Posted by
AZ History Teacher on Saturday, August 29, 2009 9:23:01 PM
On paper merit pay for teachers sounds great. Who wouldn't want to pay a good teacher more than a bad teacher. Who wouldn't want to reward the teacher who teaches vs. the teacher who just shows movies or plays at the computer the whole period. Unfortunately, just like Sushi its one of those things that you can't explain until you actually experience it.
In Arizona it is very difficult to be a teacher. We hardly get paid anything. We have class sizes that are 40+. We have a segment of our population that has no desire to learn English. We have a housing market that tanked that has led many of our families to live as nomads across the various rental properties in the Valley of the Sun. We have teacher turn over like I have never seen. When I taught in NY, we had people who stayed in a school or in the profession for 40 years. Out here, we are lucky if a teacher stays 3 years. We have teachers that disappear even before Christmas break, or in the politically correct education world: Winter Break. It is so difficult to make teaching a career and a profession out here.
So one of the few bones some of us get out here in AZ as teachers is a form of merit pay called Career Ladder. It is simple, you set goals and if you meet these goals you get paid more. Just like those who promote merit pay would want. Unfortunately just like the supposed phrase that in Vietnam you had to burn a village to save it, merit pay makes it so that you have to lower your standard to raise them. The perfect example is our AIMS test, the official AZ test is now so dumbed down and kids can take it 5 times and yet we go around a brag at how many of our kids passed it or which of our schools is performing plus plus because kids passed it. I ask any semi-literate person to look at how dumbed down an AIMS test is. Again we dropped our standards and then act happy when our kids do well on a lower standard. Is this how our kids will compete with a kid from Bombay or Beijing.
So, with merit pay you have to set goals. To get your money the kids have to reach your goals. Therefore the only way to make sure they reach the goal is to like AIMS, dumb it down so all the kids can pass. Lower the standards to raise them.
The worst victims in all this are smart or talented kids. If a student is a good student before they come into your room. If they know stuff before they have you as a teacher and they do well on their pre-tests for your merit pay.....IT COUNTS AGAINST YOU! Yes, merit pay penalizes you for having smart kids in your class. For a teacher to make the merit pay and get paid they actually have to route against their kids from having intelligence before entering your room. Again, smart kids are held against you! Do Chinese and Indian schools count smart kids against their teachers.
And unfortunately since teachers are so poorly paid in AZ, many of us need this extra money and have to take part in a system that grinds out fool after fool to put them in a world where idiots do rule. And don't get me started on how much teaching time is lost on pre and post testing for merit pay that comes out of actual instruction time.
So the next time you hear a politician talk about merit pay, please just think about what I said here.