Ms. Downey,

I read your comments on the editorial page and I find that I believe your opinions are not only wrongheaded but damaging to public education. You have repeatedly lobbied for merit-based pay for teachers and your latest essay entitled “Report cards on teachers needed,” reinforces your position as one who wants to evaluate teachers because teachers are “the problem” with public education. (I take a different view. I believe that teachers are doing an adequate job and “the problem” is that less and less money in real dollars is being allocated to student education. In fact, a doubling of the amount spent on education would be just about right. It’s money not teachers that should be your focus.) The truth is teachers are already among the most evaluated of all employees anywhere. They spend four or five years being evaluated by professors in specialized programs to prepare them for teaching. The incapable, the disinterested, the unrealistic, are removed from the programs. Prospective teachers repeatedly take part in practicums and are evaluated. If their abilities are substandard, they are asked to repeat the experiences, or retake the class. Furthermore, having graduated with a degree in education is not enough, then there is standardized testing administered by the state in order for a hopeful teacher to be certified as a professional. When teachers begin teaching, the only thing they lack is experience. In addition to all this evaluation, when new teachers are finally placed in the classroom, they are mentored, have 4 formal evaluations the first year, and usually have numerous drop-in evaluations by grade-level chairs, lead teachers, or administrators. You expressed in your recent article that you have seen teachers removed from the system. This is an example of the system working.

I think there are a number of logical fallacies in the positions that you have taken. A problem that you ignore in both the merit-based pay essays and in Report cards for teachers, is that because of differences in raw material, measuring one teachers ability against another is both unfair, and pointless. Teachers tend to get pigeon-holed in a certain grade level and a certain skill level, because basically, each level is a different experience. They don’t get random students every year. Rather, they get students at a certain level each year. Those learning disabled students go to the same teacher each year because he or she has the experience to work with them. The same teacher has the low scoring students year after year because they are willing to accept and teach those students. So a teacher with lots of patience and little ego will accept the principal, lead teacher, or counselors' office loading their classes with low achieving students. So of course comparing their student achievement scores with the scores from the teacher of the high achievers’ class will reveal that one teacher is more “successful” than the other. If you have been dissatisfied with some of your own children’s classes, it may be that the make up of the class is largely responsible for the lack of performance by the children. Some classes are less disciplined, less mature, more needy, or economically or emotionally disadvantaged. Not to mention that one year’s class may end up two or three weeks behind a seemingly identical class from the year before. No two groups are the same. I’ve had classes that allowed me to teach as fast as I possibly could. They could keep up and follow no matter what. I’ve had classes that totally stopped me from teaching. Some students didn’t want to learn and they didn’t want me to teach anyone else either—they were little anti-education revolutionaries. I was the same teacher in both classes.

A second fallacy in your ideas about evaluating teachers is that you think teachers can be adequately evaluated by administrative staff. I’m sure that in your mind, that is the administrator’s job. You may imagine administrators as super teachers, understanding the techniques and ready to aid in instruction no matter the subject. Alas, they are not. They are not even close. Great teachers never become administrators. Good teachers rarely become administrators. What can administrators evaluate? Administrators are able to measure classroom control. They can measure teacher organization. They can see if students are engaged in a learning process. They can look at the records and see who comes in early, who stays late, and who volunteers for extra duty. Above all, administrators want calm waters. They want control and no surprises. They don’t want parent complaints, they don’t want inter-departmental jealousy, they don’t want new ideas and innovations, they don’t want challenges to their ideas, even when, or especially when their ideas are wrong. Point out to your administrator that they are doing something illegal and you’ll likely get fired or at least transferred to another school. Your evaluations will suddenly be inadequate.

What’s more one good teacher and another good teacher, while achieving similar end results, may go about the practice of instruction completely differently. When I first realized this I was astonished. Here was a teacher who did nothing that I did. His process was completely different. At first I thought he was just wrong in what he was doing. The end result however, was almost exactly what I would have hoped for. He had learned to do it in a different manner and he was terrific at it. It is difficult then, even for one professional in the field to evaluate another.

I understand your point of view I think. I’ve been a parent of two children. And I understand something of teaching. I was considered a “successful” teacher for 10 years. My experiences lead me to classify you as one of those parents who “wants more.” No matter what your school provides, you want more. You want more freedom to choose your child’s pathway. You want more subjects taught. You want the best teacher. You want the best classroom. You want your student to be in class with his or her friends. You want a biography of all the teachers so you can choose which teacher you child gets. How could we ever hire a new teacher? No one would choose to be in their class.

If there were a way to have all teachers work with the same raw material, then and only then could you compare them. But there is no way to do that. Merit-based pay is a bad idea precisely because of the lack of any reliable instrument of measurement. Merit-based pay also hands the principal even more power than they currently have. Principals are dictators in their little kingdoms. Some are benevolent. Some are evil.

There are circumstances under which I would think that some part of pay raises should be based on merit. But I’ll go ahead and tell you, these are not practical ideas. Expert teachers, master teachers, could be hired out of retirement as consultants to evaluate in the same subject and grade area that they themselves taught in. They could do extensive evaluations, living in teacher classrooms for days at a time, maybe sitting for several days without making a comment or a note. Real experts would be able to rank teachers in a school in a certain area. This ultimately is impossible because guess who would choose the expert evaluators? Right. Administrators. They’d pick their friends and they’d pick bean counters. “Messy desk, tsk, tsk. How can you be doing your best?” What’s more the real expert teachers would see the futility of the process and refuse to participate.

My public school would strive for adequate teachers at all levels. Great teaching can emerge under certain circumstances: when discipline can be maintained, when supplies are adequate, when building and grounds are adequate, when parental support is present. But great teaching is a bonus. By definition the great ones are few and far between. What we strive for is a school of professional teachers, doing their job, and getting paid like professionals.

If you were able to get to the end of my essay, I challenge you to immerse yourself in discussions with friends of education—teachers, parents, administrators, community members—to discuss the needs of education. Have you done that? Has their been a forum on education sponsored by the AJC, an ongoing series of discussions around town discussing things like class size, funding, red tape, curriculum, discipline, merit pay, etc., etc. If there has been such a thing I have missed it. And I would gladly participate and add my comments and questions. I long for Maureen Downey to express something different and really meaningful about education. I challenge you to hear from more circles of thought before proclaiming yourself in the newspaper. In my opinion, you keep asking for things that someone on the inside would know are just not workable and not desirable. I expect more from the person who writes about education for the AJC. Do better.