Merit Pay and the Veteran Teacher
One of the most offensive opinions I am confronting as I research other blogging sites regarding merit pay for teachers is the accusation, sometimes subtle and sometimes very direct, that veteran teachers do not deserve their higher salary as they just don’t work as energetically as younger teachers do following the same lesson plans year after year. I take huge exception to these statements as I am a veteran teacher. I feel compelled to “talk turkey” about veteran teachers and what we have to offer our school systems.
We have years of invaluable experience (in the business world this is a coveted thing). We have experimented with a variety of teaching techniques and fine-tuned our styles over the years. We have taken a variety of graduate classes in education usually earning master degrees. We have attended a wide range of professional development workshops and incorporated many of these concepts into our classroom. We have served on a multitude of committees in our schools, been a part of evaluating new curriculum for our classrooms, been mentor teachers, helped develop standards based report cards and short cycled assessments, and received countless letters of thanks from our parents and students. We have knowledge that we love to share with anyone who is interested, but we are just as willing to listen to the ideas of younger teachers and try them out in our classrooms. Good veteran teachers understand that teaching is not a stagnant thing, and are just as willing to learn as to teach.
Somehow people, and often this includes other teachers, have come to believe that when you reach a certain pinnacle in your educational career, you become complacent and unwilling to make changes. I categorically deny this, and furthermore state again that there is no age requirement for this mind set. I have seen teachers from all age groups and years of experience who are very willing to coast along doing the bare minimum. But the highly charged issue of merit pay breeds in some people this kind of divisive thinking. It is one of the dangers I see in the adoption of merit pay, and I would take issue with anyone trying to tell me that the job I do and the years I have put in do not qualify me for the salary I have earned as a result of dedication and hard work.
Changes in Teaching, Merit Pay for Teachers, Teacher-World's Blog
“We have years of invaluable experience (in the business world this is a coveted thing).”
In the business world, results are what counts. It doesn’t matter how many hours you put in or how hard you work - you are retained as an employee and compensated based on what you deliver. This is never more so than the case than in a professional role where customers are free to seek the services of anyone they wish based on their own evaluation criteria, which rarely includes complete understanding of the education, experience and skills required to deliver the service.
Yes, I expect a doctor to have a medical degree and license, and a lawyer to have a law degree and a license, but I am free to select which one I go to based on a myriad of factors important to only me - not them.
“I have seen teachers from all age groups and years of experience who are very willing to coast along doing the bare minimum.”
Exactly. We need to weed these folks out of the system to free up resources that we can use to attract and retain high performing individuals.
I agree with you, Paul. Teachers need to be held to a high standard and that should be based on results. The only difference is that we deal with children and all of the baggage they bring into the classroom with them. Sometimes, that makes measureable results difficult to attain. Nonetheless, getting our students to achieve should always be our goal. Thank you for your comment.
Experienced v. Newbies Thank goodness teaching is still individually constructed around centuries of adaptation to the community (an ever-expanding one in 2010, just as in 1910). I have taught in different countries and public as well as private schools. I’ve taught toddlers through college and returning veterans. I do have a master’s, and piles of additional coursework including a year of law school, etc., etc. I’d bet most of us are knowledge junkies, and even at our most battered, we’re kid lovers–able to be rejuvenated when one connection happens on the worst day in memory.
Now that I’m old, employment isn’t as automatic. I understand. It’s like watching the old dog whose whole life was guarding the homestead, and a replacement is now on hand.
However. I have found, and still find, that the teacher bell curve is the same shape as always. There are those who light up schools, such as my friend who undertook the certainty for scholarship and admission for every one of our 300 + graduating seniors. No extra pay, no college counselor, just commitment (she taught AP history, regular history, and French). Same schoool, same time frame: fellow insisted on teaching particular author as modern lit because the discovery of an unpublished manuscript resulted in a contemporary copyright date…so it was modern lit. May have been influenced because his college notes were included in his lesson plans, used over the past 20-something years. No sparks, lethal or elevating, and students adjusted according to their own bell curves.
I have learned from all these contacts, and that includes the students. Of the few intern teachers whom I was honored to mentor, one still holds the position I passionately recommended for him (as my replacement); another remains in my memory for sharing what he learned (some ten years after my own certification was complete) for reaching middle school writers. Excellent. I remember my own mentor and she was superb. Hands off unless asked; mistakes aren’t fatal, and I’m so glad you are here in this extraordinary school full of wonderful kids (inner school, no resources, nazi administration, phenomenal achievement despite the times, riots, and gangs).
So how should we have been paid? The “techniques” were as varied as students are, and the results were uniformly good, based on keeping students coming to class and responding actively; watching one young man rise half out of his desk and shout, “I knew he wasn’t talking about real plums!” on reading a powerfully short poem at the beginning of his own serious adolescence–and amid gang homeys.
Looking down that long telescope from the other end now, only ONE administrator edges into better than average.
Hers was a teaching and departmental administration community college role. I believe she received some pittance more for the elected position she held; I know she was not wealthy then, nor when she retired. Some of what she was able to achieve for us all included a modestly paid day of coordinated planning to be on the same general wavelength for our students who numbered thousands. Our teachers who all had to meet CC standards, were only paid real CC salaries on a 3 out of 10 fulltime basis. No pension, no office space, no phone, no special parking for the other seven. That day of working together let us evaluate in a reasonably similar way, deal with student concerns appropriately, even do a little role-playing and issue discussion before our day (with lunch!) ended.
My solution, carefully developed over the years, will never be seen in our public schools or private: committee of the whole, selecting teachers from their own specialties to administer (while continuing to teach +/- 75%)with decisions made by ballot, as to course and student assignments, calendars, special expenditures, substitute handling, transport interaction, special needs decisions, governmental requirements, textbook or on-line choices, funding follow-up requests when program is in place each year, based on numbers of students for schools of choice.
On site support solely secretarial and assigned to duties for each specialty grouping. NO district superintendent, etc.
One regional structure funded equally for each region, at least countwide, and perhaps statewide, employing professional business managers under civil service guidelines. Each school’s elected committee deals with that regional structure and continues in an advocate voice to keep the teacher community involved, stimulated professionally and protected physically, treated respectfully; and, when necessary, aided in making mutually useful changes.
During the student enrollment, s/he will have a folder that is created at entry, and maintained throughout attendance, by each contributing teacher and the student. It will be divided, if necessary, into confidential as well as scholastic input. Almost certainly, it will be an electronic, but secure record. The primary purpose for such a record is to provide subsequent teachers with the developmental history for a student. Students and teachers may agree to maintain a continued class relationship for learning continuum. The flexibility of materials choices, developmental stages, outside influence both professional and personal, all play a role in the design.
Pay will be on the same level as private sector research and development engineers as their value is perceived for input into future product and sales. Evaluation will be through carefully composed matrices that include performance and student input. No grades will be granted without careful self and instructor critique.
Any specialized personnel required will be regionally available and paid according to caseload, as closely matched as possible to the private enterprise model, and largely interacting with electronic media.
No competitive sports teams will be created at public school; however, just as professional teams interact with city and existing high school & college programs, those private schools which create such activities will be a strong venue for students who want that combination. Their families and scholarships will support that type of school without public funding at all. There will, of course, be a healthy recruiting for instructors between all types of schools. So far as sports or physical activity, that will be delegated to volunteer leaders both student and teacher. However, no expenditures of public money for sports will be made. There’s obviously plenty to carry its own flag in a different stadium.