United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appeared at the National Education Association’s annual convention today to promote the Obama Administration’s support of performance pay for teachers. As reported by The Los Angeles Times, Duncan told the audience, “It’s not enough to focus only on issues like job security, tenure, compensation, and evaluation, you must become full partners and leaders in education reform, you must be willing to change.”
Duncan described how, as CEO of Chicago public schools, he negotiated a performance pay program with the Chicago Teachers Union, which is part of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, the other national teachers’ union. The program is still very small; it will be in only about 40 of Chicago’s more than 600 public schools next fall.
Speaking about the Obama Administration’s commitment to establish performance pay for teachers, Bob McDonnell, Republican gubernatorial nominee and former Attorney General of Virginia, noted, “I applaud the Obama administration and their commitment to move forward with this important initiative. We need to reward excellence in our public education system. A vibrant system in which opportunities abound will prepare our young people for a competitive and changing world. As Governor, I look forward to working with the administration on other important education reforms, including putting Virginia in the vanguard of the charter school movement.”
Performance pay? Think about this as it seems good but is counterproductive in reality? Children are not widgets? Guidance counselors in high schools have more to do with who sits in one’s classes than parents? State standards such as Virginia’s SOL state testing retards creative teaching and learning as students are fed to produce a grade? How do you suppose you increase student intelligence? Think about it? What does make for better education? Parents & teachers who have administrative support working together within the same ballgame. Students need to attend school to learn, parents need to be supportive of education al home for any learning environment to succeed? Students must desire to achieve and understand that learning comes from within through self desire? No one can make any person learn? Why do politicians fail to ask those of us who have worked within the system of American education for 30+ years what can make it work?
Performance pay is just another of numerous attempts like No Child Left Behind that fails to put the responsibility of learning where it belongs–on the individual and the household that raises the child. Learning takes a Village and the teacher is only a small part of the overall picture. Hopefully someone will get it before I die?