I don't have a problem with educational rigor

[ulysses]

(Note: written tonight in response to the news that Georgia will soon try to implement a merit pay program for teachers.)

In fact, I'm a big fan. I'm also a fan of reality.

I've talked to lots of very bright people who don't understand, at the outset, why I'm so set against merit pay for teachers. They usually understand when I explain what I do.

What do I do? I teach kids from poor homes - by "poor homes", I mean homes in which basic utilities are often cut off, in which there is often no way to contact parents because there is no working phone, in which "home" itself is very often a tenuous concept when the rent comes due. This in a country that can't even talk honestly with itself about economic inequality.

I teach kids who - because of drug exposure in the womb, or a differently-wired brain, or lead exposure in their early years, or parental indifference, or whatever - are behind the curve before they approach our door for the very first time. This in in a country that clings to Horatio Alger's bootstrap mythology.

I'm not saying that my kids can't learn or grow. They do every day.

Neither am I some standout. I'm one of thousands who do this work, day after day. One of thousands who stand to be screwed under merit pay schemes because we work with the kids that we do.

***

Who is to blame when kids don't learn at the expected rate? That's the question here, and Georgia's answer is "the teachers". (Of course, the other question to which that is the state's answer is, "Where can we cut the budget?") There's no mechanism by which one might hold accountable parents who don't read to their kids, and unless one is into eugenics, no reason to damn parents too poor to not live in homes or apartments - or put their children into cribs - laced with leaded paint. Who is to blame?

Public schools take all comers, and that is as it should be. Merit pay is another step toward a time when we won't take all children, and that's a big damned shame.

[tonysam]

1. Principals can't be trusted to be fair with evaluations,

so the step pay system needs to remain in place--none of this "merit" shit.

[MercutioATC]

2. The problem with merit pay is that it attempts to subjectively measure objective progress.

Unfortunately, I don't know of a good way to objectively measure progress in a consistent manner...so I don't see merit pay for teachers ever being administered fairly.

[IndianaGreen]

3. Our capitalist society doesn't put enough importance on public education

In fact, we have had decades of efforts to undermine public education. Our beloved Republican governor Bitch Daniels, has cut funding for schools including higher education. Teachers have been laid off, class sizes have increased. Kids in senior year of high school lack the critical thinking skills that many of us learned when we were their age.

Add to that equation parents that not putting any effort to find out what their kids are spending time on, together with the distractions of computer games and internet, it is little wonder that we are failing at education.

Our schools have become training centers for future obedient consumers, not places to learn about history, culture, the arts, the world in which we live in, etc.

Our kids in economically depressed areas are even in worse shape!

Socialist societies place a premium on educating and nurturing children.

[Karia]

4. Merit pay is a disincentive to teach at urban schools

for the reasons you cite, Ulysses. We as a society benefit from the work you and your colleagues do with hard-to-teach children.

Public schools should not be businesses (though some for-profit charter schools are now!) and children should not be regarded as "products" of businesses.

[nosmokes]

5. K&R

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. It's always "blame the teachers." :^(

[AwakeAtLast]

7. I teach music

which is a subject that is not tested, so how do I earn Merit Pay? :shrug: