Capt. Al Haynes sorta OT.

Margy Natalie wrote:

"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote:


One other big problem is the non-meritocracy of government/school systems.
Pay is based on years of service and so-called education credits. In the
"real" world pay is based on performance, merit, etc.

Yes, that is my biggest beef with the teaching system at present. And
the fact that it is unionized. I don't believe that "professional" and
"union" go together, but then many pilots are union also...



I'm in a "right to work" State so Union doesn't mean anything. The real reason
teachers don't have a merit system is they discovered it was detrimental to the
students. Right now if I write a lesson that really clicks and works great I
make copies and give it to all the other teachers. We help each other out to
give the best to our kids. Under merit pay (which many districts had for a
while) teachers would keep their best lessons to themselves so they could be in
the top 5% to get the raise. It didn't work. Another problem is how to score
teachers to rank them.

We have the same problem in private industry, but there are ways to
mitigate it and I still believe that pay for performance is critical to
achieving high performance. You could have merit pay based on the
performance of an entire grade or school (somewhat analagous to profit
sharing at a corporation). You can also base merit pay and promotions
on how much a teacher helps and mentors other teachers. This is an
explicit promotion requirement for technical professionals at my
company. If you are keeping the goods to yourself, you'll not get
promoted. No system is perfect, but I've worked in both environments,
and I'll take a merit/performance based compensation system any day.


Matt

"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote

You could have merit pay based on the
performance of an entire grade or school (somewhat analagous to profit
sharing at a corporation).

Matt

So you want to base teacher performance on student achievement? What is the
incentive for the students to pay attention to what is being taught, learn,
and do well on the test? There is none, for most students, at present.
They are only there because the law says they must be there.

Have you ever watched some students take a standardized test, when there is
nothing in it for them? They go A,B,C,D,A,B,C,D. Don't laugh, I have seen
it, more than a few times. This is how you want merit pay to work? I don't
think so.

I welcome good answers to the problem. Problem is, no one seems to have
any.
--
Jim in NC

Morgans wrote:
"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote

You could have merit pay based on the

performance of an entire grade or school (somewhat analagous to profit
sharing at a corporation).


Matt


So you want to base teacher performance on student achievement? What is the
incentive for the students to pay attention to what is being taught, learn,
and do well on the test? There is none, for most students, at present.
They are only there because the law says they must be there.

Have you ever watched some students take a standardized test, when there is
nothing in it for them? They go A,B,C,D,A,B,C,D. Don't laugh, I have seen
it, more than a few times. This is how you want merit pay to work? I don't
think so.

I welcome good answers to the problem. Problem is, no one seems to have
any.

When I was in school there were teachers able to motivate almost any
student and teachers that couldn't motivate anyone. No system is
perfect, but I want the teachers that are best at motivating their
students to get the best pay and have the greatest chance of staying on
the job. And maybe the other teachers will watch and learn from the
teachers that have figured it out. I'm not saying it is easy, but if
all schools have this problem, then the playing field is level and
whichever teachers are best in even this environment should be rewarded.


Matt

"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote


When I was in school there were teachers able to motivate almost any
student and teachers that couldn't motivate anyone.

Matt


When did you graduate from high school? Not recently, I'll bet.

How do you measure motivational abilities?

It is all objective. I teach carpentry. I am the only one teaching that
subject at my school. How am I to be measured against other teachers? How
do teachers of other subjects get students into their classes, equally
capable of being motivated? The different levels of students are in
different classes, to appropriately challenge their abilities, or to bring
up performance levels of lower performing students. How do you compare the
teacher's motivational abilities, now?

You will say, you "just know" who the teachers are that are the better
motivators. That is simply too objective, and too able for unfairness to
work its way in.

There are no easy answers. When you have them, come and be our state
superintendent.
--
Jim in NC

Morgans wrote:
"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote



When I was in school there were teachers able to motivate almost any
student and teachers that couldn't motivate anyone.


Matt



When did you graduate from high school? Not recently, I'll bet.

Not recently. 1977. However, there are still good teachers and bad
teachers and students who can be motivated. This has been true since
the time of the Greeks.


How do you measure motivational abilities?

By how well the students in a given teacher's class learn and perform.


It is all objective. I teach carpentry. I am the only one teaching that
subject at my school. How am I to be measured against other teachers? How
do teachers of other subjects get students into their classes, equally
capable of being motivated? The different levels of students are in
different classes, to appropriately challenge their abilities, or to bring
up performance levels of lower performing students. How do you compare the
teacher's motivational abilities, now?

If only it were all objective. Much of it is subjective, but that is
life. If you are a teacher that doesn't know the difference between
objective and subjective, then I can make a pretty quick assessment of
your competence. :-)

You measure the performance of students after they graduate from high
school and move to college or trade school. If all of your carpentry
students go on to carpentry vocational school and flunk out, then I'd
not rate you very highly as a carpentry teacher at the high school
level. I'm not claiming that performance evaluations are easy or
pristinely objective, but they are better than using "seat time" as an
evaluation metric. I evaluate a dozen scientists and engineers every
year. They all do different things in different areas of expertise.
However, I solicit feedback from their peers, from their subordinates
and combine that with my own observations. Not a perfect system, but
far better than using service time.


You will say, you "just know" who the teachers are that are the better
motivators. That is simply too objective, and too able for unfairness to
work its way in.

That would be too subjective. I agree that isn't the best way to do it,
but there are many other tools to use to get a reasonably accurate and
fair assessment.


There are no easy answers. When you have them, come and be our state
superintendent.

Never said they were easy. I'm not looking for easy, I'm looking for
better. Almost anything is better than using service time. That is the
easy way out. Requires no work at all on the part of the
administrators. What a cop out.


Matt

"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote:



How do you measure motivational abilities?

By how well the students in a given teacher's class learn and perform.

That doesn't always work. Last year in my classes I had borderline mentally
retarded students, students with autism, students with emotional disturbances,
students with memory disorders, etc. Even if they were highly motivated during
class sometimes the information turned to vapor by the time they got to their
next class. Kids with safty issues at home don't do homework, don't retain
information and tend not to do very well in school no matter what class they are
in. Kids who spend a few weeks during the term in juvie lock up tend not to
score real well on the tests either.

Margy

Margy Natalie wrote:

"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote:



How do you measure motivational abilities?

By how well the students in a given teacher's class learn and perform.


That doesn't always work. Last year in my classes I had borderline mentally
retarded students, students with autism, students with emotional disturbances,
students with memory disorders, etc. Even if they were highly motivated during
class sometimes the information turned to vapor by the time they got to their
next class. Kids with safty issues at home don't do homework, don't retain
information and tend not to do very well in school no matter what class they are
in. Kids who spend a few weeks during the term in juvie lock up tend not to
score real well on the tests either.

Nothing works always. However, I think that basing pay on service time
is just plain wrong. It is just like communism. You get the same
reward whether you work hard or coast along.

Merit pay systems aren't perfect as I said earlier, and they aren't
completely objective either. You still need administrators to use
judgement in cases like you mention above. However, warts and all, I
think pay for performance is simply better than pay for seat warming time.


Matt

You are clueless.
See Ya - Not

"Morgans" wrote in message
...

"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote

You could have merit pay based on the
performance of an entire grade or school (somewhat analagous to profit
sharing at a corporation).

Matt

So you want to base teacher performance on student achievement? What is
the
incentive for the students to pay attention to what is being taught,
learn,
and do well on the test? There is none, for most students, at present.
They are only there because the law says they must be there.

You're (properly) addressing two issues pertaining to the problem.

If a failure has three causes, you won't fix it by fixing ONE problem area.


Have you ever watched some students take a standardized test, when there
is
nothing in it for them? They go A,B,C,D,A,B,C,D. Don't laugh, I have
seen
it, more than a few times. This is how you want merit pay to work? I
don't
think so.

I welcome good answers to the problem. Problem is, no one seems to have
any.

There are definitely answers, problem is people want to address only one or
tow aspects of a problem that has SEVERAL aspects.

"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote in message
...
We have the same problem in private industry, but there are ways to
mitigate it and I still believe that pay for performance is critical to
achieving high performance. You could have merit pay based on the
performance of an entire grade or school (somewhat analagous to profit
sharing at a corporation). You can also base merit pay and promotions
on how much a teacher helps and mentors other teachers. This is an
explicit promotion requirement for technical professionals at my
company. If you are keeping the goods to yourself, you'll not get
promoted. No system is perfect, but I've worked in both environments,
and I'll take a merit/performance based compensation system any day.

Correct; no system is perfect; OTOH, a system that has no incentives, or
worse, negative incentive, is doomed to failure. Public schools are a prime
example of negative incentives.