Why HISD teacher bonuses are a bad idea
The Houston Independent School District board voted 9-0 in approval of a plan that would allow teachers to earn up to $3,000 in bonuses based on their student performance. While this looks like a good plan, it has some serious flaws.
Good teachers usually don’t get the ‘good’ kids
In most school settings, the most qualified teachers often get the most difficult students. The idea is that the better teachers will have more experience to draw from to get through to the tough kids.
And it’s a system that works. A teacher with 25 years of experience will be better equiped to deal with a poor performing student that will a teacher fresh out of college. But this will also put a teacher working in a classroom of poor performing students at a disadvantage to receive their bonus.
Think of this scenario: A teacher has been teaching for 25 years and is nearing retirement. She started her career, as many teachers do, at a poor performing school. She works her way up the ladder, changes to a better performing school, gets a masters degree, does presentations for other teachers, decides to move to Houston. Now she’s working in a poor performing school with some of the most difficult students. A teacher two years out of college that lucked into a job at one of the well performing HISD schools receives a bonus because of the school she works at, and as a result is receiving a higher salary than the teacher with 25 years experience teaching at a poor performing school. Which of these two teachers works harder to get through to their kids? Which is more important: a high performing student passing a state test that they probably would have passed anyway or a poor performing student realizing that graduating from high school is important because of what his teacher taught him?
High performing districts have an advantage
Richer districts tend to have higher performing students. It’s due to the way schools are funded. Local districts are funded through property taxes, high value property pays higher taxes. Parents with more money are more likely to have a mother that doesn’t have to work and is able to help out with homework and projects and just generally be involved. And parents with money are able to spend $50 to send their child to tutoring for an hour to catch up on assignments that they need help with.
Higher funding also leads to higher paid teachers. While the state pays part of a teacher’s salary, the district can add to that. So, you have higher paid teachers with students that typically perform better on state testing with minimal intervention from the teachers. Now you want to pay these teachers even more because their kids pass a test? That’s absurd. Receiving a bonus because your class goes from 90% to 95% passing on a standardized test does not make sense. But a teacher that has a child go from sleeping through the TAKS to passing it - they deserve a bonus.
Teaching to the TAKS
Teachers already are accused of teaching to a test rather than teaching what the children need to know just so that their school can get the ‘recognized’ or ‘exemplary’ banners to hang out front. Now that there is money involved, it will only get worse.
Add to that the fact that HISD has gotten caught in the past doctoring test scores, and it’s a potentially bad situation. Before they were only cheating for recognition, now they will be cheating for money.
So, what are the options
My opinion is that we should either privatize public education or allow school vouchers. Better schools should be able to draw the better teachers, and should be able to pay them more. But a student should not be forced to go to a specific school based on geography. Having schools compete for students rather than just assuming they will walk through the door will lead to better schools, better teachers, and better individual classes.
And although this does not go along with the TAKS bonuses, I feel that certain schools should be specialized. The current education system is set up under the assumption that every student wants to go to college, and is able to do so. College is not right for every person. If a student were able to begin a technical training program while in high school, they would be equipped to join the workforce upon graduation and not need further training for an entry level job.
Technorati Tags: Houston, school, HISD, TAKS, school vouchers
I agree excepty for one point: That performance is a result of how schools are funded. The facts show different. I was Controller at Port Arthur ISD which had a good industrial tax base, certainly not a poor district, but poor test scores. Houston ISD and Dallas ISD are relatively well off Districts yet scores are poor. In Houston ISD the highest funded high schools are among the poor performers and the lowest funded (white) are the among the best performers. The famous or infamous Edgewood ISD has been funded richly for two decades yet scores are very poor. Funding has never had anything to do with education success. Culture and home life do.
I absolutely agree that there are cases like you point out. For that matter, I
can’t really argue against someone who held the position that you have. No
doubt you have seen the inside of school finance more intimately than most.
My point was that better funded schools tend to be in wealthier areas; with
exceptions of course. Wealthier parents tend to have more time and money to
spend on their children’s education. Parents with money have the “luxury” of
not having to decide between working overtime to keep their children fed and
staying home and helping with homework. These parents are also more likely to
have college educations and see the value of their children receiving a college
education, which causes an increased level of importance on the education
itself. This falls into the culture and home life that you pointed out.
My feeling is that schools are failing because they have an effective monopoly
on education. The school a student goes to is generally dictated by geography.
Were schools forced to compete on quality rather than simply have students
“given” to them I believe that our education system would be forced to improve.
Although that does beg the counter argument that schools would then also be
competing to get the “best” students which would leave the children behind even
moreso. No Child Left Behind is an argument that I’ll leave for another time -
for now I’ll just say I disagree with it.
Thank you for your comments. This site was set up as a humor site and it is
rare that I get to actually stand up on a soapbox for things I feel strongly
about. But the failure of our education system is certainly something I feel
strongly about.