General & On My Mind 15 Jan 2006 04:29 pm
(via Aaron Campbell) I just really, really hate this kind of stuff:
Over the objections of the teachers’ union, the Board of Education here [Houston, TX] on Thursday unanimously approved the nation’s largest merit pay program, which calls for rewarding teachers based on how well their students perform on standardized tests.
Oy. Somehow this is not something that would make me want to move to Houston.
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Are you serious? That is the most mindboggling thing I’ve read today - having skim read the article, I’m not surprised the teacher union couldn’t stop it with only 40% membership - here in South Australia, it’d be closer to 80/90% but still, do the powers that be have any idea what education is? We definitely don’t have standardised testing on a pedestal like that here - I am amazed that teachers have time to be as creative as they are in the US if that’s the pressure you have to be under. Here if kids are under the federal benchmark (only introduced last year) then they received money to improve their standards and last year was the first time I have ever heard it inferred in an South Aussie school that we should “prepare” our kids a bit better for the LaN (Literacy and Numeracy) tests. The Houston pay deal can’t be a national trend for you, can it? Mostly what I read here, Will, is inspiring but that is very depressing (as it must be more so for you.)
This has been going on for years here in North Carolina. What especially insidious about it is that all teachers in the school earn their bonuses based on the work of reading and math teachers. This is so backward.
It’s an Industrial Age solution to an Information age Problem.