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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Merit pay would never work in schools as it does in other professions because children are not widgets. We're talking about complex Han beings here. As already pointed out, there are just too many variables and factors beyond a teacher's control.

This is not a job of seeing who can put the most labels on a can of soup-something completely determined by the worker's efforts alone.[/quote]

But teachers are supposed to meet the same standards despite these variables.  No wonder nobody wants to teach in Title 1 schools.  The students there are expected to meet the same standards as kids in wealthy schools.  My friend teaches in a wealthy school in a wealthy school district in kindergarten.  She routinely has students enter her kindergarten class having already met all of the KG standards on Day 1.  Some years she had more than 50% of students meet those standards while my other friend has kids enter KG below grade level.  Only in America are teachers blamed for kids enter their KG class being below grade level.  The student doesn't know how to hold a book and that print goes from left to right and top to bottom?  Must be their brand new teacher's fault![/quote]

How are K teachers blamed? For what? K isn't even a required year I thought.[/quote]

What you and others don't get, and why there is a looming teacher shortage, is that teachers are blamed for everything.  They are blamed by everyone:  parents, admin, central office, news media, etc.  It isn't fun being the ultimate fall guy.  So, yes, when children enter our classrooms and they are not socialized, they don't know how to hold a pencil, and they do not know how to hold a book, it IS the kindergarten teacher's fault in the eyes of admin.  The blame ratchets up for each year that the child moves up a grade in school.  By the time the child reaches middle school, it is a full-on frontal assault on teachers.  And we are paid a pittance for our efforts.  In a riff on an old Waylon Jennings song, 'Mama's, don't let your babies grow up to be teachers'.  (And, yes, it was a[i] really[/i] tough week at my school.)

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