I Teach Because of the Big Year End Bonus - Not
I struggle with the idea of merit pay for teachers. See this story from Crooks & Liars. There are those that believe merit pay for teachers is a good idea. Crazy! Maybe it's OK for sales people and other suckers (I was one of these) but I don't believe teachers choose the career for the money, knowing that they will eventually make the big bonus payout.
I worked commission jobs for 15 years and I know all about the commissioned suckers. There are those that are up to the commission challenge, get their payoff and move on to the next company. And there are those that struggle just like everyone else.
A few years ago Mathman H.S. had a limited bonus structure based on criteria that we mostly couldn't control. We were going to be paid based upon criteria like, test scores in math and English and student attendance. Attendance is one thing I know that I can't control. Needless to say we missed the payout. Big Deal.
I think most teachers teach because they care about content, schools, students or making a difference.
4 variables:
Good C&L article (love the cartoon). I learned a lot from the comments, too.
A conservative teacher I know once told me that if teachers want to be treated as a professional class, they need to give up the "union-think" and accept things like merit pay while eschewing tenure and such. I pissed him off by saying, "Better yet, all the liberal educators could just move to Canada while the rest open private daycare/tutoring services in their homes!"
Thank you for turning me on to C&L. The comments were very interesting. When I went to school, a l-o-o-o-n-n-g time ago, we were taught we were taught the three Rs, plus history and some art. We also had one hour of P.E. every single day. We were tested regularly on the individual subjects, and graded OBJECTIVELY. At the end of the semester our grades in each subject were determined by averaging the accumulated grades. Once a year, we were subjected to the State Exams, which determined the grade level at which we performed. It seems to me that this system worked very well. But in the governments untiring determination to FIX WHAT AIN'T BROKEN, they fucked with it, and continue to fuck with it, making it worse with every intervention. I wish they could channel Mrs. Hall (my first grade teacher) and Miss March (third grade) and learn what works and how to implement it.
O'Tim - Conservative teachers are just as bad as those Jews that are on the Bush Wagon - William Kristol et al.
Madame Z - There is no question that in some sense school reform has caused education to lose the variety it use to have. This is particularly bad for the younger students: recess and socialization take a back seat to preparing for standardized tests.
If anything good has come from eudcation reform it's the advancement of standards based learning and an effort to accommadate the multitude of differnt learning styles.
My niece is a teacher and I know she surely didn't become a teacher to get rich. She just loves helping kids learn new things.
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