ernest_t_bass;868145 wrote:You have to first understand how other countries "test and report" statistics. We (USA Americans) test EVERY child. Not every country does this. We test our (for lack of a better term) retards. They don't.

My understanding is that if you compare scores from top US students to top International students, we are still behind. We seem to fail at educating kids from K-12, and then they get to college and rapidly improve.

What seems unclear to me is this:

(1) Virtually every profession in the US evaluates employees based on some combination of objective and subjective criteria.
(2) Teachers argue that they are absolutely unique in that their value cannot be quantified.
(3) There is virtual unanimity about which teachers are good and which are bad.

This doesn't add up. If we all agree which teachers are better, why not pay them more? It's absolutely mind-boggling that teachers argue that can't be effectively evaluated when that flies in the face of everything else we've seen. Generally, every time we've had this thread, some teachers say something to the effect of, "You can't just pay teachers based on test scores." But I haven't seen anyone suggest that. Pointing out that a stupid evaluation idea is bad doesn't mean that all evaluations are bad, and I can't understand why any teacher who sees himself as above-average wouldn't want the opportunity to demonstrate that and earn extra money.

I'm 100% okay with the idea of paying our best teachers salaries that compare favorably to the private sector. Paying great teachers six-figures is fine by me, and I'd be happy to increase taxes to do that, as long as reasonable, rational criteria were used to evaluate teachers and get rid of the bad ones.

Is the problem that teachers really believe that they, as a profession, are uniquely incapable of being evaluated? Or is it that individual teachers are concerned that the evaluations for them personally might be inaccurate?

queencitybuckeye;868293 wrote:There is no practical reason that we couldn't squeeze out another 20-30 school days per year.

How are we going to pay for this 11%-16% increase in cost?

fan_from_texas;868342 wrote:My understanding is that if you compare scores from top US students to top International students, we are still behind. We seem to fail at educating kids from K-12, and then they get to college and rapidly improve.

If we only educate our "top 50%", I'm pretty sure our "scores" would increase. I really hate to agree with the idiot, but like CCrunner said, we spend an incredible amount of money (and time) on our lower percentage of kids.

Sonofanump;868344 wrote:How are we going to pay for this 11%-16% increase in cost?

The same way we pay for it now, the productive will subsidize the non-productive.

fan_from_texas;868342 wrote: (1) Virtually every profession in the US evaluates employees based on some combination of objective and subjective criteria.
(2) Teachers argue that they are absolutely unique in that their value cannot be quantified.
(3) There is virtual unanimity about which teachers are good and which are bad.

If we all agree which teachers are better, why not pay them more?

The criteria for what makes a good teacher is very subjective. I'd gather that if a school district were to pay the "best" teachers more, that would come down to favortism, nepatism, buddy system, who kisses the best ass, etc...

But what incentive would a school district have to pay more than they are required to do so?

The who "security through obscurity" argument is a total crock of shit. Someone (Vonnegut?) wrote that anyone who can't explain what they do for a living to a 12 year-old is a charlatan. I may not know the details of what happens behind the scenes at East Bumfuck High, but I know what teaching is, and could easily determine who is great at it, who is good, and who should be doing something else for a living. It's just not that complex.

Sonofanump;868350 wrote:The criteria for what makes a good teacher is very subjective. I'd gather that if a school district were to pay the "best" teachers more, that would come down to favortism, nepatism, buddy system, who kisses the best ass, etc...

But what incentive would a school district have to pay more than they are required to do so?

Why do you equate subjectivity with favoritism? Of course human beings will be human and the system won't be perfect, but in my 30+ years in the business world, I'd say that people tend to get what they deserve. If anything, the poorer performers tend to get undeserved breaks, but again, no system is perfect. I'd argue that a subjective system, however flawed, is still superior to a system where one is rewarded for simply putting in X years.

queencitybuckeye;868369 wrote:performers

What is the product, raw material and revenue produced in this business?

LOL @ teachers whining. I'd be okay with teachers being paid $12/hr after how they've acted with the whole SB5 thing.

Sonofanump;868371 wrote:What is the product, raw material and revenue produced in this business?

The product is the passing of knowledge from one party to others (aka education), the raw material is all human knowledge, and the revenue produced is the amount of learning that takes place. And before you even try to go there, I don't have to be able to measure it to know who makes the the best use of the "raw materials" and produces the most "revenue". A relatively short amount of observation will show it conclusively.

There's the answer to your question, how about an answer to mine?

I can't believe a group of professional, creative teachers and administrators can't come up with a fair system to evaluate whether teachers in their district are excelling or not.

All I ever see on these posts is wailing and whining about how unfair any subjective evaluations would be -- well that's just bull. Every private sector employee in the universe has undergone evaluations that are just as subjective and survived just fine.

I honestly think that decades of union-think where everyone is like a borg and treated as such, has killed whatever confidence these folks ever had in their own abilities. They've abdicated their individuality for the group and aren't comfortable unless the group is all getting an equal share.

Pathetic.

If nothing else, I hope SB5 survives the ballot box so you folks can eventually see that the world will not end with merit pay based on personal evaluations.

Ironman92;868330 wrote:I'm not going to say too much on this topic.....but as a gym teacher and a partial day 3rd grade co-teacher I could not possibly have enough information or experience to speak of just about any other profession the way many of you are doing.

My wife comes home most days pretty stressed from her job. In my mind I can't see the big deal about what she is having issues with...but I haven't been there and done that....so I don't judge her because quite honestly, I just don't know.

I've taught for 14 years and have worked with some real doozies, completely worthless in the grand scheme of things. I have also worked with some of the best. My current district is 40 miles wide and very low income. I can honestly say that kids show up for kindergarten each year and as a group seem lower and lower. Most districts are really cracking down on nearly everything. I will say teaching now is way more demanding than when I began.....and especially the last few years. I can honestly say that after my first week this year that I have never been stressed more about my job requirements than I am right now.

Think what you want...but most of you really don't know.

Reps to you. It is amazing how many on here are experts in teaching but haven't been in a classroom since they graduated 30 years ago.

Writerbuckeye;868398 wrote:I can't believe a group of professional, creative teachers and administrators can't come up with a fair system to evaluate whether teachers in their district are excelling or not.

All I ever see on these posts is wailing and whining about how unfair any subjective evaluations would be -- well that's just bull. Every private sector employee in the universe has undergone evaluations that are just as subjective and survived just fine.

I honestly think that decades of union-think where everyone is like a borg and treated as such, has killed whatever confidence these folks ever had in their own abilities. They've abdicated their individuality for the group and aren't comfortable unless the group is all getting an equal share.

Pathetic.

If nothing else, I hope SB5 survives the ballot box so you folks can eventually see that the world will not end with merit pay based on personal evaluations.

It is from years of getting the automatic step increases and having that golden ticket called Tenure and not having to worry about performance too much.

The title of the thread is one of the reasons for low performance in schools. If a student does poorly in school they can sign up for an entitlement program and have the rest of society pay for their failure. In China if you fail in school you are s**t out of luck. Another reason are helicopter parents who blame teachers for failing grades, not apathetic students who don't understand the importance of hard work.

In response to one of the original comments, all teachers should be paying 20% of their healthcare benfits.

queencitybuckeye;868276 wrote:One of the main reason others are ahead of us is that they attend classes 20% or more days than we do. The reason the kids got the summer off is long obsolete and should be done away with.

parents already pull their kids from school early for vacations etc. you really think people would go for more school?

queencitybuckeye;868361 wrote:The who "security through obscurity" argument is a total crock of shit. Someone (Vonnegut?) wrote that anyone who can't explain what they do for a living to a 12 year-old is a charlatan. I may not know the details of what happens behind the scenes at East Bumfuck High, but I know what teaching is, and could easily determine who is great at it, who is good, and who should be doing something else for a living. It's just not that complex.

i bet your penis is 12 inches long, you aced the ACT and SAT, and you can bench press 1000lbs?

queencitybuckeye;868379 wrote:The product is the passing of knowledge from one party to others (aka education), the raw material is all human knowledge, and the revenue produced is the amount of learning that takes place. And before you even try to go there, I don't have to be able to measure it to know who makes the the best use of the "raw materials" and produces the most "revenue". A relatively short amount of observation will show it conclusively.

Have you seen the apathetic kids that are members of today’s society? The raw knowledge that you refer to is quite lacking. How those teachers get anything out of the do no wrong ADHD slug generation is beyond me. You are suggesting testing before and testing after? I can see where those test scores will be going. Give them what they want improvement.

queencitybuckeye;868379 wrote:There's the answer to your question, how about an answer to mine?

What do you want answered?

Sonofanump;868606 wrote:Have you seen the apathetic kids that are members of today’s society? The raw knowledge that you refer to is quite lacking. How those teachers get anything out of the do no wrong ADHD slug generation is beyond me. You are suggesting testing before and testing after? I can see where those test scores will be going. Give them what they want improvement.

I have a question:

What percentage of children are in the ADHD slug generation, on average, across the country? Do you think these kids are the exception to the rule, or are they the rule?

sleeper;868612 wrote:I have a question:

What percentage of children are in the ADHD slug generation, on average, across the country? Do you think these kids are the exception to the rule, or are they the rule?

50%

Sonofanump;868614 wrote:50%

So if every teacher has this built in handicap of half the students being completely unteachable, then they can be fairly evaluated as a whole.

sleeper;868617 wrote:So if every teacher has this built in handicap of half the students being completely unteachable, then they can be fairly evaluated as a whole.

You think Ottawa Hills and Toledo Scott (or whatever rich suburb vs inner city students) are equal in ability?

Sonofanump;868632 wrote:You think Ottawa Hills and Toledo Scott (or whatever rich suburb vs inner city students) are equal in ability?

No, but if all teachers in the district have the same handicap, then they all can be fairly evaluated within that district.

Your scenario is like someone from Yahoo being evaluated by the standards of someone at Google; that isn't reality.

sleeper;868634 wrote:No, but if all teachers in the district have the same handicap, then they all can be fairly evaluated within that district.

Your scenario is like someone from Yahoo being evaluated by the standards of someone at Google; that isn't reality.

No way all teachers would have the same handicap, even in the same district.

That leads me to an idea. I could imagine teachers having a draft before the school year to determine their class. This would avoid favoritism by the principals assigning the classes. They would get scouting reports from the teachers that teach the year below them (but of course would the teacher give up that info knowing that it could affect their review of that kid’s performance. They could have a potluck with a big draft board, post the results in the local paper. The kids could know exactly how they stand. Now to figure out who drafts first.

No way all teachers would have the same handicap, even in the same district.

The point is, every teacher is going to have students that are unteachable, difficult, and will generate poor test results(if those are even used to determine merit). They will be outliers in determining who the best teachers are, I don't understand why this is so difficult to grasp.

sleeper;868642 wrote:I don't understand why this is so difficult to grasp.

Either do I.

Sonofanump;868644 wrote:Either do I.

Well, I guess we'll see teachers being ushered into the real world where you are evaluated by administrators that may or may not like you, but in general do a pretty good job of determining who the good/bad teachers are. Will there be some exceptions? Yes, this happens everywhere. The only teachers that should not like SB5 are bad teachers, because ultimately they will be the ones in the unemployment line.