Comments on: Ants At The Picnic?

By: patty

patty — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 02:50:54 +0000

What if teachers evaluated themselves against a rubric? A self-evaluation? Not test scores.

By: MW

MW — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:17:34 +0000

I too work at a Title I school and I do not believe in Merit pay. Our school is 87% Hispanic and 88% Free and Reduced Lunch. We still meet our state and district needs every year but just not as high as other schools in our county. I agree that just because students preform well on a test doesn’t mean the teacher deserves more money. I think much more than just scores should be addressed. Our students and teachers work harder than any school I’ve ever been in. Every year we get awards for making AYP and showing gains…its just that our school isn’t the highest. The fact that we can even preform on average with the rest of our county amazes most people. We are teaching impoverished students, students where English is their second language, and students where every odd imaginable is agains them. If they want to base merit pay on that…I’m all for it but to base it strictly on test scores and test performance is just not right.

By: Kelly B.

Kelly B. — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:14:24 +0000

Merit pay will not be equitable and there is not way to make it that way.

By: Dick Schutz

Dick Schutz — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:09:03 +0000

Warren Buffett’s advice applies to merit pay for teachers: “Beware of geeks baring statistical formulas.” Attorney DC barely scratches the surface. The formulas are akin to the “financial derivatives” that led to the financial meltdown. The arcane statistical manipulation of standardized tests–which are themselves insensitive only to socioeconomic status differences–simply doesn’t reward teacher “merit.” There is methodology for reasonably going about the task, but it requires a good deal more than “value added models” that are not “Change we can believe in.”

By: Kelly Brilakis

Kelly Brilakis — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:02:30 +0000

Teacher Kelly agrees with Attorney DC, there are many factors that can affect a student during testing. One year I had two students who were so sick they threw up in the garbage can during the FCAT test. Now should I be penalized by not getting merit pay due to the illness and thus bad test scores from those two students? What if you have a class of ELL students as I have had and the test is written in English and they barely make accomodations for those students should I then be penalized once again? Merit pay is another idea such as NCLB which just causes teachers more stress.

By: Attorney DC

Attorney DC — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:19:17 +0000

Kitty: As a former teacher, my argument against merit pay is that it is very difficult to invent a system that appropriately measures the “merit” of individual teachers. Student test scores are an iffy measuring tool for a number of reasons. As “tft” mentioned, students are often not assigned randomly: Some teachers teach more “difficult” students than others.

Many other variables also vary from teacher to teacher (and from year to year). For instance, when I was a teacher, at one school I taught the same class 5 periods a day. At another school, I taught three different subjects each day. Not surprisingly, I believe I had better lesson plans for the first school, when I had only one lesson to prepare each day (vs when I had three).

From what I’ve read, studies have shown no strong correlation between an individual teacher’s students’ test scores from year to year. That is, Teacher A could see 10% improvement in scores in 2006-2007 but a 20% increase in scores in 2007-2008 and only a 5% increase in scores in 2008-2009.

For all these reasons, and others, I believe it is difficult to effectively implement an objective and reasonable merit pay system.

By: tft

tft — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 23:29:04 +0000

Kitty,

1. What do you mean? Pay? Apparently so.

2. Apparently not.

3. Because my class might be filled with kids who won’t make enough progress, and your class will, through no fault, or effort, of our own.

Got it?

By: kitty

kitty — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 22:32:49 +0000

I’m that teacher from the Title I school that posted before (I am a veteran elementary classroom teacher and a math coach), and I really have 3 questions that I wish we could talk about:

1. Must teaching be a sacrifice?

2. Can teaching be elevated to a level of prestige?

3. Why is merit pay for teachers threatening?

Big questions, I know. Let’s listen to each other.

By: john thompson

john thompson — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:48:51 +0000

You write:

“a PROPOSED bill in Maine:

“A salary of a teacher may not be BASED upon the measurable performance …” Emphasis mine.

Then you respond with a rhetorical excess that is not helpful

Isn’t the legislative process supposed to help us sort out the words?

A system that is DRIVEN by a data, as opposed to data-informed, would be the death of the values of public education that I revere. I want my union to negotiate language where data supplements or complements. But I want my union to fight to the end against the worst case scenerios.

I see your frustration. We have $5 billion to drive reforms and in the short run it will be one man, Arne Duncan, who makes the call. But if people like DFER or the ED Trust (and sometimes it sounds like you believe the same) got the power they seek, it would be a pyrrhic victory. We still have Courts in this country. Over-reach and you guys will be longing for the good ol days when you just had the unions to deal with. Try to move ahead with the value added models of today in the confident way that some of you want, and you’ll be spending more money on legal cases than education. And the chances are, you’ll get clobbered in Court.

By: Kelly Brilakis

Kelly Brilakis — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 01:37:35 +0000

To the title one teacher I meant to say paid. Sorry for the error.

I believe that as teachers we are not paid as professionals but we decided to go into teaching for other reasons. There are states that pay their teachers very well and of course we should do the work we are hired to do no matter what we are paid. If we want more then we should become something else.