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The Edutopia Poll
by Sara Bernard
On October 23, U.S. secretary of education Margaret Spellings announced the first handout of the Teacher Incentive Fund, a federal grant program that offers cash bonuses to teachers and principals in disadvantaged schools who succeed in improving their students' academic achievement. This $5.5 million grant to the Ohio Department of Education will, Spellings says, bring high-quality teachers to schools in low-income districts and encourage teachers to work together to narrow the achievement gap.
Others, however, argue that incentives based on student performance are unfair. They punish educators for what is outside of their control, increase divisiveness between faculty members, and may in fact do little to bring the best teachers to schools where poor working conditions and a low base salary are the norm. Do you think these kinds of incentives are good for schools? We're interested in your opinion.
Teachers Salary
Submitted by Movita (not verified) on September 10, 2008 - 17:32.
I think that it is right as other teachers say and woyld like ta addto that that we arent paid enough sincee we have to do alot of explaining and other jobs rather than teaching so we should be paid more
Right Thing
Submitted by mellisa (not verified) on September 13, 2008 - 13:12.
I think whatever she is writing is absolute correct. i would give her an a for whatever she has wrote but something gone wrong why did teacher have to be paid for their voice?
Incentives
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on January 25, 2008 - 22:05.
I do not have (much) experience teaching, but I do have experience being a student. Most of my teachers in high school stopped caring long before I got there. My freshman year, I played cards in 4 out of 6 classes everyday simply because the teachers did not care enough to create assignments or teach lessons. It seems next to impossible to remove these teachers. Since the general consensus of this site is that incentives will not work - what will?
I am now a graduate student considering doing research on performance based incentives. If anyone would like to share their experience working in a district with incentives, I'd love to hear about it.
Incentives
Submitted by Arleen (not verified) on December 24, 2007 - 17:51.
I think that a school which has met its AYP should get an incentive which can be used only to benifit the students. If teachers get incentives it should be stipulated to be used only for educational purposes. If some teachers get and others do get it can create some animosity among the teachers. Incentives can help both teachers and students to work harder.
Merit Pay
Submitted by David (not verified) on December 21, 2007 - 17:50.
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING...MERIT PAY???
This is an OLD idea that CLEARLY has NEVER
worked in EDUCATION. The perceived benefits
are few. Folks, we have over 100 years of valid
educational research. Let's start using it
effectively. Get the money to the schools. Get the best minds in them. Make teaching a life-long career. Build a community that serves students first. Begin with the end in mind. And the beat goes on...
I believe that all teachers
Submitted by kellie (not verified) on September 30, 2007 - 19:00.
I believe that all teachers are underpaid and underappreciated. All teachers work extremely hard and should be rewarded for improving student performance. When we signed up to be teachers we did it for the love of the children and the ability to have an impact on students lives. A dedicated teacher should not perform well simply because they will receive more money. It is our job to be a quality teacher and help students excel at learning. I believe that ALL teachers should receive a higher salary. After all, we deserve it!
Merit Pay
Submitted by Rhonda (not verified) on June 20, 2007 - 20:00.
Basing pay on achievement is not appropriate if it is tied to absolute test scores rather than to improvement. However, even then it is not fair to expect as much from children who have never seen a mountain, may be homeless or without electricity periodically and who start doing sibling care in the 4th grade as you can from children who spend their lives playing sports, going to camp and on vacations, have their own computers and two parents who help them with their homework.
Then there is another group who is left out and that is the special education teachers. Despite all the talk about inclusion and bringing our kids to grade level, children are in special education for a reason and that reason is usually because there are intellectual, physical, or learning barriers that make learning harder and take longer. Only students with Aspergers are likely to learn as quickly as others and even those may be so overwhelmed with their obsessions that they have trouble concentrating on anything else.
And then there is the rest of special education,those of us who teach the self contained students, the ones in functional programs who are moderately, severely or profoundly retarded severely emotionally disturbed, non-verbal, deaf or autistic or brain damaged. Many of these kids are best educated in functional and modified programs and do not learn as much or the same things as regular kids. Now certainly you can base merit pay on whether or not a student masters IEP objectives, but we know that if it comes down to the paycheck, even good special ed. teachers are not likely to write challenging objectives that might prevent them from getting their supplement.
Instead of merit pay, raise the pay for all teachers and reward veteran educators for getting advanced degrees, staying in education more than 5 years, mentoring rookies and getting National Certification.
Also, alternate certification needs to be largely disposed of, especially in special education. I inherited some really screwed up children from several previous not-teachers. Took the whole year just to get rid of some of the behaviors and even figure out what they actually knew.
Maybe a few alternate certification people can teach but it is going to take them a lot longer to learn their job and most of them either leave the field entirely before they master their jobs or at least leave the schools that have a hard time getting teachers as soon as they can. NOt many ACs who start as inner city teachers stay there. Actually I only knew one who was any good and she was older, well mentored, and knew what she was getting into before hand. She taught Behavior Disorders and had been a parole officer in her previous career. The rest were arrogant, confused and did not know a thing about class management or getting concepts over to the students. At least first year education grads know that they don't know everything!! Alternate certification is an insult to those of us who went to school to become teachers. It says that anyone with a degree and a few weeks of training can do our job! Therefore, we are really not much.
Make the job really enticing with pay, benefits, tax breaks, quick tenure, paid tuition and fees, professional development days, planning days where you can catch up your paperwork and daily planning periods periods where there are no responsibilities for children, good working conditions, equipment, power, recognition, and a real career ladder and alternate certification won't be needed and merit pay will not be an issue in just a few years. A range of $50-100,000 plus an extra $10,000 for working in shortage fields and hard to fill positions (both inner city and rural--any place but the middle class suburbs so many teachers see as a goal) would attract the cream of the crop of college students to become education majors and teachers. Require a Master's to be completed within 5 years of employment with the goal of a person not being fully certified without a M.Ed so that teachers will really know their job. Education will improve automatically. Teachers will run the schools. No system will ever dream of hiring a superintendent who is not a teacher for fear of insulting the faculty. Everyone will get a good education. The marginal teachers will leave because the expectations will be too high for them to achieve and they will know it and head for the parochial and "christian" schools where administrators often care more about the teacher's politics than their education and pay accordingly.
Merit pay is not the way. It is too easily manipulated and political. If a teacher does not kiss the principal's backside, she won't get her merit pay. Principals will overload unpopular teachers with low achieving students or force them to teach at grade levels where they are uncomfortable or where there is a great push to teach to a high stakes test. Schools are just too political to have a merit pay system. Improve education by improving pay and working conditions and expecting teachers to do their job well, not with political bribery.
Library Media
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on June 20, 2007 - 17:28.
Who gets the merit raise for a group of kids who improve their reading scores...the classroom teacher? the counselor who kept the kids on an even keel? the Title 1 Reading teacher who worked with the children every day, agonized over every problem, and celebrated every gain? The art teacher whose class allowed kids who weren't academically successful a time and a place to shine? It takes a village, baby! Paying one teacher for the work of many just divides us.
I do all kinds of great lessons with my students when we're in the library or in the computer lab. I'm a National Board Certified teacher and a 15 year veteran of public education. I have fantastic colleagues who teach our young students music, art, and physical education. Yet none of us will ever be eligible for a "merit" raise because what we do isn't directly tested on some number-2-pencil-fill-in-the-blank test.
AMEN, To divide us is to
Submitted by Elizabeth (not verified) on October 2, 2007 - 20:49.
AMEN, To divide us is to defeat us. It is the Librarian, Art, PE, Music, Reading Coach that make it possible for the classroom teacher to be successful. It is a team effort not a solo event.
Everyone assumes I don't
Submitted by Meghan (not verified) on January 15, 2007 - 19:15.
Everyone assumes I don't want merit pay because I am afraid of my students' test scores. I am not boasting, but want to make my point clear - My students have some of the highest test scores in the state and I am a teacher who has recieved awards for innovative teaching and dedication to the students and student learning. I have revamped curriculum to incorporate learning for all students, I have brought in guest speakers to make the learning more relevant to the working world, I attend workshops regularly that change my curriculum constantly, improving on ways to incorporate technology or literacy skills into the classroom. If we were paid on merit, then I would greatly benefit.
But, I am still against the idea. Again, the test that would be used to measure student performance - in California, the STAR test - would make or break a teacher and their pay, but has no meaning for the students at all. The tests are not required for the students to graduate or advance a grade level, they are not looked at by colleges, there is no incentive for the student to even try at the tests. Schools have a huge problem with making sure kids attend on the STAR testing days. And yet, a teacher's livelihood would be based on these scores.
Also, like another respondee mentioned, a teacher gets a student in his/her class and tries their best to improve the learning for the student. However, the teacher sometimes has to deal with students who are severely deficient in basic skills and a year may not be enough time to retrain the 8 or 9 years of ineffective education. And so a teacher's livelihood, again would be based on something they had no control over.
If teacher pay were based on evaluations by principals, parents and students, I again, would fare well. But, I am fortunate to have an honest and adept principal. In addition, I have bright students who may evaluate me and say that I am challenging but most would agree they learned a lot from my teaching. Finally, I have equally supportive parents who have written letters of appreciation and fortunately for me, sent them to my principal to put on file. Nonetheless, I have seen principals needle a teacher and their amazing teaching style because of pressure from parents who just don't like the teacher. I have seen teachers be evaluated negatively and then continually harassed because the child of a school board member earned an "F" in her class. I have also myself received a bad evaluation from a student who all year long told me how much she learned in class and then when she started to falter decided to not accept responsibility but blame me. Additionally, I have had the experience of parents not happy with me or my teaching because I gave their child a "0" on an assignment that they copied from a friend. The parent challenged me on whether or not "collaboration" on assignments was fully defined in my classroom. And so, what if my pay were based on these miscontrued facts?
Another respondee brought up a great poing that merit pay will not change the teaching of the thousands of "good" teachers out there. The good teachers will continue to do what they are doing, because they are there to teach, not for the pay. That doesn't mean, however, that teachers as a whole shouldn't get paid higher salaries. Although most people would argue that for the amount of days teachers work, the salary is high, most teachers are working during their summers and the amount of hours a teacher puts into his/her job during the school year, adds up to be a year long job (60 hours/week - at least).
I think most people are concerned with "bad" teachers and think that a salary increase will fix the problem. What most people do not understand is that there are systems in place to deal with "bad" teachers and it is a myth that you can't fire a teacher. In a good school district, teachers are evaluated every year by various administrators. If you receive 2 consequtive evaluations that are negative, you are placed on probabation in the Peer Assistance Review program. This is a probabationary program and if you do not improve, you will be let go. In addition, the Education Code lists a variety of factors for which an immediate removal of a teacher from their job is required. Finally, new teachers are all part of BTSA, which is a program to help new teachers get on the right path and evaluate their progress. If there are "bad" teachers out there, it is the responsibility of the administration to use the systems in place to remove the teachers.
So, what's my solution. A general rise in pay for teachers as a whole. Mandatory evaluations by school districts of their teachers and consequences for those schools who don't follow through. A better system at the state level of monitoring the renewal of teaching credentials and the professional development required for renewal. A revamp in the requirements of the teacher training programs to better prepare teachers for the profession ... just to name a few.
One final note. Teachers know best what needs to be done to improve the quality of teachers and enhance student learning. And here, Edutopia is asking for our input. Unfortunately, the state and the politicians who write education codes, develop standards for teachers and for content in the schools, they are not asking us for our expert advice. What a great thing it would be to have a think tank of teachers in the midst of all of these issues, offer real and workable solutions to the educational issues that have been at the forefront of education for years.
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