<p>A realistic pay for performance plan can’t be based on simple test scores and requires involvement from managers to keep up with how a teacher is performing. It should include a lot of factors including feedback from parents, students, peers, and should be related to the teacher’s particular duties, which might be different from another teacher’s duties. A teacher charged with teaching learning challenged kids or ESL kids for example, can be performing the duties very well despite low test scores when compared to a teacher with a classroom full of bright kids. And the teacher with the classroom full of bright kids who produce decent test scores might not be performing highly enough - despite the decent test scores the kids might not be adequately challenged or handled.</p>
<p>Most professionals in private industry are on a pay for performance plan rather than a simplistic seniority plan. It only makes sense IMO to recognize, reward, and promote the strong performers. The weakest performers who don’t improve need to have a path out the door and be replaced.</p>
<p>In private industry in large companies, you have a competition for who can appear to be the best performers. This can result in projects that sound good that are used to beef up the annual review without actually having a positive effect, short-term or long, on corporate profits.</p>
<p>In the educational sphere, one big advantage that our competitors have is that parents are very concerned with education. I do not know how you can fix that problem in the United States.</p>
<p>Agree basically with BC. Without strong parental insistence on excellence from their children (as opposed whining about "my kid didn’t get an A–its not fay-ur) everything else is deck chairs on the Titanic. If I had it to do again, I would do it better.</p>
<p>We should allow schools to put persistently disruptive students and “intentional non-learners” in special, segregated classes. </p>
<p>Anxiousmom’s 9:42 post perfectly exemplifies why the “test scores” game often does not make sense as an evaluation tool for individual teachers.</p>
<p>Hard to see how larger class sizes will ever benefit the students.</p>
<p>Ok, I can live with the death of tenure. Now, how are we going to attract smart young teachers into the field, and keep them there? Most people don’t realize how difficult good teaching is.</p>
<p>Larger class sizes are common for Asian schools that outperform ours. Their schools have higher levels of parental support which counts for quite a bit in education.</p>
<p>Texas legislature is hoping to overturn our 1:22 K- 4th-grade class size limit. I’m praying they will retain it for K-1 grades. Hell, they should LOWER the limit in K -1, especially for low-SES schools. 22 needy 5-year-olds… one teacher/momma figure! :eek:</p>
<p>I suppose if you had a classroom of completely silent and attentive students who never spoke until recognized by the teacher, and you used a lecture method which didn’t call for much teacher-student interaction, and you had students who didn’t much personal assistance, raising the number of students wouldn’t reduce the quality of the educational experience.</p>
<p>^ Okay, that’s true. But that student has to come from somewhere. They would be negatively impacting another classroom anyway. The only actual change by making the class slightly larger is that one other non-disruptive student may be somewhat inconvenienced.</p>
<p>I think the problem with education these days is that parents are not doing their job in the first place. Schools are blamed for everything. I starts with issues at home. My most disruptive student is lives with his single mom, in poverty (free breakfats and lunches), while his daddy is in jail. His behavior affects all the other kids around him. He’s never, ever sick because his mom needs him out of the house so she can get to work. That’s what school has become: free day care.</p>
<p>I also think some teachers are just plain lazy. (Not all, mind you! But some who have no supervision.) My kids all told me about a teacher who had a “golden” job: he was the only one is his tech department. I used to think my oldest was pulling my leg when he told me stories about this teacher, who basically read books while the kids worked on their computers. But if the students had problems, the teacher just sent them back to reread the guidebook. He never helped. So I thought my oldest didn’t understand the situation. Then, my second child took a course with this same teacher and it was the exact same thing. How can a public school teacher get away with this behavior? Tenure!!!</p>