A study conducted in the metropolitan Nashville school system by Vanderbilt University's National Center on Performance Incentives and described by researchers as the nation's first scientifically rigorous look at merit pay for teachers calls into question the Obama administration's push for merit pay to improve education. The researchers looked at 300 5th thru 8th grade math teachers from 2007 thru 2009. Half were eligible for the bonus.
The study found that student's whose teachers were offered bonuses of up to $15,000 a year for improved test scores registered the same gains on standardized exams as those whose teachers were given no such incentive.
What are your thoughts?
9 comments:
That is because the of the huge classes, the teachers are now expected to integrate the sped and bilingual students into their classrooms. This usually brings the total amount of students in a class up to about 32. That could be one reason why! Not all, but some parents don't value education at home and don't support the efforts of the teachers.
Ummm let's see....Because we are not the damn problem!!!!
Many of us are already doing the best we can. Any teacher worth their salt does the very best they can for their students with no extra compensation as it is. They call it incentive pay. What incentive? Incentive to cheat, maybe, since that it your only option if the student is incapable or indifferent to their own education. You could offer me a million dollars to teach a dog to drive a stick shift. That doesn't mean I can do it! It's the same as trying to teach a 17 year old student with a 5th grade reading level to pass the 10th grade MCAS. The achievement gap is out of reach at this point. These deficits need to be addressed at the elementary level not with high school students when it is too late by the time they hit middle school. Bribes to high school students aren't the answer. Extra help, math & literacy coaches, and class sizes cut in half, plus major parental involvement at the elementary level is what would solve our problems. But I guess that's just the American way, everything and everyone has a price. Money for test scores. I'm disgusted at the immorality of it and sickened more so by those individuals who think this is a good idea. Teachers getting a commission for every passing score. I smell capitalism.
Former college basketball coach Bobby Knight once put his team through a timed drill in practice with the directive to "give me all you've got, don't hold back." When the drill was finished he then offered a 100 dollar reward to any team member who could beat his previous time. When 3 out of 15 players accepted the challenge he cut the players from the team. His logic was if you've given me all you've got, then an incentive won't make you perform any better and you can't beat your previous time.
That same logic can be applied to teaching. Those who do their best every day won't do any better because they are paid extra to achieve better test scores. Rather, they may be encouraged to concentrate on the students who have the best chance of passing. This sounds a lot like the premise of paying AP teachers more money for each student who receives a certain score on the exam. A recent TIME article on Teach For America indicated that some Ivy League graduates don't go into teaching because they honestly believe that garbage men make more than teachers. The argument could be made that teaching should pay more in order to attract and retain better teacher candidates. Of course several other arguments could be made about teacher evaluations, certification, class size, curriculum, instruction, and assessment, parental involvement and responsibility, etc.
Hey Big W... my friend is a garbage man and he does make more money than me! And I'm on top step!
A top step teacher makes in the neighborhood of $70,000 plus. Depending on educational attainment the salary could be in excess of $74,000. No disrespect is meant to garbagemen/women, however, I find it hard to believe their salaries top that of a top step teacher. More information is needed. Are you including overtime?
A teacher does over time every day and does not get paid for it. How much work do you take home? Are you paid for it? Yet others, yes garbage men get paid more when they must complete the task outside the parameters of their daily job.
I have looked up the salaries of garbagemen and women. While they may make more than a beginning teacher, they do not make more than the middle to top step teacher with educational degrees and longevity. So your data is geared more towards the lower step teacher. However, if you are determined to provide false information about salaries, harp on the overtime for garbage workers, who even with overtime may not make the salary of a top step teacher, and cry about having to take work home, perhaps you are in the wrong profession. I can only imagine you will be telling you kids to refrain from going to school to be a teacher since, by your logic, garbage workers make more money. I wonder what the garbage workers are doing doing the summer when you have 10 weeks off.
To the last anonymous writer, PLEASE! Are you kidding me? Teachers have the summer off? How about the ones who are creating new curriculum for their upcoming school year, the ones that are taking courses to keep up with the ever-increasing demands of professional development, or the ones who are going into the school itself to teach summer school or a extra-curricular summer program? Or how about those teachers who work like dogs all year doing all kinds of extra work both before and after a school day with less resources than ever before, and they don't earn an extra penny for all of their time and effort? It's time that we all step back and stop pretending that teachers have one of the easiest, over-paid jobs on the planet, and look at the real deal...I dare anyone who has never taught before to spend one day in an urban school setting with practically no resources and huge class sizes, not to mention having to work with those students with all manner of personal and social/emotional issues and get them to aspire to work for success. We'd see how fast things would get turned around!
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