In what is essentially a precis of Sunday's Baltimore Sun piece on merit pay for public school teachers and principals, today's Daily Times glosses over the intense opposition of merit pay proposals by the Maryland State Teachers' Association (MSTA).
Who could blame them. Short of molesting a child you can't be fired. If your performance is bad enough, you're bundled off to another school. You still get your annual raises. Yet, we are surprised when "Johnny can't read"?
Merit pay is an excellent idea that helps to bring market forces to education. Given the socialist predilections of the national and state teachers' unions, who would expect them to embrace such a notion?
Of course merit pay is not a silver bullet. If we are serious about providing quality public education to our children we must demand merit pay as one part of a serious approach to reform the public schools. Other actions than need to be adopted include abolition of teacher tenure (a polite term for civil service protection) and school choice.
School choice is probably the single most important reform that can be undertaken. Given that the Delaware State Education Association (DSEA), another unit of the fellow travelling NEA, is funding consultants to destroy the charter school movement in Delaware, there must be something to that notion besides the philosophical belief that freedom of choice (a key concept of liberty) always trumps socialism.
cross posted at Delmarva Dealings
Who could blame them. Short of molesting a child you can't be fired. If your performance is bad enough, you're bundled off to another school. You still get your annual raises. Yet, we are surprised when "Johnny can't read"?
Merit pay is an excellent idea that helps to bring market forces to education. Given the socialist predilections of the national and state teachers' unions, who would expect them to embrace such a notion?
Of course merit pay is not a silver bullet. If we are serious about providing quality public education to our children we must demand merit pay as one part of a serious approach to reform the public schools. Other actions than need to be adopted include abolition of teacher tenure (a polite term for civil service protection) and school choice.
School choice is probably the single most important reform that can be undertaken. Given that the Delaware State Education Association (DSEA), another unit of the fellow travelling NEA, is funding consultants to destroy the charter school movement in Delaware, there must be something to that notion besides the philosophical belief that freedom of choice (a key concept of liberty) always trumps socialism.
cross posted at Delmarva Dealings
7 comments:
The trouble with merit pay, is "Who decides the merit?"
If it's the principal, then you've just setup an a$$ kissing contest within each school. This is bad for education, bad for morale, bad for the students, and bad the whole system. Just bad.
If it's based on standardized testing, then teachers will just teach the test. This is also bad.
The idea of merit pay is great. Nobody has figured out how to do it right...
Merit Pay can be accomplished in the teaching environment, provided that proper assessments are done of the teachers. If you walk into any school, ask the other teachers, who is doing a good job, and they can all tell you. Like any profession, there are time card punchers, and committed, wonderful, talented employees. Its actually easy to figure out, and with out merit pay, the only ones getting screwed are the good teachers.
I am a teacher who absolutely LOVES the idea of merit pay connected to a base salary. I put a lot of time into my job and want to see my students excel. The problem is teachers in WCBOE schools are evaluated based on three or so classroom observations that have little/no relationship to the criteria on their year-end evaluation. I worked part-time minimum wage jobs that had more analytical and objective evaluation systems. The current system is INCREDIBLY subjective. Our schools would have to fail under poor "un-principalled" leadership that chases away dedicated teachers before it would work. Merit pay as implemented creates a major incentive to please the principal; not research based critical thought-based instruction. Quality schools start with highly qualified teachers. Wicomico is loosing them by the boat-load (10% every year) because financial incentives are better elsewhere.
Merit pay is a wonderful idea! But Wicomico must rethink its system of evaluation first.
Some very interesting points here.
1. Who Evaluates -
If you don't want your supervisor (Principal) evaluating you, then you've just shown why far too many people have no respect for our public education. Go get a job in the private sector and see who does your evaluation. All WCBOE personnel - including principals - need to be under a merit pay system. That means that a principal who gives high marks to ass kissing underachievers will be be out in a few years himself.
2. Evaluation Methodology -
Most (75% - 90%) of the criteria need to be objective. Test scores up, good teacher. Test scores down, not so good. And please don't give me any of this hooey about "teaching to the test". That just promotes the notion of educators wanting the money and not the accountability. Seniority should still count, but far less than it does now. Ditto with "professional achievement". Getting a Masters doesn't make you a better teacher. Given the wacko ideas coming from university ed schools the the exact opposite argument could be made.
I also noticed that no one wanted to touch the tenure argument.
I'll touch the tenure argument. If you want the best people to be teachers, tenure sure as helps.
I have tenure. If I had to choose between a system with tenure and without, guess which I would pick??
That choice has nothing to do with my self assessment as a teacher and mentor.
You think the private sector (without a tenure system) does a better job with teachers? Is there any wonder why parochial schools do not do as well, on average, as the public schools??
If Harvard dropped their tenure system, guess what would happen.
If you want the best teachers, pay them well, and give them a good system where they will not be jerked around...
Tenure is a joke. Comparing tenure for professors at Harvard to tenure in our public school system doesn't make sense. First, tenure at the collegiate level is granted after a long period of time and only to those that qualify. Tenure in public schools is automatic after the lapse of time. Also professors, who are doing research on controversial topics should be protected from abuse. Teachers in our school systems doing research? I don't think so.
As an employee in the private sector, my tenure comes from my continued hard work and success at my job. Not granted through the ticking of a clock.
To the posting at 11:23 AM....
You need a grip on reality!
there should be no tenures in life. nothing is garunteed and you need to be held accountable. only the public sector can live by this rule at the taxpayers expense! I'd feel better paying teachers salaries knowing that the bad ones have been weeded out. just like any other business in the private sector. accountability. tenure is a big reason why the public school system is broke!
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