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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (95110)	11/10/2008 8:52:10 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 541763

There is a huge problem with hooking test scores (because that is how performance is measured) to teacher pay. Last year I had 3 sophomore classes. One class was wild. I had my hands full with them. I never thought I got through, but I pounded away anyway. My second period sophomores were darling. They were attentive; they got through more material. They read when they were supposed to read. They turned in their homework. And when I found out I was to test with them for the 5 days of STAR testing I breathed a big sigh of relief. I provided them with healthy snacks every day, and promised them a pizza party if they didn't miss a day of testing- and no one did. Now this year we have a cool new data crunching program. So, I get on expecting to see how FABULOUSLY well period 2 did on the STAR test compared to the other teachers' sophomore classes at my school. OK, the class is 2-3% above the school average in most things, and 4% above in vocabulary, which is my emphasis. Not statistically significant imo. I look at period 6- my wild and rowdy class. 7-10% above the school average in all areas. WHAT do I take away from this? Here's the funny thing- I was told by an administrator, who happened to wander in to my period 2 class, that they were "low". I didn't think so. I thought "My goodness. What a silly administrator. These kids are brilliant. They're great." So my expectations were high, and I put in a ton of time with them, did everything (and more) that I did with period 6, and yet they didn't perform as well as I expected- and period 6? Well, how do we explain that? I can't. Seems to me if you hook teacher pay to student performance not only do the students then control the teacher, and don't think they wouldn't throw tests to get back at teachers they don't like, but you also put teachers in the position of being at the mercy of class aptitude. Some classes are clearly brighter, and more capable of being improved than other classes. On top of that, you have administrators who could easily stack classes with tough kids. I think you could pay teachers based on performance if you measure it in other ways- quality of lesson plans; quality of classroom observations- and I'm all for those ways, because they measure the excellence of the teacher, and not the vagaries of who the teacher might have in her class.