Merit+pay

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=Merit Pay=

Merit pay and why teachers leave teaching:
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 * Comments about EdWeek article on merit pay (requested anonymity)**

"While our district has become obsessed with documenting, proving, and memorializing events rather than allowing instruction to occur, teachers are overburdened with fulfilling politically charged catch phrases like data driven instruction, accountability, and highly qualified. Can it be that all these phrases have come down to it one thing: teachers are no longer there to teach but to take the blame.

Its time the union DARE take up the politically sensitive issue of defending teachers' rights and separate fact from fiction. Teachers cannot "learn" for students and teachers cannot teach WHILE being secretaries to the District, keep up with all the paper work and tasks they hold us accountable for including student FCAT progress.

Rather than providing so many tutors and coaches, perhaps its time the District provided teacher aides to help input grades and assist teachers keep up with all the menial tasks that continue to be thrown on teachers in the name of "accountability" (Anonymous).

Here are some of the reasons:

2000, Public Agenda survey of more than 900 new teachers and almost as many college graduates who didn't choose a career in education.

Concluded while "teachers do believe that they are underpaid," higher salaries would probably be of limited effectiveness in alleviating teacher shortages because considerations other than money are "significantly more important to most teachers and would-be teachers."

2002: Public Agenda poll 44% of administrators reported, talented colleagues were being driven out of the field because of "unreasonable standards and accountability."

2002 California survey published Phi Delta Kappan, concluded: "accountability" was the main reason just as for teachers leaving.

Mike Baker, a correspondent for BBC News, discovered that an educational "recruitment crisis" exists almost exclusively in those nations "where accountability measures have undermined teachers' autonomy."

Families and Work Institute survey, "salary/wage" ranked 16th on a list of 20 reasons for taking a job.

Related links
[|More problems with merit pay (Brevard County)] - blogs.tampabay.com - Posted: August 14, 2008, 3:15pm EDT by Jeff Solochek [|Get Rid of the Performance Review! - Wall Street Journal, 10-20-08] [|An Academy Classic - On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B] [|Goal Setting - A Motivational Technique That Works] [|ERIC search for merit pay]