[DonnaReed]

THIS QUOTE -

IF YOU APPLY YOURSELF FOR THE FEW HOURS YOU ARE REQUIRED TO BE THERE AND DON'T SCREW AROUND YOU WILL DO FINE. THE HONOR STUDENTS ARE NOT ALWAYS THE SMARTEST, THEY JUST TOD THE WORK. WHAT A SHOCKING CONCEPT.


Sometimes it's that simple...

Some honor students have well-educated parents and are exposed to vocabulary at home that helps them tremendously in reading and writing.

Some honor students have more supportive parents

Hell, some honor students HAVE parents.

Some honor students catch on very quickly.

Some honor students have very good memories.

Some have learning styles more suited to popular teaching methods.

I was an honor student from first grade through secondary education.
I wouldn't say that kids in classes with me were the hardest working or most committed students; some were.

I know in some ways it helped that I was a reader. My parents were not formally educated, but smart enough to know that reading is fundamental, so we had books, books and more books at home and I liked to read. I was reading adult books at the age of seven.


Bottom line: There are students who work diligently, ardously even, who are not honor students based on the criteria,
which begins with a little something called "tracking.


I was fortunate to be dubbed "gifted" in the first grade
and lemmee tell ya, that was a gift in and of itself.

[Magnulus]

Merit pay the way it is envisioned is a terrible idea. Alot of Florida teachers are dealing with borderline enfeebled brains from abusive, neglectful, or deprived homes.

Having said that, not all teachers are crap. I haven't gone to any Florida schools in so many years, though. Growing up in east Hillsborough county I went to a decent school for a few years and had good teachers, though I cannot remember most of their names. I also went to schools in Viriginia and they were pretty good, even though sometimes the students were drunk or indifferent most of the time. Bad schooling happens everywhere, because face it, education isn't a priority in many peoples lives. It isn't like Japan or Korea where parents expect alot out of kids academicly. Here, we view school as a way to recruit football players, and that's pretty sad.

[Ten]

What an extraordinary time we live in. Having bought the myth that government schools educate, when in fact they cost twice what the private sector would charge to deliver a product, now we actually wave millions of dollars around and still the government school monopoly denies its responsibility to seek excellence.

Originally Posted by sunrico90

The Florida Legislature's new teacher merit pay plan may have been passed with union support, but teachers still don't like it and some school districts have declined to participate, turning down millions of dollars in state bonus money.

It's called The Merit Awards Program, and it has been drawing similar complaints to a bonus pay system called Special Teachers are Rewarded program that it replaced in March.

Wow, the entire country depends on marketplace excellence when the teachers of our own kids in a nearly choice-less, badly failing system refuse to live by an proven excellence standard. I wonder if there's a connection.

Proponents say the plan is a way to reward outstanding teachers for their work, but critics say it undermines teamwork by pitting teacher against teacher in a scramble for a limited number of bonuses.

Heh. Surely we can't have competitive excellence in public education. Nope.

Some explain it's unfair and inaccurate to use a single high-stakes test to determine who gets the extra money. "I don't think teaching is a competitive activity. Teaching should be a cooperative activity."

Code for "leave us alone, we'll do what we want."

Teachers and their unions also say merit pay should be put on hold until base salaries are increased to the national average. Florida is about $6,000 below par, according to the Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers union.

Finally some light at the end of the tunnel: Government school teachers, you have a choice: Make more in a free-market environment, or continue to believe that government schooling's low standards and low pay are for you.

Do you agree on this? Merit pay is commonly used by private business to promote higher productivity. Proponents hope it will do the same in the classroom and help attract and retain the best teachers.

Absolutely anything that puts government schools in the marketplace is a good thing. Enough failure is enough.

My child tripled her academic performance simply by getting out of city high and into private education. Her nine cousins are all home schooled and 100% of them are well above the national average, plus far happier to boot. Getting government out of education is the surest way to probably double academic achievement. With that much performance incentive margin, the notion that poor kids won't be able to be educated becomes a canard.

Frankly, there's almost no way they could be doing more poorly than they already are. Government schools are a fraud.

[Ten]

Originally Posted by Magnulus

Merit pay the way it is envisioned is a terrible idea. Alot of Florida teachers are dealing with borderline enfeebled brains from abusive, neglectful, or deprived homes.

These "borderline enfeebled brains from abusive, neglectful, or deprived homes" come about largely as the product of dependency on government instead of self.

Government schooling is now in runaway mode: It's creating the welfare problems it's proponents say, wrongly, it's solving. It's called positive feedback, where the system depends on its own failure to perpetuate itself, thereby adding to the failure.

Government school teacher's attitudes about merit incentives are ample proof. Instead of excellence, choice, and diversity, we have the great social leveling myth, where we make nothing whatsoever a priority by saying we're making everything a priority. No Child Left Behind means leaving all children behind.

Government education isn't education. It's pandering to the special interest du jour, whether it be political correctness or some political cause or a lunch program. Next month it'll be learning by staying home. The month after, finding your inner puppy, the month after, how to learn the basics by spending the month seeing how capitalism ruins the African continent or some such rot.

Enough already.

Government has no constitutional right ruining education. So why's it there?