randomness

• we have a tentative agreement with the district. The tough part is selling it to our members so that they understand that this is the best deal we are going to get. The reason it is a tough sell is because we (as in the teachers in our district) started going through a recession five years ago - many were hoping for more (myself included).
• Artist Girl enrolled in cosmetology school. I'll admit that visions of free haircuts, pedicures & manicures have danced through my head. She is loving it. We are getting close again which is the best gift ever.
• Today, I'm heading out to by Diane Ravitch's new book,
• The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. What is amusing to me is that all those people out there who LOVED Diane Ravitch when she was promoting school choice & testing have now turned against her.
• Guitar Teen graduates from high school in two weeks. By all reports, he is nervous about the end of being a kid and making the transition into adulthood. I believe that being 18 now as opposed to when I turned 18 is much tougher.
• I have three conferences that I have to attend this summer. Summer who?
• I was very disappointed that I not able to see Bossy. During her visit to the west coast we were in the midst of heavy negotiations which brought about the tentative agreement. I hope that next time she out here, I won't be so busy!

Not a good idea

You remember this post, right? Thanks to all of you who responded & I am sure that all of you who did respond have been waiting with bated breath to see what the heck I was talking about!

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.

---

Here is a blog post about a book that explains that merit pay may not be a good idea.