Merit Pay for All

The president has this to say:
“All teachers should get merit pay.
Their checks will be more
If their students score
At top of the curve on test day.”
 
© 2009 by Magical Mystical Teacher
 
Thus speaks the president. To read what many teachers think about merit pay, click here.

No Paycheck for Me

President Merit Pay wants my paycheck to reflect the standardized test scores of my students. If the scores go up, my paycheck goes up. If the scores go down, my paycheck goes down.

President Merit Pay should meet my students. All of them have learning disabilities. Two of my sixth-graders can’t read. They have virtually no phonemic awareness. They recognize a few simple words—a, an, and, the, but—and that’s about it.

All of the kids I work with read far below grade level. An average third-grader can out-read my students. How are they supposed to comprehend a standardized test written at grade level?

Yet President Merit Pay wants my paycheck to be based on what my students cannot do.

I guess that means no paycheck for me.