Using student test scores as part of a teacher’s job evaluation while not ideal is at least a step in the right direction towards shattering the outmoded concept that all teachers are the same.

            The debate shouldn’t center on whether teachers should be evaluated using test score results.  Rather, the conversation needs to involve completely rethinking the way teachers are compensated. 

            Testing students at the start of the year, then again at the end, provides data that is quick but insignificant.  Test score results by themselves mean little in terms of a teacher’s abilities.  It’s not so easy to evaluate how well a teacher communicates with her students, how clearly and coherently she answers student questions, how thoughtfully designed her assignments are, or how patiently she works with individual students. 

            However, if test scores are going to be used to determine which teachers are doing a better job of teaching, then what must follow is an acknowledgement that certain teachers are better than others.  And, if that is so (and who would argue with such logic), then those more effective teachers need to get paid higher salaries, while ineffective teachers receive less or, without further improvement, get fired.

            Paying teachers for the quality of their work is a foreign concept in the teaching profession. When a teacher is observed by an administrator, the visit is carefully pre-arranged at a time of day when the teacher can control as much of the lesson as possible knowing her superior will be present.  What often happens is a highly rehearsed and unrealistic picture of what goes on in that classroom day in and day out.

            All teachers get paid the same regardless of the type of job they do. 

            Quality is not acknowledged, applauded, spotlighted nor rewarded.

Because the system has low expectations of teachers, teachers, in turn, have low expectations of themselves as workers and, not surprisingly, this domino effect translates to the low expectations they have of their students. 

The very forms that are used to evaluate teachers clearly show that quality is not part of the evaluation equation.  On the evaluation form are listed several teacher behaviors each with two boxes for an administrator to check off:  “meets standards” or “does not meet standards.”  Notice the absence of a third option “exceeds standards.”  So why should teachers desire to earn higher than average marks when they are not expected to be that good? 

            Thankfully, a few forward-thinking school districts and states including Denver, Houston, and Florida, have what’s commonly called a performance-pay system, often overriding union’s objections, that takes into account student test scores and pays better teachers more money.

            One study found that when teachers get paid according to their performance, their students’ performance increases.  In other words, money does motivate people to work harder.  Who would have thought?

Excellence in public schools is a random occurrence.  There’s nothing in the system to guarantee powerful instructors.  In this era of accountability there is none where it really counts and that is with the teacher in the classroom.

Give principals the power to fire bad teachers.  Each day an incompetent teacher is allowed to be in the same room with young people is another day of learning permanently lost. 

            The solution to many of public education’s problems is not a new reading program, not a new computer, and certainly not more testing.  The solution is to have higher quality teachers by providing meaningful feedback and paying them well for good work.

People will work harder if their jobs are on the line.  Teachers need to trade job security for professional integrity and join the rest of the American workforce and embrace with open arms the right to be fired and the right to be rewarded.

“Mr. Crosby is peerless as an instructional leader.  He is quintessentially professional in all aspects of his work.”

“Mr. Crosby is an excellent teacher.  He has high expectations for all of his students.”

“His lessons are superb.  His students are actively engaged in the learning process so much so that his students have actually developed their own standards-based lesson plans.”

“Mr. Crosby has an incredible way of motivating his students.”

“I saw more outstanding teaching techniques in 25 minutes than I’ve seen in a long time.”

“New teachers desiring to learn effective instructional strategies would benefit from observing his instruction and ability to engage all students.”

“He is a model for the teaching profession.”

These are excerpts from administrators’ evaluations during my 21 years of teaching high school English.  They are not meant to demonstrate how great I teacher I am.  I consider myself a very good teacher, but not Teacher of the Year material. 

Rather, the purpose of using these comments is to show how despite earning the highest commendations from my superiors, I and millions of other teachers are never rewarded either with pay or promotion. 

Teaching is more a calling than a profession, many have said.  But it shouldn’t be a sacrifice, a sacrifice of salary, working conditions, and respect.

If I worked in the private sector, some of this praise would have generated bonuses or promotions.  I have received neither in my entire teaching career. 

Teachers are not paid based on their performance but on the number of years on the job and college units earned.  In other words, there is no subjectivity involved.  A teacher may work very hard or do the bare minimum, yet each receives the same amount of money.  A teacher may spark the minds of young people, or may dampen their spirits.  No matter.  The paycheck is the same.

This is not right. 

There are a few school districts across the nation who have implemented merit pay or performance pay systems.  Both President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan favor paying teachers for their performance, as long as one of the criterions used in evaluating them is test results.  This is where I draw the line.

To use a broad, standardized test that all students take in a state as a measure of that particular teacher’s record is erroneous.  Some teachers are blessed with high achieving students, while others are less lucky with unmotivated kids.

The only advantage in using test results as a teacher evaluation tool is that it is quick.  One looks at numbers and notices if they’ve gone up or down.  Done.

A more effective evaluation system would be to observe certain behaviors in the teacher, behaviors that all parties can agree represent excellent teaching skills.

Of course, much more time and energy is expended when visiting classrooms for several minutes at a time, multiple times, over the course of a year.  Man hours intensive, to be sure.  But a more accurate picture of the teacher’s abilities will be observed.

Implementing career ladders in the teaching profession would also aid in students having a higher caliber of instructor.  If teachers knew that if they worked hard they would be promoted to a higher level of not just salary but status, quality would finally define the teaching profession.

Saying that children are our country’s most precious resource may be a cliché but it is true.  Ensuring that the people who work with this resource are the best isn’t asking too much. 

Kids go to school only 180 days of the year, a total of 2,340 days from kindergarten through 12th grade.  Let’s make sure children spend those precious days with the best teaching talent that money can buy.  Performance pay and career ladders are part of an insurance policy for the future of America. 

For those educators out there this is the time of year in May when our work officially gets recognized.  Of course, up until a few years ago, this event was called Teacher Appreciation Week.  However, after complaints from custodians and cafeteria workers, it has gone through the politically correct name change of Staff Appreciation Week.

If you are lucky enough, your local PTA will honor you with a special breakfast or lunch.  For many teachers, however, Teacher Appreciation celebrations have the opposite effect of their intentions--insulting teachers not honoring them.

Where I work the local PTA puts a lot of time and effort in a whole week of placing in each teacher's box a token "thank you."  Here are some examples:

• a Cup O'Noodles with "you are SOUP-er" taped on it

• a miniature fan with the saying "you are FAN-tastic"
• a marble with a note "you are MARBLE-lous"
• "we are the lucky ones" taped to a penny

How more substantive would it be to bundle all the money to pay for these trinkets and give teachers a special breakfast or lunch?  Plus, it would take only one timeframe of effort instead of 5 days.

What do you think?

            Why does the Motion Picture Association of America even bother with ratings when the titles of recent movies evidently have no scrutiny.  It all started a few years back when the raunchy “South Park” cable cartoon series released the feature “Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” and the producers admitted they got a kick out of having the MPAA allow such a gross title.  However, that seems tame compared to “Meet the Fockers”, “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”, and now “Kick-Ass.”

            If you are watching TV with your mother or children, do you not blush when ads for these movies appear?

            The old argument about turning off the TV if you don’t like what’s on it doesn’t work when billboards all over town are emblazoned with “KICK-ASS”; you can’t easily swerve the car in the opposite direction.

            It is practically impossible to shield young children from being bombarded by images and sounds that at the very least makes it quite difficult to explain to young people, at the worst makes life around them coarse and vulgar.

            I don’t mean to sound like a snob but enough already with all the smutty ads and movie titles.  No, using four-letter words and profane depictions is not the end of American civilization.  Yes, I enjoy watching R-rated DVDs, once my kids are in bed.

            All of us need to remember that there are children in our society, and we need to take care of them.   Children growing up with a coarser culture are bound to be courser themselves. 

There was a time when adults would refrain from using obscenities whenever women or children entered a room.  Now those obscenities are tattooed on the parents’ arms.

              Freedom is not about doing or saying anything you want.  If so, there would be no civilized society.

              There is plenty of room in the marketplace for garbage.  The public should have the choice whether or not to be forced to look at it and smell it.

              We all could use a little civility nowadays.

At 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, September 8, not only do I plan on showing my own students President Obama’s address to all the nation’s schoolchildren, but I intend to use the brouhaha over it as a teachable moment, of how precious freedom of speech is even if it means allowing hateful people to say things that are not true.

What insanity has taken over parts of this country when a presidential address to young people is perceived to be mistrusted as if an alien dictator has taken over that will brainwash their minds? Former President George W. Bush gave an anti-drug speech to the nation’s children and few screamed about indoctrination.

Some parents intend to keep their children home that day so that they don’t see the message.  My gosh, folks, this is the President of the United States we’re talking about.

How far this country has lost its way when the President cannot make a simple “do well in school” speech to America’s youth without controversy.

Paranoia is the key word involved with the vile antagonism expressed by some parents who wish their children not to hear the President of the United States speak to them about their future. 

I was amazed when my son brought home a note from his first grade teacher offering parents to opt out of hearing the message.  The problem with such a notification is that it creates the sense that what the President has to say is somehow controversial so parents who probably would not have said a peep about the whole thing might now decide to have their children not be present, even though the entire text of the President’s speech is available on line on Monday at whitehouse.gov.

At the high school where I work, the principal sent a carefully worded e-mail regarding the speech, leaving the matter in the hands of individual teachers (as it should be) whether or not to show it in the classroom.

What a shame that such an exciting moment for young people, the President speaking directly to them about their education, has been twisted by ignorant parents and ratings-addicted media pundits into a scary, heinous message that serves to indoctrinate our children.  But isn’t having young people stand up, put their hands over their heart, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance a form of indoctrination?  Many of these same parents desire religion to be taught in public schools, but that would not be indoctrination, would it?

What is wrong with people today?  Don’t we want a president who cares about health care and education?  Since when does everything the president does or says has to pass through some kind of “Democrat Liberal” filter?  Wasn’t the election over with 10 months ago?

Why any good American would desire a president to fail is beyond reason.  There’s only one explanation why some people so vehemently oppose the president:  because he’s black.  How frightful that this country has so many parents who still cannot accept that an African-American is the president of all of us. 

This isn’t the country I grew up in where people viewed the President of the United States as the president of us all whether you voted for him or not. 

We are living in dangerous, uncharted times when a presidential address to young people about the importance of education is perceived to be indoctrination.  I dread what may happen next.

           “Sex sells” used to be the mantra of Madison Avenue.  Today it is smut that sells.