WP: Florida to link teacher pay to test scores

HIALEAH, Fla. - A new pay-for-performance program for Florida's teachers will tie raises and bonuses directly to pupils' standardized-test scores beginning next year, marking the first time a state has so closely linked the wages of individual school personnel to their students' exam results.

The effort, now being adopted by local districts, is viewed as a landmark in the movement to restructure American schools by having them face the same kind of competitive pressures placed on private enterprise, and advocates say it could serve as a national model to replace traditional teacher pay plans that award raises based largely on academic degrees and years of experience.

Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has characterized the new policy, which bases a teacher's pay on improvements in test scores, as a matter of common sense, asking, "What's wrong about paying good teachers more for doing a better job?"

(snip)

The tests are already used to determine whether students pass or fail certain grades, and schools that test well, or better than the previous year, are rewarded with bonuses that are typically divided among teachers and staff, amounting in some cases to more than $1,000 a year.

Many schools now hold elaborate pep rallies for students before the tests, as North Twin Lakes Elementary did here recently. Dressed in T-shirts that said "We can do it!" the children sang to the tune of Lou Bega's hit "Mambo No. 5."

(snip)

But with such successes have come complaints. Under pressure to score well on tests, some school districts have moved school start dates back to early August to complete extra weeks of instruction before March exams. This has aroused the ire of many parents, and others have complained that with the tests have come too much pressure and too much homework.

The centerpiece of the new effort, known as E-Comp, requires all school districts in Florida to identify the top 10 percent of each variety of teacher and award them a 5 percent salary supplement. For an educator earning the average teacher salary in Florida of $41,578, that amounts to just over $2,000.

Controversy surrounds how that top 10 percent of teachers will be identified.

(snip)

"I don't think it can be done fairly," she said. "And I don't want to divide pit our staff against one another. I want a team. I want unity."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11917854/

Another assault on education from the Bush family.

Are these people insane? I can think of many ways to game the system, without half trying - don't they have educators down there? Absolutely unbelievable. Well, at least we won't have to worry about the South "rising again". They will have a lot of great test-takers, though. No one with a genuine, well rounded education, but great at the tests.

Most teachers are honest to a fault. This is an unfounded and unfair accusation.

around Texas whose scores were so suspect they pointed to cheating.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/longterm/stories/011005dntextaks.978e4837.html

I agree with you that there are many honest teachers, just as there are many honest filing clerks and tailors. But there are a lot of dishonest people too, and when their careers and their paychecks are based on test scores, you're gonna have cheating.

Test scores should be used to identify and address needs, PERIOD. Attaching substantial merit or reward to ANY test is asking for trouble.

Texas teachers' pay is not (yet) dependant on the Test. But a school's funding is.

Rod Paige was being investigated for faking attendance records in Houston when he was named US Sec of Ed by bush.

Tying test results to careers/salaries, etc., no matter who is involved, is just asking for problems. Tests should strictly be used to identify ways to improve, and nothing more. This obnoxious Bushian obsession with using testing to apportion educational funding has gotten way, way out of hand, and it needs to stop.

And I am rabidly opposed to the seeming importance put on test scores.

But I am from Florida and was educated in Florida schools.

I would match my well-roundedness any day of the week (with anyone else's).

And there are many others like me here....wait a minute. Nope. Sorry. I'm a rare bird here (or anywhere, for that matter).

To be honest, I have never been able to take school too seriously. In my case, I have always taught myself with whatever tools I could find (books, magazines, ask questions of people, and now, the internet)

I am of a mind that one's education is one's own responsibility and that public "education" is something to be endured while educating oneself.

but now I call my self, "self-educated", because I kept educating myself after college.

I do not believe most people can be trusted to self-educate, though.

From looking around at the people I know, they can't.

:argh: Not insane, they just need uneducated people who they can brainwash and who will vote republican.

Vote for the pukes, kill guys with towels on their heads, praise Jayzeus

Will she get a raise if the kids are happy?

Or the Art teacher? Will her raise be based on how many different crayons the kids use on their artwork?

The Music teacher? If they sing well, she gets a raise?

The Gym teacher? Those kids winning more kickball games means more pay?

The Librarian? More books checked out means more pay for her too?

And let's not forget the nurse! If they have all their immunizations when they start school, is that worth a bonus in her pay?

Then of course, we musn't leave out itinerant teachers who travel from school to school. Let's say a teacher has two schools. Would this means she gets half a raise or twice as much as everyone else?

Now I will be selfish and explain that I teach special ed. If you paid me based on test scores, I would owe the district money. LOL

If you don't see the problem with paying teachers based on student achievement, I don't know how much more clearly to explain it to you.

but teachers cannot and should not be the only people involved in children's education. Parents must play an equally important role: read to your kids, help them with homework, expose them to culture (museums and galleries), and nature (zoos and the outdoors), and get them involved in extra-curricular activities. Most of all, parents need to spend time with their kids and keep an eye on what they watch on TV, their video games and their internet activities (there are those who want the government to do it for them).

I always get a bunch of whiny excuses whenever I mention this, and then I'm inclined to take a page from Jesse Ventura and say, "well, I don't mean to sound hard core, but uh, then what are you doing being a parent?"

I was just trying to point out that many many teachers work with the children and it isn't fair to give raises to their classroom teachers while ignoring the contributions of so many others.

...I totally agree with you. We plan on doing all of those things you suggested. Plus lots of camping (I'm an old Boy Scout)

Two thumbs up BlueStateGuy!!!

:toast:

Those are all superfluous expenditures; hadn't you heard?

And like I said, no way will I be getting a raise for student achievement.

Except for the idiots who control school funding.

I only wish the people that do our school system's budget did.
In the county where I live, schools are lucky if they have a counselor visit once a week. Music, Art, and Gym are whittled away every year. :(

California where state funding is close to the bottom of the barrel there is no art teacher - at least at the elementary level. There is one music teacher shared by three schools. The librarian is paid out of PTA fundraising money and the gym teachers are volunteer moms.

Meantime, the teachers with the highest class test scores are given "under the table" bonuses - confirmed to me by a teacher disgusted with having to "teach the test."

The "test review" starts right after Christmas and after that it's drill, drill, drill.

Very sad.

and create their perfect dream of a nation of stupid people who are easy to control. :(

critical thinking. And current events are never mentioned. My daughter has to memorize the names of every country in Europe for 7th Grade Social Studies but she is required to know nothing about the people who live in those countries or the geography, political structure, or anything else that would provide any insight. As a parent, I have to fill in the gaps as best I can - and they are enormous.

:yourock:

Teachers are underpaid, and they are also rational. This means they will teach to the test. They will avoid innovative lesson plans and activities in favor of bland teaching to the test, which may not necessarily work.

but it still makes me angry. My oldest daughter spent her first three years of school in Florida, and she had great teachers, but I was so glad we left before she started third grade and had to put up with all the FCAT nonsense. Truly it was crazy. I spent a few weeks teaching in a Florida high school, and I don't know how every teacher learned to meet the day without dispair.

Based on the following: Crime rate, drug addiction rate, poverty rate, GDP, inflation, pollution, and so much more.

NOT performed. :eyes:

Let's tie politician and the administration pay with performance. Let's have them take continuing education every year and pay money every year for certifications.

You know this adminstration wouldn't have seen a raise in the past 5 years.

I was thinking it was a great idea but on further review...

How many pols need the money that is paid them? Not many.

Maybe we could attach their fortunes if they fail to achieve. :think:

Fla. to Link Teacher Pay To Students' Test Scores
Critics Worry About Fairness
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 22, 2006; Page A01

HIALEAH, Fla. -- A new pay-for-performance program for Florida's teachers will tie raises and bonuses directly to pupils' standardized-test scores beginning next year, marking the first time a state has so closely linked the wages of individual school personnel to their students' exam results.

The effort, now being adopted by local districts, is viewed as a landmark in the movement to restructure American schools by having them face the same kind of competitive pressures placed on private enterprise, and advocates say it could serve as a national model to replace traditional teacher pay plans that award raises based largely on academic degrees and years of experience.

Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has characterized the new policy, which bases a teacher's pay on improvements in test scores, as a matter of common sense, asking, "What's wrong about paying good teachers more for doing a better job?"

But teachers unions and some education experts say any effort to evaluate teachers exclusively on test-score improvements will not work, because schools are not factories and their output is not so easily measured. An exam, they say, cannot measure how much teachers have inspired students, or whether they have instilled in them a lifelong curiosity. Moreover, some critics say, the explicit profit motive could overshadow teacher-student relationships.

"Standardized tests don't measure everything in a child's life in school," said Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association, which is appealing the new pay policy to a state administrative judge. "We should take a look at the total education and not just what they can put on a bubble sheet."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/21/AR2006032101545.html

maybe later:eyes:

like a stick man.

Who would want to teach in a place where there are so many hinderances to test score increases?

What a dopey, simplistic idea.

Why even try? The progress my kids with disabilities make can't be measured by any standardized test.

One of mine finally learned her address today. How I wish I could get a raise for that! It only took 7 months to teach it to her.

It directly opposes the mainstreaming of special-ed kids. I know alot of teachers complain about "those kids" being in their classroom, but I've seen nothing but positive results come from it. It's bad enough the standardized testing discriminates against disabled kids and English language learners, now there's just another disincentive for teachers to teach to "those" populations.

who was promoting this pay for test scores crap. His plan was to pay for improving test scores. The CSPAN guy asked him 'what about special ed teachers?' and the idiot actually said that they stand to make the most money, since kids with disabilities can 'make the biggest gains, since they are so far behind'.

Oh, so that's it!! The reason my students are so far below grade level isn't because they have cognitive impairments, it's because I am not paid for increases in their achievement!! Hot damn, I'm gonna get rich after all! No more Powerball tickets for me. :sarcasm:

It's hard enough to find teachers who want to work with disadvantaged kids. Now it will be even harder.

This whole FCAT thing is a load of crap but to tie teachers's pay to high scores has nothing to do with their ability to teach.

:shrug:

scores. Alot of these districts are immigrant districts and kids are ESL. Also, some of the kids are homeless and have lots of socio-economic problems.

are tested.

LOL

nt

LOL

Rewarding teachers for abandoning critical thinking in favor of rote learning will lead to a specific product rolling off the edumacashun assembly line.

Wal-Mart-ready maze-running rats. Which is, of course, the point.

Teaching to the test is a REALLY, REALLY BAD idea.

to that of Stanley Kaplan drill teams. ("We have four choices for this question. We can eliminate two right away. That leaves us with a 50-50 chance of getting it right or getting it wrong. Always answer the question as an unmarked answer will be marked as 'wrong'.")

like a Scantron test. Not in the slightest.

I am SO glad I don't have kids, but my heart breaks for all those who do have to put up with this BS.

My stepdaughter is in sixth grade this year. Lucky for us and her she is a pretty smart kid because a large portion of her elementary school years were spent learning to take the FCAT. It's the same way with my nieces. I think it's a disgrace. I worry about my little one attending school here. Guess I'll be doing lots of "supplemental" stuff!

This doesn't work, people. Chicago tried it, and it just ended up making the schools that weren't doing well cheat.

You can't make kids learn if they don't get enough to eat, can't see the board because they need glasses, have a toothache, are sick, can't sleep in a chaotic building....

Make sure every kid has enough of the basics from birth and test scores will go up.

Oh, wait. They just slashed that funding, didn't they?

http://www.freakonomics.com/



BTW - you're post pretty much mirrored my first thought, "Didn't they read Freakonomics?"

First thing I thought of.

idea for so many different reasons, but what the hell do I know.

I was only a teacher for twenty years. :sarcasm:

"duh, I know, blame teachers and pay them by what my kid gets on his exams".

The bush family scares because their decisions often look like some uneducated, isolated, bigotted, gun nut, came up with them.

practise equipment? And got contracts from NCLB Act?

Oh, that's right... NEIL BUSH!

to back that up?

Thanks,
Cindy in Fort Lauderdale

He has Saudi investment for it, among others.

Shouldn't be too hard to find out the info.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3742329.html

March 22, 2006, 11:58PM
Former first lady's donation aids son
Katrina funds earmarked to pay for Neil Bush's software program

By CYNTHIA LEONOR GARZA
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil.

Since then, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight area schools that took in substantial numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

... Neil Bush founded Austin-based Ignite Learning, which produces the COW program, in 1999.

Becker said she wasn't at liberty to divulge how much money the Bush family gave to the hurricane funds, but said the "rest of their donation was not earmarked for anything."

in their classrooms? Aren't they mandated to teach to the test anyway?

Bravo! Nice thinking, idiots!

:banghead:

That is exactly what is going to happen. What they need is equal pay for equal work. Every teacher should get paid the same thing. That way no one will have any reason to inflate grades. The kids get the grades they earn, not grades based on the teacher's pay.

Teachers who rock the boat will suddenly start getting all the "challenged" kids, and the ones who toe the line will get the cream of the crop.. If there's ANY "scheme" that ties scores & wages together, there are ways to game the system..

And of course whent he union complains, the repubes will just spin it as the evil union trying to steal tax money for inept teachers :grr:

Someone needs to run an ad quick:
This needs to be linked to "business".. Like an ad where a boss gives an employee he does not like, a hard project and gives him all the office screw ups to help..then uses their poor performance as an excuse to fire the employee he has it in for..

If not, every Florida teacher should resign from their union.

My dentist is great! He sends me reminders so I don't forget checkups. He uses the latest techniques based on research. He never hurts me, and I've got all my teeth, so when I ran into him the other day, I was eager to see if he had heard about the new state program. I knew he'd think it was great.

"Did you hear about the new state program to measure effectiveness of dentists with their young patients?" I said.

"No," he said. He didn't seem too thrilled. "How will they do that?"

"It's quite simple," I said. "They will just count the number of cavities each patient has at age 10, 14, and 18 and average that to determine a dentist's rating. Dentists will be rated as Excellent, Good, Average, Below Average, and Unsatisfactory. That way parents will know which are the best dentists. It will also encourage the less effective dentists to get better," I said. "Poor dentists who don't improve could lose their licenses to practice."

"That's terrible," he said.

"What? That's not a good attitude," I said. "Don't you think we should try to improve children's dental health in this state?"

"Sure I do," he said, "but that's not a fair way to determine who is practicing good dentistry."

"Why not?" I said. "It makes perfect sense to me."

"Well, it's so obvious," he said. "Don't you see that dentists don't all work with the same clientele; so much depends on things we can't control?”
“For example," he said, "I work in a rural area with a high percentage of patients from deprived homes, while some of my colleagues work in upper middle class neighborhoods. Many of the parents I work with don't bring their children to see me until there is some kind of problem and I don't get to do much preventive work. Also," he said, "many of the parents I serve let their kids eat way too much candy from an early age, unlike more educated parents who understand the relationship between sugar and decay. To top it all off," he added, "so many of my clients have well water which is untreated and has no fluoride in it. Do you have any idea how much difference early use of fluoride can make?"

"It sounds like you're making excuses," I said. I couldn't believe my dentist would be so defensive. He does a great job.

"I am not!" he said. "My best patients are as good as anyone's, my work is as good as anyone's, but my average cavity count is going to be higher than a lot of other dentists because I chose to work where I am needed most."

"Don't' get touchy," I said.

"Touchy?" he said. “Try furious. In a system like this, I will end up being rated average, below average, or worse. My more educated patients who see these ratings may believe this so-called rating actually is a measure of my ability and proficiency as a dentist. They may leave me, and I'll be left with only the neediest patients. And my cavity average score will get even worse. On top of that, how will I attract good dental hygienists and other excellent dentists to my practice if it is labeled below average?"

"I think you are overreacting," I said. "'Complaining, excuse making and stonewalling won't improve dental health'...I am quoting from a leading member of the DOC," I noted.

"What's the DOC?" he asked.

"It's the Dental Oversight Committee," I said, "a group made up of mostly laypersons to make sure dentistry in this state gets improved."

"Spare me," he said, "I can't believe this. Reasonable people won't buy it," he said hopefully.

The program sounded reasonable to me, so I asked, "How else would you measure good dentistry?"

"Come watch me work," he said. "Observe my processes."

"That's too complicated and time consuming," I said. "Cavities are the bottom line, and you can't argue with the bottom line. It's an absolute measure."

"That's what I'm afraid my parents and prospective patients will think. This can't be happening," he said despairingly.

"Now, now," I said, "don't despair. The state will help you some."

"How?" he said.

"If you're rated poorly, they'll send a dentist who is rated excellent to help straighten you out," I said brightly.

"You mean," he said, "they'll send a dentist with a wealthy clientele to show me how to work on severe juvenile dental problems with which I have probably had much more experience? Big help."

"There you go again," I said. "You aren't acting professionally at all."

"You don't get it," he said. "Doing this would be like grading schools and teachers on an average score on a test of children's progress without regard to influences outside the school, the home, the community served and stuff like that. Why would they do something so unfair to dentists? No one would ever think of doing that to schools."

I just shook my head sadly, but he had brightened.

"I'm going to write my representatives and senator," he said. "I'll use the school analogy- surely they will see the point."

Will teachers of remedial classes get paid less?

Will administrators assign high-scoring kids to favored teachers so that teachers they don't like get punished with lower pay?

If someone comes in sick and passes the Flu bug around right before the big test will the teacher in that class have to take a pay cut?

:wtf:

I taught slower students, but it didn't help that not only did I have big classes (30 students with 18 of them special ed- no aide, no supplies, heck I couldn't even get ahold of their IEPs!), but the other teachers "weeded" out their discipline problems by having them transferred into my classes!! Their classes got better and smaller, mine got tougher and bigger. They had seniority and the district thought it was OK. Even the principal transferred problem kids out of BAND into my science classes, because they had no place else to go and the band teacher wouldn't take them back!

How can a teacher like me, who taught lots of spec. ed, BD and otherwise troubled kids, possibly compete with the other teachers who selected their own classes to have the best and brightest?

And I hope teachers like you win. There is no way something like that plan should be legal.

and by poor, I'm referring to socioeconomic status of the majority of the students. I work for a public school district. One of our schools has an 85% free/reduced lunch rate. That means 85% of the students live in poor households. In most of those cases, both parents work, often at several different jobs. That doesn't leave a lot of time for helping the kids with their homework, and correspondingly, those kids tend to do fairly badly on tests. For about 40%, English is a second language.

We also have one school in a wealthy area. Those kids often have a parent who's home all the time, active in the PTA, and who works with them on their schoolwork. Those kids tend to do a lot better on tests. Nearly all those kids are native English speakers.

Now, obviously, if the kids in the wealthy school do a whole lot better on the tests than the kids in the poor school, and the teacher pay is tied to that, what do we now do about the fact that ALL our teachers want to teach at the wealthy school, and none want to teach at the poor school? Leaving aside all the questions about the fairness of some schools being so impoverished, how do you fairly allocate staff if you know perfectly well staff at one school are going to end up being better compensated than staff at another - because of circumstances completely beyond their control?

I worked for some time as a systems analyst on a metrics project for programmers. Basically, what I ended up telling management - and they did NOT want to hear it - is that if you make personnel decisions based on metrics, your metrics are guaranteed to be worthless. Metrics should be used to identify process problems, and then to test whether solutions have any effect. They should never, ever, be used for personnel issues like pay raises, because if you do that, the employees affected by those decisions will make sure the metrics are altered. You need the old-fashioned interface for that - actually KNOWING which of your employees is doing the work, and doing it well! But they didn't want to hear that. And neither do the simplistically-minded on this issue. They think that these metrics - tests - tell them which teachers are doing a good job. They don't. There are too many variables.

These schemes are only fair if all schools and classroom are created equal... which they aren't, never have been, and never will (or should) be. I believe these ideas of "running schools like businesses" are some of the worst education-related ideas to actually be taken seriously by the powers-that-be in recent years. Hopefully this is just a really awful trend that will come and go, but I see it having some possibly permanent (and awful) effects on public schools.

themselves had to deal with some jerk boss looking over their shoulders, scrutinizing their every move, and being at the helpless, receiving end of unfair office politics. Or staying up at night worrying about how they might be fired from their job unless they can sell X amount of things to X amount of customers. Which is pretty much what this test-scores thing amounts to. (It's the teacher's fault if the kid doesn't want to do his homework, has lousy parents who don't encourage his learning, or maybe has a learning disability?)

Run a business into the ground (Harken)? Don't worry, you won't be stuck working at McDonald's (as you probably deserve). Poppy will make sure you get yet another ridiculously unearned high position in life. Defraud a savings and loan? Nothing to fear, Poppy will make sure you stay out of jail -- as well as securing another big time job for you. Worried about getting elected/reelected? Worry not. Leave that mainly to us. You've got us to hold your hand at all times, no matter how old you are, how corrupt you are, how incompetent you are. Let the little guy suffer the indignities of office politics. You've been born with the resources to not only avoid that situation, but to be the one who bestows that situation onto others.

Is our economy better off with the "competitive pressures?" Hell, NO. We HATE each other and it's getting worse. Republicans just need to go away. I'm so tired of them and their stupid ideas. If anybody succeeds in business, it's because they are cheating. They cheat by lying to their stockholders; they cheat by breaking international laws; they cheat by hiding information from the consumers.

Is that what Jeb Bush wants to teach our kids? That they have to cheat to get ahead?

Didn't they already try this in California and stop the program when it turned out to be an utter abject failure?

"What's wrong about paying good teachers more for doing a better job?"

Well, duh, nothing. But you do understand that is not what you are proposing to pay them for. Don't you?

to their students' test scores, my kid would be OUT of the public school system in a heart beat. Could that be Bush's simple objective? Why yes, I think it could.

who fails to DO the test. I taught 3rd-graders and administered achievement tests for years. No matter how hard a teacher works and motivates to prepare children for a test, there is always at least one who decides it is just too much effort, and marks random answers rather than even reading the test items. It is against the rules for teachers to speak to a child during the test, so there is no way to "spur the child into action."

Move-ins just before testing time is another problem for teachers. Frequently I would get a new student in my class the week of testing, and never a high-achiever, but his scores would unfairly reflect on my teaching performance.

One year, my brightest student went on vacation the entire week of the test. Students can be too sick for testing or just poor test-takers.

This is a disastrous decision on so many levels.

Wowie zowie and hot damn. Doesn't anyone ever THINK these things through?

:argh:

Hekate

this is so stupid - what if we had * in our classes - our pay would be very low
this just makes it so wrong
put all the dumb kids in one class
if they want to get rid of a teacher - they load their class with the less bright

this sets up codependent relationships

private schools don't have to take the lazy, unmotivated students

teachers can't fire students

Teachers will refuse to teach remedial classes. Or refuse to teach in districts that have bad test scores and need talented teachers.

Or stop teaching altogether.