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Merit Based Teacher Pay
So, Obama came out in favor of merit-based teacher pay.
Notable quotes:
Notable quotes:
Barack Obama[A rethinking of the traditional American school day may not be welcome -] "not in my family, and probably not in yours" [- but is critical.]
Barack ObamaWe need to make sure our students have the teacher they need to be successful. That means states and school districts taking steps to move bad teachers out of the classroom. Let me be clear: if a teacher is given a chance but still does not improve, there is no excuse for that person to continue teaching.
Comments
The devil will be in the details so I'm curious to see what system will be used to judge teachers. Will it be based on performance, results, test scores, graduation rates? What sort of system will be in place for a teacher to appeal their firing? Will they receive full pay while removed from their job and appealing their removal?
What about retraining? Will the "improvement" system provide a disincentive for new teachers to enter the system with a top-notch degree knowing that they only need to fail for a short time to get the taxpayers to foot the bill for their retraining? Will they be paid during this retraining?
I need some details.
EDIT: Beyond that, I think all pay should be merit based. That goes for C.E.O.'s, IT people, etc.
Despite their many flaws standardized tests are still our best tool for measuring student performance, and they work well enough for that purpose. If you look at the statistics, its all plain to see. Regardless of all the problems with the tests themselves, students being taught by better teachers do better on the standardized tests. The students at those KIPP schools are beating the ever living shit out of kids at other schools, and they most certainly are not teaching to the test.
As a means of judging any individual student, I think that most standardized tests are fairly poor. There are just too many factors in play that can set any individual student way off course. Despite this, when you apply statistical analysis to the results of all the tests, the information is actually very reliable. You can begin to easily spot outliers and trends become painfully obvious.
So while we should constantly try to improve standardized tests, and their many flaws, what we have right now is extremely useful for measuring student performance on a large scale, if not an individual one. And as it has been demonstrated that teacher performance has a causative relationship to student performance, you can most definitely use aggregate standardized test data to reliably measure performance over time on the teacher, school, district, state, national, and world levels.
One point you do make, is that if we do want to use them to evaluate individual teachers we will have to give the same tests every year in every place.
Base your teacher performance metrics on aggregated improvement scaled by the aggregated improvement of other teachers' classes. Remove outliers. After five or so years of this, you'll have some solid data as to which teachers are statistically significantly better than others and which teachers are statistically significantly improving.
It's a pretty solid system. Cameras in the classroom ensure that teachers can't easily attempt to cheat by working with their students to undermine the test, no teacher's pay is pegged to a single bad crop, and teachers can't teach "to the test." All of the data is relative and aggregated. While some odd circumstances may cause a handful of teachers to "fall through the cracks," it's orders of magnitude better than the current "system."
NOT IF TECHNOLOGY IS USED PROPERLY
But we do need to keep pushing the technology front. Eventually, the current generation (and the previous generation) will make it to the top, and they'll be able to implement things.
I am all for it, trust me, but NCLB has shown that putting too much of an importance on standardized tests as they exist now will only further hamper the system and educators.
I like Rym's suggestion as long as the test covered the areas required by National/State curriculum standards (every teacher should have some wiggle room to teach more than the basic curriculum based on their students' abilities and needs). The only issue is students that move mid-year or teachers that take long leaves of absence (for illness, specialized grant work, or family leave) should just stay at their same rate if judged solely on the test scores (neither going up or down).
They used to do that to me in Catholic school, but that's sort of expected in that environment.
Unfortunately, my streak was broken when everyone figured out the trick, a random person won that year, and then they never did it again.
Not saying, Joe, that I'm smarter than them...I'm just saying that they're indeed far from someone who should be put in the seat of decision making power.
I'm not trying to be sarcastic. I read a book some years ago called The Mocking Program, by Alan Dean Foster. The story is about something else entirely, but he describes an educational system that stuck with me. In this system, the only academics taught are the most basic skills (reading, writing, basic math, etc). The rest of a child's education is devoted entirely to learning social skills, starting with utilizing emergency services and progressing through things like advanced financial planning. Any academic interests are left entirely up to the parents to work out with their child, and can be learned through courses taught online.
A system like this is already technologically feasible, and could help to solve problems like young adults getting themselves into massive financial trouble because they don't know any better. People would still get themselves into trouble, of course, but they'd have less of an excuse.
Personally, I'd rather at least try to hold people to a higher standard than "don't die or break anything."