How irritated would you be to know that teachers are paid based on a standard that has no correlation to student performance as measured by standardized tests in math and reading?
What I mean is that teachers are paid based on a combination of years of experience and educational level attained. The more years you teach and the more college credits you earn, the more money you make. Yet no connection has been made in research demonstrating that someone with a masters degree is definitely going to be a better teacher than someone with a bachelors degree. Some research has shown that teachers do show some improvement in teaching performance between the first year and fifth year of teaching; however, research has been unable to demonstrate meaningful improvement after the fifth year in teacher quality. Teachers are paid based on standards that have little to do with student performance.
I mention all this because I saw that the Manhattan Institute for Policy research released a paper on a recent study supporting these findings. The key measure that they used to demonstrate student achievement were standardized test scores. A quick glance at the standardized tests used in Florida, the state covered by the study, finds that they only use multiple choice questions. Multiple choice questions cannot effectively measure skills like creativity and the ability to create new material, both of which are considered higher order thinking skills.
So that leads me to this question, are these research findings actually telling us years of teaching experience and college credits are worthless when it comes to predicting teacher performance or is it telling us that they are worthless when it comes to predicting student performance on imperfect multiple choice tests?
Devil's advocate: In what profession ARE people generally paid based solely on their effectiveness?
ReplyDeleteIn most professions there is some range of merit-based pay, but all that means is that over time someone who does a better job will make more than someone who does a worse job. However... more generally people are paid based on:
- years of experience
- degrees/certifications
After working for my company for almost 5 years, I do a better job than many people who have been in the workforce for 10-15 years... but they get paid more.
Matt:
ReplyDeleteValid point, but is it not possible to measure someones worth to a company by measuring their impact to the bottom line? Profit and value are the measurement tools in the business world. You have a measuring stick and it is money. In education, we don't have a good bottom line measuring stick.
You also have more flexibility to negotiate your pay in the business world. Teachers typically do not. You are locked into the pay scale. The business world also offers opportunities to earn bonuses. Again, not something available in the education world.