How do parents & teachers feel about this bill?

[golfgal]

Teachers of students with special needs should be treated like other teachers. The important thing is not to base merit pay on the absolute performance of students but on how the perform relative to how they have performed in the past. A teacher that takes a student body that scored in the 10th percentile last year and has them scoring in the 30th percentile has significantly outperformed a teacher that takes a student body performing in the 80th percentile and just keeps them there.

Honestly, I'm not wedded to the idea of using test scores as the basis for merit based pay. I'd prefer whatever system works that best assesses the performance of the teacher. That's certainly not seniority based or "special classes that they've taken" based. It could be based on peer evaluations, change in student performance by any of a variety of metrics, administration evaluations, or whatever teachers can come up with the appears reasonable.

As for people being paid based on other people's performance, that happens all the time. Just about every manager or supervisor is paid that way. The system isn't perfect, but it's much better than the way teach pay works. It's better for motivating people. It's more fair. Most importantly, it leads to better performance. That's why companies do it.

And part of their performance pay is learning how to hire people that do a good job-and they can fire those that don't. It isn't even CLOSE to the same thing when the one being evaluated has total control over those for whom he/she is responsible. Now, maybe if teachers got to pick and choose which students they wanted that might be a different story--but then what happens to the kids that none of the teachers want?

 

[MM27]

I like it no more than you do, but how do you suggest making parents accountable?

That is what this bill is about making schools like businesses and each student is a dollar bill.

Everyone compares teaching to a business model but you can't do that when dealing with human beings.

If you work in a company and you get defective parts you send the order back. You can't do that with children, they come with many bags and things that prevent them from performing their best. Is that the teachers fault? This bill only attacks the educator not the parents who aren't that doing their job.

That reminds me of The Blueberry Story
http://www.jamievollmer.com/blue_story.html

The Blueberry Story: The teacher gives the businessman a lesson

“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!”

I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of inservice. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the middle1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the “Best Ice Cream in America.”

I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging “knowledge society”. Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement!

In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced - equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman’s hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant – she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, “We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream.”

I smugly replied, “Best ice cream in America, Ma’am.”

“How nice,” she said. “Is it rich and smooth?”

“Sixteen percent butterfat,” I crowed.

“Premium ingredients?” she inquired.

“Super-premium! Nothing but triple A.” I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

“Mr. Vollmer,” she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, “when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?”

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap…. I was dead meat, but I wasn’t going to lie.

“I send them back.”

“That’s right!” she barked, “and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it’s not a business. It’s school!”

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, “Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!”

And so began my long transformation.

Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when, and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a post-industrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community. For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.

 

[vettechick99]

I can't think of a worse idea. FLs schools are already struggling and lawmakers are looking for an easy fix. They are digging themselves deeper and deeper into their hole.

 

[daughtersrus]

Teachers of students with special needs should be treated like other teachers. The important thing is not to base merit pay on the absolute performance of students but on how the perform relative to how they have performed in the past. A teacher that takes a student body that scored in the 10th percentile last year and has them scoring in the 30th percentile has significantly outperformed a teacher that takes a student body performing in the 80th percentile and just keeps them there.

There's a certain population of students that will never be able to take a test as well as those that have progressive diseases. What about teachers that teach in these type of settings?

As for people being paid based on other people's performance, that happens all the time. Just about every manager or supervisor is paid that way. The system isn't perfect, but it's much better than the way teach pay works. It's better for motivating people. It's more fair. Most importantly, it leads to better performance. That's why companies do it.

Someone else pointed out that in other work situations, managers or supervisors are able to fire those not working up to standards. Teachers are not able to do that. Also, workers have an incentive to do a good job (a paycheck). What is the incentive to do good for students?

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Again, they have the option of firing people who perform poorly.

In some cases, they do. In many cases, they do not. It's not at all uncommon to have a supervisor who cannot make hiring/firing decisions. That is often reserved for higher levels of management.

 

[taylor3297]

Do you get a rating? A grade for yourself, so to speak?

Do I get a rating or a grade? No, but I do receive a detailed summary on my performance. Also, a list of things that I need to improve upon and how I am to go about making those improvements. All the administrators I have worked for believe that everyone has something they need to improve upon.

If a teachers performance does not meet standards then the teacher is put on probation. Probation has a lot of conditions a teacher must meet in order to be taken off of probation. If the teacher fails to meet the requirements during a specified time, then the teacher will be terminated.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

There's a certain population of students that will never be able to take a test as well as those that have progressive diseases. What about teachers that teach in these type of settings?

Like I said in my post, I'm open for evaluation methods that don't rely strictly on testing. I just don't accept the notion that there is no way to distinguish between teachers that perform well and those that do not.

Someone else pointed out that in other work situations, managers or supervisors are able to fire those not working up to standards. Teachers are not able to do that. Also, workers have an incentive to do a good job (a paycheck). What is the incentive to do good for students?

I agree that the manager/employee relationship is not precisely the same as a teacher/student relationship. I raised the manager issue to rebut the notion that teacher's are unique in being judged on how others perform. They are not. In a great many circumstances in life, our job performance depends on how others perform, whether they are students, employees, peers, suppliers, or even customers. The fact that teachers do not have 100% control over their students does not absolve them from any responsibility for their student's performance.

I am flabbergasted that so few teachers want to be rewarded based on their performance. I suspect that if they worked in a situation like that for a while, they would change their minds (at least the better ones would). The notion that we cannot assess the difference between good and bad performance in teaching is absurd. I'm willing to bet that every teacher posting on here knows who the good and bad teachers in her/his school are. Heck, I'm just an involved parent and I can do a reasonable job of assessing the teachers in my kid's schools.

Testing is not the only way and may be suited only as a portion of the assessment process, but some method that differentiated in pay between good and bad teachers would be a tremendous benefit to society.

 

[Liberty Belle]

Like I said in my post, I'm open for evaluation methods that don't rely strictly on testing. I just don't accept the notion that there is no way to distinguish between teachers that perform well and those that do not.



I agree that the manager/employee relationship is not precisely the same as a teacher/student relationship. I raised the manager issue to rebut the notion that teacher's are unique in being judged on how others perform. They are not. In a great many circumstances in life, our job performance depends on how others perform, whether they are students, employees, peers, suppliers, or even customers. The fact that teachers do not have 100% control over their students does not absolve them from any responsibility for their student's performance.

I am flabbergasted that so few teachers want to be rewarded based on their performance. I suspect that if they worked in a situation like that for a while, they would change their minds (at least the better ones would). The notion that we cannot assess the difference between good and bad performance in teaching is absurd. I'm willing to bet that every teacher posting on here knows who the good and bad teachers in her/his school are. Heck, I'm just an involved parent and I can do a reasonable job of assessing the teachers in my kid's schools.

Testing is not the only way and may be suited only as a portion of the assessment process, but some method that differentiated in pay between good and bad teachers would be a tremendous benefit to society.

I haven't heard any say that.

 

[themilesfamily]

In some cases, they do. In many cases, they do not. It's not at all uncommon to have a supervisor who cannot make hiring/firing decisions. That is often reserved for higher levels of management.

But, again, those employees have an incentive for performing -- drawing a salary for themselves and their families, access to healthcare for themselves and their family. These things will keep them performing.

With students, if they can't appreciate the advantages of an education -- and they don't have parents who are holding them accountable -- they may see no incentive to perform and they don't perform. There are no immediate negative consequences, so why bother? If they hate authority and it bugs the teacher, all the better.

ETA: I'm sure most teachers would have no problem being rated on their performance. Check their attendance, show up to their class and view their teaching ability, their lesson plans, etc. Rate a teacher on what he or she is contributing to the class.

But whether the student chooses to listen, learn, etc. is a whole different story and NOT something a teacher should be rated on. That student has to own it.

 

[Liberty Belle]

But, again, those employees have an incentive for performing -- drawing a salary for themselves and their families, access to healthcare for themselves and their family. These things will keep them performing.

With students, if they can't appreciate the advantages of an education -- and let's be honest, how many kids view their education as a big joke? -- and they don't have parents who are holding them accountable -- they may see no incentive to perform and they don't perform. There are no immediate negative consequences, so why bother? If they hate authority and it bugs the teacher, all the better.

And, those people are hired. They don't just grab everyone off the street and tell them they must work there and they must do their work well.

 

[MM27]

I am flabbergasted that so few teachers want to be rewarded based on their performance.

I wouldn't oppose a reward system if you could guarantee that things would be fair, which I don't believe is possible.

 

[themilesfamily]

And, those people are hired. They don't just grab everyone off the street and tell them they must work there and they must do their work well.

Exactly. Can you imagine having to take in every Tom, Dick and Harry off the street who wants to draw a salary at your company? Anyone and everyone who walks through the door gets a job. And you can't fire them for any reason.

NOW, despite the fact that some of them have zero interest in your company, your authority, your goals or even being there at all, you have to make every last one of them compliant and top-notch performers or YOUR job will be cut.

And, every time something goes wrong at the company, YOU get the blame.

Good luck with that!!! Let me know how that works for you as a manager and then remember that's what teachers deal with everyday.

 

[TheDisneyGirl02]

How does this apply to students with special needs? As I said in a previous post, will this mean that IEP goals going to be lowered so that every student will meet/exceed the goals so that the teacher can get a raise?

I don't think that it's fair to compare other professions to teachers when determining their worth. What other job determines that value based what someone else does or doesn't do? As I said, my DD's teacher could teach her until she's blue in the face, but DD will never be close to grade level. It's not because she's a bad teacher but because DD just isn't capable of doing what other students her age are. That's not to say that she isn't learning something because she is but she will never be able to pass a test.

Both my dad and my sister are special ed teachers. My dad teaches in a rich suburban district, my sister teaches in a poor inner-city district. Both my dad and my sister do their best to teach their students everyday, but just like you said, there are just some cases where the child won't be able to pass a test period. They are both great teachers and do what they can for their students. I'm glad that although your daughter wil never be close to grade level, that her teacher is doing everything she can to help her.

 

[Took]

Like I said in my post, I'm open for evaluation methods that don't rely strictly on testing. I just don't accept the notion that there is no way to distinguish between teachers that perform well and those that do not.



I agree that the manager/employee relationship is not precisely the same as a teacher/student relationship. I raised the manager issue to rebut the notion that teacher's are unique in being judged on how others perform. They are not. In a great many circumstances in life, our job performance depends on how others perform, whether they are students, employees, peers, suppliers, or even customers. The fact that teachers do not have 100% control over their students does not absolve them from any responsibility for their student's performance.

How about if YOU worked as a teacher for awhile to understand that things are not the way you think they are? I suspect if you worked as a teacher you would get a very different perspective.


I am flabbergasted that so few teachers want to be rewarded based on their performance. I suspect that if they worked in a situation like that for a while, they would change their minds (at least the better ones would). The notion that we cannot assess the difference between good and bad performance in teaching is absurd. I'm willing to bet that every teacher posting on here knows who the good and bad teachers in her/his school are. Heck, I'm just an involved parent and I can do a reasonable job of assessing the teachers in my kid's schools.

Testing is not the only way and may be suited only as a portion of the assessment process, but some method that differentiated in pay between good and bad teachers would be a tremendous benefit to society.

I suspect if YOU worked as teacher, you would understand how very difficult it is to assess teachers. You believe that as a parent you "know" who's good but that may simply be your perception. You may understand what seems to work for your child, but that doesn't mean that a teacher who does not perform to your specifications is not doing a good job with many other students.

The business model you're trying to use doesn't work in education (or any public service field, really) because these are NOT businesses. Their goals are different from those of a business and their needs are different, too.

 

[IDoDis]

I'll take the district where I live and work as an example. The school where I work is in a low-income area. It's surrounded by apartments that are mostly inhabited by non-English speakers. Consequently, the kids at the school come in with poor or no English skills and need special programs to catch up. The population is very transient. It's not unusual for kids to come to school for a few months and suddenly disappear because the family up and moved. The school has some really great teachers and they work very hard with the kids. But the circumstances are such that the school never achieves over a certain level on standardized tests.

The school on the other side of the district is in an area of very expensive homes ($800,000 and up). Most parents in that area are college educated and hold high-level jobs. The school regularly performs very well on standardized tests. I worked at this school for three years so I am very familiar with the staff and how they teach there.

I firmly believe that you could swap the staffs of the two schools and the test scores would remain the same. There are so many other factors in student performance besides the teachers. They could be working their backsides off and still not get the results on standardized tests.

I wholeheartedly agree. For three years I worked as a resource teacher at schools throughout the district in an intern program where I helped and supervised teachers earning their MA degrees. I observed teachers at the lower performing schools and those at the top. I was not impressed with the teachers at the top schools and often thought they had it much easier than those at the bottom. The ones at the lower schools had mandatory after school trainings and meetings to attend, more paperwork than they could handle since they had to document way more things and devoted much of their school day to direct instruction with the kids, and had parking lots with 1/2 of the cars still there at 5:30pm where many of them also helped with after school tutoring programs. I was there because sometimes I met with teachers after school to discuss things.

Compare that to the schools at the top. The teachers sat at their desks and graded papers while the kids worked in consumable workbooks. The curriculum was often dull and seemed unplanned as I saw some teachers reading their lessons out of the teacher's guide for the first time while they were teaching the kids. When school ended at 3:30, the place would be a ghost town at 4:00pm. Yet their test scores were high and people would say, "Oh, that's a good school."

I'm not trying to paint with a broad brush and say ALL teachers at the low performing schools were better and vice versa. Both had the good, the bad, and the ugly. But, overall, I feel that it was not so much the teaching that made the test scores as it was the environment, childhood backgrounds, and family involvement that made the difference in the scores. If the teachers were swapped at a low and a high performing school, the scores would not change.

 

[ticktock]

Again, they have the option of firing people who perform poorly.

I guess you don't know anyone who works for the government or has a job that is unionized. They can't fire anyone either.

 

[Liberty Belle]

I guess you don't know anyone who works for the government or has a job that is unionized. They can't fire anyone either.

Yeah, I do. And yeah, they can.

Still, it's a ridiculous comparison.

 

[ticktock]

How would the teachers of these classes then be evaluated? Would they not get their raises because they had a group of bad kids?

Knowing what these teachers were dealing with they would be evaluated accordingly. They should get hazard pay in my opinion.

Something has to be done. Things aren't working as they are now. Separate the problem kids and fire the really bad teachers.

Have you ever heard of a teacher being actually FIRED for bad performance? I haven't and don't give me that line about how can they evaluate teachers the good teachers know who the bad teachers are. I had a teacher tell me she knew which students had a particular math teacher the year before because they hadn't learned anything from this teacher and she had to teach them what they should have learned the year before while at the same time teaching her own subject.

This has been going on for YEARS. Every year she gets stuck with numerous students who are lacking and every year it is the students of this one teacher. Everyone knows this and nobody does anything about it. I consider it in the same class as nurses and other doctors not reporting a doctor they know is incompetent or comes to work drunk. You people are letting the bad teachers hurt our kids!

 

[LisaR]

Our FL senate is hard at work today. In addition to SB 6 that was passed earlier today (the original topic of this post) they have also passed SB 4, making graduation requirements tougher. I am not sure why every child in the state of FL would NEED physics and algebra 2 if they are not on a path to go to a university.

TALLAHASSEE — High school graduation requirements would be increased under a bill that has cleared the Florida Senate.

The chamber voted 36-1 for the bill (SB 4) that also would do away with the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, for high school math and science and replace it with end-of-course exams.

The measure next goes to the House where a similar bill (HB 7053)has one more committee hearing left before it can go to the floor.

The legislation would add geometry, algebra II, biology, chemistry and physics to the list of courses needed to graduate and require students to take at least one virtual class.

The requirements would be phased in from this fall through the 2014-15 school year for entering freshmen.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

Have you ever heard of a teacher being actually FIRED for bad performance?

I have, but I have no idea how easy it was as the area was unionized for teachers.

It was my 11th grade chemistry teacher. Well loved and respected by the students.

I do not know what happened that year. But something did and though *I* didn't realize it (I hated science)....he was not teaching us at the proper pace.

This was/is a prestigious public magnet school in New Orleans (they have like oodles of National Merit Scholars every year--insanely high SAT scores (except me. lol!)--insanely high college acceptance rate)--

Well as we all know, LA is not the upper crust of fine schools and at this prestigious school...this teacher was not teaching us at a pace that would have had us meet even the MINIMUM requirements for a chemistry class.

As I said, I don't know how they realized, investigated or figured things out. But he was essentially put out to pasture and though technically not *fired*--he was let go and they brought in another teacher to bring us up to speed.

That was not fun at all! But they realized it needed to be done and they fixed it midyear (somewhere around the semester break, maybe a bit into the 3rd quarter).

This was not based on standardized test or the student's performance. My guess would be that a parent noticed something--or maybe one of the brainiacs figured it out and the school was alerted to the alarmingly slow pace of the class.

I feel it only happened though--b/c it was an excellent school. I'm not sure that a similar situaton in one of the regular New Orleans public high schools would have done the same thing.