Posted on 07/04/2012 3:57:12 PM PDT by MichCapCon
Two more Michigan school districts have earned praise for implementing merit-based teacher pay.
Blissfield Schools and the St. Clair intermediate school district join Oscoda and Suttons Bay in transitioning away from an industrial-era assembly line worker type compensation system to one that recognizes and rewards teachers as motivated professionals. There are reasons to think this may be the start of a trend.
It’s estimated that 85 percent of school districts nationwide still use the outdated uniform single-salary schedule that pays teachers like factory workers, rewarding them only for years on the job and accumulating more pedagogic credentials and certifications. This has been the norm since teacher unions were granted collective bargaining and “exclusive employee representative” privileges beginning in the 1960s.
The world has changed in ways that make this model increasingly untenable. For example, a 2009 law signed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm and inspired by President Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative requires new union contracts to use student performance as a “significant factor” in determining teacher pay. By itself that law does not ensure that districts will ditch the old model (for example, see Mt. Clemens), but it makes preserving it more difficult.
The 2009 reforms also improved teacher evaluations, and combined with additional reforms enacted in 2011, should encourage more districts to pursue merit-pay systems. Reform efforts are still threatened by defenders of the status quo, but will nevertheless require measuring how well teachers are performing in the classroom. The very existence of such information creates pressure for change.
Other state reforms passed in 2011 will have similar effects. The longstanding practice of using seniority as the sole determinant in school job placement and teacher layoff and recall decisions (“last in, first out”) is now prohibited. School boards that base these decisions on performance may increasingly ask why they shouldn’t also base compensation on similar measurements.
Finally, a new law enacted last year prohibits teacher unions from bargaining over the “development, content, standards, procedures, adoption, and implementation” of performance-based compensation. This means school boards won’t need the union’s permission to implement merit pay or be forced to negotiate whenever they want to tweak their performance-based system.
As always, getting the devilish details of implementation right is crucial, but the pieces are in place for school districts to begin rewarding excellence and discouraging mediocrity — in other words, treating teachers like professionals.
Teachers should welcome the changes. As one union official said about the change to merit pay in her district, "But we also could see there was potential for the staff to be rewarded for their hard work as well."
I still don’t get how merit pay can work for teachers. The teacher who gets to teach AP courses filled with motivated and intelligent students will always look better on a merit sheet than the teacher who’s stuck with the sweathogs.
The push to privatize public schools by corporations and well funded foundatiions, is on. Unions will be marginalized. Tenured,mature,great teachers will be replaced by “Teach for America” newbies who are non-union, low salaried, short term,non-certified classroom” monitors “of the transformation of public education to an e-learning, computer generated top down system of life long learning (control) takes over.
You sound like a unionistsa. You want to keep education just like it is now?
That’s the problem - merit is extremely hard to measure in that field. The solution? I have no idea, and I’ve given it a great deal of thought. Even popular teachers who are liked by kids, by parents, or by the principal are not necessarily great teachers in the sense that their kids actually learn “better” (whatever that means for each field).
but the big problem I see is that merit pay is on top of already inflated wages/benefits/pensions....
people in business get bonuses...teachers and nurses and cops and firemen do not....(among that group, the only group that usually doesn't get a defined pension plan are the nurses)
A lot of planning will have to go into distributing the crack-babies and transients evenly among the classes in each grade so teachers have an equal shot.
Precisely why I don’t like the idea much. That, and knowing that any such merit will generally accrue to the teachers who kiss the principal’s butt the most. Or, those who are most left-wing, etc.
“I still don’t get how merit pay can work for teachers. The teacher who gets to teach AP courses filled with motivated and intelligent students will always look better on a merit sheet than the teacher who’s stuck with the sweathogs.”
Please quit being logical, you will give a lot of people heartburn. Didn’t you know that everyone comes to kindergarten these days can count to 100 and know their ABC’s. If you don’t the Federal/State government education experts say so. If not ask Bobby Jindal, he says so. It’s the fault of public education.
“will be replaced by “Teach for America” newbies”
That’s OK, we can get teachers from India...like we’re getting for freshman classes at universities. I’ve come to the conclusion that most to the business community that is pushing this have marketing or management degrees and couldn’t build a dog house with instructions. They think all starting materials are the same and give the same quality product if you market it right.
“A lot of planning will have to go into distributing the crack-babies and transients evenly among the classes in each grade so teachers have an equal shot.”
Their vouchers won’t be worth anything when they get kicked out of the private schools and sent back to the public schools so the teacher that gets them can be berated for not doing a good job.
There are many levels of Oligarchy.
You sound like a unionistsa. You want to keep education just like it is now?
Yes in principle, no in practice. A teacher stuck in a ghetto school with the spawn of uncaring “parents” will not look good on paper; a teacher in a neighborhood with citizens who value education and demand performance of their children can’t help but look good. Unless, that is, you use a baseline unique to each school. But that would require a whole new bureaucracy to establish.
Any doubts as to who is driving the reform, go to erinproject.org and check to see who the top ten funders are in nearly every catagory.
Public schools and teachers are soon to be a thing of the past.
Don’t care. The current system is broken. Any and all possible improvements need to be tried.
Who is driving the reform is people who aren’t going to take bullshit excuses anymore.
Who are the "TAKE NO BS FOLKS"?
Who are the "TAKE NO BS FOLKS"?
I don’t have a hard-on against anyone who seeks to improve the current system. It is a total disaster.
The charter schools answer to the parents who choose them. If parents choose unwisely, that’s sad but it may lead to self correction. They showed they care about education by making the selection to go with a charter.
Unlike the socialist innercity warehouses. As opposed to your statement, they are the institutions that truly answer to no-one. Who can fire a pedophile public school teacher?
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-02-04/news/31025909_1_lewd-acts-district-plans-child-abuse-case
Rubber rooms where teachers retire with millions?
You are on the wrong site if you think you can defend the national disaster that is education in the US.
We could improve the schools by instituting a draft for teachers. Random selection of college graduates would be an improvement over “colleges of education”.
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