Hey, noble readers! Come vote in the latest Madville Times poll on perhaps the biggest policy issue facing the 2012 South Dakota Legislature: how should we reinvest in education?
Governor Dennis Daugaard says we have $15 million to add to our state aid to K-12 education. As outlined in his House Bill 1234, the Governor wants to spend that money on $5000 merit bonuses for the top 20% of teachers in each district, plus $3500 bonuses to every high school and middle school math and science teacher.
If you had $15 million more for education, how would you spend it? Your choices in this poll:
- On what Governor Daugaard wants, on merit and math/science bonuses.
- Just on merit pay.
- Just on math/science bonuses.
- On increasing base pay for every teacher.
- We spend enough on education! Cut taxes by $15 million!
- "It's more complicated than that...."
I lean toward "more complicated," and I've offered six counterplans myself. If you have a more complicated proposal, let us know! Write it in the comment section below.
Register your preference in the poll atop the near right sidebar. Poll remains open until Punxsutawney Phil does his show Thursday. Tell your friends, share the link, and vote now!
A start might be for school boards to take have the salaries of the administrators and put that into a one time bonus for teachers. Bonuses should not be percentage increases, but fixed amounts related to the dollar amount necessary to have the minimum wage keep up with inflation.
Percentage increases just increase the spread between starting teachers and longer-employed teachers and already highly paid administrators and everybody else.
"half" not "have".
Just read the Argus story this morning that said SD had a 82.7% graduation rate like it was something to be proud of.
One out of six students failing to graduate is not acceptable in my book. We should have 95% or better.
(1)Increase instructor salaries across the board by better funding the student aid formula-using the Better Education Expects Funding(BEEF) approach.(2)Establish a state funded program to recruit/retain young/beginning teachers by using a trade off whereby school loans would be assisted with in exchange for commitments to teach in SD.(3)Under local control and discretion but with state funds, allow school districts to enter into 11 month contracts. Those instrutors could utilize the extra contract time to further their education, instruct curiculum to fellow teachers both inside and outside the home district, provide classes to the general public including people from all ages, assist in summer school instruction,etc.(4)Further allow-do away with any useless roadblocks to open enrollment so that true competition can flourish. Competition along with better salaries and recruitment pool will help to weed out poor teachers.(5)Certify or allow to be established "teacher cooperatives". One or more instructors could join together to offer their services on contractual basis to one or more school districts across the state. This would provide school districts the flexibility especially on the secondary level to obtain that extra instructor whether full or part-time without having to take on a new employee.
Charlie: good point on competition! If we teachers are supposed to compete, why can't the schools?
Teacher co-ops: ugh! I hate the prospect of driving back and forth each day from school to school. I like biking five blocks to work every morning!
Doug: good point on inflation! $5000 won't go as far ten years from now as it does now. We'll be in a fracas every year arguing about whether we need to raise a fixed dollar amount to provide sufficient incentive.
Increase the base pay for every teacher.
Cut taxes. Cut them. Cut them now.
Option 2, merit pay only. Just merit pay. The slackard teachers need to not get raises.
I am sure you are getting all of the slackard teacher votes.
Slackers shouldn't get raises? Heck, Grudz, I'd rather fire them, replace them with better teachers, and then pay everyone better wages. Why not?
As for getting all the slacker teacher votes, well, if I plan to win anything, I'm going to need to go after a much larger segment of the population.
I've never known a teacher to be a slacker. I've have seen some that have become disillusioned or frustrated with the system or politics.
I think most people miss the big picture on this issue. Every long term study (18+ years) points out that there are only two things that are positively correlated with academic achievement:
1. How much money the parents of the child make.
2. How much EARLY (1-4 years old) childhood education the child receives.
Everything else is just minutia. Pay the teachers more, pay them less, or only pay certain teachers more; it really won't impact student achievement. The market determines the rate of teacher pay. If it goes below a certain amount people will quit teaching and the amount will go back up.
We really need to move on from this idea that teachers and in particular high school teachers are responsible for student performance and can improve it if only they would teach better! By that age, teachers need to simply present information for the students to absorb. The students will either get it or they won't and their ability (or willingness to spend the necessary time) to understand has already been determined long ago.
I always get a little nervous, Tony, when you make this argument. I could conclude that the effort I make in my classroom today doesn't matter, hand out worksheets, and spend the rest of the class period. But I can't just sit there; I have to do something, right? And I can do what I do better than someone else, can't I? The value I add still deserves fair compensation, doesn't it?
And the market doesn't determine pay in this case, not entirely. Policymakers are the invisible hand here. Local school boards decide compensation within the parameters set by the funding made available in this legislative process.
That said, I will agree that this debate may be missing the big picture, that if we are trying to move some achievement needle, we would get the biggest bang for the buck by working on improving economic security for all families and improving early childhood education. Economic security has certainly declined over the last forty years: maybe that's why schools are having to hire more staff to maintain academic results. How has the quality of early childhood education changed over the last 40 years?
Caught this tidbit of info at the RC School Budget meeting last evening. I believe Dr. Mitchell indicated this would reduce school funding across the state by $12M. Perhaps the Gov's $15M in merit pay should be "repurposed" to replace these dollars from rural electric companies.
SB123 would change the way rural electric cooperatives are taxed. Currently, they pay tax on gross receipts with the money going toward schools. The bill moves to change that. Such a change would mean $1 million less each year to the Rapid City School district, said Dave Janak, budget manager for the district.
Mitchell expressed great frustration over the situation. "They're taking revenue away," he said. "I'm not sure what's going on."
Janak expressed equal amounts of frustration. "At what point is enough is enough," he said after the meeting.
Read more: http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/rd-forum-highlights-budget-crunch-cuts/article_3bcf7650-4bdc-11e1-a3c2-0019bb2963f4.html#ixzz1l2a28yuP
Teachers/any adults make a difference in person's life. As to the REA's tax change, I'm skeptical also and I have been a member my entire life. If higher rates and higher usage os occuring, just plan on paying the "piper". I don't see this coming(the change) from the grass roots members of REA's
"But I can’t just sit there"
Sure you can Cory, you will still get the same raise as everyone else.
"I believe Dr. Mitchell indicated this would reduce school funding across the state by $12M. Perhaps the Gov’s $15M in merit pay should be “repurposed†to replace these dollars from rural electric companies."
This idea makes perfect sense to me. Replacing last year's cuts should have been the first priority, not merit pay or testing or any other "reform" idea.
CAH:
I understand that the message is uncomfortable. We naturally assume that what we do has a great impact on the world. Our minds are great at convincing us of this position. However, study after study on K-12 education shows that these is no positive correlation with student success and nearly anything. Teacher pay, teaching method, time spent in the classroom, etc. do not positively correlate with student achievement. More importantly, the decline in student achievement over the last couple of decades has occurred in parallel with dramatically increased spending on k-12 education (on average nationally; we all have examples of where locally less money is spent over shorter time scales).
So what does this mean? The conclusion being thrown around right now is that teachers aren't doing a good enough job and we just need to motivate them. (does this conclusion inherently mean that teachers are teaching worse than before?) These conclusions are just appeals to common knowledge and are not backed up by meaningful statistical data.
I conclude that this tells us that the solution to (and the cause of the problem) student achievement is not in the K-12 classrooms. I believe from what I've read is that the problem is early childhood (1-4). During that time period, a child "learns how to learn". What I mean by that is that the physical act of learning--the ability to rewire one's brain--is an ability that can be developed but only at a young age. The only studies on student achievement that have been positively correlated over long time scales (18+ years) are those that have focused on early childhood education. Interestingly, similar studies have been conducted on ages 5-8, 9-12, and 13-15 groups but have found that any interventions at these ages do not correlate with student achievement. So there is something very, very special that can happen from ages 1-4 but not afterward.
This is also very uncomfortable. We like to view people as able to change themselves and develop regardless of age. This is unfortunately not true. To a large degree a person's ability to succeed is determined by age 4.
So why is student achievement dropping off? People are dropping their kids off in daycare during early childhood and the kids simply aren't learning how to learn. Two income households cause this problem. Change this and everything else will fall into place. This could mean just providing much better and more stimulating daycare or perhaps a return to single income, family focused house holds.