Knowing these questions will inevitably come, I am forced to write the answers on each essay.....thus the extra time. It was during these past few days that I seriously began to wonder if teachers should be paid on merit instead of experience. Did you know that PE teachers and English teachers get paid the same thing depending on how long they've been teaching? Not that PE teachers are a bad breed but they are done when the 2:45 bell rings. There are no essays to grade or paperwork to sift through; therefore, if they are not putting as much time as the English teacher, why should they get paid the same?
I don't know. Maybe I'm just bitter and in a bad mood lately. This week has been a loooong one and it's only Wednesday. I started Seminary this week which has been a highlight for me. It's the only thing that keeps me going. I love it! (note: I've only been doing it 3 days so perhaps if you ask me in a few months, maybe my opinion will have changed). Anyway, I've also had games these past 2 days (we lost both: one by 10 and one by 2 in overtime). As the losses accumulate so does the parental pressure and the "know-it-all dads" who are more annoying than anything else.
So I've left home at 6 am and gotten home around 9 pm...only to dig the essays out of my bag and continue grading. This routine gets very frustrating and has led me to this post. I know, I know.....I chose this profession and knew what I was getting into; however, today is unload on life day (unload on wife day was yesterday...sorry babe).
Back to my original question: Should teachers be paid on merit rather than experience?
Today I answer emphatically YES!!!!
9 comments:
Absolutely, merit. Great teachers should get a bonus, and horrible teachers should be fired. Until we get rid of the unions and get some real competition in teaching, we will continue to have lazy and horrible teachers who just sit around and collect their pay. Because of the unions, it is almost impossible to fire a teacher, and it is almost impossible to reward great teachers.
Who gets to define "merit" and isn't that the real problem? Unable to adequately reach a decision as to what "merit" is, the unions and school boards have agreed to use experience as a surrogate. Jon, before posing the question you must first define merit in a way that all can agree on. If not, experience will continue to rule.
Kyle, how about this? High schools are already required to give the state exam as are junior highs and elementary schools. Why not take the scores of the students from one year to the next thus measuring improvement.
If you can get a majority of your students to be more successful than they were the year before, then you are making a difference and should get paid accordingly.
If a majority of your students' scores drop then you are put on one year probation to try and get it right. If you fail again the next year, your salary drops.
What do you think?
I don't think you 100% believe that system Jon....if you did then you wouldn't care that Arlington had stopped teaching novels etc b/c they wanted to teach "to the test". With that system the kids would lose the opportunity to learn about things that weren't on the standardized testing.
And whose to say that a child will try their best on a test just so their teacher can keep teaching. What if the kids hate a teacher and do poorly on purpose? (which I guess means he would be a bad teacher anyway if the kids didn't like him) Or for that matter they fail as a "prank"?
I can see this idea being good but then how do you differentiate btwn the teacher that CAN teach honors but has not been put there to teach honors...do they get paid less than the honors teacher?
Like Kyle said....it's very difficult to define merit.
Personally I think the only solution would be to take tenure away and up the pay scale. Teachers that love to teach and do a good job would obviously keep their jobs and be rewarded with better pay as the year pass. And those that suck well....couldn't hide behind their tenure. And you could always throw in a year probation period with more observations from administration over a teacher in question.
Okay sorry that was so long!
(that's what he said)
Okay that was bad....I shouldn't have said that.
I vote for Merit! However I must admit that I have decided to take advantage of the fact that P.E. teachers make the same as hard working English teachers. I will be going back to school next semester to become a special ed P.E. teacher...sweet gig!
Jill, I hate you!
By the way, I have only 3 essays left to grade from the 100 pile stack. The slow-dripping water torture is almost over. Merry Christmas to me!!!
As Loubige points out test scores will result in test preparation classes.
I don't know if you have read Zen and the Art of Motorcylce Maintenance, but the protagonist (is this the correct word Enlish Teacher?) goes insane by trying to define what "quality" is. Defining "merit" in a very political environemnt where resources are beoming more and more scarse is another insanity inducing activity.
In the end I guess you just do your best and hope that your wages don't get frozen like the rest of the people in the private sector.
Lou, you kill me.
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