A fellow teacher brought up a complication to HB 1234, Governor Daugaard's education reform package, that hadn't occurred to me yet: under the new teacher evaluation and merit pay policies, how hard will it be to place student teachers?
Right now, our public schools take on student teachers from our university teacher training programs. Naturally, our schools work to place those teachers-in-training with pretty good teachers, folks who would likely be in the running for Governor Daugaard's preferred policy of granting $5000 bonuses to the top 20% of teachers in each district.
Now suppose some schools accept that default merit pay policy under HB 1234. Suppose you're teaching at one such school, and you think you have a shot at that $5000 bonus. You know competition is going to be tight, because you are surrounded by dedicated professionals who make up more than 20% of your faculty. You thus want to do everything you can short of baking cookies for the principal to maximize your score on the merit pay bonus rubric.
50% of the evaluation that determines whether you get the bonus is based on your students' test scores. Will you risk your kids' test scores by turning your classroom over to some unproven 22-year-old college kid for three months?
Hmm... the number of teachers willing to host student teachers could be approaching zero.
Now "mentoring of less experienced teachers" is included as a criterion that "may" be used in determining bonuses. So maybe school boards could mediate the risk by saying, "O.K., if you host a student teacher, you get an automatic 20 points on the merit pay rubric to balance out any dips in test scores." But if boards offer guaranteed points for such activity, maybe the assignment of student teachers becomes all the more politicized, as bonus-minded teachers will fight for the chance to get those guaranteed points on their score sheets and minimize the uncertainty of test scores.
Either way, student teacher assignments get political. If test scores remain supreme, administrators may play favorites and reinforce their pre-conceived notions by sandbagging certain teachers with the extra work and risk of a student teacher. If we count hosting a student teacher as mentorship and extra points on the merit bonus rubric, administrators may assign student teachers as favors to their allies on staff.
This complication sounds like another issue that Senator Olson's South Dakota Education Reform Advisory Council will have to resolve. Senator Gray! Speaker Rausch! Appoint me!
p.s.: If a teacher takes on a student teacher, and that teacher gets a merit bonus, should the student teacher get a cut?
That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that either. I'll have to talk to my wife on that one.
Would a teacher get a bonus if the student teacher spoke Manderen (spelled wrong I would guess)
Sticky wicket. I hadn't thought about that either.
Usually teachers take interns because they feel they can help build a better teacher/laziness, they hope they can unload all their work on the intern/there is something in it for them/they are a dumbass.
My experience says it's usually the first. Throwing money into the mix will really mess it all up.
Calling them "interns" rather than "student teachers" seems more respectful to me.
Just sayin. . .
Give the student teacher a cut of the bonus if the kids earn one for the regular teacher, I say. Be a team. Work as a team. I'm against all these bonuses anyway, so I don't think any of them should get them, but if it takes two of you then you each get half a bonus. I'm just saying...
...Owen, if the kids ended the year speaking Mandarin better, and if they had to take a standardized test on it, maybe! Otherwise, if knowledge grows in the forest, but if there's no standardized test to measure it, then who cares, right?
So when is this bonus mindset going to lead to conversation about paying the people most directly responsible for high test scores: the students?
Ah, and the terminology: I've heard the term "student teacher" ever since I first had one when I was a grade-schooler. I wonder why our industry hasn't adopted the term "intern." Anyone know?