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At least Florida teachers know that they are getting paid next year.
Just Be Glad Your Not In Florida, Que Up Hurricane Season!
MSNBCHIALEAH, Fla. - A new pay-for-performance program for Florida's teachers will tie raises and bonuses directly to pupils' standardized-test scores beginning next year, marking the first time a state has so closely linked the wages of individual school personnel to their students' exam results.
The effort, now being adopted by local districts, is viewed as a landmark in the movement to restructure American schools by having them face the same kind of compe ive pressures placed on private enterprise, and advocates say it could serve as a national model to replace traditional teacher pay plans that award raises based largely on academic degrees and years of experience.
Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has characterized the new policy, which bases a teacher's pay on improvements in test scores, as a matter of common sense, asking, "What's wrong about paying good teachers more for doing a better job?"
(snip)
The tests are already used to determine whether students pass or fail certain grades, and schools that test well, or better than the previous year, are rewarded with bonuses that are typically divided among teachers and staff, amounting in some cases to more than $1,000 a year.
Many schools now hold elaborate pep rallies for students before the tests, as North Twin Lakes Elementary did here recently. Dressed in T-shirts that said "We can do it!" the children sang to the tune of Lou Bega's hit "Mambo No. 5."
(snip)
But with such successes have come complaints. Under pressure to score well on tests, some school districts have moved school start dates back to early August to complete extra weeks of instruction before March exams. This has aroused the ire of many parents, and others have complained that with the tests have come too much pressure and too much homework.
The centerpiece of the new effort, known as E-Comp, requires all school districts in Florida to identify the top 10 percent of each variety of teacher and award them a 5 percent salary supplement. For an educator earning the average teacher salary in Florida of $41,578, that amounts to just over $2,000.
Controversy surrounds how that top 10 percent of teachers will be identified.
(snip)
"I don't think it can be done fairly," she said. "And I don't want to divide pit our staff against one another. I want a team. I want unity."
Anything that pays teachers more is a good thing, but if a grade level improves on standardized tests the whole grade-level should be rewarded, not just a 'few' teachers. AS I posted before, I think teachers with skills more in demand in the free market - i.e. Math and Science teachers, should be paid more than a typical first-year teacher.
At least Florida teachers know that they are getting paid next year.
Free market teacher pay would work great... in a free education market. Instead we have a Government, proven inept at just about everything regardless of which party is in power (especially at the local level), running things.
Just Be Glad Your Not In Florida, Que Up Hurricane Season!
MSNBC
Anything that pays teachers more is a good thing, but if a grade level improves on standardized tests the whole grade-level should be rewarded, not just a 'few' teachers. AS I posted before, I think teachers with skills more in demand in the free market - i.e. Math and Science teachers, should be paid more than a typical first-year teacher.
They should be careful about the way they structure incentives.
I don't see why my idea, incentive pay for Science and Math teachers, wouldn't work in a public school system. It's not easy to become a teacher, especially in Texas, you have to have the degree, or pass a state exit exam in the topic you want to teach. Then there's student teaching, certification courses, other exams and what not. How many Mathematicians/Scientists want to jump all those hurdles, and all for the priveledge of earning less than $40,000? Not too many, you have to really want to teach. Then you could be the smartest, most energetic, most caring teacher in the world, and your students could still be as dumb as rocks. Where's the incentive there?
Yes, we have to reform the way we teach our kids, but the private versus public school isn't the debate we should be having. The debate I think we should be having is how much emphasis we put on extra-curricular activities like Band, Football, Vollyball, and what-not in Texas. Just think if we put as much emphasis into Math or Science compe ions as we put into a single high-school football or basketball game. Just think if students took as much pride in winning debates and compe ions as they took in running track. It shouldn't be geeky to be smart, but schools don't emphasis educational compe ions because they pale in comparison to Football, basketball, , even tennis.
The dirty little secret is that it is much, much, much more difficult to get a athletic scholarship than it is to get a educational scholarship if you dedicate yourself in High School.
More teaching to standardized tests; fewer students actually learning how to think logically and analytically and write.
Standardized tests are the bane of the American educational system.
Are you a school teacher Dan?
Unfortunately, there's no other way to gauge a child's knowledge, it's just to easy to cheat. 1 teacher can't keep an eye on 30 kids during a test. They just copy their homework. It's very easy for a kid to slip through the cracks. The problem is the emphasis that they put on it. They way it is now. You just get taught how to pass a test, instead of learning anything.
I don't believe any more than 30% of American children have the cognitive ability to think logically and analytically, and to write.
Nor do I think that these standardized testing regimens are standing in their way.
I don't like that we have to do tests, but given the low-quality parenting so many kids receive in this country, and the lack of motivation of so much of our work force, teachers included, we have to have some system of accountability.
We're doing well if these students have some type of useful job skills when they graduate from high school. Turning them into blossoming little thinkers simply is not realistic. The school system is not magic.
As the husband of a Science Professor - who recently moved out of Texas because of all of the hurdles she had to jump through to teach at the high-school level; until you get the NEA out of the mix it AIN'T EVER going to happen.
Why? Because right now, another dirty little secret, is that secondary school teachers often make as much as, if not more, than the vastly better educated professors of Chemistry and Biology at (especially private) universities. Also, the University positions are EXTREMELY compe ive, with hundreds of applicants from both inside and outside the US vying for every open position. These are people with Ph.D's, research experience and publications. You increase pay a little more at the high school level, and all of those "couldn't get into grad or medical school" science teachers would face some SERIOUS compe ion from real scientists.
It should happen, but it won't.
There is no easy solution to any of our schools problems. I think that
one of the really bad things is "overhead" too much administration and
not enough teachers. Those that teach now days are forced to teach
to the test. There is also too much emphasis placed on other than
the three "R's". Not enough discipline. Some kids go to school just
to provoke problems and teachers don't have enough authority to kick
them out of the classroom so others can learn. Not all "children" are
even gifted enough to learn along with others and teachers are forced
to slow down the learning process to the lowest level. That is taking
away from those that are capable to learn at the faster pace. Somehow,
along the way we think all kids are able to go to college and become
anything they wish. Which is not the case at all. Some people should
not be in college and have no ability to learn more than reading, writing
and simple math. That is not to say the are dumb or stupid. They may
have the ability to become a skilled craftsman. Look at what a good
mechanic can earn today. Not unheard of for one to earn close to
a hundred grand a year. Or a plumber or many other skilled jobs that
must be filled and does not take a college education. Trade schools
used to be part of our education system, but those have seemed to have taken a back seat.
I understand your point but don't share your cynicism, I guess. It may be that there are some kids who cannot be taught those skills, but there are plenty who can learn those things, if given the proper teaching. Instead of trying to find a way to accomplish that, though, we turn to standardized tests that discourage the type of teaching that is required to develop those skills -- which, by the way, would greatly aid in passing standardized tests as well. I see today's educational landscape and think that our society has essentially marginalized critical thinking and logic as useful job skills, except in very specific realms. Standardized tests do little to aid in ending that erosion.
To say that teachers are doing their jobs well because a certain percentage of their students don't fail a basic test strikes me as absurd. Somehow, when my parents were school-aged children, teaching to those notions wasn't a problem. I would agree that the lack of parenting is a problem in accomplishing that goal. But I also don't think we help matters by having the educational system pander to the lowest common denominator without endeavoring to raise the bar.
Free Markets > Standardized Tests.
In a free education market, when kids come home dumb it won't take but a small percentage of concerned parents to seek alternatives and put the failing school out of business. Schools will have the incentive to attract and maintain quality educators (via dollars instead of warm fuzzies).
Sadly, the Teachers Union is perhaps the largest reason for bad educators.
teachers being paid for test results, and schools being rewarded/punished for test results is already "causing teaching to pass the tests", rather than teaching.
=============================
March 26, 2006
Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math
By SAM DILLON
SACRAMENTO — Thousands of schools across the nation are responding to the reading and math testing requirements laid out in No Child Left Behind, President Bush's signature education law, by reducing class time spent on other subjects and, for some low proficiency students, eliminating it.
Schools from Vermont to California are increasing — in some cases tripling — the class time that low-proficiency students spend on reading and math, mainly because the federal law, signed in 2002, requires annual exams only in those subjects and punishes schools that fall short of rising benchmarks.
The changes appear to principally affect schools and students who test below grade level.
The intense focus on the two basic skills is a sea change in American instructional practice, with many schools that once offered rich curriculums now systematically trimming courses like social studies, science and art. A nationwide survey by a nonpartisan group that is to be made public on March 28 indicates that the practice, known as narrowing the curriculum, has become standard procedure in many communities.
The survey, by the Center on Education Policy, found that since the passage of the federal law, 71 percent of the nation's 15,000 school districts had reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history, music and other subjects to open up more time for reading and math. The center is an independent group that has made a thorough study of the new act and has published a detailed yearly report on the implementation of the law in dozens of districts.
"Narrowing the curriculum has clearly become a nationwide pattern," said Jack Jennings, the president of the center, which is based in Washington.
At Martin Luther King Jr. Junior High School in Sacramento, about 150 of the school's 885 students spend five of their six class periods on math, reading and gym, leaving only one 55-minute period for all other subjects.
About 125 of the school's lowest-performing students are barred from taking anything except math, reading and gym, a measure that Samuel Harris, a former lieutenant colonel in the Army who is the school's principal, said was draconian but necessary. "When you look at a kid and you know he can't read, that's a tough call you've got to make," Mr. Harris said.
The increasing focus on two basic subjects has divided the nation's educational establishment. Some authorities, including Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, say the federal law's focus on basic skills is raising achievement in thousands of low-performing schools. Other experts warn that by reducing the academic menu to steak and potatoes, schools risk giving bored teenagers the message that school means repe ion and drilling.
"Only two subjects? What a sadness," said Thomas Sobol, an education professor at Columbia Teachers College and a former New York state education commissioner. "That's like a violin student who's only permitted to play scales, nothing else, day after day, scales, scales, scales. They'd lose their zest for music."
But officials in Cuero, Tex., have adopted an intensive approach and said it was helping them meet the federal requirements. They have doubled the time that all sixth graders and some seventh and eighth graders devote to reading and math, and have reduced it for other subjects.
"When you only have so many hours per day and you're behind in some area that's being hammered on, you have to work on that," said Henry Lind, the schools superintendent. "It's like basketball. If you can't make layups, then you've got to work on layups."
Chad Colby, a spokesman for the federal Department of Education, said the department neither endorsed nor criticized schools that concentrated instructional time on math and reading as they sought to meet the test benchmarks laid out in the federal law's accountability system, known as adequate yearly progress.
"We don't choose the curriculum," Mr. Colby said. "That's a decision that local leaders have to make. But for every school you point to, I can show you five other schools across the country where students are still taking a well-rounded curriculum and are still making adequate yearly progress. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask our schools to get kids proficient at grade level in reading and math."
Since America's public schools began taking shape in the early 1800's, shifting fashions have repeatedly reworked the curriculum. Courses like woodworking and sewing joined the three R's. After World War I, vocational courses, languages and other subjects broadened the instructional menu into a smorgasbord.
A federal law passed after the Russian launching of Sputnik in 1957 spurred a renewed emphasis on science and math, and a 1975 law that guaranteed educational rights for the disabled also provoked sweeping change, said William Reese, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of "America's Public Schools: From the Common School to No Child Left Behind" (Johns Hopkins, 2005). But the education law has leveraged one of the most abrupt instructional shifts, he said.
"Because of its emphasis on testing and accountability in particular subjects, it apparently forces some school districts down narrow intellectual paths," Dr. Reese said. "If a subject is not tested, why teach it?"
The shift has been felt in the labor market, heightening demand for math teachers, and forcing educators in subjects like art and foreign languages to search longer for work, leaders of teachers groups said.
The survey that is coming out this week looks at 299 school districts in 50 states. It was conducted as part of a four-year study of No Child Left Behind and appears to be the most systematic effort to track the law's footprints through the classroom, although other authorities had warned of its effect on teaching practices.
The historian David McCullough told a Senate Committee last June that because of the law, "history is being put on the back burner or taken off the stove altogether in many or most schools, in favor of math and reading."
The report cites districts in Colorado, Texas, Vermont, California, Nebraska and elsewhere where math and reading are squeezing other subjects. At one district cited, the Bayonne City Schools in New Jersey, low-performing ninth graders will be barred from taking Spanish, music or any other elective next fall so they can take extra periods of math and reading, said Ellen O'Connor, an assistant superintendent.
"We're using that as a motivation," Dr. O'Connor said. "We're hoping they'll concentrate on their math and reading so they can again participate in some course they love."
At King Junior High in Sacramento, which sits in a poor neighborhood a few miles from a decommissioned Air Force base, the intensive reading and math classes have raised test scores for several years running. That has helped Larry Buchanan, the superintendent of the Grant Joint Union High School District, which oversees the school, to be selected by an administrators' group as California's 2005 superintendent of the year.
But in spite of the progress, the school's scores on California state exams, used for compliance with the federal law, are increasing not nearly fast enough to allow the school to keep up with the rising test benchmarks. On the math exams administered last spring, for instance, 17.4 percent of students scored at the proficient level or above, and on the reading exams, only 14.9 percent.
With scores still so low, Mr. Harris, the school's principal, and Mr. Buchanan said they had little alternative but to continue remedial instruction for the lower-achieving among the school's nearly 900 students.
The students are the sons and daughters of mostly Hispanic, black and Laotian Hmong parents, many of whom work as gardeners, welders and hotel maids or are unemployed. The district administers frequent diagnostic tests so that teachers can carefully calibrate lessons to students' needs.
Rubén Jimenez, a seventh grader whose father is a construction laborer, has a schedule typical of many students at the school, with six class periods a day, not counting lunch.
Rubén studies English for the first three periods, and pre-algebra and math during the fourth and fifth. His sixth period is gym. How does he enjoy taking only reading and math, a recent visitor asked.
"I don't like history or science anyway," Rubén said. But a moment later, perhaps recalling something exciting he had heard about lab science, he sounded ambivalent.
"It'd be fun to dissect something," he said.
Martín Lara, Rubén's teacher, said the intense focus on math was paying off because his math skills were solidifying. Rubén himself said math has become his favorite subject.
But other students, like Paris Smith, an eighth grader, were less enthusiastic. Last semester, Paris failed one of the two math classes he takes, back to back, each morning.
"I hate having two math classes in a row," Paris said. "Two hours of math is too much. I can't concentrate that long."
Donna Simmons, his mother, said Mr. Lara seemed to be working hard to help Paris understand math.
"The school cares," Ms. Simmons said. "The faculty cares. I want him to keep trying."
Sydney Smith, a vice principal who oversees instruction at the school, said she had heard only minimal grumbling from students excluded from electives.
"I've only had about two students come to my office and say: 'What in the world? I'm just taking two courses?' " Ms. Smith said. "So most students are not complaining about being miserable."
But Lorie Turner, who teaches English to some pupils for three consecutive periods and to others for two periods each day, said she used some students' frustration to persuade them to try for higher scores on the annual exams administered under California's Standardized Testing and Reporting program, known as Star.
"I have some little girls who are dying to get out of this class and get into a mainstream class," Ms. Turner said. "But I tell them the only way out is to do better on that Star test."
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
They should link legislators' and governor's pay to the kids' performance as well.
God Damn man, I never even need to reply to most of this because you've already said exactly what I was thinking, it blows my mind!
But yet magic is what some expect from a voucher system.
Kids are remarkable learners, even the under-privileged ones, but they have to be properly motivated and guided early by parents who many times themselves are bad at Math and Science (and politics for that matter).
A voucher system, in theory at least, would bring the notion of market forces to bear on the educational system. In theory, those market forces create compe ion, which creates a need for schools to do something unique to make themselves attractive to buyers. Among the things that schools might be able to do in that context is offer curricula that aren't aimed at teaching to standardized tests and are, instead, (heaven forbid) aimed at teaching logical and analytical thinking. It's not a magical proposition.
I'll admit that I've never pimped a voucher system before -- it certainly may have some pretty significant flaws (though it would also seem to have the advantage of requiring parental involvement, too) -- it strikes me as one means for eroding the standardized testing bureaucracy and moving back towards actually teaching children; teaching not just fundamentals, but teaching them how to learn and think for themselves.
And how can a voter be "bad at politics?"
It's magical in that we'd still be working with the same set of teachers, the same set of parents, and likely the same set of administrators. About the only thing that would be different is that there would be less federal control over private schools, which is really what the whole voucher debate is about. Voucher supporters want to open tax-payer subsidized schools that aren't restricted as how to how much they can link religion with education. American madrassas, if you will.A voucher system, in theory at least, would bring the notion of market forces to bear on the educational system. In theory, those market forces create compe ion, which creates a need for schools to do something unique to make themselves attractive to buyers. Among the things that schools might be able to do in that context is offer curricula that aren't aimed at teaching to standardized tests and are, instead, (heaven forbid) aimed at teaching logical and analytical thinking. It's not a magical proposition.
Assuming no dumb parents.
Merrifield's (my often referenced education economics guru) calculations give an allowance for 90-95% dumbness propensity amongst parents. If we can't beat that hurdle... we have bigger problems on our hands.
Voucher systems today either allow for transfer from one crappy public school to another - or to a private school. I'd agree that in their current form, the market is limited to to religious schools. However, most don't have as their sole purpose to indoctrinate kids with religious messages (the Catholic High School I graduated from surely didn't).
However, the solution to avoiding a dilemma such as described above is to open school choice all the way. Where there is a market, private industry will step forward to provide top quality education and capture the education dollars that are left on the table. Give every parent in America today a voucher, and the existing private school system can't keep up with demand. It would be left up to secular industry to fill in the shortage. New schools will constantly pop up, competing for business by providing better education. Over time, education will continue to advance and get better. Right now our schools are no different than they were 100 years ago - and its all because of the government monopoly that has no incentive to improve itself.
I agree with you.
Elsewhere in the world, it is done exactly as you say. But in America, we want to believe that every child can go to college and become a brain surgeon, and by golly, it would be an outrage for some administrator to decide otherwise when a child is 9 or 10.
The odds of children exceeding their parents education without the help of their parents are formidable. My wife teaches in a Charter School where they have many of the castaways from the inner city Public Schools and too many of the parents don't offer support for their children's education outside of what they receive in the classroom.
Some parents have refused to take their children to the Library to pick up a book for a report. Their reasoning? "I work a full time job".
She teaches 6th grade and some of her students are in their sixth school in as many years and if the student is a discipline problem and is failing classes the blame goes to the teacher. It's nuts!
Lack of education breeds lack of education.
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