I look back at my 40 year career in public education and how fortunate I was to have taught in a district in which the voting population valued education and in a state in which education was similarly valued. Morale was excellent at the schools I taught in. My salary was very good, far exceeding what I had thought it would be when I began my career. I feel sorry for those in states and communities in which education is not considered worth really paying for. I am glad that I heeded the advice of my uncle, who spent his career in public education. His advice when I went looking for a placement was "don't get caught in a district which doesn't value education." I'm glad I listened.
1
I have to wonder if public school districts with such problems access ubiquitous resources like the following: "Continuous Improvement in Public Schools Through ISO 9001:2000 Since Racine Unified School District achieved ISO 9001:2000 certification, the district has made notable progress in closing the achievement gap between demographic groups in reading and math, decreasing truancy and suspensions and increasing parent satisfaction."
[The answer, unfortunately, is that most do not.]
Performance based pay was not supported by “in the trenches teachers “anywhere in the USA
It was the Administrators and educational consultants and educational lobbyists for corporations ,that pushed legislators to enact these programs.
Small class size , each with a lead teacher and two paraprofessional is ideal.
Teach core courses till a junior in high school and basic living skills associated with independence and inspiration.
Start making Phonetics and math memorization required again along with civics education
We need a lot of counselors and social services too
And unions supporting families and teachers
Be brave teachers!
2
Denver teachers are striking because they don’t want teachers in high-poverty schools to receive incentives. I can’t agree with them on this.
1
Too many parents are self declared experts on how to teach, especially when most of them refuse to pay for it. BTW, terrible headline. Belittles the complex issues. But I guess it enflames debate from those outside of Denver (like NYT readers) and helps sell papers.
4
Denver teachers are breaking a 5 year contract, agreed to in September 2017.
The average Denver teacher salary, including incentives is $62k per year.
The teacher's union turned down a 10 percent raise. Compared to a 6 percent raise LA Unified school teachers agreed to last month.
The teacher's retirement fund PERA is underfunded by nearly $40 billion. The yearly budget of Colorado is $30 billion.
2
Untrue. This is an expired ten contract.
4
Performance-based pay is a scam no better than charter schools. Improve the lives of students, see teachers succeed. Seals perform at the zoo, teachers work! Some parents wonder if they should allow their child to play football. I wonder, how many would recommend their kids become public school teachers in a woebegotten district with desperately needy students?
2
@sunnyshel--in fact, statistics show that the number of people going into teaching has declined.
1
@Minmin-sunnyshel was being sarcastic. Did that fall flat on you?
1
This strike is a direct consequence of 15 years of failed corporatization of Denver public schools that began when superintendent (now Senator) Michael Bennett began managing our public school as a business. His legacy, and the legacy of his successor, Tom Boasberg, has resulted in a bloated central administration, weeks of standardized testing, and confusing pay scales based on subjective standards administered by bureaucrats who have never been in a classroom. The parents and teachers in Denver have for years been talking about this as a failed experiment in how not to run public schools. Enough is enough!
9
Both my kids are Denver Public School students & today is a complete disaster of leadership dating back to when Senator Michael Bennet was our school superintendent. He introduced the Wall St. type bonus system. When initial support among teachers for the bonus system was in the teens, he and his "reformers" hired PR firms to spin the system as winning for the teachers and students. It eventually passed with just over 50%. What's appalling is the we have a new superintendent, Susana Cordova,who has been the #2 person at DPS, and rather than break free from the stubborn legacy of her predecessor and lead, she continues to support the idea that bonuses are a difference maker. Studies by the University of Colorado have shown the bonus system very slightly improves math scores and very slightly decreases English scores. So a net 0! Meanwhile both my kids (high schoolers) have taken off school as the schools they attend are understaffed with unqualified replacement teachers. My kids take 5 AP classes between then. How can you expect a substitute teacher to help students prepare for the coming AP tests. Ironically, one of my kids is in an AP class with Susan Cordova's child, so she too will suffer the poor leadership of her mother. The difference is that Cordova's child is a senior and already accepted to university, so maybe she just doesn't care enough to have a sense of urgency to resolve these negotiations that have been going on for 15 months. My child is junior.
2
Sorry, but this is called digging your own grave.
What did teachers expect? Under any system that puts them under the microscope for student performance (instead of students themselves, administrators, etc.) who will be the fall guy in the end?
And these teachers actually campaigned for it themselves?
4
@KA-teachers never wanted this. The person mentioned in the article was one individual who supported it ten years ago. It’s the stress of not being able to plan because your pay is left to a subjective criteria decided by an administrator who makes 3 times the teacher with no accountability.
Once again, teachers get the blame for the failures of society. When many of the students come from families that are struggling to just keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, teachers are somehow seen as responsible.
A living wage for all, an equitable tax system, universal healthcare and a social safety net would go along way toward resolving the issues in our schools. Until we have these things, my recommendation to any student considering a career in education is to study coding or finance. Until teaching pays $100,000 a year and students have the society they deserve, stay away.
70
"It is the Christian thing to do." said the Superintendent of Denver Schools, when he addressed the Portland Public Schools when this performance-based pay was initiated. [No surprise today. he was predictably into fixing blame (on teachers) at the cost of fixing the Denver Public Schools system.]@Vink
3
As ineffective as public schools are commonly painted, especially by the Right, sixty plus years as a public school student (hardly unique, I know), and as a teacher and high school principal did manage to teach me a few things about teaching and learning.
One of them is that a teacher's "effectiveness" is not easily captured on tests. In fact, many of the appreciative comments I've received over the years from former students came years later, often from (now) men and women who were never "good" students, if the only measure of "good" is a standardized test.
My favorite example, though, didn't have to wait a decade or so:
In my early years of teaching, a young man surprised me by saying I was the best teacher he'd ever had. " But, Bob," I replied, "You've failed my class twice." Bob, who has just sneaked by the third time around, smiled at me and said, "Yeah, but it wasn't your fault."
Now, there was a lesson learned for both student and teacher about a teacher's effectiveness that a test will never capture and merit pay will never reward.
There are so many such lessons available to those willing to heed them that sense would invite, even demand skepticism any time teacher "merit" pay is on the table.
73
This is a result of a major disconnect between the teaching profession and American society. America values independence and ruthless competition, but education can only work when people feel like members of a community that works together.
Cooperation is key in education. When we have teachers compete against each other for scarce funding, students compete against each other for decimal points in their GPAs, and schools competing against other schools for recognition and tax money, we pervert the mission of education.
Teaching is unlike almost every job in the private sector. In the private sector, you make, market, and sell as best you can. Your actions are usually directly correlated to your success because the systems at play are limited. For education, we are only one part in a much larger system. The best teacher in the world could never hope to succeed without the support of administrators, students, parents, and the community at large. In some ways, everyone can consider themselves to be part-time educators because everything they do impacts our work.
Children are not products to be marketed and sold. They're people. And you can't objectively evaluate interpersonal relationships. Performance pay turns teachers into factory line workers and students into widgets. We need living wages and enough to remind us that we are valued.
I am biased, but education is the most important work of society. And for being so selfless and determined, our reward is table scraps.
79
@Andrew Roberts
Well put, thank you!
10
An absolutely spot on take on Education.
4
Colorado DEMOCRATIC U.S. Senator Michael Bennet introduced and perpetuated the ProComp pay scheme. To suggest in your heading that "Teachers were FOR ProCompbefore they were AGAINST ProComp" is fatuous, as the Denver School Board unanimously choose Bennet who was appointed by then Mayor (and former Colorado Governor) John Hickenlooper -- not teachers. Is it any wonder that current U.S. Senator Michael Bennet and former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper are mentioned as possible 2020 candidates for President, Vice President and/or Cabinet members for a future Democratic Administration? Or, perhaps these uber-rich, neoliberal centrists will instead campaign and/or serve with the likes of so-called Independent Howard Schultz? With Democrats like these, who needs them!
2
You need to have a bonus plan like my county does. Your bonus depends on your SAT score when you were a senior in high school. Absolutely the greatest way to identify a good teacher 30 years later.
1
At one time, our school district used Title 1 funds to pay teachers at those schools for extra days of service instead of for (some) supplemental personnel or materials. The stipend was for extra collaborative time and for recognition of the greater demands serving disadvantaged students living in disadvantaged communities. As in Denver, some balked because “that’s not fair to other teachers”, others who don’t accept that equity is more important than equality to close achievement gaps. (Other frustrations, about standards, evaluations, supervision and stakeholders, exacerbate this sentiment.)
It would be good to see the Denver Classroom Teachers Association acknowledge that it is important to gain equitable rather than equal compensation for their members who serve in high demand or high need positions. It might also be worth reconsidering how federal funds can award teachers for the extra load of serving less prepared students (rather than paying for extra personnel or materials). State funds to raise reading proficiency made little difference over several years. Conservatives have pressed for other uses of supplemental funds. I might agree to offer parents transportation vouchers to send their children to higher achieving public schools. That could lead to higher parent visions of success and greater teacher appreciation of family needs.
In valid research, there's a direct connection between subjects and the effects of their actions. With performance-based pay there isn't a direct correlation; students take end-of-year tests but their scores determine teachers' incomes. If teachers took the tests themselves, then teachers should reap the rewards or negative consequences.
The system for performance-based pay is flawed because some students may not be the best test-takers and/or may take those tests under less than desirable circumstances. Yet the outcomes from their tests affect their teachers' salaries.
2
There are so many variables involved in the education of a person, that reducing them to the result of a set of standardized tests makes no sense to me at all. Other than that such a metric provides a politically acceptable illusion of reducing something that is complex, uncertain, and ambiguous to something that appears to be simple, certain, and clear. That second set of characteristics is also indicative of control, and with test results we feel like we have gained control over something that we have not. Solving poverty is a big, daunting, intimidating lift. So we don't try very hard as a system, as a nation to do that. We leave it to individuals. But, as a system, backed by conservative politics, liberal acquiescence, and Gates imprimaturs, we blame teachers with lower student test scores for having failed students who are embedded in a system that provides them with little of what they need to do well on the tests. It is complex, uncertain, and ambiguous. Teachers accept the reality of that every day. When will everyone else?
3
The fundamental mistake we keep making as a society is reflexively applying a capitalist frameworks to every problem. Market based solutions creative destruction, survival of the biggest, fittest, or most tenacious entities have no business in education, and are why our healthcare costs are out of control.
A free and open “job market” will probably always be the most effective way to sort out how to hire the most talented candidates in any field. But paying teachers like salesmen who need to wolfishly search for bonuses is not the best way for to educate our children.
The suburbs will almost always pay significantly better, so paying teachers more for tough assignments is not only laudable, but likely necessary to recruit talented teachers to work in underperforming districts.
8
Nothing improves teacher performance more than students
coming to school READY TO LEARN. Incentivize the parents.
7
Performance based testing for teachers is a red flag. As soon as anyone suggests it, it means they are not an educator with an ounce of understanding. By and large it means they are "externals" pushing Ed reform. Externals means political influencers or those seeking some stature in the public eye which pits them against public education. It means they are not a friend of public schools. If one is for performance based salaries it means they have no clue that it is nearly impossible to increase the base-line average test scores from children of poverty. In the few rare places this has been done anywhere in USA it has been achieved through scheming, scamming, or data manipulation. Test prep may increases scores a minuscule percentage. For what? There is zero correlation with test scores and later life achievement. It wastes time undermines real learning, and diverts large amounts of dollars to "externals" pushing the testing business. Communities of poverty are in a rough spot and as a group the kids there (like it or not) can not perform as well as kids in wealthy communities. It is unachievable for the group. Individuals can do well. A teacher in 6 hours can not undo what 18 hours a day in a broken community lacks. This does not mean we should abandon the poor kids, far from it they need teachers and support even more. The pay off comes later and it is not test-based. FIGHT TEACHER BASED PERFORMANCE AND BOOT OUT ANY BOARD MEMBERS OR SUPERINTENDENTS FOR IT.
2
So... wait. Students aren't widgets and teachers can't be managed like sales reps who are trying to hit target numbers? Who knew. This is shocking, shocking news.
As a 16-year NYC Public School teaching veteran, it's clear to me that merit-based pay is just another neoliberal trap devised to turn workers against one another and open up opportunities for privatization. I'm glad to see my union brothers and sisters standing up divisive anti-rank-and-file ideologies. NYC UFT stands with you.
3
Why does it seem like it's always either-or in education? It sounds like Denver teachers need higher base salaries AND bonuses for teaching highly challenged student populations.
4
"More than half of public school students here are Latino. Two-thirds qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and a third are still learning English."
All the while, the construction and landscaping businesses profit by paying undocumented Latino workers 30-50% less than others. Teachers' performance is likely proportional to the students' ability to speak English. Perhaps they should pay more attention to national politics.
7
Performance based pay for K-12 teachers might have seemed like a good idea to Ed reformers, but the metrics used to assess teachers' effectiveness are flawed. These programs invariably rely on standardized testing and student grades. When teachers feel that their salary depends on these criteria, they use class instruction time to prepare the students for test taking at the cost of the curriculum, grade leniently, and allow students to retake tests to improve their scores. This makes sense and the teachers can't be blamed for adapting to the perverse incentives created by these programs. As shown in the comments of teachers here, and as those of us fortunate enough to have had a great teacher know, the real measure of a teacher's effectiveness is hard to quantify, and often doesn't become clear to their students until years later. A better way of assessing performance is to have adminstrators and peers evaluate teachers in class and by their curricular materials, along with student comments. This is the approach used in most colleges. T takes more effort than standardized testing, but is more informative. The bottom line, however, is that every teacher should earn a livable salary!
5
After 20 years in education, I have seen "the next best idea" come and go so many times that I've lost count. These time and money-wasting ideas are always proposed by people (business people and politicians, mostly) who have never spent a day in the classroom as a teacher, but somehow believe that they can fix all of the problems that schools face. Oddly enough, it's always public students that they experiment on, while allowing private schools to continue doing what they want.
There is only one "fix" for public school education in this - or any other - county.
1. Pay teachers well enough that the best and brightest will see it as an attractive occupation.
2. Train teachers well and then trust them to run schools themselves, without the constant flood of mandates coming in from people who don't know what they're talking about. 3. Fund schools adequately so that each child, regardless of where they come from, has the same access to high quality teachers and resources.
Any other solution is just snake oil.
23
"More than half of public school students here are Latino. Two-thirds qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and a third are still learning English."
What percentage of students were Latino, still learning English, or qualified for free or reduced-price lunch 20 or 30 years ago in the same district. Where teachers happy with their pay then?
If the parents of the Latino and still learning English students are employed by local businesses and industry, it seems that those industries and businesses should pay higher wages to the parents to lift the students' families out of poverty and the businesses should also pay higher taxes to support the school district and other local infrastructure supported by taxes. The taxes should not be applied to just the local living wage earners of more than $150,000, but to the businesses and owners (possibly out of state or out of country) who employ the thousands of local residents.
6
Good: the philosophical shift from teacher-centered to child-centered (individualized) learning.
Bad: current academic standards and high stakes testing that effectively impedes such a transformation.
Possible: realistic academic standards that honor basic skills, including critical thinking, that also allow teachers (with the ever growing assistance of technology) the time to teach the basics to all, and use them to positively reinforce curiosity and self-motivation for all.
Bad: MAGA for a few.
Possible: MAG for all.
1
Giving your overlords more power is generally not a great long-term strategy. Just sayin'.
That's the main reason this physician opposes Medicare-for-all.
Another example of states and country not spending or allocating money for education.
5
These reporters might do a bit more homework. Very little, if any, of ProComp is now based on student performance on tests and yet they list that first. The great majority is for teachers willing to go to high-poverty schools and/or work in hard-to-fill positions. The trend in Denver and nationally is for teachers to seek out lower-poverty schools as they gain experience, leaving the newbies in the most challenging situations. How is this better for kids?
Even when more of ProComp was based on achievement, teachers set their own student growth goals, which may or may not be based on standardized tests.
And, by the way, student achievement has increased substantially in Denver Public Schools in the past decade; the gap between students in the mostly poor, mostly minority district has virtually closed with that of the mostly non-poor, white student enrollment across the state.
Unfortunately, while test scores for minority students have gone up, they haven't gone up at the same rate as those of white students -- so the gap within the district remains large. This is one reason we've seen civil rights groups in Denver oppose the strike, because they believe in higher pay for teachers in the most impacted schools and because they know precious funding needs to go to support culturally responsive training for the mostly white, middle-class teaches who make up the great majority of DPS teachers.
4
I’m a retired DPS teacher and mostly agree. I do think the whole “close the gap” conversion is not helpful. Think about it - how do we change the TRAJECTORY of “low performing students” so they catch up to “high performing students” in order to “close the gap” - “low performing students” would need to “run” faster in a short amount of time to catch up with students that aren’t going to stop and wait or even slow down to give the runners who started the race way behind a chance to “catch up.”
3
The average wage in Denver is $60,553 - the average teacher's salary is $63,400. I can't believe the author even provided the net income (after taxes) and compared it to poverty level - that's disingeuous and wrong.
I'm tired of striking teachers - it's really the Teachers Union - the union has focused on wages instead of educating our children....
There are over 100 high schools in New York City where the graduation rates are below 50% - it's tragic as the majority of those schools are in the lowest income areas of the city.
The teachers are failing the students -the programs are failing the students - and the teacher's union is failing the students.
Teachers should teach, not strike.
4
You are correct, the author mixed apples and oranges ( gross v take-home ) PLUS it is necessary to consider teachers work approximately 25% fewer days per annum.
1
Teacher salaries are unionized which makes no sense. You hire a good employee out of college and they can make 6 figures in a year or two. If you want good teachers, you have to pay for it.
Teacher evaluation makes sense. Fire the bad ones by removing union protections and tenure. Public employees or employees that serve the public through taxes should not be allowed to be unionized. However, regulations for labor need to be properly written.
Teacher's should also work year round, and their salaries ahould reflect that need. Summer programs and advanced course work or vocational programs are a cheaper alternative to free college. Most teachers are not equipped to teach at a high level for advanced students, and this is horrible.
Education is key for equal opportunity and reaching one's potential. The current ability of many teachers is a joke in low socio-economic areas -- these teachers are actually paid more than they are worth. There are also rich area with some very bad teachers at the elementary level that do not know enough to teach smart kids. Then, there are great teachers, who are paid peanuts compared to what they could get in the private sector.
The problem is unions and salary and getting a supply of good teachers.
5
@baetoven You can't even begin to broach the topic politically without coming across as anti-teacher. It's incredibly discouraging if you break it down logically. Some premises on which I think we both agree:
1) Many great teachers or would-be teachers leave teaching or never teach because they can get a much higher salary in the private sector.
2) Many below average and underperforming teachers are kept in the system as a result of #1 and the union protections afforded to them.
3) Unions themselves take money from teachers further reducing their earning potential.
4) Unions are entrenched in the system and have huge amounts of power.
5) A significant number of good teachers are misled by or forced to join unions despite their best interests.
Now, raising salaries without addressing #2 is simply throwing more money at a broken system and giving a larger cut to unions (#3). That's why these strikes for higher teacher pay are always so discouraging to me. They're guaranteed to further entrench a broken system.
One possible solution is to let schools negotiate salary with non-union teachers on an individual basis. This should work to solve #1 and #5 without needing to confront #2-4 directly. Over time, this will decrease the % of union teachers, chipping away at the unions' power to a point where you can tackle #2-4.
There will be some equity problems that need to be addressed otherwise poorer school districts won't be able to compete for the best candidates.
1
Are charter schools without unions getting better results? Even with the advantage that public schools don't have of being able to select certain students and expell problem students, there are failing charter schools, both for profit and non-profit.
Unions are not the problem.
Parents working several jobs each, not having the cultural experience of how to succeed in school due to their upbrining in the US or abroad, one or both parents in prison or jail, child in care of grandma or other foster parents are not problems solved by giving teachers 2 or 3K more a year. Or solved by taking away the bonus for working with more difficult populations to teach.
Pay the parents fair living wages, provide affordable housing, single payer healthcare including quality mental health and dental care. Then, add an extended school year like other countries such as India have. And, extend the school day to 5 or 6 pm to provide services to teach children how to succeed in school. Private schools and well-off parents provide children services and enrichment after school. Stop by a Kumon Center and most of the students will be in private school uniforms.
Unions are not the problem, nor are the teachers the problem. The problem strarts further out in society and that's where the solution needs to be applied.
And, at the same time, not everyone needs to go to college. People should be able to graduate high school or possibly at 16 able to perform a trade if that is their goal.
The point of performance pay is to highlight and acknowledge those who actually excel or undertake challenges benefiting those they education - teaching in lower producing schools, taking on extra assignments, etc..
In the corporate world, 50% to 70% of all workers would rather have a base pay with limited "performance pay" as they are not at the top of performance. Human nature dictates we take the easy path to getting what we want.
Sad that a program implemented to help promote and excel turns into "the least common denominator of work" syndrome once again.
The students suffer for this...never the teachers!
Paying for performance in teaching is an idea that is irretrievably flawed. Denver seems to be the proof.
The first impediment to such a scheme being successful is "how can you tell the performance of a teacher?" Testing the students doesn't work, as this article states. More testing just takes away from teaching time, and then also motivates the teachers and the administration to dedicate even more time to "teaching to the test". Another irritant and waste of time.
Second, it then means that teachers must agitate among themselves to acquire the students that will be the best learners. This sets up fights within the school and districts; then leads to high teacher turnover as the teachers flee to better socioeconomic schools.
Third, it sets up within each school and district fertile grounds for favoritism and possibly even corruption. Flatter your supervisors, or just obsequiously follow their mandates and you get a higher score or a better class.
Why unions are so effective in elementary education is that decades of real-life experience has shown that teachers do need protections: a decent salary, support of their professional expertise over sometimes witless administration or school boards, equality and motivation within their ranks, focus upon the professional job that they were hired to do rather then "chair arranging" to meet "standards" or "dictates".
7
The broad middle group of workers in the US have been pushed around for twenty years and it is about time they stood up and asked for a bigger piece of the pie. In part it is their own fault for abandoning their unions and sheepishly stepping aside while robots took their jobs and management sent work to Asia to raise profits and their bonuses.
I am very proud of the LA teachers who walked out and got a sizable boost in not just their pay but funding for their kids' schools. And the same for the Denver academics. It is long past time that middle America simply said I want more!! The rich have taken more, management has taken more, the Congress has taken more, and foreigners have taken more out of the system. All because they could. And labor can also but If you don't ask you surely won't get.
4
So as the fed relaxes tax on corps and the top 25% why would states not increase same to offset the future loss of fed aid. Does that nixed referendum needs to be revisited?
I love it when middle class people are convinced that voting against higher taxes for corporations and rich people is somehow against their interests. Enjoy your teacher strike! And don't think you will continue to get something for nothing. If people cannot afford to live in Denver they will leave.
4
2. Raise the pay of the teachers. 1. Raise the pay of the parents.
1
Students are not widgets, to be put on an assembly line and ultimately pushed out the door with a high school diploma. Everyone wants to be rewarded for good work, and no one wants to see good work politicized. Therein lies the conundrum: There is a probationary period, usually of a few years, to evaluate a teacher's work and commitment. Many quit when the find out that it is demanding and/or not what they signed up for. In fact, among the highest in turnover are the ranks of teachers and police; both have stress and demands not envisioned on entry.
Too many of the public, including parents, see teaching as limited to school hours and have no idea of the other demands such as preparation for effective classroom delivery, dealing with parents as well a students, and administrators who often enough are ready to pounce whenever a student complains to a parent and the parent calls the principal. I knew of a case where a teacher was reprimanded for invading a student's personal "space" when he saw the butt of a handgun in a tote bag, and took the student to the principal's office. Thanks to the union, the reprimand was removed, but that is the insanity of today's classroom life. Add to that the expectations that teachers pay for many class needs, and it is not pretty. And it is seldom about the money.
3
I strongly recommend Arne Duncan's book:
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/08/arne-duncan-how-schools-work/566987/
"The first sentence [reads]: “Education runs on lies.” If one were to create a word cloud of the book, lies would probably pop out as one of the most frequently used words."
The Times has avoided reviewed it - that should tell you everything you need to know - that it an eloquent defense of a data-driven approach.
1
So teachers are worth twice as much if they are scabs? Pretty good lesson for the kids.
4
Why go to conservative education hacks like Kate Walsh and the bogus NCoTQ for quotes?
Their purpose is to undermine public education.
3
That system is always put in placed and immediately misused and abused within a year. I watched one system where about half of all workers were carefully rewarded. Within a year, only the TOP MANAGEMENT got any bonuses and nearly ALL of the bonus funds went to a very few. Now, WHO was watching THEIR pay for performance? And that is ALWAYS the problem. Such schemed always become take advantage of workers schemes. If you want a pay for performance system, start with politicians. You'll see how fouled up these are in no time.
Teachers are underpaid, no doubt. As sad as that is, I was amazed when my boyfriend, who is a teacher in Denver, went to work today to find that none of the teachers picketing left any kind of lesson plans for the classes that are still happening.
Now students are leaving the school because there are no class plans.
Both the teachers and administrators are fine with letting the students be pawns as they bicker back and forth.
Shame on both groups for turning their backs on the reason why they’re there.
2
@Sheba, the teachers are on strike -- meaning they're not working -- not taking a sick day.
8
Both my kids are Denver Public School students & today is a complete disaster of leadership dating back to when Senator Michael Bennet was our school superintendent. He introduced the Wall St. type bonus system. When initial support among teachers for the bonus system was in the teens, he and his "reformers" hired PR firms to spin the system as winning for the teachers and students. It eventually passed with just over 50%.
What's appalling is the we have a new superintendent, Susana Cordova,who has been the #2 person at DPS, and rather than break free from the stubborn legacy of her predecessor and lead, she continues to support the idea that bonuses are a difference maker. Studies by the University of Colorado have shown the bonus system very slightly improves math scores and very slightly decreases English scores. So a net 0!
Meanwhile both my kids (high schoolers) have taken off school as the schools they attend are understaffed with unqualified replacement teachers. My kids take 5 AP classes between then. How can you expect a substitute teacher to help students prepare for the coming AP tests. Ironically, one of my kids is in an AP class with Susan Cordova's child, so she too will suffer the poor leadership of her mother. The difference is that Cordova's child is a senior and already accepted to university, so maybe she just doesn't care enough to have a sense of urgency to resolve these negotiations that have been going on for 15 months. My child is junior.
6
I was lucky enough to work with Susana Cordova for a good number of years and I take issue with your attack on her. She is smart, compassionate AND understands the complexity of teaching and learning more than any other superintendent I worked for during my 30 years with DPS. Thank you Susana. DPS is lucky to have you!
1
It is bad to judge teachers based on student performance. Anyone who has been in a high classroom understands that teachers can control very little of the educational environment. The best teacher in the world cannot force students to learn. It is that simple. Administrators need to get into the classrooms and watch teachers and students on a regular basis. Administrators can also use surveys of students and parents, although those surveys cannot be heavily relied upon. They can be a small part of the process, though.
5
Agree - How about this “evaluation” - just trade out the teachers in a “high performing” school with their counterparts in a “low performing school” - if scores go up in the low performing schools and down in the high performing schools then okay, blame the teachers - if scores stay the same admit educating 30 different brains mostly by yourself in one classroom is way more complicated that producing cars that all work the same when they come off the assembly line.
1
@Anthony: so it is the student's fault.
It is a poor workman who blames his tools.
If you can't teach "difficult" students, or make learning interesting...you should not be teaching.
Education begins at home and sadly, this is not the case for many impoverished students. Therefore, many of these students /schools in such districts often perform poorly when compared to others in more affluent districts. How can these teachers be fairly and accurately evaluated based on student performance alone?
They can't.
Students are not machines, "widget in - widget out." It can take a few years to see progress in a student's academic performance. Using school district money to reward a teacher for performance is counterintuitive. The purpose of education is a community based affair where the public and the administration/teachers work for the greater good of the children. Only then will we create future independent adults.
17
@Twinone
Thank you for this reasoned reply. I have often argued against merit-based pay for teachers because I fear it would foster competition when the best thing for students is collaboration. A school is not a business and it does not make sense to run it as if it is one.
1
The great equalizer would be to have salaries based on years of service. All teachers that are 1st year make the same, all teachers with 25 years make the same and then it stops the percentage rise at a cap. Yes there is a difference for those based on education as it should be. This system is how I have it in Alabama. It has worked for us. Not saying we are paid fantastic but my city system has tried to stay competitive to draw in well qualified teachers.
3
One reason that schools have pay inequity and busted budgets is precisely because a tenured teacher gains a compounding effect of salary for simply staying in place.
@mkenney: most already do this.
They pay a kindergarten teacher exactly the same as a high school physics teacher.
They pay the art teacher the same as the chemistry teacher.
They pay the coach the same as the history teacher.
They pay the typing instructor the same as the English teacher.
This is not how reality works in any other field, or a janitor would make the same as a CEO.
1
Once again this goes back to the damage that the "No Child Left Behind Act" did to our public education system. There are many ways to inspire teachers and students. Excessive testing and competition are not going to raise test scores. Teachers who teach in areas that are difficult to serve, where students have more need educationally due to poverty or language barriers need different resources for their students. First and foremost all children need to be fed in order to do well at school. A start to fixing low student outcome would be to institute a free lunch program for all students that is not based on need, but is simply available to all students.
Second, we need to look at how we are testing childen, who is making money off of these tests and how tests can really account for development, and not one size fits all. Give public schools more flexibility in choices of curriculum. That is what charter school students and parents get. It is a reality that Title 1 schools to have less choice than Charter Schools. Why should a student attending a charter school get to have social studies and science, while a Title 1 student must crank out hours of reading, writing and math, without integration of other subjects?
We need to stop teaching to tests and teach to children as whole developing beings. Stop checking off every single tiny benchmark, and teach holistically. The entire system needs to be reworked from the ground up and teachers need to earn a professional wage.
36
@jaamhaynesWhat charters are you talking about? Charters have less choice because they dont want to pay teachers or decrease profit margins...One in my town has no gym class..Another run by the Gulens omits the Armenian Genocide..other charters dont even report their standarized test scores so they do not lose funding and be exposed for the sham they are..,
@jaamhaynes
yes evil capitalists are the reason so many kids cant perform at grade level
Try paying the students to perform. You can lead a horse to water and all. It's hard to make a student care when they don't have the incentive to work hard. And it is impossible for a teacher to improve a students grade when the student doesn't care about the grade to begin with. But of course that's not how the system is set up and because so many of us are invested in the current system we will never try new approaches. So keep throwing money at the wrong side of the problem. It's hasn't worked yet and it never will. If it makes you feel better, bank the student performance money in a college tuition account.
9
@aimlowjoe
That has been done. And outcomes are mixed. Not a silver bullet, as nothing is in education.
You also can't do that with younger children-paying a 1st grader to learn how to read isn't how it works.
3
@aimlowjoe
These teachers haven’t had money “thrown at them”, they are protesting being underpaid.
As for paying students who perform in school, that’s foisting the same “merit” system that failed teachers onto students. Monetary gain is not the achievement motivator you seem to think it is, especially when applied to education.
5
The administrators and teachers should come to my school district, where academic results have been dismal for years, despite rich pay and benefit packages for almost everyone involved. Our taxes go higher and higher, but that money apparently isn’t even enough to adequately maintain our schools. So the district is now putting forth a multimillion-dollar bond issue to refurbish worn-out facilities and put an even greater burden on taxpayers.
We look at our high tax rates year after year and ask where all the money has gone. The answer is that it has gone primarily to ultra-rich pay, benefit and retirement packages for administrators and teachers. Whenever there are any budget issues, these so-called “educators” refuse to sacrifice a dime of their compensation, so cuts must be made to educational or sports programs (or maintenance is deferred, leading to the bond issue above). Or the overtaxed residents are expected to contribute to bake sales or other school fundraisers to keep the programs going.
In our district, we offer pay for performance, alright. But it’s poor performance. As a result, and despite the high taxes we pay, the kids get a bad education and our property values are lower than they should be. But the administrators go on merrily, year after year, with little accountability.
13
@LIChef,
Well said. Way to many bureaucrats tracking useless and manipulated metrics. I'm sure even with pay for performance you have well paid layers calculating the bonus. Bureaucracy is the enemy, keep it simple.
@LIChef
Didnt even look at your name and knew you were talking about Long Island!
https://onenewsnow.com/education/2017/06/05/ny-teachers-on-long-island-avg-161kyr
@LIChef Same up here. Well paid teachers, and we have no free elective classes (ie College Algebra, Foreign Language IV, AP Science) for nonremedial 12th graders because we are 'underfunded'. Students are encouraged to grad in three or go to the Community College (on their own dime, and with their own vehicle) rather than sit in multiple study halls for senior year. There is some truth, we do have a huge percentage of transfer students who are remedial students, and the employers who bring them in from other areas do not contribute to the school budget to provide for their ENL and remedial needs. Then add in all the parents working off the books and families tripled up in housing...we need funding to come from the state level, not the property tax. The assessor has no power to collect any more on the illegal multifamily housing; that idea is sinking us.
So...the average Denver teacher makes about $63,000.
Substitutes make $106 per day. Less than $20,000 per year if they work every day.
When I worked as a substitute teacher, making less than 1/3 of what the teachers make, the teachers were very unsympathetic to my struggles.
Fire the teachers and let the subs become full time employees. At least they will be appreciative.
5
@ReadingBetweenTheLines
Always we have those trying to pull everyone down to walmart wages. I see why some are subs when I see a comment like this.
6
@ReadingBetweenTheLines so screw the teachers because you have a grudge?
4
I spent 30 years teaching in the Denver Public Schools. When ProComp arrived decent substitute pay was one victim and the district started adding layers and layers of evaluators and instructional “support” folks - all of them lined up to “help” teachers with new assessments, ideas and reforms. Teachers worked hard to measure up and adjust and mostly found themselves helping all the reformers dig a bigger hole. I applaud the teachers in their efforts to put down their shovels and climb out of the hole!
30