Around the time I wrote that post, there was a huge debate raging in the sunny, orange juice state of Florida. This surrounded legislation directly linking teacher pay with student test scores. To the relief of many Floridian teachers, parents and other concerned community members, Governor Crist, a Republican, vetoed the bill. (Crist has since declared himself an Independent because he has pissed off many Republicans in his state for vetoing the bill.)
In my (ever so humble) opinion, directly linking teacher pay with student test scores is not a good idea. The first question that I asked in my previous post was about out ability as parents to get our children to do what we wanted every time we asked. Any experienced parent will tell you that this is darned near impossible. Our kids are human and even on their best day, they will groan when you so much as ask them to put their cereal bowl in the dishwasher.
Imagine that you have 30 (and too often more) kids under your charge and you are asking them to do their best on a test. How many of them will do exactly as you have asked them to do?
Three of the questions that I asked had to do with getting kids to do what we want when we want them to do it. If we, as parents, face difficulties with our own kids - can we really expect our teachers to be held to a higher standard of getting ALL of their students to do exactly as they are asked and taught?
Then I threw in the whole question of reverse bribery. Do you see where I'm going with this yet? Again, in my opinion, tying teacher's pay to student test scores is in essence, reverse bribery. We are telling students to do their best in order to help their teachers get more pay. How exactly does this benefit students? Some kids will do well on tests because it matters to them to be do well. Other students do not see the value in these tests and in fact, may see this as a great way to do harm to the teacher who holds them to very rigorous and high standards.
I've written before about merit pay and why I think that as teachers we need to be part of the discussion. However, I strongly believe that unless there is value to the student that could care less about tests, tying my pay to that student's test score does not seem fair or reasonable.
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9 comments:
I am a fan of some sort of 2 out of 3 plan for teacher evaluation and/or merit pay.
I will have to blog this.
Amen, sister!
We were having a conversation the other day about the fact that science is part of the standardized testing for fifth grade and my daughter's fift grade teacher has avoided teaching the subject all year long. My sweet, A student daughter said "That's ok. If we do bad on the test maybe he will get fired. We should just do bad on the whole test!" At eleven years old she gets the connection between her scores and his job. Imagine a vindictive 17yr old with real power to affect the teacher's pay.
Oh.. and I should point out that this particular teacher should be fired. We have greater problems than the fact that he hasn't taught them science.
And may I add that if my pay is tied to how my students do on tests, I would only want the best classes with the most gifted students. Who will want to teach the struggling students? It's already difficult to find anyone; this would make it impossible.
We don't have merit pay, but from time to time we hear talk of it coming. I agree with Margaret that schools will be hard-pressed to find teachers for lower-level students. In a lot of ways, they work harder than teachers who teacher upper-level students.
On the other hand, a friend of mine was telling me about how they do it at the charter school where she'll be teaching next year. It's based on student growth--the students are tested at the beginning and the end of the year. That seems reasonable, right?
But...we're back to Ms_Teacher's point that students don't always do what they are asked to do. I know I'm seeing too many students who have never had to work hard because learning comes easy to them fail pretty miserably this year. The do not have the work ethic nor the desire to gain more knowledge that might help them cope. We do the best we can to help guide them, but they can be such stubborn teenagers.
This is so true! Thanks for posting this blog. You might want to check out my website too :)
Nice entry you have here... Keep it up!
Yes a lot needs to be tweaked before any full implementation of test scores and pay. There needs to be a whole new rubric, but sadly, admins have been loathe to do any real reform. So, teachers are left holding bag of ill-prepared students.
Stephen C
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