These are my notes from class today regarding one of the articles from last week.
Education Weekly, September 1, 2010
Merit Pay or Team Accountability?
Commentary piece page 24
Strong reactions of article
Why is this important? Who is important to?
Teachers pay structure is important to tax payers, especially ones that don’t have children in the system. They are worried about where their money is going.It is important to teachers because they need to make a living.
I wonder how their pay coorilates to other professions. What is the per hour salary of the average teacher?
This is the basic question of teacher worth
What is the function of each teacher?
It is to prepare students for the future
To provide the fundimental building blocks for society.
Individually or as a group
The author of this article is arguing that teachers are only as good as their students and the only real way to analyze there progress is to analyze every aspect of there schooling. So each teacher needs to be judged in a group setting. I agree for the most parts with this because each teacher only gets a short time with each one.
Priciples roles
The question of teacher accountability is one of effectiveness.
I personally don't really believe 100% merit pay is important, but i know too many republicans to totally dismiss it. Some of them are looking for accountability and need that in order to validate teachers. because this is a democracy there points of view need to be recognized. I think the most important part of that video is at the end when the author recognizes that there isn't a good way currently to put a hard value on a teacher or teachers as a whole and it goest to the fundamental flaw in the whole system, Teachers have not had the value that they should have had from the first otherwise the government would have spent enough money on the system to develop a good system.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I talked about a video that I didn't link to. Here it is.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.technologyintegrationineducation.com/video/video/show?id=3101365:Video:28767&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_video
I recently watched a video on merit pay that mathematically and statistically pretty much brings the discussion of this topic to an end.
ReplyDeleteAs much as we'd like the 'best' teachers to be paid more, there are just too many variables that are either not measurable, or not equitable.
http://tinyurl.com/26296y4
In addition to what you see in the video, consider a few typical scenarios:
Assume you base pay on student attainment of course objectives.
Teacher #1 may teach classes like pottery, photography, yearbook, newspaper, technology applications, or PE, or Foods
- every student in every class will most likely demonstrate tremendous gain, if not 100% attainment of the goals --- regardless of incoming ability.
- can't cook coming in to class -> can cook when exiting.
- can't collaborate in shared docs, post blogs, apply tech to other classes -> exit skills: every student can do this
THUS --- 100% (or close to) of all above students get A's and B's and meet or exceed expectations.
CONCLUSION: these teachers get the maximum pay based on measurement, testing, standards, growth, etc.
Teacher #2 teaches 5 sections of Basic Algebra at an underachieving school, 50% ELL (learning english). They also have over a 50% turn-over rate in kids coming and leaving. Only 15% attain minimal District standards (after all, many still don't know their mult. tables).
CONCLUSION: this teacher must be terrible (after all, look at the test scores compared to the minimal standards).
Based on merit pay standards, Class #2 instructor would be put on a plan of assistance and probably fired after 3 yrs.
Level playing field?
Another Scenario to consider: many Districts in Oregon are so small the Administrators also teach. So, they evaluate themselves!
Just to throw out some scenarios ... to toss around with your peers