Garnering Knowledge for Teaching

This morning, the Dallas Morning News described a recently released study noting the failure of a Texas teacher merit pay experiment.  It is interesting to note that the results did not necessarily say merit pay was a failure.  It noted that the design of the system set up in Texas was seriously flawed and did not establish the incentive atmosphere intended.  It seems well performing schools…wait for it…have the highest performing teachers, and that some schools, instead of giving larger sums to “high performing teachers”, split the money among many teachers in a building.

Can you imagine being the teacher who doesn’t get a bonus?  I’m not sure how that necessarily provides an incentive.   I do think there must be ways we can reward teachers who are stellar and encourage those teachers who are hanging in there, and address the issues of teachers who are spinning downward.  It is similar to a student who has lost motivation.  Taking away something loses all meaning when the punishee doesn’t care about what was taken.

I work with teachers and people who are learning to become teachers.  I believe that most  are dedicated professionals who devote an inordinate amount of time to their work for much less pay than others who spend 60+ hours on the job.  Overtime is not a celebrated task (meaning extra money for the bills), but an expected job responsibility. And before you begin to tell me how much time teachers have off in a year, think about the math…

An average individual working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year will put in 2,080 hours if that person does not take a vacation, sick day, or time off.  For argument’s sake, we take two weeks off of that total for an average amount of time an American takes off each year as 2000 hours (I imagine the number is far greater).

Teachers are in class with students for a minimum of 180 days a year in most states.  Divide that by 5 (for a school week) and you get 36 weeks of contact time with students.  Add to this 2-3 weeks before school starts (the first two to get the classroom and curriculum pulled together and the third is the week of inservice the district provides before the first day of school).  Also add to this a week over the winter holidays and the week of spring break.  For argument’s sake, I will reduce the number of hours for these weeks because, although teachers do work at home on their vacation weeks, they do not generally put in 40 hours.

So,

36 weeks at 60 hours a week: 2,160

Approximately 5-6 weeks at 25 hours a week: 125-150 extra

Going total: 2,285 hours per year.

And I believe that to be a low end estimate.  If you doubt that teachers work 60 hours a week during the school year, go to your teacher friends and ask them.  See what their number is.  I can guarantee 90% of them will tell you it is more than 40 when you include grading, data collection, lesson planning, lesson preparation, training, meetings, parent contacts, testing, test prep, and all the various other minutia that make up the day/week of a teacher.

So, we have 2,285 vs 2,000 (heck, I’ll even throw that 80 back in for you workaholics that don’t take days off).

Still, there is a difference here.  This also does not really include the after school activities and weekend fund raisers that teachers are often required to attend or conduct.

Acknowledgment #1: Teachers work hard and they work for a long time.

Back to the Dallas story: the perspective behind incentive pay for teachers assumes that teachers need some kind of incentive to do their jobs well.  The story, and the investigation into the program, state that the pay involved in the program was not enough to motivate teachers to do more.  To me, this insinuates that teachers are simply getting by and that is why students are failing.  Teachers are slackers who don’t want to do their best at their chosen profession so we need to bribe them to be better.  AND not only that, but the measurement of this bribe will be the state standardized test scores that are now attached to your teacher identification number.  NOTHING ELSE…just the test scores.

I talk to my teacher friends and I hear more of the same thing: they have more paperwork to fill out, more extensive lesson plans to turn in, more frequent testing dates to prepare for and more expectations as to what types of lessons are planned, written out, and executed.  All of this must be done with more students, less administrative support (most buildings run with one administrator these days), and less classroom supply money, not to mention a reduction in or lack of  curriculum supplies.  We want them to do more with less and then do even more with even less.

I hear my partner talk about the teachers of his high school days.  The teachers who did not care and who read the paper while kids napped in the classroom.  I try to tell him that I do not believe those teachers exist any more.  But I do not know that for sure.  I still see kids sleeping when I walk by classrooms (especially in high schools).

The teachers I know work hard and are being expected to work harder. I do not have issue with high expectations.  This is critical to educational excellence.  I do have issue with a lack of respect for the hard work that is already occurring around the country.  I have issue with the general vilification of the teacher as the bad guy in our education drama.

There are multiple, complex factors that come into play for education.  Even now, as state budgets are being passed, cuts are coming deeper to public education and yet the expectations of AYP success are still high.  Teachers face larger classrooms with fewer supplies and textbooks.  Some teachers (and this is not an exaggeration) must even bring their own toilet paper and cleaning supplies from home to work. They also face students from challenging circumstances who come to school hungry, tired, and worried.  According to Maslow, kids who don’t know where their next meal is coming from will have a very difficult time relegating brain power to multiplication tables.  Teachers need to find a way to make their classrooms safe, welcoming places where those base needs are met, in order to establish an environment of learning.

I believe we need to hold teachers to high standards.  But those must be measured in the classroom, not on a test.  That test is not only measuring what a kid might have learned last year with a particular teacher, it also measures whether she ate on a regular basis last year, how many homes did she live in over the course of the school year, how much parental support there is at home to promote student learning, or simply to provide a safe home, and how effective every teacher before this teacher has been in educating this child.  We don’t even mention whether the school district has the funding to provide consistent and fully supported curriculum throughout the grades for the students moving through from teacher to teacher.  So many complex experiences come together for one test.  Should that test make or break a teacher’s career?

I am hesitant to endorse merit pay because so much of it rides on an inaccurate measure of teacher quality.  If only there were another way to identify excellence and encourage growth in this demanding profession.  The National Board Certification program moves towards identifying master teachers, but it does nothing to address the needs of teachers who are struggling in the classroom.  How can we bring everyone up and give teachers realistic and motivational goals to achieve in order to make their teaching more effective and successful.

Perhaps if we put that funding towards simply paying teachers more for their 2,285 hours a year, or better yet, put it towards classroom supplies and curriculum, we would eventually see those gains we are seeking.  Maybe if we acknowledged the time and energy of teachers instead of treating them like human resources, it would help motivate and encourage growth and enthusiasm.

NCLB and the Highly Qualified Teacher requirements have already had an effect on what happens in public school classrooms.  Teacher certification standards have become more complex over the last decade, and the teaching force will be undergoing an experience change over the next decade as many teachers retire.  I noted in my previous post, seeing gains from reform will take time. We need to stop, and sit a moment to see where the painting is, before continuing to brush on the colors of a new bandwagon.