Whoever came up with the concepts of pensions and tenure - wow, that guy must have been some kind of BS artist

Folks who actually USE the value-added concept note that no evaluation can be made of any teacher after a year. It takes at least 5, maybe 10 years of data before you have enough information to evaluate teachers using the value-added concept - this assuming that subject, grade level, and population have all remained roughly the same for said teacher.

You want to evaluate teachers and fire the bad ones? I'm all for it. But you'd better attract a whole lot more people to the profession. You'd better be willing to pay teachers a whole lot more. You'd better be willing to contribute a larger chunk of your income to your state and local taxes. People respond to incentives - if the salary for teachers rises, more people will want to become teachers. And you'll have the luxury of culling the least effective teachers from the field.

Well, of course an evaluation can be made. I don't believe this would be a perfect evaluation, but currently, in most school districts, the SOL exams are the only standardized evaluation.

The larger the sample size the better, there's no doubt about that.

I'd be willing to pay another 1% in state and federal taxes every year to reward the best teachers (the top 10% or so) in "advancement ratio." The should be paid in the GS 11-12 range. Good teachers are a hot commodity.

There's no reason that, disregarding the government employment/salary logic of the day, that a brand new security guard for the federal government (actually, a guy that I know and grew up with) should be paid 80000/year, and a one-in-a-million physics teacher should be paid 40000. . .

BUT, how will we truly reward said outstanding ability without evaluations, good (good, not perfect) evaluations of performance?

The better questions might be:

Why didn't I spend more time finding out which employment options offer the best retirement plans/pensions/etc?

Why didn't I spend more time researching professions in industries that, with achievable educational qualifications, have low barriers to entry, low competition, and high profits and wages for those willing to put in the work?

I'm certainly glad I did both of those things, and my family is all the better for it. Pensions are great. I don'r really want to be dependent on Social Security when they increase the retirement age and cut benefits.

Most pensioners worked their entire lives for substandard pay knowing there would be a reward at the back end. I know that's not true in all cases, but it certainly applies in the public sector.

ATHiker07 wrote:

Most pensioners worked their entire lives for substandard pay knowing there would be a reward at the back end. I know that's not true in all cases, but it certainly applies in the public sector.

WE have a winner! Substandard pay = pension incentive.

This, apparently, is the trade off. Perhaps the OP is willing to pay teachers 120K? Maybe then a pension incentive isn't needed...

I teach in a well-thought of district in Northern California. We are an upper-middle class community that sends a high percentage of our students on to college. We have received many awards for excellence since I have been a part of the district (5 years as a teacher, but also was a student in the district a few more years back and not much has changed). We have some great teachers at our school. We also have a teacher whose final exam consists of the students sitting silently for 90 minutes to prove that they can focus (or maybe so that he has 3 free days to finish grading at the end of each semester and does not have to do any work on his own time). We have another teacher who routinely dismisses her freshman class 5 minutes before the school day ends so that she can beat the student traffic. We have a German teacher who does more to spread racist ideas than to teach any German language, to the point where two Jewish athletes that I coach felt compelled to transfer from her class (they were not the first and they won't be last). This same teacher was also sanctioned twice for pushing students when I was in school there and it was deemed that the offenses were not fireable. Each of these three teachers is tenured and has been for a long time. Beyond these extreme examples, there are plenty of well intentioned teachers who simply are not very good at what they do. In my district, we receive tenure after 2 years. That means that the district has two years to decide whether or not to keep someone for the next 30 years. After that they're basically stuck. I complained about a teacher this year to a vice principal because of her conduct and the vp explained that there wasn't much they could do and that they've really been waiting for her to retire for the last 10 years. In what other profession does this happen? I mention the distinctions of my district because these are the things that go on in HIGH PERFORMING districts. A district in a nice area that pays pretty well (as a 5th year teacher I make about $65000 a year and live in a nice neighborhood) I can only imagine the amount of lethargy allowed to take place in areas that can't afford to pay much and cannot use peaceful surroundings to draw qualified applicants.

Most teachers are dead set against being evaluated in any meaningful way, including the good teachers, but I would happily stand up and let the powers that be give me a regular quantitative assessment of my performance. So long as I knew what criteria I was being ranked on in advance, that is fair. Although we are currently evaluated every other year, we are evaluated based on a total of about 2 and a half hours of administration observation per year only and over 80% of teachers are given a highly positive rating. There is not much that people can do with this. Obviously not every proposed measure of assessment makes sense, but some of them would work. Anything is better than what we have now. How much do your students improve from one year to the next, while maybe not great as a one year sample, can tell you a lot if examined as an average a number of years. Trends will develop. We will have a better knowledge of performance. Some teachers are totally correct in being wary of such a practice...because they are not very good and would be forced to work. Like I said before, I work with some great teachers and I try to take my cues from them, but there has to be a way to fire the worthless ones and bring in some people who will fulfill the requirements of the job. If we are going to stand up and protect these people who milk this ridiculous system, we have no right to complain about the poor quality of education in our country.

This ^

You are in the fairy land of teaching....Not being mean at all.

Come to NC

10 years teaching 37,000.

No Union

I pay 7 percent of my pension the state pays 4.5%. We also only get 54% of our top earning years. I'd be better off with a 401k.

Nonexistent health plan. The only thing really covered is emergency visits. We still pay 30% of whatever cost. We do get some basic discounts for basic office checkups. If you wanted to pay for the high end package you would pay around 450 a month. In other words teachers here would be better off with Universal Health care. :-)

I make $800 dollars a season coaching Cross, Indoor, and Outdoor track. (Salary decided county by county.) The football coach makes $6000 for one season and is paid by the local optimist club another 60k on top of his teaching salary where he is credited with 30 years of teaching and he is only 35. (Just thought I'd throw that one out there :-) if you really want crap in the system )

I do have tenure, however, we have switched evaluation systems in the last year and tenure no longer matters. Doesn't really bother me those who need tenure to keep their jobs are more than likely not doing their jobs.

I get full evaluations three times a years, partials 3 times a year and a peer twice a year even after having tenure. Once again doesn't bother me. Those who fear evaluations probably are not doing their job. But as others have pointed out I would like to have straight forward criteria that I am being judged on rather than the vague ones they try to use now.

In my state it is hard to get rid of even crap teachers because of what they pay teachers. 70 percent of teachers in the state are not qualified according to the national standards. Any qualified teacher or young teacher makes their best effort to leave the state as soon as possible.

Having said all that I love my job, I love the school I am at, and have no real desire to leave. Sometimes there is more to a job than money. However, you take away the small pension I do have and keep my salary the same I will not teach anymore. I have a masters in Math (not Math education) and I am pretty sure I could find a job somewhere else making more money with less people complaining about how easy I have it.

As always if the job is so easy and teachers have it so great then come join us and the easy life. I think we both know those complaining the most wouldn’t last long in the teaching field.

The difference is your lack of results isn't resulting in 30 kids that fail to develop. We would be better off paying those poor teachers not to teach since with a bunch of them, kids actually regress

HRE wrote:

I just used software engineers for comparison because someone mentioned them in a previous post. Non-teaching public employees make a better comparison.

When I was in college I worked for a city highway crew in the summers. If anyone was stealing public money it was us, though we didn't get huge amounts of it. But we didn't do a lot of anything in terms of work and spent literally hours each week just hanging out on the truck under a tree on a deserted road. In four years of this there was one complaint made about us wasting money. Much different than teachers are perceived.

So the incentive is to have the kids to do really poorly on the first exam. I recommend cranking the room temperature up, having regular interruptions over the intercom, and eating looks of mexican and walking around.And hell given your example I would say you have to fire the 7th grade teachers. The given the scores are normalized the same, the 8th grade teachers far outperformed the 7th grade ones. Which leads to the other key doing well. Make sure that the previous years teacher is an idiot.You can come up with evaluation systems that work. It isn't trivial. And you probably want to focus on weeding out that bottom 10% rather than trying to decide that someone is in the top 10% or top 20%.

Yes, doctors are evaluated, lawyers, etc.. all are evaluated, and hired and fired.. yet teaches are untouchable, unmeasurable based on their competence/productivity etc.. some how its impossible to measure.

a total lie.

NC Teacher wrote:

...As always if the job is so easy and teachers have it so great then come join us and the easy life. I think we both know those complaining the most wouldn’t last long in the teaching field.

This is always what it comes back to for so many teachers. A suggestion that better evaluations and more pay for performance and weeding out of bad teachers is somehow interpreted as an attack on teachers.

Here is news for you NC Teacher:

1) I appreciate what you and all great teachers do.

2) I think that you should be rewarded more than you are for excellence.

3) I think we need to week out "crap teachers" far more than we do, including those who have somehow managed to achieve tenured status.

4) In order to accomplish #2 and #3 we need to have a good (not perfect) evaluation system in place.

5) A good evaluation system is possible (and difficult - just as it is in other fields).

6) None of this is an attack on you or a claim that "the job is so easy and teachers have it so great". Indeed, better evaluations, better rewards, higher standards should all make your job more rewarding and more respected.

I don't think you could get more than 50% of the people in the United States to agree on what it means to be educated. This isn't something new. In order to come up with a meaningful assessment you have to have some kind of agreement on the goal.

To some extent, identifying a great teacher is like identifying a great painting. What works for some isn't going to work for all. In some cases what doesn't work for most is all that will work for some.

Regarding pay for performance, recent research shows a lack of impact where it has been tried specifically for teaching. Furthermore, general research on pay for performance rarely shows it to be effective. Check into how it has worked in the health care industry. We like to think that if we got paid more we would do a better job, but the fact is that our character drives that not our pocketbook.

Other research is showing that traditional professional development activities for teachers makes little difference in their performance. There is no evidence that we can take people who struggle as teachers and make them much better by training.

I think there are behaviors you can associate with great teachers; though, not every great teacher will have the same set of behaviors. I think there is merit in establishing teaching levels (provisional, professional, expert, master, etc.) by how many of these behaviors a teacher exhibits and by the degree to which they do so.

A teacher spends most of their professional life practicing their craft with little or no observation of peers. We need to create methods by which they can observe successful peers in action. We need to clearly identify and communicate the kind of behaviors common to outstanding educators in general and specifically in their own communities. We need to encourage the development of those behaviors and provide constructive feedback to help that development all the while remembering not everyone has to have the same set of behaviors to be wildly successful.

Pay for performance is a money pit that isn't going to produce results. Assessing students to determine teacher effectiveness isn't going to create better teachers.

We need highly motivated people in the classroom that genuinely care about the development of our children. A longer internship where young teachers work in a variety of environments under a variety of teachers before becoming licensed, much like a doctor, could have benefits, but there would have to be a way to finance these internships. Doctors put up with it because there income will eventually make up for the lack of income. That is not a practical reality for teachers.

I'm going to guess like most students you didn't actually read what I wrote.

Because if you had you wouldn't have responded the way you did.

Read my whole statement please instead of the last sentence. I know the last sentence was kind of snarky but if you had read the rest you would have realized that I am......

FOR EVALUATIONS.....

Everyone complaining does understand that ALL teachers are currently evaluate right?????

NC teacher, in some ways you are correct. I have a great teaching situation. I wouldn't trade it. But to clarify a few things, you make about twice as much as I do as a coaching stipend and I pay about twice as much as you for my benefit package. This is not a complaint at all, because I could work in a nearby district for a lower salary, where my benefits are almost totally covered and I could make a larger coaching stipend. This setup works for me. Northern CA is a pretty expensive place to live too, but I can live on what I make without a problem. Like you, I am in a position where I could probably have a higher paying job that would require less hours. I have an economics degree from a good school. I like my lifestyle though.

I only bring up my salary to make the point that in my area, which is a pretty nice area, which pays better than most, it stands to reason that we can draw a high number of qualified teachers, and even we have the problems of people not doing their jobs. That part bothers me. I've never worked in another district, but if we have these issues, what percentage of teachers must act this way when schools are in a bad neighborhood and people do not want to work there, or when the salary offered is $37,000?

I agree that the method of evaluation should be well defined and quantifiable. That is what will make the evaluations equal from teacher to teacher. My contention is that our schools are not good enough and that we can do better. A simple way to make things better is to replace your worst people. There are many other problems with the education system that have nothing to do with the people in the classroom, but replacing bad teachers is obvious to everyone and despite that, for the most part, we cannot do it.

Everyone might have a different opinion on what the difference between a ok, good, and great teacher is. But there are going to be very few good/great teachers that get evaluated as subpar even by people whose learning methods don't mesh. The real problem is that poor teachers are poor for everyone. I find it amusing that you mention that additional training has failed ( I have seen mixed results in the studies) but then pretty much recommend more training. I am guessing training might make you better, but I am also guessing that a bottom 5% teacher isn't going to make the cut no matter what type of training you give them. That doesn't mean that couldn't be successful at something else in life. It just means they are a bad teacher.

ROFL what a horrible thread by cold hearted conservatives. show some heart & soul people!

Tenure is not permanent job security. The school I teach in has let 4 tenured teachers go in the last 9 years (3 of those in the last 3 years).

It just makes it harder to let someone go and you need a valid reason. The problem with it is that the process is so expensive for the school.

Many teachers want to see this changed. The problem is the ignorance of people who think it's "permanent job security" and the people who think it's all or nothing.

Unions play a role, too. Our union WILL NOT back a teacher who deserves to be fired.

LOL, you think anyone under 30 is going to work for 30 years in the same job? Company loyalty was dead before we even had zits to pop, and we know it. Why be loyal to a machine that will never be loyal to you?

Speaking of 30 years, I'll take bright, enthusiastic people fresh out of Teach For America and with degrees in actual fields, not education, over any of those withered old husks with one year of experience 30 times.