To Test or Not to Test
For a moment, just suppose:
You are a high school English teacher, and your class has just read a short story in the assigned textbook. The story is about a teenager who has a run-in with a parent, and after some difficulties, there is a comfortable resolution. You question the students about various aspects of the plot and characterization. A student offers that he knows someone who has been through a similar situation, and it didn’t work out as well. Another student suggests that maybe the story had too happy an ending, but four hands go up and a student says she thought the ending was very realistic. Another student called upon says he didn’t like the story at all, but he is countered by another who says it was at least not boring like yesterday’s lesson. More hands go up, but before you can call on them, the bell rings. As they leave the room, a student says to you, Hey, it was interesting today!
For a moment, you are pleased: it was a good lesson. The kids were really involved, and they had made a connection between literature and their lives - a good sign that might lead to reading more on their own. And then you remembered: it was one day closer to the test, and you had not mentioned how the author used symbols and similes, the kind of thing likely to show up on the test. The kids had a good lesson in literature, but how are they going to do on the test?
“The test.” The president likes testing. The legislators like testing. The media report on testing. After all, how else will anyone know whether you have taught the kids anything? And if the kids do not do well on the test, maybe it will mean that you aren’t the good teacher you just thought that you were.
And sure enough, when the day comes, the test has questions that require the students to understand symbolism, and there is a specific question about similes. You failed to make those points; maybe some of the kids picked it up from the discussion, but it was up to you to make sure. You are not a good teacher after all.
A bit silly, yes? But that is the problem teachers are up against when testing becomes the guideline, the goal, the answer, to the big question of how much education is taking place in any classroom. Knowing in general what is going to be on the test, it is up to you to teach to that test. The test makers aim at determining how many facts a student has mastered about a subject - not necessarily the subject as it is taught in your class or school, but just in general. The math questions, for example, may go beyond what is reasonable in every class or school; the questions about literature may probe for technicalities but overlook a basic like an adolescent’s emotional response. Nevertheless, and no matter how teaching to the test reduces a lesson to rote memorizing and leaves no time for critical thinking or reasoning, you must prepare your students for passing that test.
In the abstract, testing the students seems a fair way to determine whether they have been adequately taught. But students in a classroom are not abstractions. They are real: just about all are scared when test time comes around; some of them come from homes in poverty and are ill fed, tired, worried, and half sick; some of them come from homes where another language is spoken and the children are still learning English; some have special needs, are intellectually challenged and simply cannot keep up on academic matters. But all of them must be sitting there, taking the tests.
And the test results are taken very seriously by those in charge of the schools. They are to be used as measurements of teacher quality, of school quality, of school district quality - even of eligibility for money from government.
Moreover, there is the matter of how those tests are scored. They can actually make it impossible to measure real improvement. If the tests produce a median score - i.e. the number halfway between the best and the worst raw score - and the next year a school district does better by ten points, the median climbs higher, and schools which actually did improve by five points have dropped below the middle and are classified as below par, deficient. Seems crazy, but that’s how tests work.
Standardized tests simply cannot, by their very nature, fairly test the children of an entire city or state. We know from research (Public Policy Institute of California, for example) that socioeconomic factors play a huge role in test results, and everyone - from district administration through teachers and the kids - is unfairly, inappropriately labeled. To withhold government funds or to judge teacher quality by the current testing system is simply wrong.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
WHO ARE THE TEACHERS?
WHO ARE THE TEACHERS?
As the media usually present teachers, they fall into two groups. One is composed of incompetents endlessly leeching unearned pay from taxpayers. The other is made up of self-sacrificing, saintly souls devoted to the students whom they inspire to amazing accomplishment. Examples of the two types are constantly featured in the media, and the public can hardly be blamed for assuming that the stereotype is a fairly accurate picture.
The actuality is different, of course. For a better picture, begin with some revealing statistics. As of the school year 2005-06, there were 5,995,000 public school teachers, and every one of them had at least a bachelor’s degree. More than half, 56%, held master’s degrees, and there was even a scattering, .08%, with a doctorate. Women made up 79% of the profession and men only 21%, though in 1961, 31.3% were men; apparently many men fled to other fields. As custom would have it, teaching children continues to be pretty much the province of women. Given the general label of women’s work, teaching salaries not surprisingly rank low among the professions.
According to the 2005-06 survey, the average work day for teachers was 7.4 hours, but the average teacher spent 50 hours a week on professional duties. That figure might help to explain the disturbing fact that 50% of all new teachers quit within five years.
Numbers can’t tell the whole story. Working conditions for teachers bear little comparison to those of other professionals. Hours are set and assignments made for the teacher; a teacher on duty literally is locked into a schedule. A duty-free lunch is seldom as long as 45 minutes; elementary teachers supervise playgrounds and lunchrooms in addition to teaching classes. Submission to a routine signaled by ringing bells is only part of what a teacher accepts as infringement of professional status. More troubling is the fact that the teacher is told what, when, and how to teach. Creativity, intellectual strength, range and depth of knowledge are all at discount if not simply ruled out, and teachers are reduced to pushing “teacher proof” curricula. Such restrictions are usually based on the current demand that students score well on specific - district or state devised and mandated - tests. Basing the success of public education on such “proofs” of learning is an issue deserving its own blog, which will be coming.
Idealism is a common characteristic of the teacher, but it is challenged by the daily reality of the classroom. Public schools can’t pick and choose their students (as can private and charter schools); they take everyone who shows up. “Everyone” includes children unable or unwilling to meet classroom requirements; a thousand problems may create the underachieving or misbehaving child, but it is still the teacher’s job to lead that child into educational achievement, no matter what. At the same time the teacher must not neglect the children at the other end of the scale who are ready and willing to learn.
These goals collide with insufficient materials (individual teachers spend hundreds of dollars from their own pockets to provide them), uncomfortable and overcrowded classrooms, inadequate textbooks, and a lack of supportive services such as school nurses and librarians. Moreover, teachers often work under the authority of principals with little teaching experience but big egos, whose judgments can create problems and even kill a career.
In spite of these and many other roadblocks to job satisfaction, teachers persevere in their very stressful work, and those who choose to do it vary in their ability to do it well. As is true in any profession, some muddle along below expectations and others rise to levels of excellence. Every adult remembers that one really superior teacher, the one who caught the hearts and minds of many, who lives in recollection as a life-changing, life-nurturing force. Such individuals are as rare in teaching as they are in every profession, as they are in life. To expect all teachers to meet that standard is unrealistic and unfair.
Just as there are exceptions at the top, there will be exceptions at the bottom. Sadly, most adults can also recall a teacher unworthy of the profession. The media inflate the problem of bad teaching by telling the public that such horrors abound and cannot be fired. Simply not true - another blog will show how incompetents can be removed.
What needs to be remembered is that between the extremes works the vast majority, teachers who are competent, hard working, and successful in meeting all the requirements of their profession. They sign on for jobs that tax their patience and challenge their ideals. They, not the extremes, are the heart and soul, the essential driving force of public education.
As the media usually present teachers, they fall into two groups. One is composed of incompetents endlessly leeching unearned pay from taxpayers. The other is made up of self-sacrificing, saintly souls devoted to the students whom they inspire to amazing accomplishment. Examples of the two types are constantly featured in the media, and the public can hardly be blamed for assuming that the stereotype is a fairly accurate picture.
The actuality is different, of course. For a better picture, begin with some revealing statistics. As of the school year 2005-06, there were 5,995,000 public school teachers, and every one of them had at least a bachelor’s degree. More than half, 56%, held master’s degrees, and there was even a scattering, .08%, with a doctorate. Women made up 79% of the profession and men only 21%, though in 1961, 31.3% were men; apparently many men fled to other fields. As custom would have it, teaching children continues to be pretty much the province of women. Given the general label of women’s work, teaching salaries not surprisingly rank low among the professions.
According to the 2005-06 survey, the average work day for teachers was 7.4 hours, but the average teacher spent 50 hours a week on professional duties. That figure might help to explain the disturbing fact that 50% of all new teachers quit within five years.
Numbers can’t tell the whole story. Working conditions for teachers bear little comparison to those of other professionals. Hours are set and assignments made for the teacher; a teacher on duty literally is locked into a schedule. A duty-free lunch is seldom as long as 45 minutes; elementary teachers supervise playgrounds and lunchrooms in addition to teaching classes. Submission to a routine signaled by ringing bells is only part of what a teacher accepts as infringement of professional status. More troubling is the fact that the teacher is told what, when, and how to teach. Creativity, intellectual strength, range and depth of knowledge are all at discount if not simply ruled out, and teachers are reduced to pushing “teacher proof” curricula. Such restrictions are usually based on the current demand that students score well on specific - district or state devised and mandated - tests. Basing the success of public education on such “proofs” of learning is an issue deserving its own blog, which will be coming.
Idealism is a common characteristic of the teacher, but it is challenged by the daily reality of the classroom. Public schools can’t pick and choose their students (as can private and charter schools); they take everyone who shows up. “Everyone” includes children unable or unwilling to meet classroom requirements; a thousand problems may create the underachieving or misbehaving child, but it is still the teacher’s job to lead that child into educational achievement, no matter what. At the same time the teacher must not neglect the children at the other end of the scale who are ready and willing to learn.
These goals collide with insufficient materials (individual teachers spend hundreds of dollars from their own pockets to provide them), uncomfortable and overcrowded classrooms, inadequate textbooks, and a lack of supportive services such as school nurses and librarians. Moreover, teachers often work under the authority of principals with little teaching experience but big egos, whose judgments can create problems and even kill a career.
In spite of these and many other roadblocks to job satisfaction, teachers persevere in their very stressful work, and those who choose to do it vary in their ability to do it well. As is true in any profession, some muddle along below expectations and others rise to levels of excellence. Every adult remembers that one really superior teacher, the one who caught the hearts and minds of many, who lives in recollection as a life-changing, life-nurturing force. Such individuals are as rare in teaching as they are in every profession, as they are in life. To expect all teachers to meet that standard is unrealistic and unfair.
Just as there are exceptions at the top, there will be exceptions at the bottom. Sadly, most adults can also recall a teacher unworthy of the profession. The media inflate the problem of bad teaching by telling the public that such horrors abound and cannot be fired. Simply not true - another blog will show how incompetents can be removed.
What needs to be remembered is that between the extremes works the vast majority, teachers who are competent, hard working, and successful in meeting all the requirements of their profession. They sign on for jobs that tax their patience and challenge their ideals. They, not the extremes, are the heart and soul, the essential driving force of public education.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Failure Is a Myth
Failure Is a Myth
One topic which universally interests Americans is public schools. Mention anything about teachers or school kids, and the conversation is off and running. Much of it is fueled by the media, which usually tell us the rightwing propaganda that things are not going well. Certainly there are problems, but it is worth noting that in Los Angeles, for example, polled opinion about public schools varied according to whether the respondents did or did not have children in the schools. Not surprisingly, those who knew the schools first hand liked them better than those who knew them only by hearsay. We think a few statistics might help everyone see the schools as they are, not as they are said to be.
To begin, it must be kept in mind that the United States is the only country to require school attendance for every child until age 18 or graduation. We alone among nations attempt to put every child through an academic curriculum for 12 years. Every child, no matter what his or her academic capability, is entitled to and must receive the full educational program. A grand goal indeed. The rest of the world keeps their best students on an academic track as they test everyone else into trade school type curriculum.
How many kids are there in our schools? The astonishing total in 2008: 49.8 million, which is a 26% increase since 1985, and the number is projected to increase 9% by 2017. Of these, 3,328,000 are projected to graduate from high school in 2008-09, among the highest number in the industrialized world. That much public education comes at a price: the projected figure for the school year 2008-09 is $631 billion, which amounts to 7.4% of the Gross Domestic Product. Note, however, that despite the increase in enrollment, spending went up only one-half percent in ten years.
The story doesn’t end with high school graduation. From 1998-2008, 29% of the U.S. population had graduated from college with a Bachelor’s Degree. Few nations in the world can equal that number of college graduates.
It’s not all good new, of course. Some kids do dropout - more in some areas than in others, but even so, the total dropout rate fell in the years 1987-2007 from 12.6% to 8.7%. Dropout rates closely reflect the economic status of the students, the poorer the student, the higher the dropout rate.
Overall, these figures indicate that public education is doing a good job for a huge number of kids. Who’s doing the teaching for all these students? A lot of teachers - 3.2 million of them. And how well are they faring? In 2006-07 the average teacher salary was $50,816, not a bad figure. However, that number represents an increase since 1996-97 of only 3%, and inflation has grown more than 3% in 10 years. Also, behind that salary lie ten to fifteen years of experience and some 80 college units beyond the BA degree. Teachers still do not earn fully professional salaries.
Obviously, statistics indicate that American public education is not, as the common myth asserts, falling into failure. The myth of failure of public education is “proven” by unsatisfactory test scores or inner-city drop out rates, and it is necessary to remember that inner-city children, who live under dreadful conditions, not surprisingly score lower than more privileged children and pull down a school district average. It is not public education which has failed; it is poverty which has succeeded.
Our public education system, with its ideal of educating all our children, is under threat in a society which does not prioritize funding for education in the many communities where schools are the only place in which children can hope and strive for a productive adulthood. In too many pockets of poverty throughout the nation teachers struggle to meet the needs of their overcrowded classrooms, to open the door to a better future for their students. Their very presence, their continuing efforts, are part of the success of public education.
(Statistics from Digest of Educational Statistics - National Center for Educational Statistics.)
One topic which universally interests Americans is public schools. Mention anything about teachers or school kids, and the conversation is off and running. Much of it is fueled by the media, which usually tell us the rightwing propaganda that things are not going well. Certainly there are problems, but it is worth noting that in Los Angeles, for example, polled opinion about public schools varied according to whether the respondents did or did not have children in the schools. Not surprisingly, those who knew the schools first hand liked them better than those who knew them only by hearsay. We think a few statistics might help everyone see the schools as they are, not as they are said to be.
To begin, it must be kept in mind that the United States is the only country to require school attendance for every child until age 18 or graduation. We alone among nations attempt to put every child through an academic curriculum for 12 years. Every child, no matter what his or her academic capability, is entitled to and must receive the full educational program. A grand goal indeed. The rest of the world keeps their best students on an academic track as they test everyone else into trade school type curriculum.
How many kids are there in our schools? The astonishing total in 2008: 49.8 million, which is a 26% increase since 1985, and the number is projected to increase 9% by 2017. Of these, 3,328,000 are projected to graduate from high school in 2008-09, among the highest number in the industrialized world. That much public education comes at a price: the projected figure for the school year 2008-09 is $631 billion, which amounts to 7.4% of the Gross Domestic Product. Note, however, that despite the increase in enrollment, spending went up only one-half percent in ten years.
The story doesn’t end with high school graduation. From 1998-2008, 29% of the U.S. population had graduated from college with a Bachelor’s Degree. Few nations in the world can equal that number of college graduates.
It’s not all good new, of course. Some kids do dropout - more in some areas than in others, but even so, the total dropout rate fell in the years 1987-2007 from 12.6% to 8.7%. Dropout rates closely reflect the economic status of the students, the poorer the student, the higher the dropout rate.
Overall, these figures indicate that public education is doing a good job for a huge number of kids. Who’s doing the teaching for all these students? A lot of teachers - 3.2 million of them. And how well are they faring? In 2006-07 the average teacher salary was $50,816, not a bad figure. However, that number represents an increase since 1996-97 of only 3%, and inflation has grown more than 3% in 10 years. Also, behind that salary lie ten to fifteen years of experience and some 80 college units beyond the BA degree. Teachers still do not earn fully professional salaries.
Obviously, statistics indicate that American public education is not, as the common myth asserts, falling into failure. The myth of failure of public education is “proven” by unsatisfactory test scores or inner-city drop out rates, and it is necessary to remember that inner-city children, who live under dreadful conditions, not surprisingly score lower than more privileged children and pull down a school district average. It is not public education which has failed; it is poverty which has succeeded.
Our public education system, with its ideal of educating all our children, is under threat in a society which does not prioritize funding for education in the many communities where schools are the only place in which children can hope and strive for a productive adulthood. In too many pockets of poverty throughout the nation teachers struggle to meet the needs of their overcrowded classrooms, to open the door to a better future for their students. Their very presence, their continuing efforts, are part of the success of public education.
(Statistics from Digest of Educational Statistics - National Center for Educational Statistics.)
Saturday, June 20, 2009
WHY TEACHER UNIONS?
Workers join unions. Teachers are professionals and don’t belong in unions. That is pretty much a common belief, especially in the media. However, a close look at teaching shows that it is, actually, ahybrid - part profession, part labor. In common with doctors and lawyers, for example, teachers must qualify through extensive and specific college courses and then pass a stringent exam. But in common, say, with retail clerks and TV technicians, teachers once hired are told where, how, when and in detail what they are to teach. Teachers dissatisfied with or fired from a specific school district must go elsewhere to find a job, to a new city or even a state, unlike the clerk, who can leave Wal Mart for Sears. Include low wages, submission to a well-paid and distant bureaucracy, and substandard working conditions, and it is obvious that though prepared and eager to be professionals, teachers are treated like workers. And workers join unions.
Why then do we hear so much negative chatter about teacher unions? Attacks on public education from right wing politicians focus on teacher unions, implying that if only the “too powerful” unions were out of the picture, education would have a chance to improve. How powerful are teacher unions? In fact, unions can only negotiate, not dictate. Even where a contract has been won, the union (and the teachers) still have no say over curriculum, textbook selection, district organization, salaries of administration, and much more. The power of the unions is, despite all the hullabaloo about them, very limited.
Teacher unions do use whatever power they have by engaging public interest and public power through political activity. Political action committees (PACs) implement a basic principle of democracy, the right of individually powerless people to collect money as a group in order to level the playing field with such big players as corporate interests and major political factions. PACs are attacked again and again for trying to “buy“ politicians and influence legislation; if teachers support candidates and issues that affect their profession, they are doing no more than every other organized sector in a democracy. As it is, though, unions spend on average only about 20% of what business spends on causes they favor.
Using whatever power they have, teacher unions play a triple role: they protect individual teachers from administrative injustice, they preserve the rights and standards of the teaching profession, and they promote the cause of education for all children. A teacher union does for teachers what any union does for its members: provides support and strength which come only with many acting as one - unity. So, precisely what is on the agendas of teacher unions? What do they fight for? Here are their chief goals.
Quality education for all, across the community: the same levels of funding for supplies, for experienced teachers, for proper buildings and equipment, regardless of economic levels.
Class size reduction as a key element of successful education.
Minimal proportion of education budgets for bureaucratic costs, which can absorb as much as 30% of a district budget; education funds must go to the classroom, where education happens.
Improvement of teacher pay, aiming for professional levels. It is commonly acknowledged that the hard work and dedication of teachers are seldom rewarded properly; only the power of many united into one bargaining unit can achieve progress.
Protection of due rights processes for teachers, whose professional activity and status should never be subject to the whims of individual administrators. Mistakenly lumped under the word tenure, “due process rights” simply means a teacher won’t be fired without due cause.
Maintenance of supportive services provided by librarians, school nurses, and counselors; their specialized professional work is not expendable.
Advancement of education goals and methods as they are recognized through professional experience: educational reform. It must originate with teachers, not be imposed by theoreticians far removed from real classrooms.
Proper funding in local and state budgets for education. Legislators too often fail to prioritize the cost of education: California, for example, pays $50,000 a year to keep someone in prison but balks at $8,000 a year to educate a child.
Inclusion of teachers in planning school district budgets and curriculum. Classroom experience knows the needs: the administrative bureaucracy is too far removed from day-to-day education activities to have total power over them.
With such goals, teacher unions are a positive force in a community, often the only group fighting to keep alive the American dream of quality education for all the nation’s kids. They need all the power they can muster to meet that goal.
Why then do we hear so much negative chatter about teacher unions? Attacks on public education from right wing politicians focus on teacher unions, implying that if only the “too powerful” unions were out of the picture, education would have a chance to improve. How powerful are teacher unions? In fact, unions can only negotiate, not dictate. Even where a contract has been won, the union (and the teachers) still have no say over curriculum, textbook selection, district organization, salaries of administration, and much more. The power of the unions is, despite all the hullabaloo about them, very limited.
Teacher unions do use whatever power they have by engaging public interest and public power through political activity. Political action committees (PACs) implement a basic principle of democracy, the right of individually powerless people to collect money as a group in order to level the playing field with such big players as corporate interests and major political factions. PACs are attacked again and again for trying to “buy“ politicians and influence legislation; if teachers support candidates and issues that affect their profession, they are doing no more than every other organized sector in a democracy. As it is, though, unions spend on average only about 20% of what business spends on causes they favor.
Using whatever power they have, teacher unions play a triple role: they protect individual teachers from administrative injustice, they preserve the rights and standards of the teaching profession, and they promote the cause of education for all children. A teacher union does for teachers what any union does for its members: provides support and strength which come only with many acting as one - unity. So, precisely what is on the agendas of teacher unions? What do they fight for? Here are their chief goals.
Quality education for all, across the community: the same levels of funding for supplies, for experienced teachers, for proper buildings and equipment, regardless of economic levels.
Class size reduction as a key element of successful education.
Minimal proportion of education budgets for bureaucratic costs, which can absorb as much as 30% of a district budget; education funds must go to the classroom, where education happens.
Improvement of teacher pay, aiming for professional levels. It is commonly acknowledged that the hard work and dedication of teachers are seldom rewarded properly; only the power of many united into one bargaining unit can achieve progress.
Protection of due rights processes for teachers, whose professional activity and status should never be subject to the whims of individual administrators. Mistakenly lumped under the word tenure, “due process rights” simply means a teacher won’t be fired without due cause.
Maintenance of supportive services provided by librarians, school nurses, and counselors; their specialized professional work is not expendable.
Advancement of education goals and methods as they are recognized through professional experience: educational reform. It must originate with teachers, not be imposed by theoreticians far removed from real classrooms.
Proper funding in local and state budgets for education. Legislators too often fail to prioritize the cost of education: California, for example, pays $50,000 a year to keep someone in prison but balks at $8,000 a year to educate a child.
Inclusion of teachers in planning school district budgets and curriculum. Classroom experience knows the needs: the administrative bureaucracy is too far removed from day-to-day education activities to have total power over them.
With such goals, teacher unions are a positive force in a community, often the only group fighting to keep alive the American dream of quality education for all the nation’s kids. They need all the power they can muster to meet that goal.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
MERIT PAY,NO WAY
MERIT PAY, NO WAY (or MERIT PAY, DEMERIT PAY)
Just about all adults remember an inspiring teacher who truly transformed their lives. Rewarding such a teacher - merit pay - seems fair and logical. Merit pay has a great ring to it. The idea has been around education and political circles for years, and its advocates see it as the solution to almost every problem in public education. They assume that it is possible to evaluate teacher performance objectively and fairly. But teaching is not done by robots addressing robots, and descriptions of those memorable teachers would display widely - even wildly - different characteristics. How, then, can the awardees of merit pay be chosen?
Currently, assessment of education success tends to rely upon test scores - the teacher whose students score high is successful; the teacher whose students rate lower on tests is inadequate or mediocre. Unfortunately, test scores won’t tell you how well a teacher taught, because there is no way that classrooms can be equal. Even when a school tries to group students according to academic ability, there are other factors which influence test scores: attendance, for example, or the number of English learners. And how to compare English and math classes, or chemistry and physical education? If a teacher is assigned low performance students, how compare his/her teaching skills with those of the teacher assigned to honors classes? And finally - and most important- the validity of standardized tests themselves is open to serious question.
If not test scores, then what? The usual method suggested is for the principal to evaluate the teacher. S/he is the school leader, the one who presumably knows the abilities of the faculty. But can even the best-intentioned principal visit every teacher often enough to know what happens regularly in a classroom? Moreover, if the principal actually does have that knowledge, how can s/he avoid subjective assessment? Unfortunately, every teacher has at some time been in a school where administrative evaluation was unfair, where a principal punished teachers for union activity, for voicing opinions unacceptable to the principal, for speaking up in meetings, for personal qualities that ran contrary to the principal’s values. Principals have power to change assignments; for example, we know a school where a 20 year kindergarten teacher was abruptly transferred to a sixth grade class. Sometimes, too, a principal simply overlooks the work of a teacher who does not attract administrative attention. Even where the principal tries to be fair, personal judgment would be open to question on every level. And under a principal with a little Caesar complex, merit pay would become patronage and favoritism, with teachers reduced to competition for favorable attention. The merit in merit pay would vanish; in its place would be a loss of morale and education standards.
Merit pay is clearly a practical impossibility, even if it were a desirable concept. Every teacher knows that teaching is not a science; no matter how carefully the teacher follows the rules laid down by education departments in college, adjustments must be made in the real classroom. If anything, teaching is an art more than a science, and teaching is one of the hardest of all jobs. All teachers have five years or more of college under their belts, but they seldom are allowed professional discretion in their classrooms, and it is a truism that everywhere they are seldom paid what society admits their work is worth. We have one of the best educated, most dedicated workforce in America, and it would be an insult to this national treasure to introduce a flawed system whereby a “few” good teachers are rewarded with extra money while the rest of this talented group of overworked women and men would suffer the indignity of being labeled not good enough, not deserving of merit pay.
Maybe in some ideal world merit pay would work; in ours it has no merit
Just about all adults remember an inspiring teacher who truly transformed their lives. Rewarding such a teacher - merit pay - seems fair and logical. Merit pay has a great ring to it. The idea has been around education and political circles for years, and its advocates see it as the solution to almost every problem in public education. They assume that it is possible to evaluate teacher performance objectively and fairly. But teaching is not done by robots addressing robots, and descriptions of those memorable teachers would display widely - even wildly - different characteristics. How, then, can the awardees of merit pay be chosen?
Currently, assessment of education success tends to rely upon test scores - the teacher whose students score high is successful; the teacher whose students rate lower on tests is inadequate or mediocre. Unfortunately, test scores won’t tell you how well a teacher taught, because there is no way that classrooms can be equal. Even when a school tries to group students according to academic ability, there are other factors which influence test scores: attendance, for example, or the number of English learners. And how to compare English and math classes, or chemistry and physical education? If a teacher is assigned low performance students, how compare his/her teaching skills with those of the teacher assigned to honors classes? And finally - and most important- the validity of standardized tests themselves is open to serious question.
If not test scores, then what? The usual method suggested is for the principal to evaluate the teacher. S/he is the school leader, the one who presumably knows the abilities of the faculty. But can even the best-intentioned principal visit every teacher often enough to know what happens regularly in a classroom? Moreover, if the principal actually does have that knowledge, how can s/he avoid subjective assessment? Unfortunately, every teacher has at some time been in a school where administrative evaluation was unfair, where a principal punished teachers for union activity, for voicing opinions unacceptable to the principal, for speaking up in meetings, for personal qualities that ran contrary to the principal’s values. Principals have power to change assignments; for example, we know a school where a 20 year kindergarten teacher was abruptly transferred to a sixth grade class. Sometimes, too, a principal simply overlooks the work of a teacher who does not attract administrative attention. Even where the principal tries to be fair, personal judgment would be open to question on every level. And under a principal with a little Caesar complex, merit pay would become patronage and favoritism, with teachers reduced to competition for favorable attention. The merit in merit pay would vanish; in its place would be a loss of morale and education standards.
Merit pay is clearly a practical impossibility, even if it were a desirable concept. Every teacher knows that teaching is not a science; no matter how carefully the teacher follows the rules laid down by education departments in college, adjustments must be made in the real classroom. If anything, teaching is an art more than a science, and teaching is one of the hardest of all jobs. All teachers have five years or more of college under their belts, but they seldom are allowed professional discretion in their classrooms, and it is a truism that everywhere they are seldom paid what society admits their work is worth. We have one of the best educated, most dedicated workforce in America, and it would be an insult to this national treasure to introduce a flawed system whereby a “few” good teachers are rewarded with extra money while the rest of this talented group of overworked women and men would suffer the indignity of being labeled not good enough, not deserving of merit pay.
Maybe in some ideal world merit pay would work; in ours it has no merit
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Public Education, the Inside Story
Welcome to our blog on public education. We are two people with over 50 years of classroom teaching experience. Wayne Johnson, in addition to 27 years of classroom teaching in Los Angeles Unified District, was president of the 32,000 member teacher bargaining unit in Los Angeles for six years. He was also president of the 330,000 member California Teachers Association for four years. Harriet Perl was a classroom teacher for 35 years and worked for Los Angeles Unified as a counselor to victims of violence for nine years.
We know public education from the inside, and we want to share our information with you. We plan to show you the reality behind some of the important issues in public education today, such as:
How to fire bad teachers
Merit pay as a reward for good teachers
Private and charter schools vs. ordinary public schools
Principal power
The role of teacher unions
The college prep track for all kids
Why so many kids drop out
Where the education dollars go
Who teaches the teachers?
Teacher tenure
Parents' role in their children's schools
What it's like to teach today
Are vouchers the solution?
And much more!
We know public education from the inside, and we want to share our information with you. We plan to show you the reality behind some of the important issues in public education today, such as:
How to fire bad teachers
Merit pay as a reward for good teachers
Private and charter schools vs. ordinary public schools
Principal power
The role of teacher unions
The college prep track for all kids
Why so many kids drop out
Where the education dollars go
Who teaches the teachers?
Teacher tenure
Parents' role in their children's schools
What it's like to teach today
Are vouchers the solution?
And much more!
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