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I agree comparing to a state average is not particularly helpful. But comparing same school performance year over year makes sense.
Why? For schools that are already performing exceedingly well that means teacher will not get raises at all.
My students would ace the HSPA without me or any other teacher. For the kids at either end of the spectrum (the truly gifted and the truly failing) the reality is that the single largest factor for students success is home life. So how would you judge those teachers in any fair or meaningful way?
Why? For schools that are already performing exceedingly well that means teacher will not get raises at all.
My students would ace the HSPA without me or any other teacher. For the kids at either end of the spectrum (the truly gifted and the truly failing) the reality is that the single largest factor for students success is home life. So how would you judge those teachers in any fair or meaningful way?
I am sure there is room for improvement at all schools, don't become complacent.
The way you control for home life is to compare performance year over year. Again, for the most part, public schools draw students who share common socioeconomic backgrounds.
I am sure there is room for improvement at all schools, don't become complacent.
LOL! Every student in my school got the highest grade on the HSPA (Advanced proficient) that can be had. If that is the standardized test that will be used (and all the plans I have seen use it) than based on the merit pay plan we cannot improve.
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The way you control for home life is to compare performance year over year. Again, for the most part, public schools draw student who share common socioeconomic backgrounds.
How does year after year control for home life? I used to teach at Matawan Aberdeen. One year I had 5 students who could barely stay awake in class because they HAD to work to support the family. The year before I had 3 kids from the BOE members who were some of the most motivated students I have ever had. On paper the averages of the 5 kids was so low that it made the whole class averages come down to the point that when compared to the year before would make it look as if I was not teaching as well as I had before. How is that fair?
LOL! Every student in my school got the highest grade on the HSPA (Advanced proficient) that can be had. If that is the standardized test that will be used (and all the plans I have seen use it) than based on the merit pay plan we cannot improve.
How does year after year control for home life? I used to teach at Matawan Aberdeen. One year I had 5 students who could barely stay awake in class because they HAD to work to support the family. The year before I had 3 kids from the BOE members who were some of the most motivated students I have ever had. On paper the averages of the 5 kids was so low that it made the whole class averages come down to the point that when compared to the year before would make it look as if I was not teaching as well as I had before. How is that fair?
That is the way a meritocracy works. You simply can't control for every variable. In the private sector people are held to a standard, hurdles aren't considered excuses.
I find it hard to believe that there is no way to evaluate teachers on their proficiency. There have been so many varied excuses over the years. I don't blame the teachers unions for it, that is their job to protect their membership. but the reality is there are good teachers and there are bad teachers. Ultimately the good teachers will produce better objective results than poor teachers. Good teachers should welcome merit pay, poor teachers should fear it.
"But an increasing body of evidence shows that merit pay systems do work—if they're done right. In Arkansas, an ongoing study by the University of Arkansas of a Little Rock teacher pay-for-performance program reports significant gains in student test scores, as well as overall teacher satisfaction with the system. “The results were pretty clear,” said Gary Ritter, PhD, co-author of the study and endowed chair in education policy at the University of Arkansas. “We found a positive effect of program participation, ranging anywhere for 6 to 9 percentile points.” For a struggling school district, or any school district, those are major gains."
The whole merit pay debate for teachers got me thinking. Why not do something similar for cops? If your crimes stats go down in your town you get a raise. If they dont go down then you dont get your yearly raise. Being that Newark just went a month without a murder for the first time in a long time. I am sure Newark cops should be rewarded for something like this. This type of merit pay system would reward outstanding cops that are preventing crimes in a lot of NJ towns.
Cops in Cranford,Millburn,Livingston,Short Hills should be rewarded for keeping crime so low.
Hahhaa ... I think they already have such a "merit pay" system in place (I mean, the Cranford/Millburn/Livingston cops are getting rewarded).
The contracts cops have are written as if they were designed to be gamed. They don't need merit pay (they already have a hierarchical system that permits variation in pay) so much as contracts that aren't designed to be gamed.
That is the way a meritocracy works. You simply can't control for every variable. In the private sector people are held to a standard, hurdles aren't considered excuses.
I find it hard to believe that there is no way to evaluate teachers on their proficiency. There have been so many varied excuses over the years. I don't blame the teachers unions for it, that is their job to protect their membership. but the reality is there are good teachers and there are bad teachers. Ultimately the good teachers will produce better objective results than poor teachers. Good teachers should welcome merit pay, poor teachers should fear it.
So you just said the same thing again without answer my very specific questions. I
How will teachers like me, whose students already have the highest possible scores on the HSPA, get raises using the test scores every merit pay program uses?
How will you protect teachers who work in the poorest, lowest socieoeconomic districts and work with some of the most troubled students?
How will you assign students? If there are children who are known to be chronic poor performers, which ever teacher's class they go into, that teacher will not get a raise that year.
The details really matter here, so not using platitudes, how can merit pay be made fair?
So you just said the same thing again without answer my very specific questions. I
How will teachers like me, whose students already have the highest possible scores on the HSPA, get raises using the test scores every merit pay program uses?
How will you protect teachers who work in the poorest, lowest socieoeconomic districts and work with some of the most troubled students?
How will you assign students? If there are children who are known to be chronic poor performers, which ever teacher's class they go into, that teacher will not get a raise that year.
The details really matter here, so not using platitudes, how can merit pay be made fair?
I don't think a full blown merit pay plan is going to be formulated here. I point out that most public schools draw from homogeneous communities meaning, they don't change their socioeconomic characteristcs radically from year to year. You counter with anecdotal evidence which may or may not be accurate.
Because I cannot present every detail for you on an internet forum doesn't mean it is not possible. See the article I posted above, merit pay clearly works.
Of course merit pay can be made to be fair, it happens every day in the private sector.
Again I understand teachers resistance. It is much easier to coast along than to be held accountable.
Why? For schools that are already performing exceedingly well that means teacher will not get raises at all.
My students would ace the HSPA without me or any other teacher. For the kids at either end of the spectrum (the truly gifted and the truly failing) the reality is that the single largest factor for students success is home life. So how would you judge those teachers in any fair or meaningful way?
As I posted elsewhere, the individual teacher shouldn't be on the hook for the aggregate performance of the school, but the administrators should be.
As for the teachers, as I pointed out the baseline is the percentile of the student in the beginning of the year, which you compare with the percentile at the end of the year. Obviously, some basic conditions need to be met for this to work. For example, the test needs to be sensitive enough to detect changes (up or down) in the students performance.
Unfortunately, the unions militantly oppose any form of accountability. Their far-left political orientation compels them to insist on paying everyone the same regardless of teaching effectiveness, utility of the teacher's work or market value of their skill set.
But the fact that it takes some careful thought to design a good compensation scheme does not mean that it should be summarily dismissed as impossible. The sad truth is that most of those who insist that it can't be done, don't want it to be done because they don't want accountability.
How will teachers like me, whose students already have the highest possible scores on the HSPA, get raises using the test scores every merit pay program uses?
The test needs to be sensitive enough to detect changes in student ability to be a good candidate for measuring student performance.
The fact that there exist inadequate tests does not imply that it is impossible to design a test that is adequate.
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How will you protect teachers who work in the poorest, lowest socieoeconomic districts and work with some of the most troubled students?
The baseline is the percentile rank of each student in the incoming class. These students start at a low percentile.
Also, I don't think there's a need to compare teachers at one school with teachers at another school.
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How will you assign students? If there are children who are known to be chronic poor performers, which ever teacher's class they go into, that teacher will not get a raise that year.
If the student is a chronic poor performer, the baseline is lower. If they continue to perform poorly, they are meeting expectations in the same way as an average student whose performance is average.
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The details really matter here, so not using platitudes, how can merit pay be made fair?
It really isn't that hard, unless you want it to be. The notion of establishing controls and baselines, and making them robust is well understood. There are people who have given considerable thought to these issues and the state of modern science is such that we are quite a long way from simplistic proposals that ignore baselines.
However, I think it is a bit much to expect everyone who expects teachers to be accountable just like anyone else in any other industry, to be able to draw up a detailed and well thought out performance appraisal system on demand. The finer points of compensation, agency (e.g. aligning employees interests with their clients), and establishing baselines are things that ultimately need attention of people who are knowledgeable about these things -- management experts, psychologists, economists and policy experts.
Last edited by elflord1973; 05-06-2010 at 08:55 PM..
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