language processing/ADD disability. While she remains behind in her reading level compared to kids her age/other kids in her class, she has made significant improvements since having some interventions (and a couple of fantastic teachers who recognized the red flags; took the time to implement accommodations even before she was assessed; and listened to us, the parents, when we kept asking questions about her problem with reading).

Imho, that's success, and these two teachers deserve merit for what they did for us as a family.

And, btw, thanks for the work you do with the kids. :thumbsup:

[roody]

13. Makes sense to me; I'm sure you know that standardized

testing is the only measure that counts for anything now at public school. I'm glad that your daughter had some good teachers.

[rwheeler31]

7. Sorry cannot agree.

[MadHound]

8. Actually all the good teachers I know are saying the same thing I am

Merit pay is another disaster waiting to happen, and it will simply hasten the destruction of our public school system.

[roody]

15. That destruction is the underlying agenda.

[tbyg52]

38. Bingo. nt

[femmocrat]

9. Sorry, but I have to disagree.

I work just as hard as you do, but teach a subject that does not test. If merit pay is to be linked to student achievement, I would never receive it.
Would you consider all teachers in non-core subjects as "substandard"? I really don't think so.

How would you determine a basis for merit pay?

[roguevalley]

36. I hate merit pay. I taught every subject and the graces in elementary for 27

years. Prep for all the subjects and the 'spread', that is, the differences in abilities. High school teaches one, maybe two subjects all day. The prep isn't the same and the work isn't as hard. Its great to teach your subject and be the greatest. Try and be the greatest for all of them. Merit pay for them? As much as I cling to all teachers and they are all my brother and sisters, that is just ... I am struggling to find the word. This whole thing will put teachers at each other's throats. Count on it.

[kwassa]

10. and why should they be saying it?

what is your teaching experience?

[Imagevision]

11. Try it implement it - what's there to lose - what to gain...

[MadHound]

18. What's to lose

Hmm, let's see, a generation of students who are ill taught because their teachers are forced to teach to the test due to NCLB and merit pay. What else is to lose? The ability of a school to function as a smoothly running unit with everybody helping everybody else. Merit pay turns people in competitors and destroys cooperation. What else is to lose? Well qualified, excellent teachers who don't want to deal with further bullshit and simply move on. What else is there to lose? Eventually our public school system, since merit pay is another one of those strategies designed to hasten the destruction of our public school system.

What is they to gain? Not a goddamn good thing.

Any other questions?

[Confusious]

14. So how are we going to compare different districts?

All funding for schools in local areas come from property taxes, so inner city kids get less money for schools then the suburbs. Inner city kids are probably more likely to have parents in jail or on drugs, or single parent poor family.

Are you going to just say that all A's are equal? or all D's as far as progress goes?

I would think a teacher in the suburbs should have 50% A's under that. Inner city, maybe 5%.

Maybe a nice giant equation to figure things out:

average income of students parents x number of parents in PTA x amount of funding for schools x 1 divided by average grade point average of students in the class ..... etc, etc, etc.

If I was a good teacher, I would know enough to say: "Its a stupid FUCKING idea"

[RiverStone]

29. You can't!

And yes, it is a stupid fucking idea. :think:

[roody]

16. Well the money to install and monitor the cameras to

observe us at all times will take teachers and assistants away from kids.

[last_texas_dem]

19. I oppose merit pay* because I don't believe there is a fair and accurate way to do it

and, even if there were, observance of educational "reforms" over the past thirty years leads me to believe that it is highly unlikely that such a system would be implemented using the most fair and accurate measures.

I believe that the implementation of subjective measures to measure teacher quality would needlessly add corruption to the educational system. (Why are many still so gung-ho on the idea that running all systems like businesses will necessarily improve them?)

Also, I don't believe that a merit pay system will do anything to rid the schools of "substandard" teachers. Its implementation in the past doesn't seem to have been particularly successful, so I'm not sure why it is being promoted as some sort of proven reform.

Just my take as a non-teacher...

* I should note that by "merit pay" I am referencing any system in which teacher pay is tied to student "performance." I have heard measures such as offering additional pay to teachers for teaching in hard-to-staff schools or offering additional pay to teachers for obtaining Master's degrees, etc., being counted as components of a "merit pay" plan.

[noamnety]

20. I share that belief:

"I don't believe that a merit pay system will do anything to rid the schools of "substandard" teachers."

There are only two ways it would get rid of teachers - by reducing some teachers' pay to subliving wages, which to me is not an option, or by crippling some teachers' morale for so severely that they quit the profession.

I find it hard to believe we have democrats arguing for subliving wages for anyone ... which leads me to think they are aiming to cripple the morale of teachers. I don't think that's in the best interest of students - particularly as teachers have to invest so much money to get certified. Many can't afford to willingly walk away from that investment and leave the profession in this economy, so all you got then is mediocre teachers who resent their administrations. How does that serve anyone?

[wickerwoman]

23. I was a pretty good teacher

and I busted my ass for my students. Would I have stayed in the profession if they had had merit pay?

Probably not. My school was pretty broke. We didn't have air conditioning in the summer and sometimes it got up to 105 degrees in the classroom. I had to buy my own fan and all it did was push hot air around. We had cockroaches climbing on the walls and rats nesting in the ceiling. You could hear them squealing and fighting during class. Part of the roof crumbled so it dripped water into buckets on the floor every time it rained. There was a hole in the ceiling right over my desk and I used to have a creeping fear that a rat was going to fall through it and onto my head.

Would I have stayed in the profession for an $800 a year performance-based bonus? Honestly, no. I'd rather have had air conditioning and an exterminator and the roof fixed and updated textbooks and not have to deal with dirty looks from the receptionist every time I signed out a new white board marker. Yes, signed out a white board marker. Because if you used more than your monthly ration you had to buy your own.

Probably the most surreal meeting I ever attended had the school administration trying to convince teachers to stop wearing jeans because the school had an "image problem". I felt like screaming "damn straight we have an image problem. I'm teaching in a frickin* furnace that reeks of the poorly maintained toilets next door with frickin* rats having a party upstairs but obviously the reason students don't take classes seriously is because the teacher is wearing jeans."

Likewise, it's not "substandard teachers" dragging down the US education system (although there are a few out there.) The kids see a lot of things before they see the teacher but for some reason all the public/administration sees is the teacher. When I was in high school, we had to navigate a hall strewn with trash cans collecting water as it fell through the leaky roof. For four years. It's kind of hard to build up school spirit when the first thing you see when you walk into the school are garbage cans. But it does give you a good sense of just how much your community values education (despite all the bullshit said about it on TV).

Let's take the money they are proposing to spend on merit pay and get every school building up to code and well equipped. And then let's pay all teachers a professional wage. And then let's worry about the incentive structure to award the excellent teachers... they aren't quitting in droves because they don't get bonuses. First things first.

[ourbluenation]

27. well said. Most teachers are good teachers. Districts will go bankrupt with all this merit pay.

for crissakes this seems so obvious.

[vince3]

24. Way too may loaded terms

A "good" teacher in the eyes of whom? And all of the "ifs"? This merit pay thing came out of the far right wing. The same people who have brought us fraudulent elections and fraudulent wars and everything else.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

25. also creates bad feeling with staff

if one teacher out of the staff gets a merit award and the others don't just imagine the moral in that school!
There are enough assessments throughout the year to weed out bad teachers. Extra funding should go to teachers in difficult schools who will try to raise standards.

[ourbluenation]

26. The only reason I want merit pay is because my hubs is a damn good teacher and we'll

have more money. Other than us having more income, it won't do a damn thing to fix education so in reality, just can't support it.

[RiverStone]

28. I work for a school where every kid is on a free and reduced lunch

Our achievement may be very different than your achievement.

Simply surviving a difficult home life and making it to graduation is a HUGE success. How do you account for "merit" when some teachers have dedicated their career working for very disadvantaged kids? Do you grade merit on a curve?

Add inner city LA or rural Appalachia to that curve...

Merit pay is a bad idea! What equals merit to one person may not equal merit to another. Students are far, far more than standardized test results --- as are great teachers!

[FlyingSquirrel]

30. I really just think the right answer is

for the Federal Government to earmark a very large amount of money for teacher salaries, and require that it be distributed. In every public school, without strings. Insist that all teachers (even the "bad" ones) be given a significant raise - I'm talking 50% for new teachers, perhaps 20% for those with the most longevity. And that this be permanent. Also (duh) more general funding for all schools, particularly those with the lowest test scores.

This will have the effect of freeing up the teachers to concentrate more on their profession and less on worrying about paying the rent or mortgage; and encourage more talented people to enter the profession.

Merit pay is just not going to do the trick (and it's difficult to implement as well).

[babylonsister]

31. Rec'd. Thanks for giving us a different perspective. nt

[BlooInBloo]

32. Awwww.... someone finally caught on!

:rofl:

[Joe Fields]

33. Thank you. Not only for the noble work you do,

but for recognizing the obvious.

[EFerrari]

35. A dressed up bad premise is still a bad premise. n/t

[ExExGOP]

37. How do you measure merit in a fair way??