<p>I for one HATE the idea of merit-based pay for teachers. It is insulting for someone to think that I would teach harder or better if I was paid a bonus for my kids doing better. And since the beginning of the year, I have had 9 new students come in, and 17 leave. (I started out with 28) Who are you going to test? The few kids that have been with me since the beginning of the year? The kids who came in 7 weeks ago? 3 days ago? Some years I have a class with more academically able kids, sometimes a class of slower children, who take 10 times as long to learn one tenth of the material. Does that make me a better teacher one year than the other? With merit based pay I can see that in some schools when they make up class lists for the next year, teachers will be saying, “No, don’t give me that kid. He’s learning disabled.”<br>
As to “No Child Left Behind” - yuck. Time for us to admit that children have different gifts and some would be happier, more engaged, more productive, and better contributors to society if they could choose a “vocational track” program like Germany, than being forced into the “college prep” curriculum.</p>
<p>P.S. Not to mention we would have more gifted plumbers, automotive technicians, wood workers, lutiers, chefs, painters, etc. etc… etc.</p>
<p>“The teacher is so boring everyone falls asleep.” That’s such crap. Those kids don’t want to be there, they’d fall asleep even if John Nash was teaching.</p>
<p>I’ve attended both private and public schools. There’s nothing intrinsically better about private schools. The real advantage simply results from the vast majority of students there wanting an education. Kids are impressionable. If the culture of their new school is one of achievement, new students will try to achieve. If the culture is one of mediocrity, new students will become mediocre. Also, the fact that their parents have spent money on their education encourage most private school students to work harder.</p>
<p>American culture doesn’t exactly hold education in high esteem. It’s honorable for athletes to spend hours working on their jumpshot, but smart kids have to hide the fact that they study. This year I dropped a varsity sport to devote more time to my favorite academic activity. Needless to say, I took a lot of flak for this decision. I could care less since my academic activity got me into Yale, but I can see how peer pressure could affect the decisions of others. </p>
<p>Edit:
Exactly. Not everyone will have a job that requires a college degree. Making these people learn things that will have no bearing on their future lives is just wasting everyone’s time.</p>
<p>anxiousmom,
I agree that merit pay would not get me to work any harder than I do, mostly because I didn’t enter the profession for money in the first place but for other reasons, which I’m sure are similar to yours. Merit pay would probably make me very anxious. I also agree there are problems with the concept, which you explained well.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, however, it has been my experience as a public school teacher that not everyone shares your work ethic and sense of integrity. There are quite a few “slacker” teachers at my large middle school, lax oversight from administrators and a resulting malaise when it comes to really guiding our kids up and over the academic bar, which has been set quite high (i.e. our standards in Language Arts and Math are designed to prepare high school graduates to enter the Univ. of California system). </p>
<p>Tenure and a lack of financial incentive in the workplace (other than to get more college units) create an odd combination of smugness and torpor among a substantial number of my peers, I’m afraid. The ones I’m talking about would not set foot in a school such as yours, by the way. </p>
<p>I don’t see merit pay as a magic bullet here, but in combination with the list above, I think that it would help these teachers keep their eye on the goal: academic achievement for all of our students. At least it would get them to look at the goal instead of complain about it and wait for it to go away.</p>
<p>Who is John Nash?</p>
<p>Remember the movie: A Beautiful Mind? It’s about him. Sverige Riksbank Price in Memory of Nobel in economics, schizophrenia and all that stuff…</p>
<p>/the one fan of John Nash I know didn’t like that movie.</p>
<p>FF,</p>
<p>Another fair point. I wouldn’t advocate a dramatic rise in teacher pay without slaughtering some of the union’s sacred cows (tenure, regular pay scale, etc.) just as I didn’t support Arnold’s initiative rolling back tenure in the absence of any plan to raise teacher pay. I guess what I want, more than anything, is consistency. I’m a liberal who believes that reforming the school system according to market principles could really work, but only if we have the courage to follow through on the logic of these principles, which, in my view, means not just instituting school choice and abolishing tenure, but facing the reality that it takes money to attract and retain talent. In the market economy, any business that believes its talented employees will stick around out of passion, selflessness, and good will is doomed to mediocrity, if not outright failure, the very state of our educational system today. In this sense, real success–in education as in business–is going to require wise, targeted investment, and, as I see it, the greatest return on our investment in education–the kind of return that involves the sort of cultural shift that would mean real school reform–would stem from dramatically broadening the pool of prospective educators. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that true school reform is going to take courage and flexibility. Liberal advocates for reform will have to be willing to take on the teacher unions. Conservative advocates for reform will have to recognize that the very logic of their approach might ultimately clash with their desire to avoid raising taxes. Of course, over all these reflections looms the thorniest question of them all: Can we really do anything within our schools to ensure their improvement, or will our efforts merely pale next to the social ills that fall at their doorstep?</p>
<p>Never watched that movie.</p>
<p>Damn, I meant prize in the memory of Nobel. And now I can’t edit it…</p>
<p>Emperor550 notes,“American culture doesn’t exactly hold education in high esteem. It’s honorable for athletes to spend hours working on their jumpshot, but smart kids have to hide the fact that they study”</p>
<p>Response: You have almost hit the nail in the head. What is missing, however, is that there ARE some schools where the culture is “smart is cool.” We moved from a school district where “stupidity was cool” to one where “intelligence and hard work are respected.” Accordingly, there is over a 200 point median SAT difference between the schools.</p>
<p>It all starts at home! We have to find a way to make studying and hard work as “sexy” as doing well on the athletic field. This is why many parents try to get their kids out of certain high schools and into other schools. I don’t think that the better schools have better teachers,but they do have a better educational culture and more parental support.</p>
<p>We need flexibilty in our public schools. If kids aren’t cutting it, they may need to go to special schools where they can be given other types of instruction such as vocational instruction.</p>
<p>If kids or teachers are behaving badly, we should have a simplified way of getting them out of the school.</p>
<p>In a sense, we need to adopt some of the policies and benefits available to private school, which means higher teacher salaries and benefits in exchange for loss of tenure.</p>
<p>“I am glad that at age 11, I was directed to Classics rather than the vocational track that would have prepared me for a lifelong career as a secretary or stenographer!”</p>
<p>Well, the drawback of early selection is that mistakes in assessment can be made. However, it is my understanding that parents can oppose the selection as the findings of the schools are not final. I have to believe that the decision must be based on prior performance and that efforts are made to ascertain the causes of poor performance. I’m not sure if the alternative to keep students in classes for which they are poorly prepared is a better one. </p>
<p>They are probably “victims” in both systems.</p>
<p>Xiggi:</p>
<p>It was easy to go from Classics (or Math or Sciences) to vocational: you only needed to do poorly. It was not easy to do the reverse. I don’t believe anyone ever achieved this feat in my school.</p>
<p>My district is bi-modal. Students in the same high school perform either very very well or very very poorly. Top students go to HYPSM, but the median SAT is in the 800 or possibly 900 (old SAT). This reflects the bimodal character of the demographics: children of professionals (including academics) and children on F/R lunch whose parents do not speak English, who have to work more than 20 hours a week to help support their families. </p>
<p>In France, children may not work until they’re 16. And there are not many jobs open to them. This may not help the families’ finances, but at least it does not distract them from their studies.</p>
<p>i agree with taxguy where he says “It all starts at home! We have to find a way to make studying and hard work as “sexy” as doing well on the athletic field. This is why many parents try to get their kids out of certain high schools and into other schools. I don’t think that the better schools have better teachers,but they do have a better educational culture and more parental support.”</p>
<p>honestly, how can we go around and say that teachers and money and the government are all at fault for our education system’s faults? it starts at home. i can’t tell you how many parents don’t go to pta meetings in my school. we have around 2200 students. a good night for the pta is 20 parents. many parents don’t get involved until it’s time for their child to go to college. they expect the school to raise them and to teach them everything they know.</p>
<p>i’m sorry but that woman who’s son could barely read–not entirely the school’s fault. there are just some basic things that parents can teach their children. i know for a fact that my sisters and i were all encouraged to read and write from a very young age. i taught my younger sister her alphabet and numbers when she was 2 and 3 years old. parents can’t just sit their children in front of the tv and expect elmo to tell them everything and then, 2 years later, send them off to the next “babysitter”.</p>
<p>the work ethic behind american education is what’s failing. there was a time when almost every teenager in america would kill to get the chance to go to school…now they go to class and decide that they’re gonna waste everyone’s time. parents need to step up and be more involved. of course, there are plenty of great parents out there who do their best, but there will always be those that decide to make their child someone else’s problem until it’s too inconvinient for them.</p>
<p>I agree that it must be hard to go back from the vocational system, but it does not have to be a death penalty. </p>
<p>As an example, my cousin drifted as low as failing two grades but managed to blossom when studying subjects that interested him. Later on, he moved to a much harder technical school and graduated with a degree that would allow him to attend any engineering school in the country. </p>
<p>Of course, this is anecdotal.</p>
<p>Xiggi:</p>
<p>Yes, it depends on the mission of the vocational school. Mine was firmly to train girls to be secretaries and stenographers (it was a girls’ school).
Our local vocational school is famous for its tough curriculum. Most of its graduates do go on to college; a few years ago, a young woman graduated from there into MIT.</p>
<p>spoonyj,</p>
<p>re: post 60</p>
<p>The critical thing is not just the pay or money. From the broadcast/article they point out that in the US we have dramatically increased the amount we spend on public education in real dollars. Yet, there are no results. I do not like some of the methods used in the Oakland School from the braodcast the results are excellent.</p>
<p>So, let’s look at private schools, many private schools devote much more of their budget to teachers and less to administration. Ideally we would apply this to the public schools and take the money saved on administration and apply it directly to teaching.</p>
<p>Overall, I am a free market type so I believe in vouchers. Regarding whether it violates the US constitution, it does not. Money follows the student, it is not an “establishment” of religion. </p>
<p>Personally, I like the way it is implemented in MA, there is school choice and the money follows the students from one public school to another. To me it is easy to see why MA has one of the highest rated public school systems in the US. Some of it is the competition enabled by the school choice program.</p>
<p>emperor550-- I completely agree with you on the subject of vocational study. I happen to be stuck in the public school system and I was “sorted” based on my zip code. Needless to say, I have to ride a bus every day to a different school just so I can take AP classes. My home school is a flaming cesspool of out-of-it students. Nobody pays any attention to teachers or for that matter, fellow students. All anybody cares about is Number 1. Students at my school do not think about others, and nor do they care even if they did think; which seems to be impossible for many of them. </p>
<p>There is a girl who does very well in math, and fairs well in other subjects. She happens to be stealing Salutatorian from me on the basis of receiving A grades all the time in easy classes like, Student Assistant or Peer Mentoring (both are homework hours because she doesn’t do anything in them). She takes Video Photography at my school, which is considered a blow-off class and she sleeps the whole hour. Yet she is being deemed Salutatorian because she got lucky enough to have teachers who dish out A+ grades (some teachers at my school refuse to give an A+, which actually counts as a 4.25; they say you have to have over 100% to get an A+ out of them; you can have a 98% but you still get an A, meaning they bring your GPA down when you deserve a higher grade; meaning, I have taken more difficult classes than anyone in my class–and this is no joke–and I get the A grades because these teachers don’t give the extra points; on top of that, my school doesn’t give AP bonus points like most schools, so my GPA is weighted against other students who spend their senior year with 6 out of 7 hours and a list of blow-off classes. Example: the senior year English class this Salutatorian is taking has spent two months reading and working on To Kill A Mockingbird. I happen to have AP English at the separate school I go to: is there a difference? Yes, but not at my home school. I am not rightfully getting Salutatorian or Valedictorian because I took the harder classes and got punished for it. There goes possible scholarships too! </p>
<p>On top of that, my school is pathetic in that class sizes are around 30 students, many of whom are obnoxious and rude. I was in a class last year where boys would make obscene gestures towards our female teacher (who happened to be around 56 or so at the time) just for the sake of being funny. This particular teacher is not the greatest either. She’s been teaching for over 30 years, same district, and you can tell she has given up. Anybody asks her a question, the typical response would be, “I don’t know, Google it.” My school lost two excellent english teachers last year as well. One to retirement, the other to budget cuts–he got scared and took up a job in another district that was better and paid more. I don’t blame him. But he was a good friend of mine, more friend than teacher, and I am finding it difficult to be surrounded by “hoodlums” at school when last year I could turn to him to talk to. He had the same problem–the students at my school made him afraid to teach because he is only 26 and was scared that all students are as dumb and rude and disrespectful as he has seen. He wanted to go into something different. He found that it’s just my district though. But there are other ones out there just as bad. That 20/20 special showed a little of what it’s like inside a “real” high school. It’s scary that they are the future of America. Makes me want to move to England or some other country. Perhaps Belgium.</p>
<p>currently i am in high school and I see my fellow students not having a work ethic. They cut corners at evey opprunitty. An example is that there are some seniors who haven’y read one book for english. I find this very sad that kids my age don’t care about learning but instead sex,money and fame. I think it is kids not trying or caring about school that puts American Schools behind.</p>
<p>I blame certain teachers for their inability to teach. Certain students for not being 100% all-there in the head. Certain parents for passing down that sinful gene of ignorance–trust me, if you ever saw the way parents drive their kids to school in the morning, you’d know that the students aren’t exactly on their way to the Nobel prize). Certain political leaders for that BS No Child Left Behind Act. Certain school officials for being arses (they are at my school) and having power trips (I have a Vice Principal who thinks he owns God and everyone’s uncle, and spends most of his time at school stalking students who happen to be in the halls and not in class–then he jumps on the PA to say, “Teachers! There is no less than 20 students in the halls–no more passes for students for the rest of the day!” This will occasionally happen during 2nd hour. </p>
<p>Oddly enough, that very same moronic Vice Principal I mentioned above tried that small-cash rewards game with my class last year, just as that guy did in the special last night. We were reviewing, ha ha, To Kill A Mockingbird (I took senior year english in my junior year) and I had answered his question perfectly (he was trying to “take part in our learning” by taking over the review questions from our teacher)–he, however, after claiming he loved the book and knows everything about it, said I was totally wrong. My teacher actually gave him a long look that screamed, “Excuse me, idiot, but what are you talking about?” She actually told him, “Um, she’s absolutely right. That was a perfect answer and exactly what I want!” And he was like, “Oh, well, okay then.” He spent the whole hour wrongly prounouncing words and names from the book. He looked like a fool.</p>
<p>I really loved the parts where they filmed the classrooms and halls. Kids chasing each other down the halls, playing monopoly, sleeping, etc.</p>