Merit pay for teachers?

This will be interesting:

 

The biggest problem (but not the only problem) with merit pay is the measuring stick. I've got a problem with using standardized test scores. With NCLB teachers have already been forced to teach to the test, which has done wonders for test scores, but at what expense?

Even schools are getting to the point where most resources go toward the subjects that are tested while the other subjects get table scraps.

 

Well, there's one problem right there -- only 15 percent of the teachers are part of this release. It's got to be either everybody or nobody.

I would agree that merit pay is one of those things that sounds good in concept, but doesn't work in reality. Just like tying funding to test scores -- all it does is encourage districts to teach to the test, or otherwise throw everything they have into test days. I'm generally happy with my kids' schools, but I'm nauseated that when state standardized test week comes, the district is handing out "do great on the test!" T-shirts, sending home extra notes encouraging parents to make sure their kids get sleep, and spending specific time on test prep. To me, it's the biggest waste of educational time for the year, and that includes the last "week" of school that consists of two half-days and a 90-minute day.

 

I think it's important to say that the vast, vast majority of teachers do a good job, are in it for the right reasons, and put in extra time and even money in an effort to give their kids the best possible education.

I think it's also clear that the biggest problems our schools face is kids who are not prepared to learn or are uninterested in learning. The biggest factor in this is uninvolved parents.

Schools and teachers can not make up for the breakdown of the family in locations across America.

But I also think that in 2010, we should have metrics to identify both good and bad teachers. I understand it's not easy, but we have 100 new stats to evaluate baseball players and we still have no idea who is a good teacher.

And the unions resist any effort to evaluate teachers.

We absolutely need to find a way to hold poor teachers, principals & schools accountable.

We all know that they're not all great. Some are bad. Is that number 10%, 5%, or 1%? I don't know, but there's not much being done about it now.

The very worst teachers & principals need to be fired and the very worst schools need to be closed.

 

I always wonder about the whole, "teaching to the test" argument. If these tests aren't a good measure of the kid's knowledge, maybe the problem is with the tests.

I mean, there re certain things you should know in each subject at each grade level.

Serious question: can someone please explain why using tests is so bad and/or why it can't be improved?

 

YankeeFan -- I don't think anyone (except for a teachers' union president, in public) will argue that there aren't bad teachers, and that drastic action should be taken in the most dysfunctional of situations. But ratings teachers, quantitatively, is hell of a lot more difficult than rating baseball players. (Although it would be funny to see a staff list with VORT -- Value Over Replacement Teacher -- attached.)

The big factor is not only uninvolved parents, but also school funding that is based on local property taxes. You end up with wide swings in funding for districts, particularly in states like Illinois that barely support schools (and aren't even sending the pittance it's supposed to send). You can end up with a situation where a school becomes a symbol of the downward spiral of the community. Or as property taxes spiral up, and voters place caps on them or otherwise rebel, you get a case where people's frustration with taxes ends up harming kids' educations.

The closest thing to unanimity that voters can come up with in "solving" school problems is fighting to pay taxes to support them, a problem I suspect that will keep getting bigger as the population ages ("Hey, my kids aren't in school anymore! So what do I care?"). There aren't a lot of people like my father, who hated taxes as much as anyone, but who voted for every educational tax increase on the ballot, knowing that a strong school system was not only good for educating his children, but keeping the desirability of where he lived high, and his property values up.

 

Standardized tests reveal only that which can be memorized and parroted back. They reveal almost nothing about the ability to synthesize information, or reorder it, or put it to actual use. Standardized tests are a figleaf for politicians.

So we'll measure the ability to "teach" by measuring the ability to teach tests which themselves measure nothing.

 

There are a number of problems. One is that you can't use the same standardized test in different districts and expect it to be fair for all of them. The quality of teachers, parental support, environment and materials available is far too different.

Also, not all students learn the same way. Some struggle to process what they read, but they do much better when the information is represented graphically or spoken. These students in turn express their knowledge differently as well. Some students test well. Others struggle on tests, but do better with essays, projects, presentations or other methods of sharing information.

When you force teachers to teach to a test, it restricts their ability to reach students who learn differently. It also unfairly biases assessment against students whose strengths lie outside of test taking.

There are some very smart kids who simply don't show up well if you sit them down with a standardized test. We don't measure their abilities properly, which gives us false information about them and their teachers.

 

YF, there is a serious discussion going on at the medical school level -- and probably many levels -- on whether the purpose of education is arming you with a boatload of facts, or teaching students how to learn. With so much knowledge at your fingertips (hello, Google!), and with the amount of information exploding and changing, the question is whether it's downright educational malpractice to just teach kids a rote set of facts, and call it an education.

Of course, those advocating the teaching-how-to-learn aren't ignoring facts -- you've got to know something. But tests often tend to spotlight whether someone knows how to take a test, not what they actually know. It's better than nothing, but to throw decisions such as school funding and staffing on how kids do on a one-day or one-week test seems a little much.

 

Amen on both the state funding and property tax factors. Teachers are just the easiest target.

 

It isn't the teachers, it's what they teach.

There's not enough emphasis on engaging students in math and science. I remember when I was in school it was always about memorization when it came to those sorts of classes. I can't say I retained a whole lot either. I really don't know how things have changed in the 15 or so years since I was last in public school, but if there's no strategy to make subjects interesting we're going to continue to get the same results.

I think we see a lot of the baloney which cripples our system in the text book debates. Education officials are not worried about concepts. They're worried about being right and having the satisfaction of seeing their world view in print. And hence having that world view taught and memorized for some standardized test.

 

She's been there 15 years and has a lot of friends in high places, that's for sure. One of the few times I'm glad schoolkids have cameras and videocameras on their phones, because that's been the bulk of the documentation.