Support is growing in Congress and some cities for giving outstanding teachers in high-poverty schools incentive bonuses and performance pay, the Washington Post reported.
Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., has proposed a bill that would provide up to $12,000 in annual bonuses for teachers in some low-income schools, based on test scores and professional evaluations.
National teacher unions have long fought the idea of “merit pay,” raising valid concerns that it would put too narrow an emphasis on test scores, which can reflect many factors other than a teacher’s skill. Moreover, critics say how bonuses are doled out could be skewed by favoritism and other subjective criteria.
But with teacher retention a critical problem in our schools, surely there is some fair way to evaluate outstanding teachers and reward them the way our society routinely recognizes excellence — with extra pay.
Most schools know who their best teachers are. It’s not fair to treat them the same as those who are dead weight.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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51 Comments
Teachers Union won’t allow it, because it endangers their ability to keep the mediocre and the below standards teachers on the union
“money for showing up” payroll.
The teachers union will never allow this. It would destroy their control over teachers. They do not want teachers to be treated as individuals and professionals and to be rewarded as such. They have always fought allowing for merit pay etc.
Teachers need to stand up and be heard as individuals and professionals. If you are truly concerned about your pay then do something about. Do not just be one of the many in the herd and accept what the union thinks is right for everyone. Be an individual and get paid for what you are willing do and what you are worth. If a teacher is willing to teach in a tough, environment and take on the task of teaching in schools where of the most experienced teachers will not teach then those teachers that will should be rewarded for their willingness to do so.
Teachers start speaking out now. Stop allowing the union to be your voice. They are not out for your best interest.
“‘money for showing up’” payroll.
VS.
“the money for nothing sect that the Kahn belongs to.”
the teachers union?oh yeah, that’s it blame them.
we got tons of money laying around to do good stuff… especially for the kids.
let’s blow some more smoke up our collective assess.
bush cut taxes.bush is wasting huge amounts of taxpayer money in freakin iraq.
somehowthat don’t seem like it balances out.
it’s fun to talk about pie in the sky ideas to impress all of us.
this will never see the light of day. neo-cons hate public schools. they don’t like kids. they don’t give a shit about you.
Some type of extra pay needs to be given to teachers to keep experienced staff in low income schools. Around here, as soon as a teacher gets any senority, they transfer to a better school. And who can blame them if the pay is the same and they don’t have to put up with unruly students whos parents don’t usually give a crap and never come to school.
Kev – You are right on target.
It seems to me extra pay for working in difficult schools or situations is different than awarding “merit” pay.
I suspect “merit” pay brings up a myriad of associated problems: who makes the decision, how do the non-recipients accept the fact they didn’t receive pay differential, how much, does the increase continue the next year, does it solve any problems, etc.
A number of ways exist to supplement pay of teachers … for working in extra curricular activities, attendance at seminars, assistance in working on advanced degrees, etc.
Wichita Public Schools pays a $1500 annual bonus to teachers willing to work in “at-risk” schools.
Merit pay is a stupid idea whose intention is to divide and demoralize teachers.
If merit pay is such a good idea, let’s have merit pay for other professions–doctors for instance. I want my physician to be constantly evaluated by a bean-counting administrator and paid according to how well he kisses ass.
And I want him to be ranked against all the other doctors so when he turns out to not be the best one, I can drop him and demand to see the top ranked doc.
Ditto for taxi cab drivers. I want their performance review painted on the outside of their cab so I can see if I want them to drive me anywhere.
Or how about Presidents. A review board should evaluate our President every four months. If they find that he or she does not meet standards, the President would be fired.
I’ve got an idea. How about if we get people who don’t already hate public education and want to destroy it to try to improve it?
Merit pay is to public education as privatization is to social security, an attempt to turn it into a free-market system and hence destroy it.
There is money paid to people who DO NOT teach but are classified as “teachers,” to hide that fact and keep them separated from “administrative.” Nail down Winston Brooks on this and learn about the HUNDREDS of paid “teachers” who don’t have any teaching responsibilities. It won’t be easy to get him to admit; it is well hidden.
There is money it just isn’t spent wisely.
If these hundreds of people paid as teachers were really teaching and classroom size was reduced because those paid as teachers are really in the classroom with students every day we would see improvements. Improvements not just in test scores but in what each of our students learn.
The bigger 259 gets the more this number of teacher support positions grows. Give these teacher support personnel some students and see what help could really mean. Who is going to make the biggest difference — TEACHERS. And we handicap our teachers in so many ways! We give them hoops to jump through to satisfy the local district, the state and the federal governments. We give them too many students and poor working conditions.
At the middle and high school levels if a teacher has 20 students in a class that sounds great. But remember they teach at least SIX classes daily — they have at least 120 students every day. ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY students to teach, to grade, to evaluate. With that many students daily isn’t it likely to take longer to know Johnny needs help here, Susie needs help there…?
If you really wanto to evaluate teachers, at least at the high school level, it can be done in 2 weeks, in any school.
How, you ask?
Forget test scores; all they really tell us is how well students take tests.
Ask the students. Seriously. Find out which teacher they take if they actually want to accomplish something, learn something, and which they take if they want to cruise through and do nothing.
They know. And they’ll tell you; they’re brutally honest.
And it must be really walk the halls and ASK, not hand out yet another performance review survey which will be routinely ignored.
Should merit rest entirely on those criteria? No, of course not. The other usual standards also apply, including in a world which thinks the important things can be quantified and manipulated, unfortunately, those damn test scores.
But it can be done.
BTW Capn: whether you realize it or not, most of the world DOES in effect operate on “merit pay.” The market can be quite brutal in that regard, too.
This is a great way for the Democrats to buy the next election.
Not even using their own money. The Democrats just give the bill to the taxpayers.
Democrats claim to be more fiscally responsible then Republicans. Prove it.
Max, Anyone and everyone (no matter what party affiliation) is more fiscally responsible than the current administration.
When NCLB is either scrapped or truly becomes helpful by being overhauled (to the extreme!) we will make progress. And much more than simply funding (which has never happened) the act is required to make improvments. NCLB is a tool moving all students towards mediocrity. That’s not what any of us want for our youth, the people who are our tomorrow. The best part of No Child Left Behind is the name of the legislation which sounds admirable and does opposite of what it’s called.
This link addresses the rush to mediocrity of NCLB:
http://tinyurl.com/3dekjp
“Democrats claim to be more fiscally responsible then Republicans. Prove it.”
Uh, max, one only has to look at what the national debt was when Clinton left office, and what it is today. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out who is fiscally responsible and who is not.
Take a look at how Bush didn’t use his veto authority once on any fiscal bills, but now that the democrats are controlling congress, guess who is threatening to use it now?
Get real: it’s the repubes who don’t know what a purse string is.
Take a look at the value of the U.S. dollar against other currencies. This administration has been a huge financial disaster, and to imply otherwise is stupidity in its most pure form.
Uh Stumper, the Democrats keep pushing more and more pork thru Congress including this multi-billion dollar teacher bribe.
You saying the Dems are lily white and haven’t voted for any pork in the last 7 years?
BS.
Dems keep claiming how fiscally responsible they are, then turn around and vote for crap like this teacher bribe.
George Miller is a democrat’s Democrat. He sponsored the bill, now law, to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25. He went after Jack Abramoff, and played leading key role in sending Tom “The Hammer” DeLay back to Sugarland Texas with his tail between his legs.
Miller is as strong a defender for white, black and brown workers’ rghts as you can find in Congress. He represents a blue-collar-predominant district. He attended a junior college, and a state university that was originally a normal school for teacher training.
When George Miller proposes giving “combat pay” (my term not his) to teachers who work in inner city schools, people need to wake up to changing reality. This isn’t some kind of neo-con, right-winger’s, destroy-public-education proposal. Were NEA and AFT to oppose this, they would be shooting themselves in their own feet. I personally think they will smartly go along with it.
Currently, the lock-step seniority-increment pay system and seniority-based school-choice system (school choice for teachers, albeit not students), forcibly puts young, inexperienced teachers into the worst schools, while senior teachers get to go to the nice schools. Call it what you want, an initiation ritual, paying your dues, hazing the young teachers. It’s corrupt and backwards.
Miller’s proposed $12,000 annual bonus to teachers who teach in inner-city, federal-lunch-subsidy-majority schools will give senior teachers a pay-based incentive to work with the kids who are hardest to teach.
Fundamentally, Miller’s proposal places a high value on educating socioeconomically disadvantaged kids, and those who teach them, which is opposite to our traditional system. It’s not a perfect proposal, but it is a sound experiment: pay teachers more for harder jobs and measure who takes these higher-paying jobs and what the children’s performance results are.
Max, try running your home finance the way republicans have run this country.
Borrow and spend republicans. Max, there’s a word for people who borrow with no intention of paying back.
I agree with you XXX. I’m no Republican or Democrat.
Blaming Bush and the Republicans for past spending practices does not forgive the Democrats for spending like drunken sailors today and going forward.
Stop the spending spree now!
GMC writes,
“Ask the students. Seriously. Find out which teacher they take if they actually want to accomplish something, learn something, and which they take if they want to cruise through and do nothing.”
WRONG. Students have a very good idea of the perception of learning. They have no idea if what they’re learning is correct or valuable. It’s like asking passengers of a jet plane if it were maintained correctly.
“BTW Capn: whether you realize it or not, most of the world DOES in effect operate on “merit pay.” The market can be quite brutal in that regard, too.”
Absolute BULLSH*T but the reich-wing loves to believe this. Your own job is a perfect example of pay having almost nothing to do with performance. Ditto for the pay of the CEO’s of every major corp. in the US. Ditto for Worst. President. Ever.
Your job for instance has no relation between pay and performa
Oops, postus interuptus . . .
Your job for instance has no relation between pay and performa
Posted by: CapnAmerica | September 24, 2007 at 11:38 AM
Warning Will Robinson!
Call the management book writers everywhere!
According to the Capn you’ve gotten it all wrong!
Shouldn’t there be a tangible reward for superior performance teaching our kids?
Or would that cause teachers to look for ways to excel, thus causing uncomfortable changes in our educational system. Or the lower performers might suffer a loss of self-esteem.
Can’t have that.
Miller’s proposal makes sense to me. A good experiment to see if there will be teachers who will accept the “combat pay” (my words, too, MPS) for the job, rather than fleeing.
While I believe there should be a “merit pay” component to teacher compensation regardless, there is a real issue with retention of experienced teachers in these particular school environments. Just like the Army paying a higher enlistment bonus to those willing to go into combat immediately upon completion of their training, why should not teachers who will volunteer for duty in low-income schools also receive bonuses?
As to subjectivity in evaluations as a reason to object to merit pay, tell that to anyone in the private sector who receives employee evaluations. There are subjective criteria employed there, too; and, much as an employee who feels wronged by a supervisor, the teacher(s) who also feel that way may seek to change employers.
Capn’s comments on doctors is important. There is merit pay in medical care. Surgeons make more than internists.
We have a backwards payment system in Medicare in which rural-area doctors are paid less than ubran-suburban doctors, and the same is true for hospitals. The result? Rural communities can’t recruit well-qualified doctors (who speak intelligible English), and rural hospitals are closing, denying rural citizens high-quality medical care, and often local hospital care outright. This represents a devaluation of farmers and those who live in farm-economy-based towns.
“There is merit pay in medical care. Surgeons make more than internists.”
False analogy.
Researchers at big colleges make more than high school teachers. What were talking about are teachers who have the same job responsibilities.
Doctors and most professionals make much much more money in urban vs rual areas. Most people dont want to drive 1,2 hours too buy groceries, soap or to see a movie
‘most of the world DOES in effect operate on “merit pay.”‘
It just dawned on me WHY right-wingers love to believe that so much, MUST believe it, in fact.
It justifies the riches of the rich. It allows them to believe that the CEO of Wal-Mart DESERVES to make more in one week than a floor worker (sorry, I meant “associate” hahaha) makes in a LIFETIME.
If you want to improve education, sustantially raise the base pay of all teachers and attract a better class of students into university education departments! We need to get past the “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; those who can’t teach, administer.” mentality.
[cue lightning strike]
agree with MPS
You know the real scandal in education? Support personnel . . . all those parasites drawing full-time pay for half-time work as “distance ed coordinators.”
It justifies the riches of the rich. It allows them to believe that the CEO of Wal-Mart DESERVES to make more in one week than a floor worker (sorry, I meant “associate” hahaha) makes in a LIFETIME.
Posted by: CapnAmerica | September 24, 2007 at 12:45 PM
Comparing salaries of a CEO to a worker is not only off topic in regards to merit pay it is purely idiotic.
Of course, it is understandable as Capn wants a socialist country where we all wear the same uniform, draw the same pay, live in the same type of houses and have no opinion other than what the “State” allows us to have.
“Da?” comrade Capn?
The always-on and always-wrong troll runs true to form yet again.
Capn appears to be “always on” and he is supposed to be at work.
Does his employer pay him for screwing off at work?
I’m protected by a union, Kansas.
They can’t touch me and neither can you, Troll.
muhahaHAHAHA!
Besides I only pop on for a few minutes at a time, pea-brain.
Kansass,”Comparing salaries of a CEO to a worker is not only off topic in regards to merit pay it is purely idiotic.”
Are you saying that CEO’s don’t actually merit being paid 400X what they pay the people who do the actual work? I’d have to agree with you there!
I’m protected by a union, Kansas.
They can’t touch me and neither can you, Troll.
muhahaHAHAHA!
Posted by: CapnAmerica | September 24, 2007 at 03:00 PM
Oops! My bad then! I didn’t realize you were stuck in a mediocre paying job. :)
“Dead weight” at the college,univ. level can be easilydismissed. Who decides at other
levels? I wouldn’t trust one of my administratosrs in my 42 yearsof university teaching. Colleagues usually play the “Scratch my back” game.usually play the “Scratch my backgame.”
CapnAmerica, or “Brad” as they call you at the other blog, shouldn’t you disclose your conflict of interest in this matter before you bloviate too much?
The comment was made that “Most schools already know who their best teachers are.” HAH! They don’t know. Adminstrators know who will be their “yes” people and who won’t. Those that tend to go up against administrators are adminstrativley excessed to schools they do not want to work in and given so much grief that they eventually play the politics game or they go to another district, if they can get a decent reccomendation from USD 259. Those who play the yes game very well are moved downtown, where they inflict more damage upon the employees and students.
Sorry, I don’t respond to Graffitti Trolls.
But thanks for playing and better luck next time.
Kansas–
I don’t know what you call “mediocre.” I personally believe that holding down a full-time job is better than being a wuss who lives off of disability.
But, hey, that’s just me . . .
It’s true, I DO have a conflict of interest.
I admit it.
I am outstanding in my field.
I’m not complaining, I make just below the median salary for teachers. :)
And according to this, I make quite a bit more, heigh ho.
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary
And you know what’s funny?
While how much one makes is really important to you CONS — a kind of measure of your value to the world — it’s just not that important to me.
I’m not going to even waste much of my time o this thread.
Here are some facts.
Until the summer of 2005, USD 259 and UTW (that nasty teachers’ union) worked under a contracutal memorandum of understanding to research and work towards the implementation of an alternative compensation program for Wichita.
Much work was done toward this program until it came to a screeching halt due to a poor-faith bargaining decision by the District. This decision was referred to way up thread, the “$1500 Bonus” issue. The BOE made this Board policy by vote after the teachers refused the proposal in open negotiation session. The arbitrary nature of this “bonus” was not well thought out. This “bonus” goes to teachers at buildings that have more the 64% of their students getting Free and Reduced lunches. That was problem number 1. A very narrow criteria was used to award this “bonus”. Some large schools with staffing issues did not qualify. Administrators were also awarded these “bonuses”. The public is probably not aware of this or the fact that if the administrator was moved to a non-qualifying building, they RETAINED the bonus. Teachers who moved did not.
A misconception is that this “bonus” was put in place to attract the better teachers to the lower socio-economically area schools. The district can produce NO numbers to support their ascertion that the bonus has done so. In fact, pretty much the opposite occurs. Teachers at those buildings have about the same retention rate as teachers at non “bonus” schools. The money hasn’t caused any movement.
This would be the opening salvo of monumental screw ups were “merit pay” be brought in. The administration screwed this up ALL ON THEIR OWN, without the union.
Besides, where is that big pot of money going to come from to fund merit pay? Is Brenda Landwehr and her merry band of reichwingers going to willingly cough up MORE money than they are forced to? Is Washington actually going to fully fund NCLB (and IDEA?) like they promised when the Dems signed aboard?
This thread is a WASTE OF TIME, this isn’t going to happen.
Good Night All………….
XXX,”Max, there’s a word for people who borrow with no intention of paying back.”
They’re called “Relatives.”
Did you all know that in some of the leading education departments of major universities, students are counselled to avoid teaching in Kansas, due to low salaries and a tendency for religious nuts to interfere in classroom instruction? I’ve talked to several outstanding teachers who were told about Kansas and therefore took jobs in other states for considerably more money and less RR propaganda.
Of course, it is understandable as Capn wants a socialist country where we all wear the same uniform, draw the same pay, live in the same type of houses and have no opinion other than what the “State” allows us to have.
Posted by: Kansas | September 24, 2007 at 01:17 PM
========================
For a supposed learned individual, this is NOT the picture of Socialism… FAR from it….
WHO is it that is always frothing at the mouth for mandatory school uniforms??? Not the LEFT… but rather the Right…. Uniformity makes it easier to take away rights, if you look in a mirror, and perceive no individuality, but only sameness..