patrick.net

"House passage is considered a foregone conclusion, but Ford said the union will keep seeking changes to make the bill more palatable."

Do the UNIONS think we are stupid, more palatable meaning allowing them to bend over parents and students while they get paid. Get outta here!

"That includes adding a due-process element to let teachers appeal poor evaluations that can lead to missing out on merit pay or outright dismissal. The union also wants to reduce the state Department of Education's power and give more authority for implementation to local school districts."

Ohh, you mean you want to be like New York and have us fund 100 million in salaries for lemon teachers who are undeserving. Get outta here!!!!!

"Evaluations would be based 50 percent on student performance over a three-year period with the rest based on principals' assessments and other factors including advanced degrees -- but only if they are in the teacher's subject area."

Whats unfair about that?

Tell some talented kid he should become a teacher. Hey, there's no job security, but if you are good, and can fit in well politically at your school, they will give you the kind of students that you can move ahead well and be paid accordingly.

But yeah, no job security. When you're 55 or so, maybe sooner, don't be surprised if some cost saving administrator, decides he can save the school money (maybe get a bonus for lowering costs) by replacing you with a 23 year old. At that point, you may wish you had chosen a career that was more lucrative than a public service job working with kids. But hey, at least you will know that for a while you made a difference, maybe enjoyed it in many ways.

Just make sure you have some skills to cover you those last 15 years. Maybe you can find some sort of charter school in a terrible neighborhood to go to.

And to think, a lot of teachers don't make it 5 years in the profession now, even with the job security , and benefits. They're making it real attractive down in Tallahassee.

I guess it's easy to be an expert on something you know next to nothing about. Clarence, or Ray, whatever your name is, welcome to my ignore list.

The school system is broken because the premise is flawed: there is no such thing as a one sized solution to education. Kids are all different - their parents priorities, their environment, their personal druthers and expectations, etc. -- and forcing them all into the same monopolized, kid warehousing system only creates disaster. Using the system "as it is" as a baseline for arguing is like arguing about what the best direction was for the titanic to motor on after it hit the iceberg: it's a complete and utter useless distraction from the problem.

What's needed is radical reform, bottom up, top down. Scrap it. Start new. Rid us of all laws related. Rid us of compulsory education. Rid us of mandatory union requirements to teach. Rid us of school districts. Rid us of the education industrial complex and its $ billion lobby. Sell off all the public held assets. The market will solve the problem far better of turning the highest % of kids in the most productive citizens they can become.

but it requires radical thinking outside of the box. It requires radical inventiveness. It requires shattering the protected nature (primarily about self-interest) of the status quo. It requires no longer subsidizing mediocrity and failure. It requires ending the inevitable ever-growing problems related to all things redistributionista related. It requires freeing up the $billions of dollars dedicated to education from those who control the system, allowing the most inventive educators to access the capital to provide results, vs. the current structure which rewards those who have the greatest political power, at the expense of all else.

Another education expert has the easy answers. The idea that the whole thing is broken is insane.

People, please read this.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/09/27/100927taco_talk_lemann

Teacher tenure is an outdated concept. It needs to be eliminated. Tomorrow would be fine with me.

Marcus... no one has job security anymore. The new employement reality is that everyone is expendable and we all need to keep our skills diversified so that WHEN we lose our current job, we are good candidates for another, hopefully better, job.

I am not qualified to offer a valid opinion on how teachers should be evaluated, as I have never taught school for a living. Frankly, there is no amount of pay that would entice me to spend 5 days a week with youngsters required to be someplace they don't want to be and learn stuff they don't want to learn.
That said, somebody has to do it. I'm a big fan of home schooling for those who are willing to make that commitment.
I'm also a big fan of year round schooling. It just makes sense. We are no longer an agrarian society. Get full time use out of those buildings that cost so much to build, operate and maintain. Students retain more when their breaks are shorter and more frequent. Scheduling can be worked out to keep families on the same cycle of breaks. There's these things called computers.

marcus says

Tell some talented kid he should become a teacher. Hey, there’s no job security, but if you are good, and can fit in well politically at your school, they will give you the kind of students that you can move ahead well and be paid accordingly.

Lots of people, including private school teachers, have long careers without unions. Where does their job security come from?

I really like the idea of tying pay to performance. I don't think using standardized tests is a good way, though there's definite appeal due to the simplicity of such a system.

Maybe it's not feasible, but ideally the measure of performance should be how well the student performs in the real world. The problem with that is that by the time the first wave of students from XYZ teacher's 1st grade class hit the real world, 11 to 15 or even more years have passed. Perhaps something along these lines would be best:

Measure the performance of a teacher by through the performance of her students using the best info available for each student. For each student who *ever* passed through teacher XYZ's class, get the latest/greatest measure of their success. If the student is currently in the next grade, their current grade would have to suffice - or some standardized test. But years later, if that teacher is still teaching and the 1st grader is now an 11th grader, why not consider the student's GPA over the intervening years? And if the student has gone on to college, use their GPA there instead. If a student has entered the workforce, use their tax information to estimate their financial success in life.

The pay scale could be made not relative to all other teachers in a state or district, but inversely proportional to average family income of students at the school the teacher works at. Work at a poor school and make a difference, and you get very, very well rewarded. Work at a posh school where the parents will ensure their kids turn out well regardless, and your pay can be affected by performance only as it relates to other teachers at the same school.

This would encourage teachers to get their students to do well on standardized tests (the current system does the same). Current students will affect your salary next year .. through their scores (or grade). However, it also encourages teachers to give their students lessons that will help through succeed all throughout public school - and beyond, into the work force. It would allow some teachers to thrive simply because their students are good test takers - but if those same students begin to fail later in life, that teacher will not reap continued rewards. If, on the other hand, a statistically significant number of students that passed through a particular class have moved on to become very successful in life, that (now much older) teacher will reap life-long rewards, as long as he/she teaches, that will vastly outweigh any short-term consequences associated with truly preparing students for life in a way that does not merely maximize standardized test results.

Such a system would be vastly more complicated and there are some potential flaws. For instance, students who achieve great success and happiness in life ... through financially unrewarding endeavors ... would not benefit their teachers. Of course, rewarding teachers on the basis of test results doesn't help with this problem, either.

All my life I've bubbled in answers on pages on standardized tests.

You think any of these tests measure "success" somewhere down the line?

I don't.

Thus using them as some sort of bedrock measure of effectiveness to be tied to salaries is pointless.