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CAT Tracks for July 22, 2009
BEST & BRIGHTEST |
BEWARE!
Now is the time for all good teachers to practice their expletives...it's summer, the kids are away, and "education experts" are in fine form.
Go for it!
The article below should be final proof that there is no honesty among the critics of public school teachers. One does not have to be Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, or Bill Clinton to sense a conspiracy to destroy the public education system.
For years, the critics of public education have assaulted teachers...
Hey, it's like the tree in the forest thing...if one screams expletives while alone in one's house with the windows shut and there is no one to hear, did one really curse?
Oops, pardon the digression. One more time...
For YEARS, since this whole "reform movement began", teachers have been denigrated for their alleged ineptitude.
The term "highly qualified" has been engraved in the national, state, and local educational lexicon.
In Illinois, for instance, teachers are forced to jump through the hoops to demonstrate that they are qualified to work for substandard pay in an occupation that is afforded no respect. Every five years, teachers in Illinois must prove that they have "grown"...acquiring 120 "credits" in professional development.
Did I "getcha"? Did ya think I "cussed"???
Noooooooooo!
The latest proposal...by folks that fit the extended version of the "favorite put-down" rendered above..."Those who can do; those who can't teach; those who can't teach, teach teachers to teach!"...is to do away with pay for those who have obtained the recognized symbol of "highly qualified"...the Master's Degree.
So, no more (pay for) MS...pay will be only for BS!!! (Oh, they will probably still insist that you get your Master's...they just won't pay for it!)
Folks, this is all "smoke and mirrors", or maybe more appropriately a "shell game" played at the expense of teachers/marks. The "powers that be" keep changing the playing field...changing the rules in mid-stream. They encourage teachers to become "highly qualified"...the ultimate, of course, was the obtaining of a Master's Degree in their field of expertise. After teachers jump through that hoop, the Puppet Masters pull the strings and say that an MS is worthless. Here is what you need to do now...
And they wonder why the poor, pitiful teachers feel a need to unionize...feel the need to try to even the playing field. Well, we may be poor (in more ways than one), and we may be pitiful (pity the idealistic youth who dreamed of helping others at her/his own personal sacrifice), but "we ain't stoopid!"
Power is in numbers.
So many reformers, so many ways...
We have our friends at "Teach for America". They tend to employ and use folks that feel an urge to do a stint of "public service". (Hey, they are less likely to get shot at than if they had entered the military...although in some places, that is not always true.) They are willing to do "missionary work"...going into the worst schools for a couple of years, toiling for "teacher pay", and when it is all over...walk away, find a real job, and earn REAL MONEY...with a clear conscience.
And, do not overlook the current bonanza! All those Wall Street types and the folks put out of business by the Wall Street types. They need some "chump change" to tide them over until recovery arrives and they can get back to their millions. The "powers that be" are quite willing to wipe out all the red tape placed in front of the "lifer" teachers and offer this new work force...this TEMP FORCE, alternative certification. Well, of course, it's only right. After all, they ARE the "doers".
Folks, it's all about the money. (Hey, teachers...you've heard THAT one before...every time you insulted the "powers that be" with a request for a pay raise!)
The politicians, the taxpayers, the person on the street...they want the best education that money can buy; they just don't want to pay for it. They want YOU to be thankful...that you have a job. I mean, since you obviously "can't do"...YOU should be eternally grateful that they allow you to work...to prepare the leaders/workers of tomorrow...to make all other professions possible!
Have they not heard that "you get what you pay for"? (Hey, as we are well aware, they "make out like bandits"...they get much, much more than what they pay for! They get idealistic lifers...the folks that will still be there when the "Teach for America" Temps and the "Wall Street" Temps climb on (or back on) the gravy train!)
Spiro and Tricky Dick worried about a left-wing conspiracy, railing against the "nattering nabobs of negativism". Bill Clinton retreated into his bunker, hunkering down against a vast right-wing conspiracy.
Well, teachers, you should feel honored! You're getting it from both sides.
It's the only thing that the right and the left can agree upon...
From the Education Week...
Report Urges Halt to Extra Pay for Master’s Degrees
By Stephen Sawchuk
States are spending billions in education dollars each year rewarding teachers for earning advanced degrees that show little correlation with improved student achievement, a report released yesterday concludes.
The policy of giving teachers salary “bumps” after they earn master’s degrees in education “is in the drinking water everywhere, but we know the relationship between the degree and student achievement is nonexistent,” said Raegen T. Miller, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank.
Mr. Miller co-wrote the policy brief—one in a series on school financing in the economic downturn—with Marguerite Roza, a professor at the Center for Reinventing Public Education at University of Washington, in Seattle.
By decoupling such degrees from salary schedules, states and districts could free up funding for other types of compensation policies that might promote student achievement, the authors suggest in the report.
The brief arrives even as transformation of teacher-compensation systems rises to the top of the national agenda, propelled by the $200 million in additional money provided through the federal economic-stimulus package.
Big Numbers
Districts in every state provide additional pay for teachers who hold master’s degrees, either by granting the teachers annual stipends on top of their base salaries or by altering the district salary schedule to award “lane” increases to those who earn the degrees.
A handful of other states, such as New York, require teachers to hold such degrees to obtain the highest level of licensure. Regardless of the mechanism, the accompanying salary bumps are typically career-long, not just one-shot increases.
Between federal, state, and local funding sources, states devote 1 percent to 2 percent of their current annual education expenditures to those added costs, according to the report.
The figures vary depending on the number of teachers in the state, the percentage of those who hold the degree, and the average salary bump teachers receive from acquiring the degree. In all, states spend about $8 billion annually compensating educators for holding a master’s degree in any subject.
Researchers have found that in certain content areas, such as mathematics and science, holding an advanced degree bears a positive relationship to student achievement. But many more teachers hold master’s degrees in education.
In terms of per-pupil expenditures, the cost amounts to $319 per student in Washington state, which pays more than half its teachers upwards of $10,000 annually for having a master’s degree. It is lowest in Texas, which has only 27 percent of its teachers holding an M.A. and awards such teachers about $1,400 a year each in additional pay.
Uncommon Change
Although dozens of states and districts have begun to set up performance-based pay systems over the past decade, far fewer states and districts have examined the cost of master’s degrees. Even some of the most prominent performance-pay models, such as Denver’s ProComp plan, allow teachers to make more for earning the credentials.
More recently, detaching compensation from the attainment of master’s degrees was one of the initial proposals of District of Columbia schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee when the city’s collective bargaining agreement came up for renewal in 2008.
That proposal, though, was overshadowed by a controversial two-tiered pay proposal that would have allowed some teachers the opportunity to take part in a performance-based system in exchange for relinquishing tenured status for one year (Pay-for-Tenure Swap for D.C. Teachers Under Debate Aug. 27, 2008).
In phasing out bonuses for advanced degrees in education, states could use the savings to institute comprehensive changes to teacher compensation. Although the research connecting performance-based pay to improved student achievement is thin and inconclusive, piloting and evaluating such plans would allow districts to home in on ways of better aligning pay to goals for boosting student learning, Mr. Miller said.
Such reforms could be politically challenging, but districts and states could render them palatable if they grandfathered in current teachers and changed policies only for those entering the profession, the report suggests.
“The variation between states on these pay increases shows that not everyone has the same feeling about the value of these degrees,” Mr. Miller said.
The stakeholders with the most to lose from such a restructuring of teacher pay could be schools of education, whose enrollments are supported by the salary incentives currently in place. The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, however, has generally supported efforts to link graduates of teacher colleges to their students’ performance and to better integrate content-area coursework and pedagogy.
“Paying teachers for earning a master’s degree was a response to issues of inequity and caprice that existed in the last century,” Sharon P. Robinson, the president of AACTE, said in an e-mail. “With the advent of new fiscal constraints, districts must give thoughtful consideration to teacher pay, with teachers, and with a view toward new principles in human-capital management as well as questions of productivity.”
The idea is not necessarily anathema to teachers’ unions, either.
For instance, James R. Carlson, the UniServ director for the Kettle Moraine, Wis., local of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, a National Education Association affiliate, and the director of the Educator Compensation Institute, recently unveiled a proposed compensation system that would grant salary bumps only to teachers who earned advanced degrees in a content area or in cognitive science.
“We have to embrace contemporary research if we’re going to generate new sources of income in the compensation system,” Mr. Carlson said. “The status quo is not good enough.”
Under his proposal, teachers could make more money by earning advanced certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, conducting “action” research, and gradually taking on additional roles as lead teachers and mentors.
UniServ staff members provide bargaining expertise to local NEA affiliates, and Mr. Carlson hopes that, with the right incentives, several interested local affiliates will consider the proposal.
“Hopefully, better economic times will convince state legislators to fund pilot projects to see if these things are worth doing,” Mr. Carlson said. “That’s the right way to go about this.”
