Merit Pay Found to Have Little Effect on Achievement

[tropicangela]

The most rigorous study of performance-based teacher compensation ever conducted in the United States shows that a nationally watched bonus-pay system had no overall impact on student achievement—results released today that are certain to set off a firestorm of debate.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/09/21/05pay_ep.h30.html?tkn=PMZC/JzI73B7JY/GJEdCKvj4NYzoCwmccqX5&cmp=clp-sb-teacher

[Mini-Me]

This seems to suggest that bad teachers are already "doing their best," so financial incentives to do better won't help anything. Now, firing bad teachers without hesitation and replacing them with better ones...that might help. ;)

It's tough to make public schools better though. The best curriculum and timetable is child-specific, so no uniform regimen inflicted upon an entire class is going to work for everyone. Still, curricula and policies are dictated bureaucratically from the top down, undermining even the kind of competition that would lead to better results on average. That organization is deliberate though, because the fundamental purpose of compulsory schooling is to promote soul-draining obedience to authority, conformity in thought, and indoctrination. This purpose is totally contradictory to fostering excellence. Instead, it inherently breeds mediocrity, and it's only getting worse as increasingly wasted minds deadened by public education grow up to become increasingly poor educators themselves. It's a feedback loop. The downward curve probably has some asymptotic limit somewhere, but we obviously haven't reached it.

[romacox]

In Florida, the merit pay was to be tied to the FCAT test, which is a highly ineffective way to measure students let alone teachers. College professors say the new students can pass the FCAT, but cannot do basic math.

As a tutor, I work with public school, and homeschool children. I do not blame the teachers for what is happening. Before the Department of education was created, local communities and teachers ran the school. We had the best education in the world.

Government bureaucracy has taken the control out of the hands of those who care most about the children, and transformed them into a bureaucracy of worthless statistics.

[osan]

This seems to suggest that bad teachers are already "doing their best," so financial incentives to do better won't help anything. Now, firing bad teachers without hesitation and replacing them with better ones...that might help. ;)

It suggests no such thing, necessarily. No doubt, though, that it is so in some cases. What this suggests to me is further confirmation that the school system is bad in the fabric. Not only is much of what they teach worthless crap, the ways in which is it presented is of equally poor quality. Moreover, dissemination of a standardized, one-size-fits-all curriculum has proven an ultimate disaster, particularly in light of the environment of standardized testing to which all teaching is now geared.

Public schools are an absolute and unmitigated failure. Kids are bored and disinterested. They are stressed out by the "high standards" to which they must rise in order to pass the standardized tests. Teachers are bored, frustrated, angry, and in some cases just collecting a check. Administrators are so hopelessly brainwashed by the tripe that is forced upon them by the state, they can no longer see reason in most cases such that when they look at their failing school they automatically look to the teachers, the budget, and the students for blame - never to the curricula, the farcical system of standardized testing, the environment - the very fabric of the system itself. In their minds it is impossible that it could be any one of those, much less all of them taken as parts and as a whole.


It's tough to make public schools better though. The best curriculum and timetable is child-specific, so no uniform regimen inflicted upon an entire class is going to work for everyone.

Agreed - yet even a one-size=fits-all approach can be far better than what has been foisted upon us.


Still, curricula and policies are dictated bureaucratically from the top down,

And forever will it be so until we put our feet down and say "no".


That organization is deliberate though, because the fundamental purpose of compulsory schooling is to promote soul-draining obedience to authority, conformity in thought, and indoctrination.

On the money. For those who look at this and think "conspiracy nut", I can only say that you are hopelessly ignorant and pray to god you haven't reproduced.


This purpose is totally contradictory to fostering excellence.

Are you kidding? It's contrary to fostering low-mediocrity. Forget excellence.


Instead, it inherently breeds mediocrity,

Were that only true. It breeds the lowest form of intellect that remains useful to the interests of power.


and it's only getting worse as increasingly wasted minds deadened by public education grow up to become increasingly poor educators themselves. It's a feedback loop. The downward curve probably has some asymptotic limit somewhere, but we obviously haven't reached it.

Yes, a vicious circle. Question is whether the asymptote runs vertically or horizontally. :)

It's really quite fascinating to watch "them" murdering our posterity before our very eyes as we do absolutely nothing about it. I mean, if they took knives to our children's throats, wouldn't we get our guns and lynch the motherfuckers from the nearest tree? Seriously - would we not do this in such a case - kill them without hesitation, compunction, or mercy in defense of the lives of our children? If so, why then do we stand by as they do effectively the same thing, only far more cruelly, and smile like idiots? That's a true $64 question for you folks. You sh ould sit quietly, alone, and think about that until you find an answer, especially if you have children of your own. Public school is tantamount to a death sentence for most children. Death of their spirits, intellects, independence, curiosity, and so forth. Why is this acceptable to so many?