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Old 06-18-2011, 04:51 AM
 
Location: MMU->ABE->ATL->ASH
9,317 posts, read 20,955,366 times
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WHY SHOULD THEY! What is the motivation for passing a STANDARIZED TEST?

Take a read thru, I remeber when i was in 3rd grade i took the iowa tests and made real nice pattern with all the dots. I know my son only cared about the 5th & 8th grade GA tests because he needed to pass them to move on. (and he failed the math in 5th grade, by 3 ponts and had to do summer school)
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Old 06-18-2011, 04:51 AM
 
24,488 posts, read 41,062,294 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler View Post
I've been in industry and I'm now in teaching and I'm telling you that merit pay will not work. You will drive good teachers out of teaching and popular teachers will get raises. In 10 years, you'll have a system of popular teachers with people who couldn't find a job elsewhere filling in the vacancies because there will be vacancies when those who can do and those who can't are the only ones left to teach.
I respect your experience in the industry. I just am glad to see change as well.
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Old 06-18-2011, 04:53 AM
 
Location: Whoville....
25,386 posts, read 35,466,787 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NJBest View Post
I would support this as a good method.
IMO, this would be a start but you'd have to look at several years worth of data before you could ascertain anything. It will be more than 10 years before such a system would be useful WRT merit pay and teachers. Of course, it will take money to dissect the data. You'd have to look at how each individual student tracked through several teachers and how different teachers teaching the same subjects fared over several years. Personally, I don't trust the government to put in the effort it would take to actually use testing to separate the good teachers from the bad but I will accept tying passing/failing to the tests that I am judged by. You just can't judge me by a test my students take that they have no vested interest in taking.
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Old 06-18-2011, 04:55 AM
 
24,488 posts, read 41,062,294 times
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Originally Posted by Ivorytickler View Post
IMO, this would be a start but you'd have to look at several years worth of data before you could ascertain anything. It will be more than 10 years before such a system would be useful WRT merit pay and teachers.
The investment in time is worth it if it will yield good results.
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Old 06-18-2011, 04:56 AM
 
Location: Whoville....
25,386 posts, read 35,466,787 times
Reputation: 14692
Quote:
Originally Posted by NJBest View Post
I respect your experience in the industry. I just am glad to see change as well.
The problem is, they are the wrong changes. I predict merit pay will have disasterous fallout. The only possible good thing I see coming out of it, is we might get exit exams so that passing/failing a class/grade is clearly quantified. One of the issues teachers face is kids who enter classes without the prerequisite knowledge. There is not much I can do with a child who doesn't know algebra. Chemistry is math with beakers. If they had to pass an exit exam to get out of algebra and could not take my class until they did, I'd see a higher percentage of kids with the prerequisite math knowledge to succeed in chemistry.
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Old 06-18-2011, 04:57 AM
 
18,837 posts, read 37,281,021 times
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I saw this attitude coming when I taught. Now, on the IEP forms there was a box that was checked if the parents wanted the child included in testing or not.

I really don't see Merit pay any different than a commission pay in sales, sometimes you have a great year, other times you don't.

I agree with Ivory, smart, motivated people will leave teaching, I did, and found my skills transferred very well into health care, where I fill a very needed niche in providing education on using adaptive equipment to both staff and patients.

When I taught I did everything I could to make more money, I sold my prep, worked ESY, was at the top of the pay scale in terms of education and National Board Certification, 20 years on the pay scale...I was topped out. I did administration, but hated it.

Glad I left. I miss the kids, I liked teaching. But not the politics.
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Old 06-18-2011, 05:01 AM
 
Location: Whoville....
25,386 posts, read 35,466,787 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NJBest View Post
The investment in time is worth it if it will yield good results.
It will yeild no results for a decade. How willing will John Q Public be to foot this bill (and it will be enormous) with no results on the horizon? No, it won't fall out that way. They'll be hanging teachers on first year data because that's what the public wants. It's like calling an exterminator for ants. The customer wants to see them die NOW. Never mind one of the most effective ways of, permanently, ridding yourself of ants (boric acid) takes about three weeks to destroy the nest. Exterminators make a lot of money coming back month after month because people want poisons down that kill the ants NOW but don't kill the nest so they keep coming back. The public wants merit pay because the public wants heads of teachers and they want them now.

IMO, it would be far better to spend this money on additional training for the teachers you have. ....but there will be no heads on platters that way so it won't happen.

I, for one, would love some intensive training on differential instruction. If I want it though, I have to do it on my time and my dime. You know, in the 20 years I was in industry I never paid for a single class or seminar and they gave me the time... Maybe it's time we start treating teachers like other professionals.
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Old 06-18-2011, 05:02 AM
 
24,488 posts, read 41,062,294 times
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Jasper, your story is interesting. I actually have always wanted to leave the private sector and go into teaching later in life. The opposite of what you did.
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Old 06-18-2011, 05:08 AM
 
Location: Whoville....
25,386 posts, read 35,466,787 times
Reputation: 14692
Quote:
Originally Posted by jasper12 View Post
I saw this attitude coming when I taught. Now, on the IEP forms there was a box that was checked if the parents wanted the child included in testing or not.

I really don't see Merit pay any different than a commission pay in sales, sometimes you have a great year, other times you don't.

I agree with Ivory, smart, motivated people will leave teaching, I did, and found my skills transferred very well into health care, where I fill a very needed niche in providing education on using adaptive equipment to both staff and patients.

When I taught I did everything I could to make more money, I sold my prep, worked ESY, was at the top of the pay scale in terms of education and National Board Certification, 20 years on the pay scale...I was topped out. I did administration, but hated it.

Glad I left. I miss the kids, I liked teaching. But not the politics.
The politics are getting to me too. I'm thinking I made a mistake in switching careers. I'm not quite ready to admit that and head back into engineering yet but if they push merit pay, that will be the kick in the butt I need. I will not sit around until it's my head on the platter because I happened to get a challenging group of kids.

People who want merit pay are not considering that different groups of children are not the same. You have years when you have strong classes and years when you don't. I've already been told that the class I'll have next year is a struggling class. This year's class was a high flying class. While the average over many years will be consistent, each year can be very different from the last which means I'm responding to a different set of challenges each year.
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Old 06-18-2011, 05:32 AM
 
Location: Michaux State Forest
1,275 posts, read 3,408,562 times
Reputation: 1441
Okay, merit pay is one issue that really gets to me because it is so wrong, as it is just another example of scapegoating teachers because no one wants to confront the real reasons and issues that are contributing to the failure of our public schools. Many of those who support merit pay have never set foot in a classroom. This will not work because our kids are individuals, not a product on an assembly line and thus cannot be measured as such. This WILL drive out the good teachers who are already struggling to make ends meet. I am disgusted and disheartened by the politics that now prevade the teaching profession, truly sad.
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