Education Secretary Arne Duncan Says Merit Pay Should Be Tied to Student Growth

Preface To Educational Reform & Merit pay…

Let’s ill-prepare our teachers in Instructional Science, let’s also have them going to school nights after long days for Master’s degrees and let’s have this challenge overlap with their 3-5 years as neophytes on the job. Oh, and let’s pay them very little while they have sinking debt from undergraduate and graduate degrees and in paying for a dependable car and a place to live and multiple insurances and of course saving while their young for when they grow old, and having a family before they grow too old. And, when they become nearly inured from being constantly observed and evaluated based on the achievements of others, let’s complete the denigration by offering them tenure, or security in a profession that does not offer merit-based pay nor a ladder to better status. Go, be happy and remain energized doing at age 63, make that 67, what you use to do at 22.

Oh, but we already are doing these things, and topping it all off with further reminders of the lowly status of being just a teacher by relabeling school administrators who once served teachers as knighted Educational Leaders. And let’s welcome in parents and Educational Reformers with bizarre and often strident ideological stances to more fully scrutinize every teacher’s every move. The narratives surrounding educational issues are controlled by politicians and self-serving foundations with naïve agendas (try emailing a foundation; they will send you any of their “white papers” FREE, but will not let you post back anything to them or their audience).

It does not have to be this way, but those of us caught up in labyrinthine conditions are often the most difficult to rally against their oppressors; doing so requires rising above “cognitive dissonance” or the tendency to over-value something that requires so much from us.

Should you not find sense in the current state of affairs join me in mounting Teacher-based educational reforms. There are two that I believe deserve your attention and comment. One would be to fix a fundamental problem in which all of us are complicit: the need to forge a standard curriculum of Best Instructional Practices. There is no consensus on just what constitutes Teacher Preparation, what teachers are taught about teaching can vary greatly from one professor to another; nonetheless, Teachers are increasingly accountable for student learning even while Schools of Education and State Departments have yet to identify the specific tools that you should know and master. (You may wish to see one effort to generate movement in this direction at: http://bestmethodsofinstruction.com/.)

In a manner of speaking there can be such a thing as Teacher Education until a core curriculum has been hammered out. Secondly, anyone who has ever taught knows that to do it right also makes it physically and emotionally draining. As currently understood schools are expected to do essentially three things every day: teach new concepts, conte

Anthony V. Manzo of CA 7:51PM March 02, 2010

How am I suppose to be evaluated on my teaching when I teach students who don't give a rip about their education and neither do their parents. You can't judge me by the class I had last year to the class I have this year because they're two different classes. If I was teaching the same kids year after year, then you can compare their growth to my teaching skills. But it's apples to oranges. I'd like to see if those Chicago students could pass the CA State Standards Test. We have the toughest standards in the country. Maybe there wouldn't be such "glowing results" if all the states tried our state tests. It just amazes me how people in their "white towers" make rules for those that are actually fighting the battle. Those people have no idea what it's like in the trenches.

Arganda of CA 7:02PM January 14, 2010

Social workers, Teachers and Principals should not be rewarded with merit pay based on childrens performance not only becausae of the wealth of the district. Many parents in weathy as well as medium income districts do not always find education important so they do not take responsibility to help their children with their work. In some districts parents are unable to help their children because they do not speak the language therefore either can not read the text or were not taught to do the subject the way the student is being taught in the states. Then the teachers and social workers or students working with these students are being penalized. Also more over not ever student matures at the same rate so they are not going to grow mentally as fast as another student so social workers can not be judged according to the growth of each student since some do not mentally mature as fast as others and some even slower when they have physical or mental disabilities which keep them sheltered. These are factors that have not been addressed.

Respectfully,

SusanMarie stanton

SusanMarie Stanton of NY 8:21PM January 04, 2010

There are two things that forcast some real progress with K-12 education in the U.S.: (1) Arne Duncan has the right focus and seems on top of the situation; (2) he has the money to work with. No education secretary during the Bush years had real financial backing; in fact, Bush had to be embarrassed into financial support for "No Child Left Behind," the cries of "unfunded mandate" deafening.

What Duncan is doing is not undoable, but working against entrenched interests (teacher unions, school boards, parent-teacher associations, lazy parents, etc.) will require pretty slick operating as months move into years.

Duncan should NOT exclude experiments that put all responsibility for student success in the hands of teachers and parents--no tiers of administration at all. Pour the money saved into teacher salaries and let them do the hiring and firing in school districts. Try motivating teachers the way competitive markets motivate others in the country: competition + success = reward. Let the teachers engage parents for support and let teachers decide when support is adequate or inadequate. (Too often parents are either disinterested or claim lack of time, both disqualifiers for legitimately being called "parents" in my opinion.) Also, Duncan should look to the experimentation going on in some districts around the country and incorporate them where they're obviously on the right path.

Finally, it really IS time, in a country where education is deemed important enough, to end the excuses we commonly hear for the overcrowding of classrooms, the underrewarding of teachers, the failure of communities to provide the number of volunteers and hard resources needed for support in schools, and the like. Let's hope Duncan has the guts to say "put up or shut up" to those who constantly find fault with K-12 education!

So far, so good, Arne Duncan.

Ron W. Smith of UT 2:24PM December 20, 2009