[Vision2020] Teacher merit pay...

[Don Kaag]

Dale:

The tenure point is three years.  And tenure, as it is at the 
university level, is essential to academic freedom, to protect teachers 
from arbitrary firing by administrators and/or unfair witch hunts by 
parents.

I agree that some method must be found to get rid of "dead wood" 
teachers.

  In one case,  a teacher transferred from the high school to the junior 
high and assigned to teach World History to 7th graders.  Although the 
teachers' certification covered History, they hadn't taught in the 
field in 25 years.  They were not prepared to teach the subject, nor 
were they able to do an adequate job in the classroom.

As a department, we felt sorry for the individual, and tried to help 
with advice and materials.  My patience was at an end, however, at the 
beginning of the next school year, when the teacher showed up no better 
prepared to teach than when they were transferred to the junior high.  
They should have spent the summer "getting smart' in their subject and 
developing curriculum to use in the classroom, but they didn't.  The 
teacher was, very frankly, awful.  Everyone, teachers, administrators, 
students, parents... knew this.  It still took three years of 
counseling, retraining, etc., to get rid of them, as per the SOP.

Alternatively, you are not going to get good teachers to dedicate their 
lives to their craft if you don't give them a career path.  If they 
know that as soon as they get established---start a family, buy a 
house, get involved in the community---they are going to be tossed away 
like a disposable napkin, you will get precious few takers.  There has 
to be some kind of upwardly-mobile career path, involving job security 
and increasing pay, to attract and keep good teachers.

As I have indicated earlier, I am personally in favor of some kind of 
merit pay.  The question is, who gets to evaluate teachers and decide 
who gets it?  Will it be based on competence and teaching skill, or is 
it simply going to be the "old boy" network at work yet again?

Regards,

Don Kaag