Reply to Wash Post article on Montgomery County salaries

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am an MCPS teacher who is leaving the public school system. I am sick of performing at a very high level while others coast and make the system look terrible. I believe there should be incentives and rewards for teachers who do good work, as opposed to uniform raises for all. I wish it were easier to get rid of bad teachers. Instead, the good ones flee, because the system is stuck in mediocrity and the wonderful teachers resent that the system equally rewards the great and the awful teachers. I also think the county should start tracking school retention numbers. If you want to see whether a school has decent leadership, evaluate the number of high-achieving professionals who are leaving. That will speak volumes.[/quote]

While I don't necessarily disagree, how do you evaluate teacher competence?  A great teacher could have a classroom full of idiots and only make a small gain despite a doing a fabulous job; a terrible teacher could have a classroom full of geniuses and make a large gain despite doing a terrible job. It's hard to measure what kids "should" learn since so much is tied up with the kids natural ability.   I have friends who are teachers; apparently everybody "knows" who the bad teachers are.  I'm just unaware of any way to rate teachers that's not heavily dependent on the luck if the draw in getting students.[/quote]

This is true. I work in a high FARMS/ESOL school and am considered to be good at what I do, by subjective and objective measures.  But if my pay starts being tied to student performance under the guise of "teacher competence",  then I'm high-tailing it to a different part of the county. I can't undo the effects of poverty in 6.5 hours/day. Ultimately I would have to put my family's well-being first. [/quote]

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