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I have been teaching for over 30 years. I have taught students from low income families and I have taught children of families of more substantial means. I can tell you that my heart is truly with the teachers at schools serving children of poverty. They need the best, most experienced teachers. Those of us with experience really DO make a difference in our student success rates: check the research! Yet the daily work is so much more difficult, that we tend to look toward moving into schools where the students are easier to manage, as we gain years of teaching experience. There's no getting around it: if you reward the teachers of high achieving classrooms, the best teachers will move FROM those more challenging classrooms, where test scores are held lower due to societal challenges beyond teacher control, into classrooms where more money can be earned.
It is true that there are documented cases where self-sacrificing teachers like Mr Holland and others, have had great success under very difficult circumstances, but those teachers also sacrificed their own families and personal lives in the process. You will not get high numbers of teachers willing to sacrifice it all, to earn a few hundred extra dollars of merit pay. More of the best teachers will simply move to where the monetary rewards are greater,and the daily tasks are more manageable.
In addition to this effect, you will see a competition to get the highest achieving students assigned to the classrooms of "certain favored" teachers. The lower achieving students will be assigned to the teachers with the least clout. Think about it. Don't you see that this will happen?
Then there's the issue about who will get assigned to work with the clusters of "TAG" students: will it be the teacher who is best equipped to work with their quirky styles? Or will it be the teacher who, again, has the most clout, who then will drill them so they can "boost the test scores", an outcome that is often not the best approach for these special learners?
This initiative is so full of great ideals, but when you try to figure out how to structure the reward system to get the desired effect, there isn't a structure that will really get the money where you are trying to get it. The current system is not really based SOLEY on experience: it's also got an educational level factored in. I think this is a good system. What we really need to get rid of the awful teachers that we all know are present in our system, is PRINCIPALS WHO WILL STEP UP AND DO THE EVALUATING AND SUPERVISING THAT THEY ARE ASSIGNED TO DO!!!!! If they did their job, those incompetent teachers would be removed. The union contracts do NOT prevent the removal of poor teachers. They do contain a level of protection to assure that angry parents are not able to singlehandedly get a teacher that they don't like removed. That structure is often used as a cloak to hide behind, when supervisors don't want to do their job. The fact is, there IS a process for the improvement of teacher quality, and the removal of teachers who refuse to comply with the expectations. Principals just have to follow that process. I have seen it at work. It's not impossible.
I am so glad you are airing a show on this topic. I wish I could listen, but I'll be teaching. I will definitely catch it on the podcast. Good luck! Thank you for inviting me to have my say tonight!

posted 4 years, 8 months ago
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