Re: I need some help on what to say to a reporter on Thursday

["Allen Flanigan." <Allen.Flanigan@USPTO.GOV>]

Here's more on merit pay specifically for teachers:

In case you haven't heard enough about problems associated with merit pay
for
                       teachers, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's
School of Education has
                       released a paper that looks at, among other things,
the perils of merit pay for
                       teachers.

                       Merit pay, the report argues, has been touted as a
means of boosting teacher
                       performance and, ultimately, increasing student
achievement. The argument for
                       merit pay is that the current salary grid rewards
every teacher and provides little
                       incentive for an individual teacher to improve
his/her performance or professional
                       competence. However, merit pay plans for teachers
have been poorly designed,
                       do not recognize the cooperative and collegial
aspects of teachers' work and
                       tend to be complicated because they depend upon
teacher participation,
                       involvement and enthusiasm.

                       The father of Total Quality Management, W. Edwards
Deming, called merit pay
                       the "deadly disease" of management because it focused
on individual
                       performance, not on the quality of a work team. In a
school, teamwork is vital,
                       and rewarding individual teachers with merit pay pits
teacher against teacher,
                       which is detrimental to collegiality. Equally there
is "virtually no evidence that
                       merit pay plans actually improve student academic
achievement." Merit pay
                       plans tend rather to interfere with alternative and
simultaneous efforts aimed at
                       boosting student performance, and so they may
actually thwart educational
                       reforms.

                       The obvious conclusion is that merit pay for teachers
does not work.

                       Source: Catherine Lugg, Congress, Teachers, and the
Perils of Merit Pay,"
                       Education Policy Project CERAI-01-19, University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee


-----Original Message-----
From: gbracey@EROLS.COM [mailto:gbracey@EROLS.COM]
Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2002 8:52 AM
To: ARN-L@listsrva.CUA.EDU
Subject: Re: I need some help on what to say to a reporter on Thursday


Mickey, in the "Testing, Testing and More Testing" section of the 11th
Bracey Report, I discuss the Kane and Steiger work which shows

1.  Yearly changes are unstable
2.  Most of the change has nothing to do with school
3.  People who set up accountability systems don't understand the strengths
and weaknesses.

There are other problems, but that will get you started.  I think the report
is online at www.pdkintl.org <http://www.pdkintl.org> , click on Kappan
Magazine.



----- Original Message -----
From: Mickey  <mailto:PAVURSOL@AOL.COM> VanDerwerker
To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU <mailto:ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2002 9:10 AM
Subject: I need some help on what to say to a reporter on Thursday

Hi guys,
I got a call from a reporter that I'll have to answer later today or this
evening.  One of my fellow school board members (he's new and a former
businessman) has suggested that in this era of not much money and lots of
accountability, that we should base raises for prinicipals and for teachers
on improvements in SOL test scores.  I argued against it and thought it had
died but it just keeps popping back up.  Can anyone help with some pithy
comments, good arguments, or other thoughts?  That it is so close to home
and my kids makes it hard for me to string coherent sentences together. My
choice is "what?  is he nuts?  what's wrong with him? To arms!"  but that
obviously won't work. SO HELP!
Mickey