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I have spent far more than a "couple of weeks" teaching. In terms of the latter comment, I've never suggested that "every teach is horrible and no student has ever learned anything".....I really don't know where that is even coming from.
I've already listed some, but some objective metrics are: 1.) Student evaluations, 2.) Administrator evaluations, 3.) peer evaluations, 4.) test scores, 5.) student grades, 6.) student performance in later courses, later years....and so on.
Those are all subjective and that is the whole problem with merit pay for teachers--it ends up coming down to who is buddies with the principal. Evaluations are ALWAYS subjective, using test scores are subjective in how you interpret the data from those scores and how on earth can you blame a teacher 10 years down the road for something a former student does??
Where my comment is coming from is your entire attitude toward teachers in every single post.
Yes....and what conclusion exactly are you trying to draw? That some students act poorly? Gee...really? Pointing out cases were students are doing stupid things in no sense invalidates the effectiveness of student evaluations. After all...you could do the same thing for voters in general elections, should we now replace our democracy with the sort of dictatorship that exists in US public schools?
I hate to break it to you but high school students are indeed legally responsible for their own actions......
I am? Can you point out where I said this? Of course...I said no such thing just yet another fabricated assertion.
The issues you mentioned are also issues on college campuses...yet they all use student evaluations. Are they perhaps greater in high school? Probably...but how does that invalidate the use of student evaluations in that setting? The fact that some students will provide junk evaluations is a given, that is why you look at a statistically significant sample of evaluations.
And gee...that is just so different than what happens in politics huh? As I said before, using student evaluations as the sole factor in a teachers evaluation would be insane, instead they should be used as part of a comprehension review process. The voting comparison makes no sense....
Umm...sorry but you couldn't be more wrong. Student evaluations are indeed used when evaluating instructors. They are used in the hiring process (for when you taught as a grad student), they are used when determining tenure, etc. Now are they the sole determining factor? Not even close...but they are looked at and are part of the decision making process.
I'm not going to entertain your ad homs, my experience is irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of the claims I'm making.
Ok let's keep this simple then.
Please show evidence showing that student evaluations correlate with teacher effectiveness at either the primary or secondary level.
Those are all subjective and that is the whole problem with merit pay for teachers--it ends up coming down to who is buddies with the principal. Evaluations are ALWAYS subjective, using test scores are subjective in how you interpret the data from those scores and how on earth can you blame a teacher 10 years down the road for something a former student does??
Where my comment is coming from is your entire attitude toward teachers in every single post.
Yup! It comes down to whether or not the pricipal likes you and whether the parents complain about you. The teacher who bakes a cake for the principal and gives easy A's will get high evaluations.
Last year, my evaluator was the vice principal who thought I walked on water. This year, it's the principal and, in his eyes, I can do no right (he reprimanded me for calling on a student in class because she claimed she was embarassed. This girl sits in my class, arms folded and stares intently into the corner (in a show of contempt for me, no doubt). So I started calling on her trying to get her out of the corner. I got my hand smacked. Given the circumstances, I don't think that was warranted.). I was not the principals first choice in the hiring process. A friend of his was. He was out voted because the school board wanted my credentials over his. I'm going to bet my evaluation this year looks nothing like my evaluation last year. I still have four years to go to tenure so they can fire me for sneezing funny.....
Yup! It comes down to whether or not the pricipal likes you and whether the parents complain about you. The teacher who bakes a cake for the principal and gives easy A's will get high evaluations.
Last year, my evaluator was the vice principal who thought I walked on water. This year, it's the principal and, in his eyes, I can do no right (he reprimanded me for calling on a student in class because she claimed she was embarassed. This girl sits in my class, arms folded and stares intently into the corner (in a show of contempt for me, no doubt). So I started calling on her trying to get her out of the corner. I got my hand smacked. Given the circumstances, I don't think that was warranted.). I was not the principals first choice in the hiring process. A friend of his was. He was out voted because the school board wanted my credentials over his. I'm going to bet my evaluation this year looks nothing like my evaluation last year. I still have four years to go to tenure so they can fire me for sneezing funny.....
....Hmmmm....maybe I'd better bake a cake...
Well, welcome to the way the rest of the world is evaluated. Perhaps not quite that simplistic - but yes, your immediate supervisor, has a fairly big impact on your evaluation. It is good if there is some personal rapport but hopefully your supervisor (in your case the principal) would attend at least 4 of your classes (as someone else said) and be able to offer some kind of coaching and feedback with some type of objective goals.
I'm not in your profession (I have my own) so I would not be able to list all those goals for you.
I don't think that teachers are the ONE group in society that simply cannot be evaluated. I think they just don't want to be.
I think there is something to be said for merit pay and quality of performance. What is your incentive to be an outstanding teacher if you get the same raise, the same increase, as the teacher next door who does next to nothing?
Some folks are very self-driven to continually improve and push themselves for the better and some are not.
Those are all subjective and that is the whole problem with merit pay for teachers--it ends up coming down to who is buddies with the principal.
How do any of the things I mentioned come down to who is buddies with the principal?
The measures I mentioned are all objective in the sense that they don't depend on the particular views of some principal or other individual, that is, teachers could easily look-up how they are doing etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by golfgal
Evaluations are ALWAYS subjective, using test scores are subjective in how you interpret the data from those scores...
To say it again, when I say "objective measures" I mean that the measures are canonical. There is no way you can evaluate teachers in an entirely objective fashion, but that is hardly an argument against merit based pay.
The argument here seems to be that since there are not any evaluation methods of teacher performance that are 100% accurate then merit based pay won't work.....but that makes little sense. There are no hiring methods that always work...so then should schools stop analyzing applicants and just hire them based on some arbitrary measure..like how tall they are?
A merit system wouldn't be perfect, but its going to be better than paying teachers based on the number of years worked and their degree credits.
I think there is something to be said for merit pay and quality of performance. What is your incentive to be an outstanding teacher if you get the same raise, the same increase, as the teacher next door who does next to nothing?
The funny thing is they've tested that.
Student achievement is not increased by merit pay for teachers.
I teach because I love teaching. I teach for nothing when I haven't got a paid position and am working outside education. I teach for pay when I can - and for a lot less than I make in high tech.
If you pay me more, I will have more money, but I won't teach differently.
Then again, I think I did the same in high tech, too. I do the best I can at what I am doing, because I am paid to work, without a stipulation on how good a job I should do contingent on my pay.
Doesn't mean I won't let my boss know if I feel undervalued, but it's my work!
Please show evidence showing that student evaluations correlate with teacher effectiveness at either the primary or secondary level.
Sure, there is actually plenty of research on this topic all with similar results, namely that high school students are able to effectively evaluate teacher performance:
"Finds that high school student evaluations are very comparable to the more "expert" evaluation. Supports the use of student evaluations for the student teacher evaluation process. (MG)"
I think the fact that all the disagreement is coming from teachers and not educational researchers is very telling, to say it again, the teaching environment in the US is very authoritarian.
A merit system wouldn't be perfect, but its going to be better than paying teachers based on the number of years worked and their degree credits.
Better for what?
I happen to believe we need a decent evaluation system for teachers and that we don't have one - but I don't think it has anything to do with pay. It has to do with helping us to develop better teachers!
If this sounds oddly like the same notions behind authentic assessment of the students, there is a good reason...
None of the merit pay systems currently bandied about is fair. None. "Value added" is perhaps the best, but even it is far too malleable by activities outside the classroom to be viable.
so zero parenting zero support of teachers to discipline gangsta kids in the classroom.
and then we wana hold the teachers accountable for maurice's weapons violations and illiteracy at school? no no friend u r talking about juvi hall not k12.
Why do you write on a forum, as if you are texting? What happened to spelling and capitalizing sentences?
I happen to believe we need a decent evaluation system for teachers and that we don't have one - but I don't think it has anything to do with pay. It has to do with helping us to develop better teachers!
Okay....so should we just stop paying teachers? Or maybe we could pick numbers out of hat to determine their pay?
You have to determine teacher pay with some method....so why not use a method that is actually has some relation to the labor market?
Its funny how much teachers complain about merit based pay when that is how pay is determined pretty much everywhere. Why would primary and secondary teachers in public schools be the exception?
When it comes to merit based pay teachers usually have something very naive in mind, namely that some guy is going to assign them a salary based on how much he likes them.... But that isn't how any serious merit system works and there is tons of literature on this topic to aid educators in building an effective pay system.
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