Teacher's Pay Now Tied to Test Scores

[running wild]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060113/...on_teacher_pay

To me, this is just one more reason to homeschool. I think an incentive program based on students' test scores is going to "force" teacher's to only teach what needs to be mastered for these standardized tests. We live in VA, and everything here is about the SOLs. Once the kids take the SOL exams at the end of the year, school is pretty much over...even though they still attend for another month or so.

If somebody can explain the following to me, I'd appreciate it: I don't understand how such a system can be fair to teachers. If I'm a history teacher at an affluent school, where most parents are college educated and most students are college bound, how can I possibly be on the same rewards system as a teacher who teaches history to low income, underperforming, inner city kids? It's like comparing apples to oranges...Am I missing something?

[afishwithabike]

To me, this is just one more reason to homeschool. I think an incentive program based on students' test scores is going to "force" teacher's to only teach what needs to be mastered for these standardized tests.

I'm with you. Putting them on the score grid with the students is a horrible idea. Averages are such a sick joke. I am with you, one more reason to HS. I have also heard (I may be wrong) that it is connected to the state. They are giving schools with low scores less $$$. I have some family members whose DC are in poor rural public schools, and it is a sick state of affairs. They already get so little $$ because they have so few students. When test time comes around the teachers stop their entire cirriculum to teach the tests. Ugh. Treating children like a test score further devalues human life in my opinion. DC truly have become merely a #.

[alegna]

They don't give a flying rat about being fair to teachers- OR kids. You hit problem number 1 on the head. If your kids are already scoring well, forget the bonus pay.

-Angela

[CarolynnMarilynn]

Oh great, so those teachers teaching kids who are just learning english, kids that have special needs, or are at-risk youth who may require more intense support, and other groups less likely to score high are going to get paid less? Seems to me it rewards schools to kick out those kids who don't 'perform', and restrict enrollment in the schools in more affluent areas that are likely to score higher. Not to mention teaching to the testing as a p-poor way to teach. Sigh.

[MyLittleWonders]

Don't even get me started on standardized tests and scores ... : and as a former teacher and a wife of a current teacher, it is the most unfair system out there (at least at this current time; I'm sure they'll think of something else too). Yes, it does force that only the test be taught - not understanding, no time for indepth (dh gets in "trouble" for actually trying to make sure his students understand not only what they are doing but why ... he teaches high school math). The stress can be unbearable for teacher and student. And the kicker is that the way standardized tests are designed, there will ALWAYS be someone on the bottom of the totem pole and someone on the top. You are basically ranking millions of kids (and teachers) on a scale of 1-10. If there is a 10, then someone else must be 9, 8, 7 ... all the way down to 1. It doesn't matter how closely they all did on the actual test, nor how well they actually did (for instance, the person/school/teacher ranked #10 could have actually only answered 50% of the questions correctly, but they were the top scoring person/school/teacher in the test, so they are in the top percentile ... and exageration, but not by much). Standardized tests were designed to rank ... not to judge individual performance, class performance, or even school performance ... simply to rank a large group of people along standardized lines. (During my Master's Degree we learned quite a bit about the fallacies of standardized testing and most of us came to despise the system even more!) The thing is, is that most people (at least it seems TPTB) don't understand that there is an actualy different between percentages and percentiles ... and until they start to see a flaw in the system, nothing will change and it will only get worse. What gets me, though, is that for some reasons the teachers' unions accept all this ... and really, all they can truly do (at least for a tenured teacher) is shuffle that teacher around to other schools ... usually lower "performing" schools. The whole system is screwed and yep, it's yet another reason we are hs'ing. : :

[GoodEats]

While I do understand the "reasoning" here - one has to base "success" on something this is just going to push out the help where it is needed the most

• areas with a lower tax base (rural, inner city) will suffer because teachers with a "proven" record will be recruited to the more affluent areas, where they can be paid a higher salary, with more benefits, leaving the novice or "substandard" teachers to areas where a higher level of skill is probably needed the most because of the rest of the children's lives being a challenge in itself
• areas where more dedicated, more selfless, more specialized teachers are needed, such as special ed, will be even MORE desperate because the teachers gifted in these areas will have to make the economic choice to change their focus/specialty area to something with a better bonus structure or just be forced out
• children will be taught less and trained more because even MORE of the year will be focused on beating the test, not that, from what I have seen recently, there is much of a focus on content and mastery already

Brilliant.

"Stupid in America" doesn't even seem like an apt moniker for this. I'm all for throwing money at the growing problems in public schools - in order to have enough supplies for each child, in order to decrease the student/teacher ratio, to provide a safe physical setting, in order to have the staffing to give struggling kids the assistance they need. THIS, though, is just reckless spending that hopes to make it look like "something" is being done.

[Eris]

OT... are the standardized tests in Virginia really called the SOL's??? That's just too funny.

[Missy]

I don't get the humor in "SOL's"? Maybe because I'm so used to hearing it that there's another meaning that I've totally missed?

In Virginia, it's a lot more than just dropping the curriculum around testing time. The entire curriculum is based on the tests. Administrators and state officials will insist that they designed the test around the existing curriculum, but my dh and I were both teachers before, during, and after the development and implementation of the testing and the curriculum completely changed. Across the state. And with it, teaching changed.

I'm no longer teaching; we're hsing. But, dh teaches civics and he's extremely frustrated at the imposed limitations. He used to teach at a school located in an upper middle class area--his test scores were always extremely high. He left that county (good-old-boy system strongly in place; children were last on the list of educational concerns) to go to a neighboring school system (huge system but more child-focused) and is now at a school in a much lower socio-economical area. A very large number of his students are ESOL, and most are minorities--and his test scores have dropped significantly. But, he loves his students, and he does a kick-a@@ job.

By adjusting the pay according to test scores, the children who always end up with the short end of the stick will just get short-changed once again. My dh will stay where he is, unless we really can't afford it (and it does get very tight here. The DC suburbs are not cheap.), but a lot of teachers will follow the money. And not because they don't care. We bought our house over ten years ago, when we were both teaching. Since that time, it has more than doubled in value. There is no way we could afford a house in Northern Virginia on a single teaching salary. Money is a strong motivator.

[Citymomx3]

I get why Eris finds SOL funny. "S-O-L" is said around here to mean "sh*t out of luck". Like in: "Sorry, there are no more tickets to the show. You're S-O-L."

And I find it ironic that it's the name of a school test. (hee hee)

[Missy]

Okay. That occurred to me, but I ruled it out because it should be "S-O-O-L".
:

[nomadmom]

Instead of "out of", say "outta", then sol works.

[mattemma04]

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[DoubleOven]

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