Many unions oppose merit-based pay increases. I think the reasoning is that it leaves raises to the discretion of mgmt, and they’re afraid raises won’t be given. I support merit-based pay increases.
Diogenes the Cynic
Yep, I read it. Can’t imagine why I thought you were responding to me, since the text follows a quote of my post. Guess it must be my problem. I’ll try to take some remedial reading lessons if I can find the time, or you could learn how to write and make it clear to whom you are addressing yourself. Either way, keep it up and I’ll be happy to see you in the pit.
Well if I paste a quote, and then respond it, I assume most people can figure out that I am addressing the person whom I quoted. I’ll be sure to use names from now on so as not to confuse anybody.
Rhum, I just checked page one of this thread and I made a huge mistake. I thought that both of my quotes came from lee when of course the first was from you. My bad, my mistake. My apologies. I’m totally sorry. I withdraw any snide insinuations. Please ignore my last post as it is completely idiotic and wrong. I misread your last post and thought you were confused because I posted after your post. I reread it and realized that I HAD quoted you after all. Once again I completely apologize. Here let me smack my own self in the head for you.:smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack:
Fair enough, these things happen. I appreciate your sincerity. No harm, no foul.
As my sister told me when I declared my major in education: “When I started teaching, you could have an apartment or eat. Now you can have an apartment AND eat.”
From my experience in the field, I’d say that one of the best ways to “fix” public education is cut out the bureacracy (I know I misspelled that). Teachers are being swamped with so many piddling little forms that actual teaching is being pushed aside in favor of paperwork. Promotions increase that problem as my clinical teacher found out when he was promoted to department head. I had to pick up some of his slack because he had to run meetings, arrange meetings, fill out forms, gather forms, a lot of administrative crap that made him question why he started teaching in the first place.
The best way to improve a failing school is to get a decent principal. I’ve worked under both good and bad principals. In the school with the principal who was padding out his retirement money, there were gang fights, bomb threats, weapons, rapes, and a lot of scared students. In the school with the good principal, discipline problems are taken care of swiftly, students and teachers are happier and more productive, and the whole feel of the school is safer. Test scores I can’t comment on since I’m currently subbing while trying to get a permanent teaching job next year/semester.
And get rid of zero tolerance. That was a horrible idea and whoever came up with that should be submitted to things only mentionable in the Pit.
Then there’s the way money is unevenly distributed among schools which, in the interests of keeping this a readable length, I’ll not go into. Especially since I have only anecdotal evidence based on my student teaching.
Faddish: There are a variety of methods for teaching reading. Phonics, whole word, whole language, and others. The tendency I have seen is that one or the other is taught as the right way for a few years and then something else reigns supreme.
Dumbed down pap: The math books which the education majors were given that I saw contain no true proofs. The so-called proofs they even bothered with were either abbreviated into lies or turned into prose summaries of what the proof would contain. They introduced concepts that can and should be proven from other axioms, and treated these theorems as axioms themselves.
Some new educational ideas may be considered faddish by people who walk in for a day with set notions about teaching, make a snap judgement, and walk out. But (a) the ideas may need to be explored and reflected on first, (b) the fact that so many ideas and fads come and go may be because they are executed poorly, half-assedly, and not fully implemented by the right people. But yeah, there are also fads that come and go, it is true. And there’s lousy schools, lousy teachers, lousy teacher colleges, and lousy textbooks. (Where is your friend going, BTW?). There are too many specific plans that usually have dopy acronyms like L.E.A.R.N. and P.R.I.D.E. – and teachers need to grasp at the underlying principals rather than reify it like that. For instance, if self-esteem is important to learning, a good teacher reinforces actual quality work and coaches, she doesn’t say everything is wonderful and treat self-esteem as an isolated and unconditional unit. If you decide authentic assessment is crucial to making connections from classroom to the outside world, you can’t just tack some bogus authentic assessment tasks at the end of the typical unit. If portfolios are in, you don’t just collect worksheets and stick them in a folder. I think those are the kinds of half-assed things that may happen, and then when learning doesn’t improve, makes teachers and parents suspicious of future “fads.” You have to do it right.
And then there’s some fads that should be put to death. I’d like to kick the ass of the guy who invented this “number family” math curriculum that befuddles parents and confuses kids because they don’t know what are legitimate math concepts and what are silly math games invented just for that curriculum and which will have no use outside of the curriculum. I’d also like the kick the ass of the kind of person who puts together diversity readers that teach kids of all cultural backgrounds to hate reading.
One of the problems is the strict adherence to one method, whatever the method. Even methods that are generally sound will fail to reach some students. If the class size is too large is impossible to catch all of these failures, but too often teachers will view the failure as a problem with the child not the method.
My husband had the good fortune to substitute over an extended period for a couple classes of students that were far behind the other classes in a small Catholic grade school. Since the classes were small, and he was willing to try different things, he was able to help all the children catch up to their peers in the other classes. The special classes had to be discontinued, for a while at least because there was no one significantly behind. He also taught them to form study groups and help each other study during their free class time. The teachers did not like this, talking in class even quietly, even to learn and help others learn, was not a welcome idea.
Bricker
How would merit pay be implemented? Test scores? Teachers get merit pay for student performance?
Teacher unions act as an advocate for teachers. They expose things that should be exposed. Without teacher unions we would be sitting outside of a restroom door during our 25 minute lunch.
I used my union representative recently… for the first time. She “persuaded” my principal to establish a procedure for an unruly parent that threatened one of the coaches on our staff and went toe- to- toe with a player in our program. Without this advocate my principal would have adopted a “cooloing off” period and a wait and see approach. This person was in essence stalking members of our staff. The cops told us it was an “administrative matter”. The administration told us it was a “police matter”. The union acted in my best interest. This is why they are needed.
Somebody posted a remark about teachers working for 5 hours and having 3 hours to prepare and grade papers. My day went like this:
Arrived on campus @ 5:45am.
Grade papers / record grades from 5:50 - 6:30
Check email / return email 6:30 - 6: 45am
Run copies / prepare for class 6:45 - 7:20
Hall duty 7:30 - 7:45
Class 7:45 - 9:15
Class 9:20 - 10:50
Advisory 10:55 - 11:25
Lunch - 11:25 - 11:50
Class - 12:00 - 1:40pm
Class - 1:45 - 3:15
I had major responsibilities after school today. I got home from work at 10:00pm. I will be on campus tomorrow before 6:00am.
Where is this three hour planning time? I teach during my conference period. Teachers that have a conference period are involved in “team meetings”, “study groups”, ARDs, etc. We get almost no planning time during the work day. I do most of my planning on Sundays. Most teachers take tons of work home with them. There is no time within the school day for preparation. Several teachers have more than one prep. If you think we are over-paid, you are mistaken. I earn my money.
Having taught in public schools, I have this to add:
Would you, as an adult, put up with the conditions at a school?
To answer this you would need to follow a kid around for a day or two and see where they go, what they do, and what resources are there for them to use.
One school of my experience was quite overcrowded. The stage in the cafeteria was used to run both music and physical therapy activities at the same time.
Would this situation happen in the business world? What if a board of directors at Company X was told they had to hold their meeting in the same room that was being used for new trainee orientation? Would they put up with that? Or how about having to take turns on the computers?
My experience in business is that these folks raise holy hell as soon as the executive washroom is out of lemon scented urinal wafers.
Extreme example? Maybe, but I don’t think so. It’s no wonder kids don’t buy into school. To me it seems hopelessly half-assed, and I think the kids know that.
Half measures are the curse of our world. Our schools should either be great places to be, or they should be done away with. What we’re doing lacks imagination, and is harmful in the end. It teaches everyone involved, kids and adults, that doing it… mostly OK… is acceptable.
Pencil Pusher:
A huge problem with the current school system is, as has been noted by others, the huge and wasteful beaurocracy that currnetly runs it. This needs to be fixed from the inside out, just as inefficiency problems within a company are fixed. Right now, there’s absolutely zero incentive for schools to do this, and it has little to do with the quality of teachers. If the pay and job security of those in charge was dependent upon actual performance - ie, whether or not parents actually want to send students to their schools - they would find a way to fix things, and they would find it fast.
jacksen9:
Same way my merit pay is implemented. I get bonuses based on performance. Is it based on a quantifiable contribution to company earnings? A test I take? No, my boss, who knows what I should be doing and is competent enough to figure out if I’m doing it well, decides to give me a bonus based on how well I perform. Schools should be the same way. The principal, and other relevant administrative faculty, should rate teachers based on how well they do. There shouldn’t be a formula, just a good application of common sense. What the hell is the principal good for if has no idea how well his teachers are doing?
skutir:
Hear hear! I would love to see schools just - pardon the cliche - get back to basics. Stop teaching cultural diversity, stop teaching self-esteem and acceptance, just cut out all the damn fluff, and teach these kids to read and write and add, using the same old techiniques that have been around for ages. You know what? I learned all about self-esteem and tolerance when I was in school, and I didn’t need a 12-week workshop to do it. It’s called “life”. A good teacher will get across the point of do-unto-others, and love-your-brother, and whatnot, without having to lecture on it ad nauseum. That would also go a long way towards addressing the concerns of those who don’t want their kids learning about homosexuals, or having to perform Muslim religious ceremonies as part of “Cultural Tolerance Week”. Learning arithmetic is much less controversial, you know?
Jeff
I will start by saying that my opinion comes from not only having 3 teachers in my family, but also having many friends/relatives with children in school, and even more friends who are also teachers.
IMHO, our education problem is NOT with the schools. No ammount of money will fix them short of using that money to bribe the kids to work harder.
When you were a child, what made you work harder to learn? Because your teachers made you, or because your PARENTS backed up your teachers? Teachers and schools have no power when it comes to making sure children learn if their parents don’t back it up.
I have freinds/aquantences, and family alike who will go to school to yell at a teacher who tried to discipline their child. Even when their child was clearing in the wrong, the parent is on the side of the child. As such, no ammount of work on the part of the teacher will ammount to anything unless for some reason the child is self motivated (rare).
We as a society have somehow got it in our head that the schools should do everything for us with some magic wand. That somehow, our kids should learn things without US as parents supporting their learning. And by support, I mean studying with them, encouraging them, talking to their teachers to see how they are doing.
No ammount of tiny class sizes, computers, high paid teachers will make a child learn if he doesn’t have a reason to.
ElJeffe
We had “incentive” pay a few years ago. I would be in favor of principal’s choice merit pay. I think there would be a lot of ass kissing and other kinds of sucking up. I would like to see pay raises because teachers deserve a raise. I do not believe a poor teacher would turn into a good teacher because they could earn a little extra money. Good teachers are good because they care about kids and they can provide quality learning environments. Merit pay would be great but I do not think merit pay would create more student success.