Mrvaudrey

Tag: merit pay

  • The Case for Merit Pay

    It’s most often tenured teachers who have the most surprised reaction when we talk about this. It often starts when our conversations steers close to the issue, and I drop this bomb.

    “I’d happily give up Tenure for Merit Pay.”

    Eyes widen. Jaws slacken. Palms sweat and buns fidget. “Why’s that?” they ask.

    Here’s why:

    There’s a teacher at my school who I watched yell at his kids for not lining up correctly before the bell.
    For ten minutes.
    He also has them copy three pages of notes per section by hand, and that’s theB onlyB way he teaches.
    He gets paid more than me.

     

     

    This teacher and I have never spoken, and I don’t pretend to judge him based solely on hearsay, but — and I say this without a shred of shame — you’d be hard pressed to find two examples in my class of teaching that bad.

    John and I discussed this briefly in the car on the way back from La CucinaB this weekend. He pushed back, saying (and I agree) that “teacher ranking needs to be rock-solid”.

    Definitely. Let’s go there. There are eight measuresB (so far) of teacher effectiveness, they are, in no order:

    1.) Student test scores – Yeah, okay. They areB a measure. One criterion. No denying that.

    2.) Parent Survey – this would definitely encourage me to make more parent contact.

    3.) Units after Bachelor’s degree – Objective and easily verified.

    4.) Student Survey – arguably the best judge of teacher effectiveness, students should have significant voice in what makes a good teacher. I createdB my own listB and I have them grade me two or three times a year. (Then blogged about itB here.)

    5.) Peer Observations – You know who else does a good job of judging teacher effectiveness? Other teachers.

    6.) Administrator Observations – You know who does a slightly less-good job? Some administrators. Mine are awesome at this, though.

    Potentially problematic ways to analyze teacher effectiveness:

    7.) Conference and Workshop Attendance – How do you verify what a workshop is?

    8.) Student Grades – Uh oh. How do you make sure that each teacher grades the same way on the same assignments?

    Anyway, I don’t claim to have the answer, but I have a response to the question.

    ~Matt “Teachers Could Make $100K a Year” Vaudrey

  • Dear President Obama

    Dear President Obama,

    I gave you my vote in 2008 and I am still 100% glad that I did. Ibve never doubted you in your 14 months so far and I think youbre fabulous. This is a letter commending your triumphs because you are an easy man to criticize; people love to throw stones at the TV screen knowing the President wonbt yell back.

    As an American, Ibm fan of Healthcare reform. So committed, in fact, that I find myself in the minority for the first time in my life. Ibm a White, Protestant, Middle-class male with a Masterbs degree. Ibm from an upper-middle class family and so is my wife.

    Ibm in the minority for this reason: Ibm prepared to pay more taxes for the same health coverage so that medical coverage could be provided to those less fortunate than I am. Ibm sure if everybody thought this way, webd have a bill already, but Ibm prepared to wait until we find a bill that people quit complaining about.

    (And Ibll tell any Republicans I know to put some of their energy into building bills instead of tearing them down.)

    Unrelated to health care, I support several unpopular ideas and I figured that youbd like a voice in the trenches. So here it is from an educator:

    Merit Pay is a great idea if properly and concretely implemented. I wonbt suggest what that system will be, but I can say from my own experience that teachers who stink are kept in the payroll way too long. Exciting and motivated teachers have little incentive to do a good job when tenured teachers get paid more to sit behind their desk and hand out worksheets. Itbs depressing.

    NCLB is hated universally among teachers that I know. We all agree that the students in our classes need better skills and that a great way to measure that is test scores, but to claim that all schools reach an API score of 800 by the year 2014 is ridiculous. If you donbt know much about API, then you can trust me on this; itbs ridiculous.

    We understand that the White House has bigger fish to fry than No Child Left Behind reform. For now, we teachers are fine to just b& not talk about it.

    Itbs also pretty apparent that youbre not a big fan of people applauding you; I respect that and empathize. I giggled when Michelle motioned for the house to bsit downb during the standing ovation for her obesity plan.

    All that to say that I think youbre great and I will support you until you do something crazy, like invade Canada

    b& and probably even after that. They’ve been asking for it, eh.

    ~V