NC social studies teacher - who lets idiots like her teach?

[mhendo]

@Shodan

Merit pay for teachers may be a fine idea, but only if those who don’t have merit don’t get paid.

But if the pay, merit-based or otherwise, were better, then teaching would attract better candidates at the training stage, when college students are choosing their majors and their career direction.

If you’re going to introduce merit-based pay, you also need a reasonable system to evaluate what good teaching looks like. Right now, basically the only measure is performance on standards-based test, many of which do a very poor job of actually testing a student’s understanding of the material, and also aren’t very good at assessing higher-level skills and reasoning. If you want to evaluate teachers properly, that itself will cost some money, because you need to do more than look at test results.

As for this teacher, at a minimum i think she should be told in no uncertain terms that this sort of political partisanship is unacceptable in the classroom. Some form of discipline would be appropriate, but if this was an isolated incident i’m not sure that firing is appropriate. I’ll repeat here what i said in the Pit thread about this incident:

@mhendo

For this teacher? I’m not sure what the solution should be. But i can tell you unequivocally that if this is the most ignorant thing that she’s ever said in the classroom, then she’s probably no worse than the person who might replace her.

I don’t say this because i have a hard-on for teachers. I think teaching is an incredibly important profession, and i’ve worked with school teachers who are models of intelligence, curiosity, thoughtfulness and erudition. But i’ve also spent a considerable amount of time over the past couple of years teaching college students who are hoping to become school teachers, and it’s amazing how much these people don’t know. More troubling than that, however, is how uninterested some of them are in alleviating their ignorance.

I’m not just talking about factual questions here, but basic skills such as writing a coherent sentence; understanding how to use apostrophes; knowing the difference between “their” and “there” and “they’re”; correct use of subject/verb agreement; and a whole bunch of other things they should know before Grade 9. I’m not talking about the occasional typo here; i’m talking about students who don’t know this stuff, and who also think that it really doesn’t matter, and that i’m just an asshole for taking their writing skills into account when grading their papers.

They’re even worse when it comes to higher level skills like synthesizing an argument, using evidence to draw a conclusion, or comparing and contrasting texts in order to identify similarities and differences.

I’m generalizing, of course. Every class contains some students who do all this stuff well, and who are also curious and committed and engaged. Many of them will, i think, make fine teachers. But in other cases? It’s pretty depressing when the person who is going to be teaching 8th grade students consistently demonstrates a level of writing ability and cognitive skill that is barely above grade 8 levels.

Of course, there are economic issues at play here as well. The American taxpayers have, in many states and local jurisdictions, made clear that they want smart, qualified, professional, and committed teachers, but have also continued to chip away at education funding to the extent that students who have these qualities are less and less likely to be interested in the job. Taxpayers and legislators increasingly choose to pay peanuts, and are shocked and surprised when the system attracts a few monkeys.

@mckall

It would certainly push her towards the bottom of the hiring lists when it comes to choosing and hiring candidates.

Is that always the case?

Here in San Diego, the city’s Unified School District has laid off hundreds of teachers recently due to budget problems, and those layoffs are done based on nothing but seniority. Last year, i worked on a federally-funded grant program to improve the teaching of American History in county schools, and one of the teachers i worked with, a fabulous teacher who won a county-wide and a state-wide award for her teaching, was pink-slipped because she lacked seniority.

@mckall

Merit Pay, if there is a viable way to get it done without teaching to testing for the sole purpose of making money, I’d love it.

Absolutely.

The problem is that the people calling for merit-based pay are often the same ones who think that NCLB-style standardized testing is the proper way to measure educational outcomes and teacher quality.