Teachers and merit pay

[The Thriller]

https://www.deseretnews.com/article...en-board-to-include-them-in-negotiations.html

The new contract lays out a performance pay component. It states teacher raises will eventually be based on the results of to-be-developed evaluations. Traditionally, raises have been based on years on the job.

The board voted to continue experienced-based raises for the next two school years while it develops criteria for the performance-based model. By 2013-14, 25 percent of teacher raises will be based on performance, with the other 75 percent based on experience. The following year, 50 percent will be performance based. By 2016-17, 100 percent of raises will be contingent upon performance.

I was wondering what your thoughts on this issue are? Many here have worked in Pub Education.

Personally, I think this is the wrong way to go about to improve education.

First, I think it's ignorant and lazy to put a "one size fits all" cap on education. Some subjects, grades, schools, etc will show more improvement than others.

Secondly, by putting many teachers in no win or hopeless situations, corruption and cheating will undoubtedly follow. Has anyone followed the Atlanta, Georgia situation? The superintendent put so much pressure on principals and teachers to show improvement, that a massive cheating scandal was created. Principals/teachers changed scores and cheated on tests in order to save their own hides.

Do we really want the desperation, greed, the "win at all costs", the corruption and cheating that we see in the private sector to overrun our public education? I've heard that studies have also shown that merit pay often doesn't motivate. anyone else seen studies on merit pay? Help inform me if you can.

Thirdly, which is somewhat tied with the second point, it seems that there's a movement to change public education. As if it has become too unionized? Weird... and move it to a more competitive like situation found in the "private sector." Now, one could argue that the private sector is anything but free right now, as they have taxes, politicians, and other loopholes in their favor... But at the same time, with so much focus being on not letting "one child be left behind" doesn't moving education to a more of a private sector setting kind of work against this ideal? In the private sector, there are winners and losers. Is that really what we want in our education? Some teachers winning and losing... Some kids winning and losing... Some subjects winning and losing...

Fourthly, Ogden School District is the only district in Utah that is moving to a 100 % merit pay system (to my knowledge). What is going to become of that district when teachers recognize that they can find better jobs elsewhere? Ultimately, it's the students and parents who lose out. As their district and schools become the training grounds for new and desperate employees while better ones find better jobs and flee.

To me, moving everything to merit pay works well for politicians and perhaps districts. But it ignores the #1 and #2 problems that are hurting our system, class sizes and those who do not speak English or care about education.

Thoughts? Arguments to the contrary? Experiences? Discussion?

 

[moevillini]

I'm not sure what the answer/solution should be. You've brought up some of the obvious points against merit pay - teaching to the test at the expense of other types of learning and cheating to produce good results.

It's sort of the other side of the "student assessment" coin - - another issue many districts have been questioning in recent years.

 

[green]

I don't know. I don't think 100% merit pay is the answer, but unions have definitely hurt the quality of teachers out there. I also have problems with "no child left behind." It is the wrong attitude. You can't punish good students to make sure bad students aren't left behind. Sometimes being left behind is a great thing. We need to be pushing students more, not making it easier so the kid who doesn't care passes his classes. There are a lot of problems.

I am for vouchers. I think that if you give parents a choice on where they can send their kids, competition will fix a lot of these problems.

That being said, vouchers are not the end all be all, but when you figure in cost, they seem to be the cheapest and quickest way to fix some problems.

 

[Cope]

Solution - Start paying teachers more since they deserve it and it will allow you to interview based on past references, ect. vs if you have a teaching degree you can get a job.

The problem is that since everything is so sugar coated with our kids now a days teachers are afraid to push students. My wifes best friend is a teacher (5th grade) out of state and was telling me about her having a kid sit out of the class room because he was being disruptive and distracting. She almost lost her job because of it yet she warned the kid for days. Back in the day I was scared ****less of my parents finding out and whooping my *** (Another sugarcoating philosophy).

Just my 2 cents

 

[One Brow]

Teachers are rsponsible for perhaps 20-30% of the learning their student do or do not take in. One expectional student (exceptionally godd or bad) can skew the results for a class of 30. I don't think there is any good way to measure a teachers ability using less than several hundred students over a period of a several hundred class-hours. That means it would take about ten years or so. By that time, they are rarely the same teacher that they were ten years ago.

Vouchers are fine as long as the private school play by the same rules as the pubic schools: every student needsto be admitted, accomodations made for students with disabilities, etc. However, that will never happen. Private schools rely on their ability to be selective in order to reduce costs.

green: In what ways have unions hurt the quality of teachers out there? Do you have evidence of improvement in teacher efficiency or loss of teacher efficiency when a school went from non-union to union?

 

[green]

green: In what ways have unions hurt the quality of teachers out there? Do you have evidence of improvement in teacher efficiency or loss of teacher efficiency when a school went from non-union to union?

Mainly, adminsitrators. Why does a school need 15 vice-principals? Schools are too top heavy.

 

[candrew]

I am for vouchers. I think that if you give parents a choice on where they can send their kids, competition will fix a lot of these problems.

That being said, vouchers are not the end all be all, but when you figure in cost, they seem to be the cheapest and quickest way to fix some problems.

I live in an area with a great public school system - however I'm sure there are many upper class people in my neighborhood that would be willing to pull their kid out of public school and send them to private school if they were able to get a voucher or education tax credit.

Opponents of school vouchers all say it will leave the public schools underfunded. This is bull ****. I think we all know the public schools will get their money somehow - by either higher property taxes, sales taxes or whatever.

So essentially my tax burden is increased to support a public school system that was fine to begin with so some other family can get a tax break to send their kid to private school. And this somehow is labeled as making the system more"fair". And yet whenever the tax burden is shifted to the rich to the benefit of the middle or lower classes, this is automatically labeled as "class warfare"

 

[Gyp Rosetti]

As a public educator, I think you've all made good points.

To piggyback, The Thriller's first original point, I also think certain teacher's classes will unfairly show more improvement than others. In other words, if I teach Honors classes, my students are going to naturally be more motivated (thanks to the parents) than say just a regular GE class, or one with inclusion SE kids, especially in a district like mine.

My fellow teachers and I talk about this and I will absolutely lose my **** if the Honors teachers get merit pay for doing what the worst teachers in the building could do or almost do. Don't get me wrong. I actually think our Honors teachers are great. But I'd love to see them work with the mainstream kids I have. I work in a middle school in an urban district that is about 95% Hispanic (Dominican, PR mostly) and whose HS here in NJ is ranked in the bottom 2% of all high schools in certain state rankings and yet I bust these kid's asses every single day and they succeed. I don't tolerate mediocrity and try to instill that in the kid's and their own lives. I'd put my student's data over the last five years against any other Non-Honors teacher in grades 5-8 in the entire district and guarantee that mine blows theirs away.

But if the Honors teachers get merit pay over me because 100% of their kids pass the state assessment and improve at a similar rate as my own kid's, I'll go ape****. Hell, our 7th grade Honors LA teacher couldn't handle the mainstream kids her first year and so she was moved to Honors this past year. Don't get me wrong. She's great. At working with Honors kids. But I can't even count on two hands the number of times she cried in class her first year and had to leave the room (there was an ICS teacher) because she had a meltdown while teaching regular GE kids.

In short, it's apples to oranges.

For me, it will motivate me even more. I'll strive to get 100% of my kids to pass the state assessment and improve individually so that they all show great strides from their prior year(s).

But there are so many variables at work here that I can't imagine a fair way to do this.

 

[Qman]

I suspect we are looking in the wrong place for the source of most the education problems. I believe so much of success in education is based on the parent's interest level. So maybe the policy should be 'no parent will let their children be left behind'.

 

[The-Joker]

What if we gave parents tax cuts/refunds based on how their children perform in school in the previous year?

 

[One Brow]

Mainly, adminsitrators. Why does a school need 15 vice-principals? Schools are too top heavy.

Administrators do not typically work for the teacher's union.

I went to a Catholic high school, which had the priviledge of not admitting the most difficult students. For 2,000 students, there was a principal, and assistant principal, and two coordinators for each class (8 total). I can easily see a need for 15 vice-principals when the student body approaches 3,000 in a public school.

 

[The Thriller]

Personally, I think "unions" is just one of those talking points people make but really have no clue what the hell they're talking about.

As One Brow has stated, we need information to back up some of the anti-union stuff that seems to dominate the airwaves these days.

IMHO, people always need to find someone to blame stuff on. In recent years, with the recession, people have lashed out at educators, law enforcement, and illegal immigrants.

In reality, teachers have very little say in education. The curriculum is determined by politicians and school boards. Districts distribute the pay. Principals make up policies.
Teachers don't make up the tests. They didn't pass No Child Left Behind. If students aren't being prepared for the next class/grade/phase of life, why are we only looking at the teachers? More often than not, they're doing what they've been told to do.

More often than not, they're teaching a watered down version of science that has been approved by a religious school board that is afraid of a comprehensive science course will somehow ruin someone's faith in god.
More often than not, they're teaching gay history instead of focusing on science, math, literature, art, or something useful because the politicians in Sacramento told them to.

In Utah, I remember several districts went to a format which let all kids leave school early on Monday afternoon so that they could have "meetings." These meetings would then earn them federal pay. Kids lost out on hours and hours of valuable class time.

The teachers didn't decide this, the district, principals, and to a degree, the cheap *** Utah legislature did.

People have lashed out at law enforcement, yet crime in this nation has actually gone down in most major cities (I saw this report a month or two ago on the news). Perhaps law enforcement deserves praise?

while illegal immigration has gone down (of course, this issue still needs to be resolved). But you'd swear by the media and the outrage from various political groups, that illegal immigration has never been a bigger problem.

The point I'm trying to make, is that the American people seem to rely on bumper sticker talking points rather than evidence to form and support their opinions.

Currently, we're blaming everything on the teachers' union without any evidence that they're largely responsible for our current economic or educational situation. And we're demanding that teachers be more accountable without evidence that they haven't been accountable in the past.

I'm curious, if teacher pay is going to be determined by the students' performance. Can the teachers then demand something out of the parents? Perhaps the parents don't get tax returns if their kids don't attend class? Or perform at a certain level?

Only asking one side to be accountable while all others don't do a damn thing isn't exactly a formula for success.

 

[7StraightIsGreat]

My kids just spent 4 years in the Ogden School district. While I've never been an educator, I don't think I like the way Ogden School District is going about all of this.

I'm not against incentive based pay but to leave teachers out of negotiations and offer them a take-it or leave-it type of deal seems wrong to me. Especially because the Ogden School District doesn't have a firm system in place for how the incentive based pay is going to work. They're basically asking teachers to sign this contract with the good faith that the district will eventually come up with a fair incentive based pay system. That sounds like a good way to get screwed over if you ask me.

 

[The Thriller]

My kids just spent 4 years in the Ogden School district. While I've never been an educator, I don't think I like the way Ogden School District is going about all of this.

I'm not against incentive based pay but to leave teachers out of negotiations and offer them a take-it or leave-it type of deal seems wrong to me. Especially because the Ogden School District doesn't have a firm system in place for how the incentive based pay is going to work. They're basically asking teachers to sign this contract with the good faith that the district will eventually come up with a fair incentive based pay system. That sounds like a good way to get screwed over if you ask me.

What were your experiences with the school system?

Didn't you a while ago bring up the possibility of giving parents incentives to be involved in education? Or am I just trippin here?

I think this is the biggest issue when it comes to "accountability."

Accountability, like politicians preaching "free market", is fun to talk about and sounds good on radio and tv. But rarely doesn't it entail specifics. And almost never does it actually bring positive results.
If we want to be truly accountable, then politicians, school boards, and parents needs to be held accountable. Otherwise, it will just make teachers and principals more desperate to cheat, lie, manipulate, and deceive results that work in their favor.

 

[7StraightIsGreat]

What were your experiences with the school system?

Didn't you a while ago bring up the possibility of giving parents incentives to be involved in education? Or am I just trippin here?

I think this is the biggest issue when it comes to "accountability."

Accountability, like politicians preaching "free market", is fun to talk about and sounds good on radio and tv. But rarely doesn't it entail specifics. And almost never does it actually bring positive results.
If we want to be truly accountable, then politicians, school boards, and parents needs to be held accountable. Otherwise, it will just make teachers and principals more desperate to cheat, lie, manipulate, and deceive results that work in their favor.

I haven't commented much on past education threads, so i think you may have me mixed up with somebody else in regards to parent incentives.

Overall, I'd rate our experience with the Ogden School District as average. Both of my kids had a couple of good teachers and a couple of not so good teachers over that time. It also seemed as if Ogden struggled to keep the really good, younger teachers because they could usually move on to the Weber or Davis districts and make a little more money.

We've since moved to Roy and my kids are now in the Weber School district. After seeing the two districts in action, I'm of the opinion that Ogden should cease operations as a school district and be absorbed into the Weber County school system. They'd have a much better shot at teacher retention and it seems like things are just ran in a much more comprehensive manner in Weber. Not only that, I'd be willing to bet that you wouldn't be seeing this current contract fiasco if Weber County were running the show. Seems like there would be much more input on a county level as opposed to letting a city run their schools.

 

[green]

I like the "if you can't help your child pass tests, then you can't get your tax return/welfare check." That is the best idea yet. Can you imagine how many parents would get on the ball when their $2,000 check every April didn't show up because their kid is failing Math (especially the ones that get that check when they haven't paid a dime in taxes)?

At the end of the day, it will come down to the kids and their parents. If that isn't fixed, then nothing else will matter.

 

[CONAN]

Merit pay is all well and good in theory but implementing it is a nightmare. And even if it works it's only a bandaid. Good teachers for sure help but they can only do so much. The homefront is where the focus should be.

Look how much parents push their kids for good grades to get a better deal on car insurance? Give parents similar financial incentives for good grades and you'll see substantial increased parental involvement. Some issues there for sure but at least you are starting at ground level.

 

[TroutBum]

I am 100% for this. Will it work? No idea, but the way things are going now, we're getting nowhere fast. For the first time ever, I'm actually cheering for Ogden.

 

[LogGrad98]

Tough thing with merit pay is deciding what the merit targets are and how the person can actually impact them. Most often these systems are based on something some higher-up thinks sounds good but is very impractical.

I see almost nothing as a true consistent measurable result for a teacher's effort. You could take test scores...and teachers will teach so students test well, not necessarily get an education. You can tie it to continuing ed for the teacher, but there is no way to measure if that has any impact on the students. You can track thing such as attendance and projects the students do and other practical class application-type things, but then the teachers will focus on that.

I know from years of trying to apply something like this in an industrial setting - where we actually can track exactly what your productivity, quality, and attendance and such is like, and can actually tie it to a bottom-line number - that these systems rarely get the results you really need or want. You can certainly drive one number up, most often driving others down just as much if not more.

I would love to see some kind of system, for example, that rewards my daughter's last math teacher while firing her last history teacher.

Her math teacher was genuinely concerned about the students, she took time out to contact us, and did what she promised the kids she would do (updating their grades on the first day of her vacation because she promised the kids they would see their fully updated grade before Christmas is one thing), she taught principles while expecting, and working with, the students to not only test well, but to also understand the practical applications of algebra. In short she went above and beyond.

Her history teacher, on the other hand, simply gave them page after page of rote memorization, much of it incredibly meaningless - it was american history and he wanted them to memorize the date and day of the week of "key" historic events, such as the allies entering Berlin, the first day an ally entered a concentration camp, the day hitler died, the day we entered Paris, etc. Instead of putting some time into it so the kids would connect to these events, and what they might have meant to us now, which is what history should do for us, my daughter at least knows all the dates, if not what they mean. I took that on myself and we read a lot of history about the things she memorized dates about. But the teacher, when we asked, made it clear he couldn't care less. He rarely did what he told the kids he would do (he told them he would bring them all in a german advents calendar since it coincided with that part of the class and he never did).

But you know what? The history teacher has more tenure, has been a teacher longer (something over 15 years), and has a masters degree, so he makes substantially more money than the math teacher who is in her 5th year and has yet to finish her post-grad degree, partly because she was helping kids who were not up to grade level over the summer rather than studying.

That ain't right.

 

[The Thriller]

Tough thing with merit pay is deciding what the merit targets are and how the person can actually impact them. Most often these systems are based on something some higher-up thinks sounds good but is very impractical.

I see almost nothing as a true consistent measurable result for a teacher's effort. You could take test scores...and teachers will teach so students test well, not necessarily get an education. You can tie it to continuing ed for the teacher, but there is no way to measure if that has any impact on the students. You can track thing such as attendance and projects the students do and other practical class application-type things, but then the teachers will focus on that.

I know from years of trying to apply something like this in an industrial setting - where we actually can track exactly what your productivity, quality, and attendance and such is like, and can actually tie it to a bottom-line number - that these systems rarely get the results you really need or want. You can certainly drive one number up, most often driving others down just as much if not more.

I would love to see some kind of system, for example, that rewards my daughter's last math teacher while firing her last history teacher.

Her math teacher was genuinely concerned about the students, she took time out to contact us, and did what she promised the kids she would do (updating their grades on the first day of her vacation because she promised the kids they would see their fully updated grade before Christmas is one thing), she taught principles while expecting, and working with, the students to not only test well, but to also understand the practical applications of algebra. In short she went above and beyond.

Her history teacher, on the other hand, simply gave them page after page of rote memorization, much of it incredibly meaningless - it was american history and he wanted them to memorize the date and day of the week of "key" historic events, such as the allies entering Berlin, the first day an ally entered a concentration camp, the day hitler died, the day we entered Paris, etc. Instead of putting some time into it so the kids would connect to these events, and what they might have meant to us now, which is what history should do for us, my daughter at least knows all the dates, if not what they mean. I took that on myself and we read a lot of history about the things she memorized dates about. But the teacher, when we asked, made it clear he couldn't care less. He rarely did what he told the kids he would do (he told them he would bring them all in a german advents calendar since it coincided with that part of the class and he never did).

But you know what? The history teacher has more tenure, has been a teacher longer (something over 15 years), and has a masters degree, so he makes substantially more money than the math teacher who is in her 5th year and has yet to finish her post-grad degree, partly because she was helping kids who were not up to grade level over the summer rather than studying.

That ain't right.

Interesting experiences. That's too bad, since I loved history in HS. I saw some teachers more motivated than others. Fortunately, most of my history teachers were pretty motivated and interesting.

One of the things that you may run into, is "what is history?"

Math, is cut and dry. A formula taught in California is going to be the exact same formula in Utah.

But history is much grayer. And oftentimes, you'll be criticized for being too religious, pro-America, or too pessimistic or socialist having an agenda, or promoting or exaggerating historic events.