Houston to Link Teachers' Pay, Test Scores

[Nbadan]

Houston to Link Teachers' Pay, Test Scores
Wednesday January 11, 2006 10:17 PM
By JUAN A. LOZANO
Associated Press Writer


HOUSTON (AP) - Houston is about to become the biggest school district in the nation to tie teachers' pay to their students' test scores.

School Superintendent Abe Saavedra wants to offer teachers as much as $3,000 more per school year if their students improve on state and national tests. The program could eventually grow to as much as $10,000 in merit pay.

The school board is set to vote on the plan Thursday. Five of the nine board members have said they support it.

``School systems traditionally have been paying the best teacher the same amount as we pay the worst teacher, based on the number of years they have been teaching,'' Saavedra said. ``It doesn't make sense that we would pay the best what we're paying the worst. That's why it's going to change.''

GUARDIAN (http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5539285,00.html)


BONUS - IF teachers can get beyond the discipline problems that the admin. won't help them with(I am talking about serious problems, like kids who like to start fires, etc); IF they can get beyond an administration that is pressuring the teacher and using up their precious prep period for constant meetings to browbeat them to try and do better on the test scores so that that admin. can make those extra bucks; IF they can get beyond the mounds of paper work; IF they can get beyond large class sizes; IF they can get beyond the individual preps they have to do for EACH ADHD kid (which is at least half of each class); IF they can get beyond the language barriers; If they can get beyond mouthy parents who blame the teacher, but who aren't doing THEIR jobs--then maybe they can get down to teaching to the TEST---NOT what they WANT to teach, or should teach. Teachers WANT to do a good job with our young, or they wouldn't be in the profession.

[boutons_]

Pay the teacher's $80K/year and you'll get great teachers and great education.

Pay peanuts, and you get monkeys, (for teachers and for students).

[Jamtas#2]

The education system really needs to revamped. Being a governement run institution that is also heavily unionized in most states makes reform difficult. The easy thing to say is up the salaries, but that money for that either comes from raising taxes or cutting other government programs to fund it. I've heard arguements to privitize it into an industry where the competition would improve the quality. Such as using a system where the funding is tied to the student and will follow that student to the school of their choice, not just the assigned school by where you live. Both pros and cons to this type of system. Pro- with more students and more money, schools that are doing a good job of teaching would be higher in demand and end up with more money as a result. Cons- underperforming schools would get worse and there's no reason to think that classrooms won't just get overcrowded with this type of plan.
Discussion is needed and a new solution needs to be created. Until our country owns up to self-responsibility and parents do play more of an active role in discipline (understand that nowadays both parents are working more thatn in the past and that leaves children to raise themselves unfortunately) ,that aspect won't change and unfortunately the burden falls on the teachers. We just need to fix this system so that we are getting the best to train the students. And it is a hard career to do nowadays. I remember how many boneheads I had in my classes who existed only to disrupt class and learning to amuse others at the expense of preparing themselves for their futures.

[FromWayDowntown]

This is a wonderful idea -- now teachers will ONLY teach to standardized tests, leaving vast groups of school children unable to think critically or to synthesize material; it's all about believing that there can only be one answer to any academic question. Undoubtedly, this will assure improvement in education.

:rolleyes

[Melmart1]

I used to work at HEB with a teacher from Kennedy. She had student loans to pay that her teacher's salary wasn't covering, so she worked p/t as a cashier nights and weekends. This was five years ago, and they were already teaching only the test. She said they didn't read literature, they sat there and learned how to take the test, how to make an 'educated guess' if you didn't know the answer, etc. So I think what you have said will happen is already happening, FWD. At least, at some schools it is.

[gtownspur]

I seriously doubt that the thing holding back inner city education is having standardized test. Standardized test came about because the schools were the ones not performing and commting social promotions.

[exstatic]

The education system really needs to revamped. Being a governement run institution that is also heavily unionized in most states makes reform difficult. The easy thing to say is up the salaries, but that money for that either comes from raising taxes or cutting other government programs to fund it. I've heard arguements to privitize it into an industry where the competition would improve the quality. Such as using a system where the funding is tied to the student and will follow that student to the school of their choice, not just the assigned school by where you live. Both pros and cons to this type of system. Pro- with more students and more money, schools that are doing a good job of teaching would be higher in demand and end up with more money as a result. Cons- underperforming schools would get worse and there's no reason to think that classrooms won't just get overcrowded with this type of plan.
Discussion is needed and a new solution needs to be created. Until our country owns up to self-responsibility and parents do play more of an active role in discipline (understand that nowadays both parents are working more thatn in the past and that leaves children to raise themselves unfortunately) ,that aspect won't change and unfortunately the burden falls on the teachers. We just need to fix this system so that we are getting the best to train the students. And it is a hard career to do nowadays. I remember how many boneheads I had in my classes who existed only to disrupt class and learning to amuse others at the expense of preparing themselves for their futures.


Texas is most certainly not unionized and is one of the worst systems around so that's bullshit. People don't want to hear it but big pay would yield better teachers and better education. Yeah, it would mean higher taxes, but you get what you pay for, as Boutons most eloquently pointed out with his monkey examples. If you go cheap, you get crap.

[Nbadan]

The whole reason I'm against privatization is because it would lead to a even bigger gap in the quality of a education in Texas between the rich and the poor, something that Texas has been making inroads with Robin Hood in the last few years...

http://www.idra.org/alerts/barchart.gif

Let's say the wingbats got what they wanted and Texas became an all vocher state. Every student would receive about $6,000, or the average amount spent in Texas per pupil. Well, I think what we'd find is that those that paid just the 6,000 voucher amount to private schools wouldn't receive near the quality of education that they receive in public schools, also Texas would have to supplement the voucher amount for schools for special needs students, since $6,000 isn't nearly enough.

The rich, meanwhile, can afford to add another $100-$600/per month to their voucher amount, that adds an average amount of $3,600 per year. Add that to the $6,000 vocuher and that would give these students an average of $9,600.

Where do you think all the quality teachers are going to want to teach, a school that gets $6,000 or $9,600 per student?

[Jamtas#2]

Texas is most certainly not unionized and is one of the worst systems around so that's bullshit. People don't want to hear it but big pay would yield better teachers and better education. Yeah, it would mean higher taxes, but you get what you pay for, as Boutons most eloquently pointed out with his monkey examples. If you go cheap, you get crap.

Nowhere in my post did I say that Texas was unionized nor did I say that being in a union is what lead to it. I said that in most states it is unionized, but the point was that in every state it is government run which makes reform difficult. Pointing out that Texas is not unionized doesn't make my post "bullshit". I was merely discussing the need for education reform and listed a few pro and cons of one such type.

[Jamtas#2]

Texas does have the Texas State Teachers Association which is a member of the National Education Association, the nation's largest union. ( http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=905733 link to a story from last July on their fight to raise the average starting wage for teachers)
On a side note, the NEA (www.nea.org) is also trying to fight against Bush's No Child Left Behind act (http://www.nea.org/newsreleases/2006/nr060111.html) due to the fact that "more schools failed to achieve 'adequate yearly progress' (AYP) under NCLB in 2005-06 " due to funding cuts.