A new pay-for-performance program for Florida's teachers will tie raises and bonuses directly to pupils' standardized-test scores beginning next year, marking the first time a state has so closely linked the wages of individual school personnel to their students' exam results.
The effort, now being adopted by local districts, is viewed as a landmark in the movement to restructure American schools by having them face the same kind of competitive pressures placed on private enterprise, and advocates say it could serve as a national model to replace traditional teacher pay plans that award raises based largely on academic degrees and years of experience.
Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has characterized the new policy, which bases a teacher's pay on improvements in test scores, as a matter of common sense, asking, "What's wrong about paying good teachers more for doing a better job?"
There is so much wrong with this idea you know it had to come from a Bush!
What kind of cookie cutter children will will be the result of an education focused on high test scores to the exclusion of other school activites. Where would the future artists come from? Who would wasted their time taking band? Who would waste their English credits taking a creative writing course?
And what would this do to the teachers style of educating? Would the teacher be relaxed and friendly toward the children? Or would it be much more likely they would be stressed and focused on bringing up those test scores? How would they deal with the classic underachiever in their classroom? Would they try to get the kid transferred to somebody elses class? I mean this kid could keep them from providing for their own family!
Some of my very best memories form school were with those eclectic teachers who had a unique method of teaching. The one who brought her guitar to class and sang songs during rainy days when we could not go out for recess. The one who was fascinated with the paranormal and constantly told us stories of strange events around the planet. Or the one who spent most of the class telling hysterical personal stories that vaguely related to the subject. (I got an A in his class which was on a fairly difficult subject.)
These wonderful people taught me more then how to pass a test. They taught me how to be a person. A person who remains, to this day, a student still seeking knowledge and personal growth.
It seems that this new testing criteria is designed to create a world of buttoned down, no nonsense conservatives. And that is a world that holds no attraction for me.
I want to live in a world that is populated with snowflakes, each one different and unique and special. I don't have to enjoy the company of everyone but I appreciate the fact that they provide a differing set of values or knowledge then myself. It makes the world so much more interesting. Don't you think so?
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Don't feed the trolls!
It just goes directly to their thighs.