Posted on 09/13/2010 7:58:56 PM PDT by Kaslin
Howls of protest are coming from Los Angeles teachers whose evaluations on their effectiveness in raising student test scores have been published in the Los Angeles Times.
But that is to be expected, for teachers are among the very few professions who feel that they can write their own job descriptions and evaluations. The statement of one teacher, that she was proud to have ranked “’less effective,’” because that showed that she chose to “’teach to the emotional and academic needs’” of her students was quite telling.
Since when did teachers’ bosses (the citizens) ask them to teach to students’ “emotional needs”? And how are “academic needs” apart from what students can demonstrate on tests: that they have acquired a body of knowledge and set of skills?
But teachers have rewritten their own job descriptions under the cloak of “professionalism.”
Furthermore, the emotional needs get mixed up with the “academic needs,” so that teaching becomes a part of manipulating students’ feelings under the cover of “critical thinking.” Not surprisingly, once they are led in a certain direction by emotional pressure, students’ opinions match those of their teachers, now known as “facilitators.”
I saw such arrogance displayed when I spent two long days with social studies teachers at the National Council for the Social Studies annual meeting in Atlanta last November. A theme repeated over and over was how to impart “social justice” lessons in the classroom while officially meeting state mandates. Not once did I hear anyone voice a concern with raising test scores or teaching history and civics objectively to students.
We are told that teachers work very hard, but what was expected of them as demonstrated in a workshop called “TCI strategies on the question, ‘How did change and conflict shape the American West?’” didn’t seem all that difficult.
Following the dominant mantra that the teacher should be “the guide on the side,” rather than the “sage on the stage,” the teacher conducting the demonstration hit the play button on the stereo so eleventh-grade students could listen to the song “Home on the Range” and then speculate in their little groups about the “feelings” of various victims and victimizers.
Another workshop was led by a “shadow senator” from the District of Columbia and an “activist.” They told teachers how to get K-12 students involved with lobbying and street protest for D.C. statehood. You can read my full report here.
But this is the kind of thing that teachers learn in education schools at the undergraduate and graduate level. It was displayed by an education professor from Clayton State University, who responded to a local test-altering scandal in an op-ed, in which she questioned the importance of knowing such things as the dates of the Civil War.
As I learned from perusing her and other education professors’ syllabi, teacher education students are expected not to know the subject matter they are teaching but to think and feel “deeply.” The class requirements consisted largely of journal entries, “response” papers, and “deep” discussions in the classroom.
What most of us would see as a topic for discussion over a couple of margaritas is the basis for certification and then the advanced degrees that catapult teachers into higher salary brackets. The other way to get a pay raise is to just stay on a job that is protected fiercely by the union. Nice work if you can get it.
Merit pay alone will not right a topsy-turvy system. As in politics, we need more citizen activism. There needs to be much more oversight of curricula. Teachers themselves should be tested on the subjects they teach, for studies show that their knowledge translates into student success. We should take advantage of technology—not the attention-inhibiting, expensive razzle-dazzle “learning” programs—but cameras in the classroom. In addition to being able to view classrooms on tape, citizens should be invited to sit in on classes and evaluate.
Teachers unions will object loudly, citing such concerns as privacy, the First Amendment, “professional standards,” etc. But other employees know that even their email correspondence on the job is subject to scrutiny by employers and that their raises are based on performance. Why should it be any different for teachers?
from here towhall?
LOL
Man, I had to take all sorts of Social Justice crap to get my degree. My goal every Wednesday night was to make that professor’s stomach sink when she saw me coming, and by George, I’m pretty sure I did.
trust as gone bust
Merit pay plans that I’ve seen are weak.
The kind that base merit pay on evaluations by principals or districts are generally undermined by “good old boy networks” that in the result in some kind of favoritism or even nepotism.
The kind based on “testing” are weak because schools no longer use tracking and IQ testing. Teachers get random groups of kids, and one year they could get lucky and the next year unlucky in terms of the kids they draw.
Have they gotten better or worse from one year to the next in terms of their teaching? Not very likely.
In some of the more basic sports, such as running, it is possible to establish a baseline time and measure improvement against that time. Without knowing desire, that becomes a weaker measure, but it is good to have a baseline.
With an IQ test and a classroom of tracked “above average” students, it is possible to establish baselines, no matter how much some might argue against the tools being used.
In that class, a genius getting a good grade is really not a big deal. One would expect a genius to get a good grade. Some do and some don’t, though, because desire also enters in.
Which is harder, though, raising an apathetic genius getting “C’s” to “A” level, or raising a “C” ability student to “B” level?
I teach 3rd grade in what is known as a Title 1 school in Texas. Title 1 basically means that most of the kids are on the free or reduced lunch program because of their socio-economic status. We have had a merit pay system for the last 3 years that is based on state (TAKS) testing scores. Every year I receive above average evaluations, and every year I receive a decent little bonus because of the test scores my class received. Does merit pay work? I really don’t know the answer to that question. I had above average evaluations and high test scores before the merit pay program started, and I just continued teaching as best as I knew how once the program began. It really does seem though that every year the kids that come into my class are lower and further behind than the year before.
It's why we pulled all 5 of our children from the public sewer system so we could teach them the same things learned in high end private schools. Reading, Writing & Arithmetic.
Eventually, no less than completely privatized education will be tolerated.
Merit pay for teachers is absurd. Low test scores say as little about a teacher’s effort and expertise, as do high scores.
There are multiple problems, and as my wife is a school teacher (and a darned good one), she said it plainly: people will cheat. No, not the students, but the teachers. If test scores become the final say in what a teacher makes from year-to-year, expect rampant cheating, coaching during tests, etc. And the teachers that don’t cheat, can always fall victim to vindictive colleagues from lower grades who assign crappier students to their classes. Not to mention the fact that, from year to year, the parent crop can go from a nightmare of good-for-nothing drunks and wife-beaters to super-responsible and involved families with mature kids. Test scores don’t measure the sweat and tears that go into teaching disinterested kids who go home to their disinterested parents who blame everything on the school.
We live in a different age, and having seen it first hand, I can tell you that whereas it might SEEM fair to have “merit” payscales for teachers, there’s absolutely no way to measure that merit in a just fashion. I’d rather see a bad teacher get a paycheck he/she doesn’t deserve, than watch good teachers leave the field and retire early because they end up in the same crucible as the losers.
Kinda like....whatever you “reward” is what you will get....want “higher test scores”....then teachers will find a way to get them.....doesn’t mean the students have learned anything......they jut tested well according to how they were prepared...
In a nutshell, after I researched merit pay I became a detractor.
Why?
It's been around since the 1920's or so and has really never worked. I don't feel it can address an environment where the dynamics of the population changes so frequently.
IMHO, it is basically an instrument for meek administrators to wield against faculties and lends itself to herd behavior and lack of initiative amongst a faculty. It promotes a$$kissers and destroys faculty cohesiveness.
For example, I was always given students with discipline problems because I was able to keep them under control. Among discipline problems there are many students who really don't want to be in school and would rather be out working. They could care less about test scores.
I was a valuable employee to the principal because I was able to work with these students.
Under a merit pay system that used test scores as an evaluative instrument why would I want to take on that role? Who gets those students, then? How does that affect the academic progress of the classes that end up with them?
By labeling certain skills as economic assets, you, in the process, label other skills as economic liabilities. Some of those skills you have labeled as liabilities may actually be essential for the creation of an efficient academic environment.
While researching, I found many parodies of merit pay rules and guidelines that were really humorous in an 'onion-like' way because they could have been true. I also found a check list of how to counter arguments for merit pay that actually worked because our proponents simply regurgitated ancient arguments that were proven ineffective in the past.
A school lives or dies by the strength of it's top administrator.
If you have an administrator who has the b@lls to be assertive with under-performers and the humility to thank and acknowledge their drone workers you don't need merit pay. You will have a happy, productive faculty working for a common goal.
My 2 cents.
What if I could hire the best instructors in the world to put together presentations on every subject, and then post it all on the equivalent of YouTube? Then hire some tutors and put them on call via Skype from their homes, heck they could be anywhere speaking any language.
Then the key: set up contract testing centers at local strip malls with a examinations so tough that one could guarantee competence or the person will be replaced with costs or retrained to competency. That company would compete in an open market providing trainees with guaranteed excellence in their respective fields.
Will the schools guarantee their product?
Thus EVERYONE could learn as much as they want as fast as they can go. What would become of "public education" then?
That effectively reduces the classroom teacher to little more than a destructive babysitter, deserving of no more than about $10 an hour with no benefits.
America sits at the BOTTOM of the industrialized world for the quality of its k-12 educational product, but it is BY FAR the most expensive in the world. Why should we be asking parents to work two jobs so that they can afford the taxes to support these people? Doesn't that make them into slaves?
So, these shills stand here insinuating that I'm a creep for not wanting to pay MORE for this "good" teachers, when the price of paying for it is to force the payers out of state, taking the jobs they create with them. Isn't that one of the reasons we have high unemployment in the US in the first place?
It is the entire model that is the problem. So I suggest teachers go find how much you they worth doing a real job because the reality is that SOMEBODY will do what I just described and we will have no choice but to do it eventually.
You are a BRAVE soul! During my undergrad years, I sat in the front of the class, I remained shaved, trimmed, and coiffed so as to be just another face. I let them preach their High Holier than Thou BS. I sat through plenty of classes with militant feminists and outspoken Liberals leading our educational paths through their own little twisted worldview.
Graduate school's been a bit different. I'm outspoken, and I can def. tell which professors don't want to deal with me. It's amusing really. I really know who the arch-Liberals are!
Merit pay is the only way to keep education honest. Unfortunately, standardized tests are the best way to make that happen. I wish it wasn't, but there haven't been any real Earth-shattering developments out of the field of education in many years.
Until the schools start FAILING the kids that do absolutely nothing during the school year, the idea of merit pay will be moot. How can you rate the performance of a teacher if they have a class full of dolts who don’t give a damn about anything but sex, drugs, and rock & roll at 4:20 pm.
A goodly amount of time is spent "churning the tests" so as to justify the existence of these parasites, when there are perfectly good standardized tests (Stanford-Binet ?) that could be used.
Also, the existing administration, if it's not totally incompetent, ALREADY KNOWS who the bumblers, shirkers and idiots are, and were it not for stupid rules, could fire them immediately.
Nothing wrong with merit pay, properly applied. But if you really want school (and student) improvement:
1) fire 66% of the staff that is not full time in a classroom;
2) use existing nationwide standardized tests;
3) put the little creeps currently labeled "learning disabled", whose REAL problem is being discipline disabled, into reform schools of the old style.
Now why would Ms. Grabar ignore that gorilla? Hasn’t she been feeding it?
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