Repub media myths regarding education:

Myth one: Merit pay will act as an incentive to better teaching. Good teachers will make outstanding salaries. Bad teachers will fall behind and quit.

Problems:
1. There is not a good mechanism in place to determine who is a good teacher. If administrators were able to do it, bad teachers would be weeded out during their probationary periods and all teachers would be good teachers.

2. Test scores don't show who has a good teacher, they show which students are smart. The same teacher might teach two widely different classes, one with good test scores, one with failing test scores. A great teacher may help students, but cannot overcome them.

How do the students reflect the teacher? Something like this. One third of the students WILL LEARN, regardless of who the teacher is. One third of the students WILL NOT LEARN, regardless of who the teacher is. One third of the students WILL LEARN with a good teacher.

What can be measured? Classroom behaviors. Are students on task? Is the environment neat and orderly? Does there seem to be a reasonable method of disseminating information. Caveat--even with all of the above some teachers do not have good results with their students.

Why is teaching so difficult? It is not enough to know the subject and know basic teaching strategies. Students are so complex that many may not respond adequately to basic teaching strategies. Teachers must determine why a student is not learning and devise a non-standard way to teach the material. This ranges from difficult to impossible. Why does a student not make the jump from point A to point B? Is there an alternate method of instruction that will communicate the ideas. Is motivation an issue? Master teachers can do this. Many teachers cannot. Even master teachers don't know exactly how they do it

Things that affect test scores more than teachers.
1. Parents expectations
2. Home life--safe, secure, nurturing environment
3. DNA
4. Community expectations

3. An even worse problem--Administrators will use merit pay as a way of rewarding their friends, regardless of ability, and to bludgeon their non-friends, regardless of ability. You would be hard pressed to find a teacher who disagrees with this. My drinking buddies, my hunting buddies, my coaching buddies?--merit pay raise. Don't volunteer to take that extracurricular activity that I can't find any one to do, even when it is crappy and time consuming and you have three children and are working on a masters degree in night school?--no merit pay for you. Criticize some thoughtless policy changes even in a kind and thoughtful way?--no merit pay. Even worse--Refuse my flirtations?--no merit pay for you. If test scores are the criteria, then it's easy--assign the lowest and slowest to teachers you don't like. They will still fail and the teacher's will not get raises. Hahahahahahahaha!

Merit pay is a nice idea. It's just that no one has any idea how to make it work. There are lots of nice ideas that don't work. Get over it.