Here's a neat idea: itemize the amount of an individual's taxes that go for defense expenditures on a biweekly paycheck.

dajafi wrote:Here's a neat idea: itemize the amount of an individual's taxes that go for defense expenditures on a biweekly paycheck.

Well, actually, it'd pretty much be the whole thing. Well, that, and interest on the debt.

allentown wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:OK, so lots of people get treated bad by their employers. I really don't doubt that. But I still think the pay scale for teachers is about as bad as you can get for someone with an advanced degree. I still don't like merit pay for all the reasons I mentioned, mostly because it doesn't lead to better student outcomes, which is supposed to be the whole point.

I am looking forward to my first summer off though. My wife and I are going to have our honeymoon and I plan on going camping for a few weeks, probably by myself. I used to do that in college and grad school and I really miss it. But I don't think looking forward to my time off makes me lazy. Other than a 4 day trip to Puerto Rico, I haven't had a vacation in 6 years, unless you count the week around my marriage, which didn't feel like a vacation.

I don't see why you would conclude that merit pay would not lead to better student outcomes. I think it almost certainly would do so. And you are deluding yourself if you equate years of service and number of courses taken with merit.

First, give me some evidence that using merit pay leads to better student outcomes. It's been tried again and again and it does not lead to better student outcomes. Show me an example where it has worked and I'll start to reconsider my opinion. Like I said, I went into this being for merit pay and my mind was changed after looking at the research that shows no positive result from merit pay over any length of time. Where are the better student outcomes that you are sure will happen? Just because something sounds good doesn't mean it IS good. Good teaching is complex and merit pay has not worked, despite literally centuries of attempts. It comes in and out of vogue because it doesn't lead to better student outcomes.

I'm not deluding myself about anything. You didn't understand my point, or I did a poor job of communicating it. I wasn't equating years of service and number of courses taken with merit. What I said was that the merit systems tend to value the same types of things that people show when they have taken courses and have experience. For example, a merit evaluator coming into a classroom is going to look for good classroom management and an engaging lesson plan. Teachers with experience and lots of courses in education usually know how to do decent classroom management and design a decent lesson plan. Most of what makes bad teaching isn't going to show up on an evaluation for a teacher with any sort of tenure. It might show up on a new teacher, but the tenure system gets rid of most of those people.

Good teachers (and most people in general) are intrinsically motivated, not extrinsically motivated. That's what the research shows.

allentown wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

allentown wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:

Uncle Milty wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:

Uncle Milty wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:if you really think that i feel sorry for you.

Was this for me? If so we might need a breakout thread.

yea, good teachers arent lazy. that is really a terrible stereotype that is not true.

You're right. Good teachers aren't lazy. I commented on the overwhelming proportion of teachers to good teachers.

lazy people exist in every profession. you dont really have a point.

Yes, he does. Teaching is the only profession in which you really can't be fired, your compensation is totally unlinked to performance, and no matter how bad you are, you are guaranteed customers.

I kinda agree, but principals can make things pretty hard on the teachers who don't do a good job. My prof was a principal in the Nashville school district and he sad that he would get people to quit by giving them the worst assignments and making their lives hell. Of course, that's easier to do in a major urban school district.

I do think there needs to be a way to fire teachers who are burned out and not doing the job, but I think you are exaggerating a bit. It's not like the school district has no recourse. A burned out teacher isn't going to hang around in a school when they get the worst assignments all the time and are evaluated twice a year and forced to fill out tons of paperwork. That person will usually quit and take the retirement.

I can assure you based upon experience that many, many burned out or really bad teachers do cling to their jobs for dear life.
In a school district with 900 teachers, an intermediate unit with about 100, and a vo-tech school with about 70 teachers over the course of 20 years, I saw exactly 1 teacher lose a tenure hearing based on incompetence, and he was too debilitated by alcoholism to effectively defend himself. Talking monthly with school board members from 9 other school districts, there was perhaps 1 other firing for incompetence over that time period.

One of the problems with tenure is that it is 'earned' after two years on the job. Hope springs eternal and adminstrators are still hoping they will be able to coach a failing teacher to success at the end of that two year period.

What are you arguing? That the tenure system is broken? I agree. Let's fix it, make it harder to earn, etc. I thought the conversation was about merit pay. I agree something needs to be done, but merit pay isn't the answer.

I fail to see how everybody's just ignoring mountains of data that shows merit pay has merit. My bet is that you'd have some data that shows your point (as a biased teacher) and others would have data that shows their point (as a biased merit pay advocate).

Not to mention, we're fine not paying good teachers more if you want it that way and think it won't help. We just want to be able to fire bad teachers more easily. Normally you have to GIVE people something in return for that. We figured the good teachers might want some money. If you are willing to bargain away tenure for nothing - THAT'S AWESOME, but hopefully you won't be teaching kids business.

I don't have 4 weeks of vacation, and don't know many firms where you start at 4, know a lot more where you start at 2, but most are in the middle at 3.

jeff2sf wrote:I fail to see how everybody's just ignoring mountains of data that shows merit pay has merit. My bet is that you'd have some data that shows your point (as a biased teacher) and others would have data that shows their point (as a biased merit pay advocate).

Not to mention, we're fine not paying good teachers more if you want it that way and think it won't help. We just want to be able to fire bad teachers more easily. Normally you have to GIVE people something in return for that. We figured the good teachers might want some money. If you are willing to bargain away tenure for nothing - THAT'S AWESOME, but hopefully you won't be teaching kids business.

I don't have 4 weeks of vacation, and don't know many firms where you start at 4, know a lot more where you start at 2, but most are in the middle at 3.

I went through the literature looking for examples of where merit pay worked, but couldn't find anything of significance. I also read recent review articles written by people who are for merit pay and they never mention these mystery successes. You'd think they would be touting those successes, if they existed. Cincinnati, NYC, Denver, Iowa, AR, all of these places fairly recently gave it a go under a variety of situations. The best thing I saw was small gains in AR under a study that was later torn apart as being poorly designed. The teachers in these areas often liked it, so it's not that their unions were blocking the good news. I really don't know what to say. The fact that I can't produce evidence that merit pay works is somehow evidence that it works, I guess. Remember, I wanted to find information that it did work, since that was originally going to be the thesis of my paper.

I'm not sure what the insult is about. You have no evidence that it works, so your solution is to insult my business skills. I'm not in the profession to make tons of money and I'm not responsible for bargaining on behalf of the union. I'm posting on a message board about what I learned about merit pay after spending hours studying it, which is something you haven't done. I want what is best for the kids, not for myself. You must have me confused with someone selfish like a businessperson. I think there should be a way to fire bad teachers, and I think there should be higher pay to attract professionals from other fields. That's very different from merit pay.

By the way, I just had my first evaluation a few weeks ago. My principal loves me and said that I was "miles ahead of where I should be given my experience," so it's not that I think I'll get fired or make less money if merit pay goes through.


Here are a few pros and cons on merit pay from both sides of the argument....

here

Presumably this is the study you're talking about... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/200 ... mance-pay/

I think the money quote is at the bottom... the studies you'll cite weren't given long enough to work because of lack of funding/strong opposition from jerk ass teachers unions.

I recall a conversation I had with a Dean who was trying to convince me to get my MPA. He was rattling off of all of the jobs I could do. He got to School Administration and I said "Nah, teachers would get on my nerves." His response was "I've been graduating teachers for 25 years. Never the brightest students, usually straight C's. Very, very nice people. Easy to manipulate."

If he's got any point, I wonder if the focus is wrong at colleges in the first place (i.e. why aren't the brightest attracted to teaching?) It can't all be about pay, it never is. I'd think job satisfaction has to factor somewhere. I read once that there are three characteristics to a miserable job regardless of pay: anonymity (who really knows what I'm doing), immeasurability (who knows how good I am at my job and how can I get better), and relevance (who benefits from my work)? Teachers have the latter in spades - I think personally I'd have the biggest problem with the first two. Testing is certainly aimed at creating some kind of measurability, but considering the aftermath, it was clearly the wrong approach.

I'm no expert, so I'm open to other perspectives, but I wonder if teacher you are depends on if you can find a kind of niche and have fr. For instance (anecdotal evidence alert), my mom was once a preschool teacher and very good at it; creative, effective, etc. She cared about it, and there weren't any signs of burnout. Now, because it didn't pay very much as a small private outfit, she had to take another preschool-ish type job that sucked because of all sorts of regulations that made it much, much harder to actually do the job. And now she's in a public high school and fucking hates it, because of the same regulatory roadblocks, though she still tries and (hopefully) has some effect. I'm not sure where all this fits into the teacher union debate, or merit pay, but I've been thinking of that while reading the last few pages.

Why do we, as a society, continue to bully people? It really ends well with some individuals, doesn't it?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnCG-Ly-uBE&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

This is a hell of a way to start a reelection campaign.

Well, that's one way to do it

VoxOrion wrote: I read once that there are three characteristics to a miserable job regardless of pay: anonymity (who really knows what I'm doing), immeasurability (who knows how good I am at my job and how can I get better), and relevance (who benefits from my work)? Teachers have the latter in spades - I think personally I'd have the biggest problem with the first two. Testing is certainly aimed at creating some kind of measurability, but considering the aftermath, it was clearly the wrong approach.

Your english teacher must have been one of those C students: when you're referencing the 3rd of 3 items, it's the last, not the latter. Latter, & its fraternal twin former, work in pairs of two.

Yea, I'm grading papers here, people, and the red ink is flyin'!

I do like your tripartite miserable jobs index, mainly because I firmly believe its application reveals that most jobs are, particularly on items 1 & 2.

Work, on the whole, is overrated. Ownership: that's where the sex is.

I wonder if, given that Doc Smooth solved healthcare and that thread's dead, we couldn't have an education policy thread breakout.

WSJ Opinion page: what to read when nothing but stupid will do

Hello, Tipping Point

In which Murdoch's Morlocks divine in Tuesday's election results the imminent demise of Obama & all things Democrat.

never mind there's no one they would back that's ready to offer anything but "i don't like things now".

"Tipping Point"? Really? How hip are the WSJ editors, nipping at liberal heels via reference to a decade-old book written by a Canadian?

Obama's remarks about the shooting are a bit strange. I don't know what conference he is talking about but he talks about that for about 3 minutes before he mentions the shooting. So weird.

TenuredVulture wrote:I wonder if, given that Doc Smooth solved healthcare and that thread's dead, we couldn't have an education policy thread breakout.

"The operation was successful, but the patient died"

I like the education policy breakout idea.

My position on education is the same as on health: we should have less of everything formally constituted.

read more, school less; do healthy stuff more, doctor less.

TenuredVulture wrote:I wonder if, given that Doc Smooth solved healthcare and that thread's dead, we couldn't have an education policy thread breakout.

If you do a search, you'll find that I started one a year or two ago. It didn't go real well.

jerseyhoya wrote:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnCG-Ly-uBE&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

This is a hell of a way to start a reelection campaign.

He's such a fucking boob.

NOBODY VOTED FOR YOU, ASSHOLE. NOBODY WANTED YOU IN THAT OFFICE. NOT EVEN YOU. GO. THE. FUCK. AWAY.