Merit Pay!

[anajones33]

Merit Pay--- I teach in an inner city 5th grade classroom. I have a classroom with two languages. Eleven out of the 25 students have just arrived with very little knowledge of academics in their native tongue. They are very low with their reading, writing, and math skills. DRA has placed a few on Level 1 and a few on Level 6. Anyone who knows DRA knows these are kindergarten and below first reading abilities. This is fifth grade. The other children have been in our school system long enough to read and write in English. Most have lost a lot of their native tongue academic abilities. They can always speak it. Anyhow... I know that I try very hard each day I go to work to bring educational opportunities to all these children. It is however extremely difficult to have so many drenching and heartbreaking obstacles in my way. I have missing parents, illiterate parents, homes without books, no computer access, drugs, murders, prostitution, little academic experiences, and only about 4 1/2 hours a day to teach them the skills that a fifth grader should know and teach them skills they did not attain in K, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade. But that doesn't matter to merit pay givers. Oh, No.. they want to reward our teachers that have very little obstacles in their ways. I would love for my Governor to come take over my classroom for a month and show me what he can do that I am not ad I drive myself crazy day after day trying to figure out how else I can get a skill across. Merit Pay is ....... oh its best if I just leave this as is... What is your take on Merit Pay?

[amytrabs]

I totally agree with you..Obviously Gov Christie has no idea what it is like to teach- in ANY type of classroom. He is pretty naive in terms of merit pay because you are absolutely right- Many teachers work extremely hard to teach their kids and no matter how hard they work, some kids just can't get it or don't want to get it, not to mention the various backgrounds and struggles that the students are experiencing at home. Also, if this so called "merit pay" thing gets passed, are they going to take into account Special Ed kids who obviously have more difficulty in the classroom than regular ed kids? I was watching the news the other night and they were asking parents (NOT TEACHERS, obviously) what they thought about it and of course the parents were all like "Oh yes I support this absolutely b/c it gets rid of mediocrity in the classroom- teachers will want to work harder and therefore we will see more results" etc etc...Maybe what needs to happen is have merit pay actually happen for a certain amount of time and then once they see that no matter what, even when teachers try their very best, students may not succeed completely. There are so many variables in the equation that merit pay is just not fair to anyone. I'm sure the older high school students may understand merit pay and may even feel more pressure to succeed to "help out" their teacher.. who knows. The whole thing is just not right.
I'd also like to know what exactly the student achievement will be measured by. If all of a teachers students are getting A's, how much will the salary increase? If all of the teachers students are getting C's, then what? What if the teacher tries as much as she/he can and the students are unfortunately getting D's & F's? Maybe the teacher is great, but the student goes home and has a broken home and is sad and has no interest in school. I could go on and on.. but i'll stop here. :/