America is known to have a capitalistic economy (it is not 100% capitalistic on the spectrum, but when asked, we state that we have a capitalistic economy).
Most jobs will pay their employees according to if they do their job and they do it well. When it comes to public schools, teachers are paid based upon their years of experience and their qualifications. There is also this thing called "tenure" which after a certain number of years at the job (I believe it is three years), makes it very hard for the teacher to lose their job.
There are many pros and cons to merit based pay for teachers.
PROS:
-education will improve because MBP will weed out the teachers who don't achieve the results illustrated in their students test scores
-it will give teachers an incentive to keep working hard (it is a fact that many [not all] teachers burn out after teaching for so long and do not teach with the same enthusiasm when they first started.
-it rewards teachers who do an outstanding job teaching
CONS:
-many do not think MBP is fair because there will be obvious differences in the test scores of an Senior AP class than a freshman CP class
-it does not work for all subjects. Music and Special Ed are cases where it is hard to determine what has been accomplished through standardized tests.
-it is not fair for teachers to be "punished" if their students are just not good test takers
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1862444-1,00.html
I couldn't find an extremely current article about this, but this article from Time Magazine last year provides some pretty good insight on Michelle Rhee (the chancellor of education in Washington DC). Rhee supports the idea of merit based pay as means to improve education by weeding out the "bad" teachers and rewarding the "good" ones who get results illustrating the improvement of their students.
"Rhee wants to use that [improving test scores with a certain teacher] to decide who gets paid more--and, in combination with classroom evaluation, who keeps the job. But many teachers do not trust her to do this fairly, and the union bristles at the idea of giving up tenure, the exceptional job security that teachers enjoy."
One of the things that I found almost shocking when I first read this article almost a year ago was this interesting piece of data regarding having "good" teachers over "bad" ones:
"If two average 8-year-olds are assigned to different teachers, one who is strong and one who is weak, the children's lives can diverge in just a few years, according to research pioneered by Eric Hanushek at Stanford. The child with the effective teacher, the kind who ranks among the top 15% of all teachers, will be scoring well above grade level on standardized tests by the time she is 11. The other child will be a year and a half below grade level--and by then it will take a teacher who works with the child after school and on weekends to undo the compounded damage. In other words, the child will probably never catch up."
Now I must warn you, many people I've talked to at Aragon are very opposed to the idea of merit based pay because it does not seem like a fair system. Only the thing is, that is because people at Aragon immediately think of the teachers at Aragon and that it would not be fair for them to be penalized if the students don't meet the standards in our test scores. I think that many of us agree that our teachers are great, and I believe that the majority of teachers here would have no problem with us not meeting the test standards. The thing is that MBP will help education in parts of the country where teachers aren't as strong and in turn student education is sacrificed (I couldn't think of a less intense adjective...).
What do you guys think? Any arguments for MBP or why MBP should not be implemented?
Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Moving On
1 hour ago
6 comments:
I do not think merit based pay for teachers is a good idea, especially if the measurement of their capability is based on standardized tests.
First: The pay of the teacher will fluctuate a lot based on how good the generation's students are at taking standardized tests (seeing as test taking itself is a skill).
Second: The education system will curve more towards a system in which students are taught to fill in bubbles on a scantron rather than learn actual skills used in the working world that come along with the things they learn. I think that the most important part of school is to teach kids how to apply what they learn to the real world. Take for example this blog and Mr. Silton. Hypothetically speaking, (because I am sure Mr. Silton would not sacrifice his salary over the education of hundreds of students every year) if teachers were paid based on merit, Mr. Silton may decide that making us do more homework that includes multiple choice questions for practice on the AP is more important than bringing us the world of political blogging.
And besides, if a teacher is really that horrible, the students could complain to the principal or superintendent or however it was done during the 2007-2008 school year to get rid of a particular Modern World History teacher.
-Yuzo Yanagitsuru
"One of the things that I found almost shocking when I first read this article almost a year ago was this interesting piece of data regarding having "good" teachers over "bad" ones:"
Not really shocking at all when you think about it - teachers do make a difference. However, students must also take it to themselves to learn the curriculum. The teacher can only go as far as teaching it, but he/she can't make the student learn it. Educators don't seem to understand that.
I don't see how this will improve grades in low-income neighborhoods. It is a generally true that kids there aren't as disciplined as the middle class or high class neighborhood kids.
"The education system will curve more towards a system in which students are taught to fill in bubbles on a scantron rather than learn actual skills used in the working world that come along with the things they learn."
Exactly. Our classes will teach us how to pass this test; it will not actually teach us useful applications for what we learn.
I agree with Kevin, teachers can only teach the material, not 100% have the students understand it. Although, merit based pay might motivate some teachers in those mentioned regions in the country, to "teach better", mostly I don't think MBP will be advantageous. MBP is kind of like studying for the SAT, the teachers' curriculum will be teaching to a test (most definately, the standardized test that determines their salary). Even the best standardized tests cannot accurately measure how well students will do in the real world, and teaching to the tests will not necessarily teach the students the complete material. For example, in many math SAT books, there are many sections on tricks to plug in the answer choices rather than actually teaching the correct formulas needed in real life. Besides just possibly making the education of the student less comprehensive (which, is exactly was the MBP doesn't want), it just takes the passion and motivation out of teaching. I know there are some teachers (many in this school) that make their teaching plans and lessons as amusing and informative as can be. MBP will probably just quell that motivation, since teachers will then be motivated only to buy standardized books and teaching guides to create a lesson that ensures their salary is not on the line. Overall, I don't think MBP is going to be all that effective.
- Henry Zhang
I enjoyed reading your post Jessica. Thanks for writing it.
Although I agree with Yuzo in that merit is a difficult thing to measure amongst teachers, I do believe it should be taken into account more than it currently is. Rather than completely basing a teacher's pay on longevity and the Union system, shouldn't some of the teacher's pay be based on how the teacher is performing, just like it is in corporate America. In no other business does a person get job security after three years, especially now; Performance is always taken into account when it comes down to who get to keep their jobs. Why shouldn't it be the same for teachers?
Although one way to do this is to use standardized test scores, this method is clearly suspect to inequalities. Another option, however, to keep teachers improving and performing at the top of their game is to limit the terms of tenure. At some other schools, such as Saint Ignatius, tenure must be renewed after a certain number of years. Student reviews, observations, and peer reviews (I'm not entirely sure about the last one, but I think it's a factor), are all taken into account when it is time of an S.I. teacher to renew his or her tenure. In this system, any job losses due to budget cuts would not always be the newest teacher, who may be a fantastic teacher. It would be the teacher who is not teaching well.
Unfortunately, implementing this system is far past the limits of our budget, would require much more work and effort, and would probably meet a wave of opposition from the Union. As a result, it is not a very practical option.
However, I believe that rewarding excellence rather than longevity is a flaw that hinders education, and therefore must be fixed.
I firmly believe that teachers should be paid based on merit rather than longevity. I have had enough teachers that hardly know their subject matter and dislike being around children to realize that the current system of hiring/keeping teachers doesn't work very well. With tenure, teachers can lose a lot of incentive to work hard. Now, I'm not proposing that teachers should live in constant fear of being fired, but I do think that there should be a little less "security" in the jobs of teacher with tenure. This would force slaking teachers to work harder and would therefore help students.
However, how the "merit" of teachers would be measured, is the most difficult problem to address when discussing this issue. As mentioned, test scores could be one way to measure how capable a teacher is, but there are obvious flaws in doing that (which we have already pointed out). I think another idea with which to determine merit would be to allow students to rate their teachers on qualities such as preparedness, patience, quality of curriculum, etc. But, there are obvious flaws in that system as well, such as biases, prejudgement, and the habit of many people to be hyper-critical.
In my opinion, though merit based pay would be highly beneficial to our school system, I agree with Kristyn in that we do not have the means to finance such a change. So, due to it's impracticality, it does not look like something that will be happening very soon.
Sabrina, besides the flaws that you mentioned about quantifying merit, teachers, no matter how good they are, can only go as far as teaching. Learning is up to the student.
Should a teacher be fired because the student is lazy and/or unwilling to learn? A student like that is at fault for not learning anything, and poor test scores from such kind of students make the teacher look like he/she is underperforming.
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