This is what I have been saying from post 5 or so. My district rates us in percentiles based on how much we’ve improved kids against “expectations” for kids of the same demographic pattern. By one test, I’m in the 50ish percentile. By another, given 6 weeks later, I am in the 85th percentile. They purport to measure the same thing. My merit bonus (and we do have one: there are programs in place in various schools) was determined by those two numbers, but to me, the huge discrepancy between the two scores tells me that we are dealing with some very crude instruments.
That is an excellent point. Everyone knows who the good and bad teachers are. Parents, administrators, other teachers, even the students know who are good and who is terrible. Why can’t we take the info we already have and assign merit based pay?
The problem is that you can’t fire the bad teachers unless they murder a child or something as heinous
One of the most frustrating experiences of my life was when I was a student representative to my local school committee. One of the language teachers was up for promotion to dept head. She was a complete psycho who yelled at anyone (teachers and students alike) who didn’t leave the window blinds exactly even. Excellent teachers had left to get away from her. I was going to raise an objection, but one of the school dept’s staff talked me out of it saying that it was just a pro-forma thing, blah, blah.
The idea that we would protect teachers at the expense of students is mind boggling. It’s not like you have a second chance to attend third grade. One fucked up teacher can set you back for years.
I’m not a teacher but as a graduate assistant at a museum I do act as a docent and provide tours to school groups. I’m relatively new at this and I’m getting better at it but I do notice that the amount of useful information I’m able to transmit is determined largely by the behavior of the group. So I don’t really understand how merit based pay for teachers is going to work. If I’m teaching in a part of the district where the students show up having eaten breakfast and have parents who discipline them at home and have an interest in their child’s education then great, merit pay all the way. If I’m teaching in a part of the district where a lot of kids are constantly late, students are willing to say “fuck you” to the teacher, and their parent’s don’t seem to have a keen interest in their child’s education then odds are good that I’m not going to be as effective a teacher as I would be in the good part of the district.
Fine, I suppose we could have a merit based system. Just don’t expect to be able to come up with some simple formula to determine pay.
Odesio
It’s a bad idea. I know, the old saw about “productivity” and stuff. People want the teachers pay to be performance based. However, in a factory or on a production line, if you get bad materials shipped in, you can reject them and send them back. You have some control over your raw materials. In schools, the incoming students are the raw material, and the educated successful graduate is the finished product. So, if the student can’t or won’t perform, the teacher is penalized.
You can’t fairly tie performance to pay for the teachers, unless they are allowed to reject the defective raw material.
Why is this so HARD? We can compare employees in non-school companies that have different depts, locations, job descriptions, etc.
Here is an idea: Compare teachers within a school. Compare teachers within a school district. Compare teachers of the same subject. Compare teachers to those with similar special duties such as PE, ESL, special needs.
WE DO THIS ALL THE TIME in the real world. Please, seriously, can someone explain to me why people don’t get the concept of merit-based pay?
I understand your frustration.
However, teaching is very much unlike anything in the ‘real world’*. The only way to truly understand what is involved is for you to try to craft your own teacher-merit-pay scheme. Only when you get your hands dirty will you start to realize how difficult it is.
- Gawd I hate that term. When I was a teacher I would have punched you in the nose if you had said that in front of me. - Note evidence of a lack of respect in the phrase ‘real world’…I bet big bucks you also believe that you should be paid more than a teacher.
Because there are so many variables at play, of which the teacher is only one. When your sample size is only 20 (for an elementary school) or 80 (for an urban school*), it’s really hard to isolate the impact of one variable among so many. Add to that, the tests we use are fairly crude when trying to assess how much the students have progressed in literally dozens of broad skills.
*Student loads are typically 130-180 on any given day, but in many districts a significant portion of those students are mobile: either they come in late in the year (and so really shouldn’t be counted) or they leave before the yearly assessments (and so can’t be evaluated).
We already have teachers teaching to the lowest common denominator and it would trend ever lower if merit pay were ever realized.
Standardized testing is a poor substitute for acknowledging learning.
I’ve worked on projects with technical writers, a program manager, hardware engineer, software engineers, and evaluators, but we still managed to evaluate their performance. Every profession is different than every other profession. I don’t think that teaching is so different from everything else that you can’t rate peoples performance. There are so many ways, none of them perfect, but all of them better than paying people based on seniority and giving tenure to teachers that are at best incompetent, and at worst harmful.
You don’t like the term “real world”, but if you think professionals’ salaries shouldn’t be based on performance then you are not living in it.
Want a concrete proposal?
Rank teachers based on: feedback from parents and students of last year’s class, feedback from teacher receiving students from previous year on how well the students are prepared, and feedback from fellow teachers on who they consider to be the best and worst performers. Compare the ranked list of teachers to their salaries and then divide up the pool of raises (if any these days) among the top performers so as to create equity. Experienced teachers ranked below less experienced teachers for several years in a row should be weeded out so new, potentially better teachers can be brought on board.
Merit pay does not have to be based on standardized test scores. In fact, I think that is a bad way to do it. Companies make merit pay decisions all the time without resorting to standardized tests. Do you really not know which of your peers are good at their jobs and which aren’t? Aren’t there some people you would like to be on a project with and others you avoid?
Not a bad start…but way to simplistic
Issues:
Feedback from parents: IMO, feedback from parents is not a good input. It varies wildly from location to location. Good teachers could give a parent a hard time and that parent then rates the teacher low. A good teacher is not necessarily the nice teacher and the child may complain about them to the parent. Bottom line, parents are not competent to judge the quality of a teacher.
Feedback from students: Bad idea - look at my post correlating grades with student evals.
Fellow teacher feedback - Ahhhhh man…while I will give to you that certain teachers may be a good judge of the quality of teaching…this would most likely devolve into a popularity contest, spiting, politics etc. Now, if you could identify these teachers and have THEM judge…you may be onto something. However, believe you me, the experienced old teacher who is very opinionated, confident and seems very competent to an outsider may very likely be crap. I have known many an experienced teacher that others would think knows their stuff really just be nosey, power hungry bullies*.
====
The idea of fellow teacher feedback has real merit, IMO. The problem is that teaching IS NOT A PROFESSION! Teachers do not certify their own. they do not promote/judge their own. If you wanted to professionalize teachers…then they would do a good job of policing their own…as good a job as doctors and lawyers.
=====
- I know this is a common complaint from all walks of life. However, I have taught for several years and have worked in the ‘real world’ many times that.
In all my years post teaching, I have only had one boss/supervisor that was bad. Every other one I had was a damn fine boss. Maybe I’m lucky. Maybe I’m a forgiving, easy grader…I don’t know.
However, teaching? AARrrrrrgggg. I don’t know what it is. MandyJo even touched on this. There is something about education administration…I don’t know if it is the position itself that attracts these types…or if it is the training they receive that tells them to act a certain way…or if, as MandyJo says, “those that can’t teach…administrate”…but the vast majority of administrators I have have seen/worked with were, in all honesty, power-hungry bullies (though, for some reason, I was usually on their good side 
)
These people should not be responsible for teacher salaries because they will use it to force asskissing and compliance and not good teaching.
Administrators should, in their entirety, be fired. Find teachers that absolutely refuse to be administrators…and MAKE THEM administrate :D.
Professionalize teachers…they will solve your merit pay issue.
I have taught only in the CC and uni, not K-12, but I know exactly what you mean. Invariably, the students who are doing horribly in the class–barely attending, not taking exams, blowing off projects, etc.–give the professor bad evaluations. The better students tend to give, well, better evaluations. So there is an inherent problem with relying on feedback.
1 question: How do you measure a student’s willingness to learn?
What peer is going to vote you low when they know it will be their turn to get a vote next?
Teachers have a pretty good Union at the moment.
Explain to me how easy it is to do then. Because in my admittedly short time and limited role as an educator of children I have noticed that my effectiveness is limited by the students I receive. It’s not just a simple matter of looking at test scores and figuring that Mrs. Goody must be a better teacher than Mrs. Brady.
By what standards are they being compared to one another?
Odesio
Evaluation is fine. I’m perfectly ok with evaluations, and using evaluations to determine raises. What I am not ok with–and what every “merit system” seems to include–is the attempt to quantify teacher merit by some reductive metric into a single number, or even a series of numbers.
Oh, bollocks. 90% of school administrators are ex-teachers.
Yes, every single metric is flawed; that’s why you use multiple metrics, as checks on each other.
Indeed. We can hire the best chef in the world, pay him a ton of money, and tell him to bake us a nice apple pie. But if we hand him wormy apples and moldy crust, the pie won’t be good no matter how hard he tries to make it so.
Well no, it isn’t. THAT"S WHY I SAID THAT IN MY POST! You don’t use test scores as a metric.
Are you telling me that you don’t know which of your fellow teachers are good and which aren’t? Because if you really can’t measure, objectively or subjectively, what you do, then maybe we shouldn’t pay you at all.
That’s why you rank them; i.e., put them in order. Mrs. Smith is better than Mr. Adams who is better than Miss Tweezle. You do it confidentially, you don’t rate yourself. And the Union is the problem. Our kids’ needs have to be put before protecting incompetent teachers.
I’d like to see teachers be paid at least as much as an entry level engineer. But if you act like line-workers then you will be paid like them and get the same respect from the public.