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An Open Question To All Teachers

By: congressworksforus (Diary)  |  March 2nd, 2011 at 07:51 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Recently, I have taken to patrolling the comments section in our local newspaper here in Ohio.  I don’t use the term ‘patrolling’ lightly either.  It’s amazing that so many union shills descend on a newly posted article so quickly.  It’s almost as if they are tipped off about the new piece.  But our news media wouldn’t do that, would they?

Of course not… but I digress.

One of the reasons I take the time to read through the banality that pervades page after page of drivel, is because (a) you see exactly how the enemy thinks, and (b) you occasionally come across a gem in the comments.

And today, such a gem lay there waiting. A true pearl of wisdom.

I won’t post the original comment because it was wrapped in sarcasm that would require the posting of several previous comments, and besides, I can’t even find — let alone link to! — the original comment because this particular newspaper has the annoying habit of deleting comments it doesn’t like, making it all but impossible to link to the correct page on their site.

So much for freedom of speech.

But nonetheless, the core of the comment was so simple, so brutally honest, it needs to be spread to the four corners of the nation by every one of us.

So I ask this simple question of every public school teacher in this great country.  I care not whether you work in the inner cities, the suburbs or out in the wilds of rural America; the question still remains.  And all I want from teachers everywhere is a simple answer, so please, pass this question on to every teacher that you know, because it deserves to be answered by every single one of our so-called educators.

Dear Public School Teacher,

If you believe so strongly in collective bargaining, if you believe that merit pay is wrong, if you believe that being rewarded based upon your job performance is unfair, if you believe that every teacher should be treated the same; if you believe that the only way teachers should be compensated is based upon how long they’ve held their position, no matter the subject they teach or the difficulty of the material that is presented, then please, answer me this:

Why do you grade your students individually ?

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COMMENTS

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  • nycenterright

    I don’t believe in most of those things. The problem is that I have never seen an effective proposal for evaluating the performance of teachers. Every single one I’ve seen is a disaster that I could punch a dozen holes through in a few seconds.

    Students get individual grades because they are significantly easier to assess than their teachers.

    • Bill S

      a) I doubt he was addressing you – he was addressing the teachers who are currently whining about having collective bargaining removed
      b) So you’re saying that because there’s not been an “effective” proposal for evaluating teachers, it just shouldn’t be done?

      Based upon your response, I suspect you’re a public school teacher, and your response contains just a weeeeeee bit of bias.

    • congressworksforus

      Why is it that merit pay works perfectly OK with private schools, but somehow with public schools it fails?

      It’s really not that hard to develop a merit-based system. Most of what people are judged on in the private sector includes things like attitude, respect for your peers, ability to work together, showing up on time, putting in the extra effort when needed (“going the extra mile”). Nothing in there that cannot be applied to teachers. Those are the things that get you “above the median” pay raises more than anything else, along with feedback from your peers.

      In fact, if I was designing the system I wouldn’t include student grades at all (pointless since teachers give them!). State and/or national tests, yes, for sure. Predictive analysis should be applied to see how your students measure up compared to their predictions at the start of the year. Pretty easy to do with the data mining technologies available today.

      I think what teachers are most afraid of is bad students affecting their performance, but in fact bad students are far better for you as it gives you a chance to show what you’re really made of. And you’re not working in a vacuum. You’re part of a team.

      I may be wrong, but I think the biggest problem with teachers not accepting merit-based pay is that virtually all of them went to school, then to college and to grad school (where applicable) and then straight into teaching. They’ve never experienced the real world first hand for the most part. You’ve never been through a performance review so you don’t know how it works and therefore cannot see how it could be successfully applied to your profession.

      Which it most certainly can be as illustrated by private schools as noted above.

      • Bill S
      • http://seekingliberty.wordpress.com fmaidment

        n/t

      • aesthete

        but there is actually a problem with government evaluating economic processes effectively: it can’t allocate resources efficiently because it does not have, and will never have, sufficient information. In a market system, prices convey an enormous amount of information simultaneously, and government can only rely on this information to the extent that it follows the market, instead of trying to lead it. In the case of, say, plumbing jobs, government is a price taker, not a price maker: it hires a plumber and pays him based on the going market wage*, which is the optimal wage (or as close as we can get to it).

        In the market of *educators*, government has a near-monopoly on education and its labor components, and the apparatus to make that stick. The things government does would sink a business in less than a year, but it is able to avoid such a fate by expropriating our property to pay for its failures. Since there is no alternative to the price system, government is only able to rely on the crudest of incentives and signals (the democratic process being one of them). The solution, IMO, should be for us to privatize the system, and then to have a subsidy for parents to dedicate to the private school(s) of their choice.

        *Barring pol and union shenanigans.

        • Bill S

          Your proposed privatization would certainly address the problem, but with the current system unionized and the “it’s for the children” attitude that’s prevalent, it’s unlikely to happen. But competition would surely force the (formerly) government schools to compete.

          Neither of my kids attended a government school – several years of homeschooling, followed by private Christian schools. They received a far superior education to what the government schools provided, yet I had to double-pay to subsidize a wasteful, inferior “education” infrastructure.

          • aesthete

            by my mother, who was a first-generation immigrant from PR who could just barely speak broken English. She was smart and dedicated, though, and I’ll be darned if I didn’t get an education that was miles away better than what my peers got in gummint schools. It is unfortunate that there is no way to avoid double-paying if you’re a homeschooling family, or if you put your kids in a private school: IIRC, Florida tried to fix this problem while Jeb Bush was in, and IN’s education bill (still pending) does in fact fix this problem — and it is a problem for those families that somehow have to make ends meet while paying for their kids’ education twice.

            I didn’t mean to imply that my proposal (or rather, Milt Friedman’s) is immediately tenable, simply that government is necessarily at enormous disadvantage when it tries to control a sector of the economy due to the fact that it lacks the instant feedback and information provided by prices in the market — a problem that unions have exacerbated and taken advantage of, but not created.

          • Bill S

            this article just now. Looks like my state is trying to address the problem.

            Shocking:

            Teachers’ unions opposed the bill, saying it would do nothing to improve education.

            Unfortunately, with a Dem governor, it’s unlikely this will get passed.

          • congressworksforus

            The quote from the Democrat at the bottom is encouraging…

          • aesthete

            Be nice if it did pass…

        • congressworksforus

          And I do think privatization (with vouchers) is the best solution.

          But it can be done. Natural attrition enables a district to keep it’s costs flat whilst still rewarding excellent teachers. I really don’t mind paying more taxes for my school district, as long as those increases are in line with reality.

          But we’re currently on a 100% tax increase every 10 years with our existing expenditures. It doesn’t take a genius to see that we’re now on an unsustainable path and well outside the boundaries of reality!

      • rightwingmom52
  • danasdaddy

    I’ve often wondered at the audacity of the teacher unions in thinking that their liberal viewpoint actually represents ALL of their teachers. From people who are all for multiculturalism and diversity, it’s amazing that they consciously ignore the diversity of thought among their own members.

    One of the reasons I left teaching was that it was all too often focused on politics and not actual teaching and learning.

    • http://seekingliberty.wordpress.com fmaidment

      “You’re a member of [special interest group]. You want this. Vote for us.”

      When confronted with, say, a black conservative (pardon my political incorrectness), they accuse him of being an “Oreo”. Scientist who doesn’t buy into global warming? “Oil company shill” or “denier”.

      Anyone who doesn’t fit their mold is some kind of outcast. They’re not multi-cultural. They’ve just formed high school cliques.

  • KC

    Every business in the country that has employees is constantly monitoring their performance.

    That’s what managers and supervisors are for. Sure, some of it is subjective, but so what?

    The only difference is that teachers are protected by unions – even the ones that are obviously incompetent and worthless.

    The only real solution is abolish unions altogether – ain’t gonna happen.

  • hoosierteacher

    I moved from education to law enforcement (though I’m still do education work; I’m a field training officer and teach some specialized classes for our academy). But here’s my response. (First, I never joined the union and I don’t support the teachers in WI).

    I wouldn’t use your line of reasoning. There are clearly times when we should evaluate individuals (such as students and, yes, teachers) and times when evaluations should be made as groups (underperforming schools for example).

    I think we ought to stay on message. These teachers in WI have a pay and benefits compensation package that averages over $100,000 a year. WI also has a poor track record versus non-union states in education.

    (Recently, unions released a report stating the opposite. They cited ACT testing that showed WI ahead of non-union states. They were dishonest. Only about 3% of WI students take the ACT, th brightest kids. The non-union states the union used for their figures require most students to take the tests. A seperate study shows that WI college entrance scores as well as graduation rates are LOWER than the five states the union tried to use).

    Now, those teachers that are making a fortune are doing so in a state that is b-r-o-k-e. Further, all the governor is asking is that those teachers make a contribution to their health care and retirement. The contribution he’s asking for is LESS than what other teachers make in other states. He’s doing this to prevent lay-offs.

    The teachers are being completely unreasonable, are resorting to thugish 60′s tactics, and making fools of themselves. The nice thing is that the governor campaigned on this, he won, and popular support is behind him. The teachers are hurting their own cause (as are the democrat senators that ran away). The teachers and their allies in WI have turned this from a loss in WI to a spreading loss across the country.

  • congressworksforus

    The hypocrisy is rife.

    “There are clearly times when we should evaluate individuals (such as students and, yes, teachers) and times when evaluations should be made as groups (underperforming schools for example).”

    Most people in the private sector work as part of a team, but they are still measured based on their own contributions. Team goals are rewarded, generally, with bonuses and lunch courtesy of the boss.

    The point of the diary was not to give teachers a shellacking; it was to make them think about what their union tells them. The only way to win this war is to cause dissension in the ranks of the other side…

  • Menlo

    I’m not a teacher, but I know that countless teachers pass kids just to pass them. Some do it directly by fudging the grades, and some do it indirectly by lowering the standards. I don’t doubt that in some cases, it is in their own interest to pass more students.

    I’m sure you will find a good number of consistent collectivists out there.

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  • Bill S