Yes, this is the essential problem with all merit pay programs that have been proposed, at least that I know of. They all rely to some degree on the performance of students on tests, and students do not have any incentive to do well on those tests. In fact, they often have an incentive to do badly.
These are all valid concerns. This is not an easy problem to solve, and i certainly don’t pretend to have all the answers.
As you suggest, eliminating test-based assessment and replacing it with in-class observers might just replace one set of problems with another. Not only is there the possibility of cronyism, but you run into the concern that most teachers (good or bad) cannot be adequately evaluated during one or two lessons. The best teacher in the world can have a bad day, and a truly awful teacher can put together a good lesson if he or she knows that the evaluation is coming.
A key problem here is that the people who do nothing but scream for higher test scores aren’t even willing to have an intelligent conversation on this issue. It’s all about the scores, with little consideration of what actually constitutes good pedagogy, or whether there might be better ways to assess the quality of teaching.
I taught in a Texas district that had merit pay. Building principals got a certain amount each year they could award in 500 dollar increments. Purely coincedantal, one supposes, that the meritorious teachers were also the ones who were personal friends with the principals.
How is “graduating from HS” NOT incentive to pass the tests?
So when I was a senior I took government from a teacher who was a bit to the right of Hitler. I used to believe he thought Barry Goldwater was too liberal to be president.
Anyway he and I would get into it in class over various items. He thought Nixon was wonderful (this was during tricky Dicks first term). I didn’t think so.
In these discussions, which often last half the period, I would often hand him hiss ass and sometimes he would hand me mine. A good percentage of the time it was a draw.
Anyway at the end of the year I got an A and he wrote in my yearbook I was the best student he had ever had in his class.
Anybody else see a difference between my teacher and this one?
Has anyone argued that it isn’t?
Heh–I almost wrote about the same teacher (was his name Mr. Hicks, by any chance?) I never had him, but given my anti-war tabling in the high school cafeteria during the first Gulf War, I had my share of run-ins with him. And he subbed for the truly incompetent social studies teacher I did have at one point, and I had run-ins with him then, too.
When I say he was far to the right, I mean he said things like, “Slavery is the best thing that ever happened to black people, because it introduced them to civilization and Christianity.” That’s not hyperbole; that’s as close to an exact quote as I can get, two decades removed.
But the awesome thing was how open he was to discussion. He taught in a highly liberal school, and he delighted in provoking us liberal kids into fits of apoplexy. And when one of us made a solid argument, he’d compliment it. I remember when my girlfriend of the time wrote a paper for his class in which she talked about being lesbian (long story, don’t ask); he gave her an A on it, despite his loudly-professed belief that homosexuality ought to remain a felony.
I’m not sure that I approve of his approach. In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t. But there’s a massive difference between his approach and the teacher’s in the OP.
And Shodan, I’m all about merit pay if you can propose a strategy for measuring it that’s less soul-crushing than EOG tests (I’ve spent the last two months crushing souls instead of teaching; it’s thoroughly miserable for all parties concerned, and I desperately hope I can get in a few days of actual teaching before the school year ends instead of just endlessly drilling kids on multiple choice test strategies). I’m pretty arrogant about my teaching and I want money for it, to be totally blunt, and I think merit-pay would favor me.
But I have stories from college about folks going into the profession. When you’ve got folks willing to get four-year degrees for a profession, and when the pay for the profession is so meager compared to that for other four-year degrees, you’ll get some folks who are in it for the benefits; some folks who are in it for the passion; and some folks who are in it because it’s the best money they can make given their brains, work ethic, and personality.
THe first group? Meh. The second group? Yay. The third group? Oh hell no, you don’t want them teaching your kid. But they’re out there; they’re in the schools. If the profession paid better, principals wouldn’t hire them, because there’d be such better competition for the jobs.
The tests are given long before graduating from high school is a worry. I live across the street from an elementary school, and they have banners up about testing. And they are hardly at risk of getting funding cut because of bad scores.
The teacher was suspended. Too bad she wasn’t fired and the suspension is with pay.
suranyi is making that argument vis-a-vis merit pay.
Passing MCAS is madatory for a diploma in MA.
Wow. Y’know, I’m no big believer in tenure at all; I tend to think the arguments in its favor are overblown, and I’ve advocated on these boards for its abolishment. I’ve not really encountered this argument before (i.e., without tenure, right-wing blowhards could kick liberal teachers out of the school without any sort of due process or investigation, based on an incomplete sample of a video a student took). You may have just made me a believer in tenure. Are you some sort of double agent or something?
The tests I’m talking about have no effect on whether or not the kid graduates from high school. They have no effect on the kid’s standing or grades at all. That’s why he has no incentive to do well.
For example, my wife is a sixth grade teacher. In sixth grade the kids are required to take a series of standardized tests which somehow determine how good the school is doing, and might someday be used to determine teacher’s pay. Yet the kids themselves are totally unaffected by the results of theses tests. They could blow them off completely, and many do.
Yes, of course. It’s because she’s liberal. Not because she is an ignorant idiot who doesn’t know the subject she’s supposed to teach.
Perhaps, or perhaps it’s because she’s a racist, not because she’s a liberal.
I’ll absolutely support her removal from the profession after an investigation shows that there’s no relevant context (for example, some student who hates her has filmed her modeling terrible debate tactics or something else–I don’t know exactly what, but that’s why I’d want an investigation). But I’m not a credulous rightie willing to believe any edited video that comes along besmirching a liberal, and I would hope, after having had that particular trick pulled on you so many times, you wouldn’t be either.
The video was edited? Can you point to any evidence that it was?
And sure - she was “filmed modeling terrible debate tactics”. That’s just funny. Grasping at straws?
Not Hicks, Ferraro. And I guess compared to Hicks he was not quite as out there as I thought. 
When my kids got to HS there were exposed to several teachers that put forth various position and they were expected to research that position and put forth why they agreed or disagreed. Positions like one teacher was a communist, another a libertarian, another a right winger. Agreeing with the teacher was NOT a guaranteed good grade. Whatever your position you had to back it up. It was the backing up of your position that made your grade. IOW the teachers actually wanted these kids to [gasp] think.
I was very happy with that school.
I had a high school teacher (Senior Honours [sic] English) who was a good teacher in general but on rare occasion would turn her podium into a pulpit when a particular bee got into her bonnet. Some of us complained to the principal who was sympathetic but since her worst infractions were basically wasting the occasional fifteen minutes of class time to harangue us collectively she never got more than a quiet talk with the principal (AFAIK). We all learned to ignore her little moods.
Also, she’s responsible for my lifelong loathing of Thomas Hardy novels.
No, I can’t point to any evidence that it was. That’s why I want an investigation.
And no, I’m not grasping at straws; on the contrary, I’ve said that if everything is accurate, I want her out of my profession. I, however, do care about the truth, and there’s a well-known tactic of lying character-assassinating gonzo journalism that’s reared its ugly head especially on the right in the last couple of years; I want to be sure that’s not what’s going on here.
You, however, appear to be upset that there’s going to be an investigation. Seems very Soviet, but whatever.
Isn’t it interesting that, as long as nothing is happening to this idiot teacher, some posters are eager to talk about how teachers should get raises. The instant it is suggested that something more than a paid vacation should happen, the minds instantly slam shut and the name-calling starts.
Regards,
Shodan