The President’s recent speech on education of course brought all the pro and con advocates. As a teacher, the part that irritated me most had to do with merit pay. It is stated, and correctly stated, that the teachers’ union opposes merit pay. The problem is, they don’t say why. And, it seems to me that the assumption is that we fear being judged on how good a job we do.
I personally am not opposed to that to merit pay in principle. I am very concerned about how I might be judged and by whom. As these things go, I could end up being evaluated using a criteria created by people who have never been in a public school classroom for anything other than a photo opp.
I have students who come into my 9th and 10 grade classroom who are reading at a 2nd grade level. Am I, who sees these student for a little less than an hour a day, 5 days a week, going to be evaluated negatively because these students test poorly an a state-mandated and state-generated competency test in Biology?
I have two brothers in my classes. They were both born in this country of Hispanic parents, neither of whom speak any English. The brothers struggle. Mother and Father are concerned, but when I want to talk with them I have to speak through an interpreter. These two boys are certainly bi-lingual but they were exposed to almost no English before they started school. I can help them along. Their reading skills are improving but they are no where near grade level.
I could go on, but the point is that, while we all know that education needs to improve, it must not improve at the destruction of well meaning teachers who daily deal with the students who happen to come their way