If teacher's do not want to be paid based on merit, then what do they want to be paid for? Teachers hold their students accountable and promote them to the next grade level based upon merit, don't they?
Why shouldn't teachers be evaluated and paid based on merit?
According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, "Sarasota teachers joined with the statewide teacher’s union Wednesday in legal action against a new law that links teacher pay to student performance and ends tenure for new teachers."
What this is all about is collective bargaining.
Now here is an interesting statement from Christine Mayer, a Sarasota elementary school teacher, "I’m there to teach the child. They’re there to learn. Now I have yet more hoops that I have to jump through that violate my constitutional rights." It appears Christine does not know what is in the U.S. Constitution or the Florida Constitution. There is no constitutional right to not being evaluated, nor to have collective bargaining. The Florida legislature can give and take away collective bargaining, as was done in Wisconsin.
This lawsuit is to try to get the courts to keep unions in power, a secondary issue teacher's being held accountable. When political pressure fails then sue and hope the courts rule in your favor. I know, you union members are thinking let's have every government worker's union sue to not be held accountable for their job performance. But wait that is already embedded in NEA, AFT and SEIU negotiated contracts.
Samuel L. Blumenfeld, in his book "Is Public Education Necessary?", lists five myths about public education:
Myth 1: Public education is a great democratic institution fundamental to America's prosperity and well-being.
Myth 2: Public education is necessary as the great equalizer in our society, bringing together children from different ethnic, social, racial, and religious groups and molding them into homogenized Americans - which we are all supposed to want to be.
Myth 3: Public education provides the best possible education because we are the best possible country spending the most possible money.
Myth 4: Neighborhood schools with its cadre of dedicated teachers and administrators belongs to the community and is answerable to it through an elected school board.
Myth 5: Our society cannot survive without it - that is, public education and all the people who run it.
Experience has shown us these are truly myths. According to Justin Pope, education writer for the Associated Press, "SAT reading scores for the high school class of 2011 were the lowest on record, and combined reading and math scores fell to their lowest point since 1995.
Wayne Camara, College Board vice president of research, said recent curriculum reforms that pushed math instruction may be coming at the expense of reading and writing — especially in an era when students are reading less and less at home. We’re looking and wondering if [more] efforts in English and reading and writing would benefit” students."
I believe in an educated public, however, I have lost confidence in our public education system. Especially when I see teacher's unions not wanting teacher to be evaluated on their merit. Parents, teachers and students must come first, not unions.
Comment
Comment by John Mainhart on September 18, 2011 at 12:59pm There is one big problem with your analysis. Teachers have not been responsible for teaching students in most areas of this country for at least 20 years. When I entered teaching in 1957 I considered education a service to be rendered for the good of the community. After years of worthless workshops it became clear to me that the bureaucracy running education and the leaders of the education establishment thought that children did not need discipline to learn and if they did not learn it was because the teacher did not motivate them properly. If you translate that into what is going on in many schools accross this country it means that God must be dismissed when considering the values you teach our children, and that children have no free will to decide not to learn what our best teachers teach them.. I don't know what you could do to get further from the truth. Anyone who has ever raised a child knows that they can find numerous reasons to not do what adults tell them to do.
It is a real credit to those many fine teachers who are independently motivated by their own conscience to teach our children, by the best methods they know, by pursuing the truth about education. These teachers ignore, at the risk of their jobs, the myriad of systems created by our educational elitists who try to enrich themselves by producing far too many systems to "improve" our education system through programs forced on the teachers in too many of our schools
The people who would get the merit pay would be those teachers who teach the latest system which has been designed by people who are not interested in values and refuse to dignify teaching by acknowledging the fact that the students being taught have free will. Get the nation and the states out of education and give local communities the job of teaching their own children in the best way they can. Since they know their own children and presumably love them they will do what is best for them in most cases, certainly in a lot more cases than we are doing now. By the way that includes organizations that are created only to get more and more money from the state and Federal Gov't
Comment by Cliff Parker on September 18, 2011 at 6:43am 
Comment by Shirley Eliakis on September 17, 2011 at 10:12am 
Comment by American Infidel on September 17, 2011 at 9:40am EB and Shirley, we still have great teachers like the ones you describe, who work long hours for low pay and do their grading and planning on their own time: they are called private school teachers, and they are some our greatest unsung heroes.
The way to make public schools like the private schools is to give parents a true choice about where their children attend school, by giving each parent a voucher for each of their children, in the amount currently confiscated in taxes by the government for government schools, to be spent at the school of their choice, public or private, OR we could just do away with public education altogether. It is certainly not Constitutional. By doing away with the entire system, parents are not taxed at all for public education, and can educate their children as they see fit with the thousands of dollars in taxes they will save each year. Then, in an atmosphere of true and open free-market competition, the good schools would not only survive but flourish, and the bad schools would be out of business.
Comment by Phil on September 17, 2011 at 9:32am Yup. Jimmy Carters Dept. of Education. Abolish it.
It's unconstitutional period.
Comment by Shirley Eliakis on September 17, 2011 at 9:27am Take my word for it, please, I have family members in the teaching profession who are dedicated and inspirational. They are committed to not only their students, but to their students' families. They deal with a careless society. They deal with irresponsibility. They don't care about perks like they care about the kids they work with every day. We need to start looking for ways to honor the honorable and ignore the disreputable and unsavory that cast a bad shadow over those who truly are worthy of praise.
I believe that Americans are bright enough to come up with ways to reward those who work hard and put their hearts, minds and energy into a goal that they know inwardly to be their very life's purpose. Some who humbly wear the title of teacher need to be put into the forefront.
Being the competitive and inspireABLE nation that we are, others will most certainly be inspired to be " ALL THAT THEY CAN BE"!
It's hard to stand by silently when common sense is being abandoned to notoriety and power shows.
The most powerful human beings have always been the quiet, busy, modest individuals who are so engaged in being "useful" that their life's joy is inherently connected to their work.
Comment by E B Boyd on September 17, 2011 at 8:47am Does anyone remember a time when teaching was a "calling" just like ministry? I remember when teachers worked long, long hours with relatively low pay but produced knowledgeable students. Teachers from 50 years ago took papers home to be graded, prepared lesson plans on their time, etc. Now we have teachers who have to have days off to do these things and are paid so much better. I think that when we adopted the idea that all kids recieve a trophy instead of demanding that they earn the trophy is where we got into trouble.
This country has abandoned the "self responsibility" idea and have gone to the entitlement society. Teachers have become the substandard employee in a bankrupt company.
Comment by David Crespo on September 16, 2011 at 11:54pm Comment by Phil on September 16, 2011 at 11:38pm Comment by Phil on September 16, 2011 at 11:37pm Public unions are nothing but an extortion racket with "We the people" being the victims.
Where's our bargaining rights on how much of our hard work and sweat you are entitled too?
You're not! Public unions are a Ponzi scam and where at the Madoff part now.
Parties over. All public unions must be abolished or this country will NEVER recover.Period.
© 2013 Created by Judson Phillips.
You need to be a member of Tea Party Nation to add comments!
Join Tea Party Nation