I just caught last week's 60 minutes story filed by Katie Couric on the NYC charter school that pays teachers $125,000 in salary. I expected the piece to be a total disaster, but in the end it wasn't all bad -- in fact with a tiny bit of help Couric could have done a really good report. It amazes me, by the way, that none of the big time network journalists can find anyone --even a relative who teaches -- to prep them on education issues so they can ask even elementary questions about how a school functions. But to Katie, Lindsay Crist and all the other journalists out there who won't be reading my article -- I offer these observations and questions for free.
First the observations:
1.Does anyone believe that if this model is successful, even wildly successful, that districts across the nation would start paying teachers $125,000? Some places wouldn't so it simply out of spite.
2. The Principal struck me as someone looking to create a business model for duplication in a for-profit scenario rather than an educator. I tend to think this is what a good many charter schools are about -- in fact, one of the only ways this model makes sense is for privately run schools to use the higher pay to poach talent from public schools and leave a wrecked system behind. Well, that's just the cynic in me talking -- I suppose if we really wanted to do things right in education in this country the highest paid and, hopefully the best, teachers would be working with the most challenging students. We have virtually the complete reverse of that situation now -- and it probably will never change.
3. I actually loved the fact that much of the teacher evaluation was done by the other teachers in the school and that they seemed to have time scheduled into their day to work together on teaching methods and management techniques. This virtually never happened in any of the schools I worked in and would have been invaluable. Why? Because all teachers face the same sort of management challenges with students, and seeing particular situations or personalities being handled by another teacher is an incredible learning experience. Also, being evaluated by a peer is far more productive than by an administrator. First, people tend to perform unevenly in front of an administrator because of the naturally stressful atmosphere generated by an official evaluation performed by someone with supervisory (and firing) authority. But second, administrators have often not spent enough time in the classroom, may be trained in a different subject area than the teacher or are so many years removed from the classroom to have much useful information to impart to a classroom teacher. At any rate, having planned-for teacher interaction should be part of any serious reform, this too will probably never happen.
4. Underlying the whole piece is the tacit assumption that a regular teacher neither makes nor should make anything close to $125,000. As far as I know, a lot of wealthy suburban districts top out in this range -- all you have to do is hang around for 25 years...
Lingering questions any educator would want answered:
1. I worry about the practical application of this model beyond a tiny number of schools. It is fine to have an "American Idol" style hiring process to populate one boutique school but what would happen if there were a lot of these schools? If a thousand school districts in the US decided to adopt this model are we to assume that in addition to the giant sucking sound of superior teachers from around the nation switching to these districts, that thousands of recruits from the private sector would also rush in? How else could the whole staff be "above average"? Also -- the main thing keeping people from teaching isn't the pay, its the extremely difficult workload and awful working conditions.
2. Does the school get to boot or not accept kids who have behavioral problems? Any model seeking to improve the performance of America's worst schools has to answer this question. Having taught one year with virtually no students with real behavioral issues and six years with a normal distribution, I can tell you that the year without the behavior problems was exponentially easier than every other; and it showed in the kids' performance. This is a basic question that should have been asked right up front.
3. What happens if the school gets to its 5th year and can't show any improvement in testing? Does this mean that having a great teacher for every class makes no difference? Or does it mean that student performance hinges on many more variables than teacher alone? Or does it mean that, maybe, student learning and development can't be measured with test scores alone?
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