• Front page
• Receive letters on your RSS reader

The Rocky Mountain News recently featured a photograph of a teacher attending a rally for higher wages (“Teachers hold noisy rally,” May 9). He was carrying a sign that said “Professional $ for Professional Work.” Oh please — a bad teacher gets the same pay as good teacher. When the teachers union accepts true merit pay, perhaps they can lay claim to the title of professionals. Until then, they may as well be Teamsters.

John Pilon Sr., Denver

READER COMMENTS

Question:

Exactly what constitutes a good teacher? What constitutes a bad teacher?

Before you answer, make sure that students' standardized test scores aren't included in the mix, because (obviously) teachers can't simply pick and choose which students they teach, and they can't force their students to learn anything, do well on their exams, and turn in their homework.

glow has apparently never heard of value-added assessment, which compares how much a teacher's students have learned in their year with him or her (as measured by standardized tests) with how much they learned in the previous and following years. That washes out "which students they teach."

It's not up to the teachers entirely. The kids have to want to learn. Don't penalize teachers because of bad students, merit pay for teachers is just a bad idea. It would be like having merit pay for coppers..they would write a bunch of stupid tickets just to get the raise, and wouldn't have effected a damn thing.

And save the comparisons between doctors working for "merit pay" and teachers possibly doing the same. Doctors have patients who actually want to get better; they are motivated by the fear of dying. Teachers don't see that kind of motivation in their charges.

I see where "Edythe" has another of these wonderful theoretical solutions to a real problem. Just "measure the difference" in a year; and it "washes out" everything else.

Applied in a real classroom, however, it does nothing of the sort. As "glow" points out, teachers CANNOT FORCE learning, or anything else - except perhaps, some degree of classroom good behavior, by sending trouble makers off to "higher authority". So, when little Johnny, or Suzie, comes in having decided NOT to learn - for whateve reason, sometimes from the reality of having a learning disability that is now being "mainstreamed" by the theorists, without regard to the actual nature of the problem - and, following up on little Johny's, or Suzie's, progress at the end of the year, it is found that they DID NOT learn . . . what then?

Why of course! We have a "bad teacher". No "merit pay" there!.

But, certainly, we do have another argument for such as Vouchers, and destroying the public school system in favor of indoctrination shops - especially those indoctrination shops that can reject, out of hand, little Johnny and Suzie, should they apply.

Edyth is under the impression that you can give a child a one hour test and find out how much he/she has learned in an entire school year. The fact that this is obviously impossible does not seem to trouble her.

Nor does the fact that bright students learn faster than slow ones. Of course the ratio of bright and slow students differs greatly from class to class and from school to school.

Nor does the fact that what students learned last year depends in part on how good the teacher was, how good the school was, how good the parents were, and how good the student's life was. All that can differ markedly from year to year, so that to expect a student to learn this year at the same rate as last year is nonsense.

Testing does can serve a useful purpose, but a limited one. It is best limited to short term results, such as well the student did in studying his/her spelling or math or whatever. I recall when IQ tests were thought to really show how smart a student was, until we realized that the factors tested by them were much less than all of the factors going into how well the student was prepared for the real world. A student is going to learn a lot, or fail to learn a lot, that will never show up on a standardized test.

I find the comments here to be a huge disappointment. You cannot positively affect every child, but a good teacher will motivate and positively affect a great number of his/her students.

I've worked in the private sector for many years and guess what? You can't make the people who work for you "want to" do anything either.

You have a 20-60-20 split. Twenty percent of the workers would be great workers no matter who was their manager. Another 20% of the workers would be ridge runners, that it poor workers, no matter how good the manager is. But it the middle 60% that a good manager lifts up and a bad manager lets down that makes the difference.

I think it's probably the same thing for teachers.

As for testing, it may not be a perfect measure, but it's a good measure of how the students are doing.

Somehow the teaching profession which grades it's students multiple times a year, seems to feel that they really can't be measured or graded for their work.

It is a huge disappointment.

"Edyth is under the impression that you can give a child a one hour test and find out how much he/she has learned in an entire school year." --So are a lot of people, Truth, and unfortunately a lot of those people are politicians. Which is why we have "Let them eat cake" solutions to complex problems. And it's also why we have people like Jim who think that because he has a job not teaching it gives him the credentials to judge people who do teach.

Oh, and Jim, your letter should have stopped just before "I 've worked in the private sector for many years," because that moment is where any of your authority to comment on teachers' struggles went right out the window. It's a certain way for you (in the private sector) so it's "probably the same thing for teachers." And people wonder why teachers are voluntarily in unions.

John-You are obviously a product of capitalist america who also probably had a poor educational experience of your own. That's okay, our educational system does not work for everyone...nor does everyone try and work for it. That is the biggest reason why merit pay would not work for teachers...and that certainly doesn't make them any less of a professional.

There is no doubt that the system needs some changes, but the one that you suggested should not be one of them. Also, when was the last time you went and observed a "good" teacher and a "bad" teacher? Or was that restricted to when you were in the classroom?

Many of you have hit the nail on the head regarding public education. It is not teacher pay or testing. It is that public education is a requirement for everyone under the age of 16, including those that do not want to learn, and those whose parents don’t give a poop.

We hear again and again that it is to the public good that everyone is educated. I quite agree. If only everyone wanted to be educated.

I prefer to post with at least one semi plausible suggestion. However, I am not sure that I have one here. Keeping the kids in school who would rather be anywhere else, as required by law, brings down the quality of education for those that really do care to learn (including my children). The alternative, in addition to those often-sighted statistics regarding how much it costs society to not have kids educated, is to have these hoodlums running amok in the streets…not one I would be too happy about. I would be very interested in hearing some fair and economical methods of dealing with the issue. )By the way, I don’t consider a special school to engage those at a high risk for drop out fair or economical….Why should we pay more for these kids then we are paying for the high achievers?)

bjs,

Trouble is, the time is long past when an apprentice program was the feasable.way of dealing with those who were not school oriented. Not only are today's industries more complex than anything we knew back then, there is also the problem of both child abuse and child labor situation to be considered..

This is one on which I, too, would be grateful for some ideas.

Jim,

Business and industry, in the private sector, are far different from the school classroom. You hire - and can fire - your EMPLOYEES. They work for specific rewards, paychecks and benefits.

Children, on the other hand, are neither hired nor fired; and they are not subject to the "employment" milieu. Nor is the idea - much less the practice - of "motivation" anywhere near the same; nor are the "rewards". And, the actuality of the "work" is totally different as well.

So much of the idea of "privatization" of education is based on the "private sector of business/industry" model that it is . . . pitiful and pitiable to contemplate.

But, just for example, perhaps you might answer these: Which "employee", at which particular job, in your private sector should Johnny, or Suzie, emulate, be patterened after, or become, in the school years? And which "manager" should see to it that they do so become as indicated?

"Question:

Exactly what constitutes a good teacher? What constitutes a bad teacher?

Before you answer, make sure that students' standardized test scores aren't included in the mix, because (obviously) teachers can't simply pick and choose which students they teach, and they can't force their students to learn anything, do well on their exams, and turn in their homework.
Posted by glow on May 21, 2007 06:53 AM"

I would have to say that a teacher that doesn't know that putting pictures of kids smoking pot into the yearbook is a bad teacher. Having sex with their students is also a bad idea. Jay Bennish is a bad teacher, as is Ward Churchill. When High School graduates don't know Wyoming is a state directly north of Colorado, it condemns the whole profession.

"Teachers, teach yourself."

A "bad teacher", or one who made a mistake, as humans do?

Does that make the teacher who reads - from say Harry Potter, for instance - to encourage kids to at least try to enjoy books; and then finds him/her self on the receiving end of a lawsuit - because some religious fanatic is against the idea of "magic" - a "bad teacher", too?

Ward Churchill may be flamboyant; and he may well plaigerize at times too. But, he does make people THINK, even if what they think is directed against what they are hearing.

And, I would have to ask how many High School graduates do we have who don't know Wyoming is a State? And, what were/are the District standards for teaching geography? And, are these - by any chance - students who have come through a special education program; or been "mainstreamed" to save taxpayers the cost of special education?

Condemning the whole profession for individual instances is, of course, easy. But, unfortunately, in the end it does nothing to really offer a solution to complex problems.

clyde: "When High School graduates don't know Wyoming is a state directly north of Colorado, it condemns the whole profession."

Wow, clyde, you should have taken a course in logic from a good teacher.

Gosh, teaching is different than the private sector. You have to teach students who don't want to learn. Grow up people. Of course I have authority to comment on teachers since as a tax payer I get a say.

First of all, I'm not a teacher by my wife was (she's getting a pension from PERA now). I always hear about students not wanting to learn, and then I also hear about Parochial schools actually teaching kids with the same demographics as inner city schools, expelling fewer of them and achieving much better results.

To hide behind 'it"s different here" is what every failing manager in the private sector tries to do as well.

A good teacher will inspire his/her students. Again, not all of them, but enough to notice the results. And we should pay them for it with merit pay.

But here is another suggestion. Let's have a Schoolstead act where individual teachers can set up one grade schools in the buildings we already are teaching students in. They can pay reasonable rent. Then let's give the kids parents vouchers. They can interview these teachers and send their kids to the other classrooms in the school or to this "private" classrooms.

I would expect the best teachers would love this arrangement. A 20 student class would gross around $160,000 and if s/he wanted they could go as high as 25 students ($200,000). Even after paying reasonable expenses, these teachers would do quite well.

POST A COMMENT

• 'Kid Nation' reality show a new low
• Rivers a shameful hire
• Too little news
• ‘Diesel’ fumes
• Unlocalized story a disservice to readers
• Riled up by Christian music
• Darling of the left
• Solutions too costly