The Florida Board of Education unanimously approved Tuesday a plan that will grant bonuses to the state’s top teachers, an assessment that will primarily be based on how their students perform on standardized tests and other measurements.
The plan, called Effective Compensation or E-Comp, was pushed by Education Commissioner John Winn, who wants it implemented in every district for the upcoming 2006-07 school year. It has been opposed by the state teachers union, the Florida Education Association, which says educators’ pay should be improved overall before a bonus program is imposed. It is threatening to go to court to block the plan.
The plan requires districts to award bonuses of 5 percent or more to at least the top 10 percent of their teachers — that’s at least $2,000 for a teacher making $40,000 annually. Teachers who are in the top 10 percent one year and remain in the top 25 percent statewide the next would again receive a bonus.
The rankings will be based on how students perform on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which covers subjects such as reading, writing, math and science, or special exams or measurements for classes and grades not covered by FCAT.
Something sensible out of Florida for a change.
Are you kidding? All this will do is either punish teachers for stupid/lazy students that dont care and dont want to be there – or it will convince teachers the only way to get more money is to improve students test taking ability or even worse help the students by cheating on the tests.
Great, I fully support meritocracy. Plus, it pisses the unions off, which makes me support it even more.
The only downside is that children are only being taught what is on these standardized tests. Random testing and evaluation will always show a better picture of the true state of students’ progress than having a structured and standardized testing regime. The downfall of the public education system is that it is designed for the lowest common denominator.
I came from the Florida public school system of the 70’s. We went through three sets of standardized tests, all of which were thrown out through legal actions after the fact.
Does this mean teachers in the gifted classes will automatically get bonuses and remedial teachers won’t?
It seems to me that all this ‘bonus’ program will do is to encourage the teachers to teach the test.
I strongly beleive that programs like this actually cause the QUALITY of EDUCATION to suffer.
Combine this with the elimination of tenure (no job should be guaranteed, everyone should have to work hard and compete to keep their job) and you’ve got something going.
Unfortunately, I also agre with Mike – standardized tests as the only measure of merit has problems.
I forgot, I also agree that anything that pisses off unions is a good thing.
So if you teach in a rich area where parents can afford extra help for their kids, kids have less behavioural and learning problems, the kids first language is english, and the schools are better supplied you’ll get paid more. That sounds fair to me. Lets make sure the best teachers are only teaching the rich kids.
Teachers will bejostling to get the good classes and the bad classes will be neglected.
I must agree with Gary and James – the teachers who work the hardest to improve their students’ performance should be rewarded, not the teachers who happen to have the best students by virtue of the demographics of the school district.
So long as we’re on the subject of school funding, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) demands bringing all levels of students in various demographic areas up to passing the standardized test. Now you tell me how the ESL (English as a second language) students – a group of students selected specifically because of their difficulties – are going to be able to perform better year after year. As soon as a particular student’s performance improves, he or she is moved out of ESL. The ESL group is required by NCLB to pass the tests, but they are selected specifically to have trouble with tests. Where’s the sense in that?
Man, I don’t know about this. Standardized tests aren’t really a measure of learning. We’re IT guys, right? How many A+, MCP or even MCSE certs are a result of “brain dump” sites? I’ve know a LOT of “certified” pros who not only would I not let work on my computers, I wouldn’t even let them USE my computers.
And if you want to piss off a union, send their member’s jobs to India.
I like that an idea is presented and they immediately push to implement it across the board without testing driving it in a few schools first. Like every great idea that is pushed out without testing, this one will fail because of some big, obvious problem that we can’t yet forsee.
Rewarding an employee based on his/her performance on the job? What a revolutionary idea!
Having been a high school student not all that long ago, I have to say to Larry…..they ALREADY only teach to the test’s. There is no more research or random study done, it’s all done with a direct link to the tests. Nothing more, nothing less.
And Don…..the jobs are already going to India.
This is fine as long as they look for and punish teachers who cheat.
Freakonomics has a chapter where he catches teachers that cheated by correcting or filling in a particular string of answers with the right (or, humorously, wrong) answers.
A rash of cheating followed the offering of performance bonuses based on test scores. A similar program in California was terminated because of suspicion that many “top teachers” had cheated for their students on the tests.
The only direct correlation that standardized testing has ever shown is with the socio-economic background of the student. Rich kids score better than poor kids (I know there are exceptions, but they are few and far between).
All this means is that the good teachers, the experienced teachers, will migrate the wealthy schools and the poor schools will be left with a newer, less experienced staff.
These are becoming popular proposals. Expect to see this happen in more states. Minnesota is running a pilot program in a few districts for “performance based” teacher pay but here it’s up to the local districts about how to measure performance. Stragely up here in Democrat land we are more for “local control” (especially in regards to education) than in the Republican South. As others have mentioned one of the big worries about proposals such as this is that a bad group of students could completely screw up a teacher’s salary and that teachers would be inclined to cheat to raise test scores (if that’s the measurement).
>that children are only being taught what is on these standardized tests
Great.
The teachers unions have been blocking merit pay for decades.
I took the original standardized I.Q. test when I was in high school, nobody was allowed to know the results because some parents complained. In a perverse way, I’m glad to know current generations of school kids get to experience the same crap my generation (gen X) got to deal with.
Teachers will just have to work harder to have the bad students removed from their rooms. A larger lost, and dangerous, generation results.
Short answer: Horrible idea, for all the reasons above.
Long answer: I left Florida 2 years ago and many of my friends became teachers there, and they are against it. Excluding the issue of cheating, this should be based on IMPROVEMENTS. Whether that is from year to year (first year teaching at a specific school would not be eligible) or from beginning to end of the year (there are preliminary tests available), thus making some leveling of the playing field.
Mind you, it’s not perfect, because the imrpovements that can be made on the lower level exceed those on the higher levels, but a sliding scale could be built depending on the first test.
Also, if there was a preliminary test, it would have to have some consequence or weight behind it, else it would be a bad marker of actual performance ability.
Either way, there are MANY problems with this itteration of an idea.
Bad idea.
Bonuses for doing a better job only work when all is equal. Because of the disparity between schools and school districts there can never be a level playing field.
I think the Florida legislature enacted this so they can say they are doing something to better education without looking at what they are doing. It is poorly thought out, guaranteed to antagonize and will eventually fail in the courts. In the mean time, a lot of money and time will have been wasted that could have been better used improving classrooms.
If you want better students, STOP putting all students in the same classification. Not all students learn the same way or at the same speed. Not all students have the same home environment to return to at night. And not all students get the same opportunities and tools in school to learn.
Teach students to think !!! Don’t teach them to pass a test.
Brilliant.
I hope you geniuses have your same comments ready when we get another story saying that there is a shortage of teachers in Florida.
THere is not enough money on the world for me to go teach in one of those drugs/gangs infested pits of humanity that permeate Florida and I tip my hat to any person who would want to go an teach current drug dealers with time to kill and other flotsam who dont care cuz 50cents dont need no eddukashion and hes got plenty of hoes and bling.
I just cant figure if Id rather teach in FLorida or in Texas where half of 8 graders fail math or Detroit where HALF of the adults are illiterate,…seems like there is similar armpits all over the place and I think this will help make up peoples minds where they want to work.
This sounds great on the surface but dig a little deeper and it illustrates a profound lack of understanding. Teachers do not begin the year with students of equal caliber. This will lead to teachers manipulating the system to get choice schools and students. Teachers will not cooperate when it comes to sharing ideas. As a result, poor students will get poor teachers and our society will remain in a state of disrepair.
The only way to rectify the system is to make everyone accountable; administrators, parents, politicians, students and teachers.
I have 2 children in NC schools, and they have NC versions of textbooks to teach the tests! My sons’ teachers only care about the end of grade tests, because that’s what their bonus is based on. Homework and grades and life skills (doing the work required, and trying to deliver more than expected) are unimportant. One teacher told me “I could have your son face the wall, the rest of the year and he’d still get a 4 [out of 4] on the EOGs [End of Grade Tests].
I think education needs to be a lot more local, and the standards to be determined.