Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Hmmm, do you think that the conversion to all digital TV will provide a transmission switch Obama could use to shut off people's sets?!
His bonus program for teachers is really, really stupid, too. Before proposing it, he might want to have checked out the states that tried to do this -- it was a mess here in Texas. Heh, I got one retroactive bonus check after years of litigation over criteria, the "unfairness" of these bonuses, etc. I still don't know what happened to the subsequent years of bonuses as my students continued to perform well. I think they gave up on the bonus thing.
It's costly and DOESN'T WORK! Obama would know that if he thought it might be important to do a bit of research.
Bonuses have to be funded by the federal government and they represent merit pay. State and local governments revenues are not tied to school test scores. Thus revenues can go down and test scores up and then you have no money for bonuses (merit pay). The Feds can sustain the funding for. Unions are against merit pay and conservatives tend to favor it. That would put Obama on the conservative side of this issue. It is consistant with Behavior Economics and Finance to use motivation to increase teacher performance.
MINNEAPOLIS — For years, the unionized teaching profession opposed few ideas more vehemently than merit pay, but those objections appear to be eroding as school districts in dozens of states experiment with plans that compensate teachers partly based on classroom performance.
Scores of similar but mostly smaller teacher-pay experiments are under way nationwide, and union locals are cooperating with some of them, said Allan Odden, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies teacher compensation. A consensus is building across the political spectrum that rewarding teachers with bonuses or raises for improving student achievement, working in lower income schools or teaching subjects that are hard to staff can energize veteran teachers and attract bright rookies to the profession.
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama today endorsed the idea of merit pay for teachers before an audience hostile to the idea, the giant National Education Association, but he softened the blow by telling the union's national assembly that he would not use "arbitrary tests" to link pay to performance
Hmmm, do you think that the conversion to all digital TV will provide a transmission switch Obama could use to shut off people's sets?!
His bonus program for teachers is really, really stupid, too. Before proposing it, he might want to have checked out the states that tried to do this -- it was a mess here in Texas. Heh, I got one retroactive bonus check after years of litigation over criteria, the "unfairness" of these bonuses, etc. I still don't know what happened to the subsequent years of bonuses as my students continued to perform well. I think they gave up on the bonus thing.
It's costly and DOESN'T WORK! Obama would know that if he thought it might be important to do a bit of research.
Do you suggest then that all teachers continue to get paid the same and to receive the same raise every year regardless of performance? What professions in the public sector do that? Is the notion of same pay regardless of performance a liberal or conservative concept? As a tax payer not as a teacher I must ask you are you willing to continue funding the bottomless pit of public education without any performance accountability for your dollar$?
Sure just pour more money at the schools - the classic dem solution. No matter that the DC school district spends $20000/pupil right now. That is more than the BEST private school education one could buy.
John McCain on merit pay in 1999.
Good teachers should earn more than bad lawyers
Q: How can we attract the best and the brightest teachers, given the current salaries? A: I don’t see why a good teacher should be paid less money than a bad senator. It’s important that we have merit pay for teachers, that we have teacher testing, that we do everything we can to motivate young men and women to enter this profession. There’s a whole generation that’s retiring. It is unconscionable that the average salary of a lawyer is $79,000 a year and the average salary of a teacher is $39,000 a year
Source: Republican Debate at Dartmouth College Oct 29, 1999
First off - parental involvement is good, but a lot of parents have to work more than one job just to keep a roof over their family's heads. Parents with low wage jobs aren't going to be able to provide a lot of parental involvement. Also, in most young families, both parents work. Communities need to find ways to supplement "parental involvement" but that's another issue.
Second - if you aren't going to tie merit pay to test scores, what are you going to tie it to?
Third - some teachers are bad. I was in a video store one day and a little boy (maybe 10 years old) was telling his grandmother what they did all week in school. On Monday, they watched This Video, then on Tuesday, they watched That Video, then on Wednesday they watched Another Video. His grandmother said in astonishment "Goodness! So many videos! When does the teacher teach?" I don't remember the entire response but the answer was: the teacher didn't teach very often. She mostly let them watch movies.
Parents need to think about these things before they have a kid, or 2 or 3, or 4.....
Even with working, there is still plenty of time in the day, many parents feel that the gov is here to raise their kids, the gov of course have constantly fought parents for years over who has more rights to their kids upbringing. Now many parents have been raised since they were kids that kids and all aspects of their raising is the responsibility of schools/government, not parents. Parents are just their to feed them (once a day I might add) and to produce them and shelter them, that is about it.
Merit pay should not be tied to test scores because frankly, there are just some plain stupid groups of people out there who have been raised in an environment that says education is not important. I never liked the whole idea of basing academics off of test scores anyway.
Some teachers bad? Many are! The teachers union is one of the worst organizations in the country. They have no purpose other than to protect their jobs in face of any circumstances to the point a teacher has to commit a criminal act to even get fired now days.
It would help of course if the federal gov stayed out of schools all together.
I continue to hear anecdotal evidence of bad teachers and schools. Can someone on the board here tell me how their children's schools were? As I have stated, my kids went to schools all over the place and although they were not all academically challenging, they were not all places full of lazy horrible teachers and awful disrepectful children either.
First off - parental involvement is good, but a lot of parents have to work more than one job just to keep a roof over their family's heads. Parents with low wage jobs aren't going to be able to provide a lot of parental involvement. Also, in most young families, both parents work. Communities need to find ways to supplement "parental involvement" but that's another issue.
Second - if you aren't going to tie merit pay to test scores, what are you going to tie it to?
Third - some teachers are bad. I was in a video store one day and a little boy (maybe 10 years old) was telling his grandmother what they did all week in school. On Monday, they watched This Video, then on Tuesday, they watched That Video, then on Wednesday they watched Another Video. His grandmother said in astonishment "Goodness! So many videos! When does the teacher teach?" I don't remember the entire response but the answer was: the teacher didn't teach very often. She mostly let them watch movies.
Not some a lot of teachers are bad. There are 2.8 million teachers grades K-12 in the United States. How many things do 2.8 million adults do well? What percentage would you guess are excellent, good, average, below average or poor? Then figure out how many that comes out to in a base of 2.8 million. Scary isn't it?
(Although, IMO, the very best way for children to get on track is for moms to be able to stay home and care for them. But that's another problem for another day
I completely agree. Real wages (wages adjusted for inflation) have gone down since the late 60's, with only a little tick of a rise in the late 90's. This definitely affects education when both parents are working overtime to feed and clothe the family, instead of focusing more on the kids. Government can definitely have a role in changing the rules of the game to favor working families over just corporate profit. A different balance needs to be attained in America in this regard - and Obama's ideas (while not perfect, of course) are the best thing going. We can have both thriving businesses and thriving families with parents who have time to spend with their kids.
BTW, some of us guys are pretty qualified to stay at home and raise the kids, too.
I completely agree. Real wages (wages adjusted for inflation) have gone down since the late 60's, with only a little tick of a rise in the late 90's. This definitely affects education when both parents are working overtime to feed and clothe the family, instead of focusing more on the kids. Government can definitely have a role in changing the rules of the game to favor working families over just corporate profit. A different balance needs to be attained in America in this regard - and Obama's ideas (while not perfect, of course) are the best thing going. We can have both thriving businesses and thriving families with parents who have time to spend with their kids.
BTW, some of us guys are pretty qualified to stay at home and raise the kids, too.
D'oh! Of course. Sorry
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
