The Telegraph asked several current and retired teachers to talk about Gov. Sonny Perdue’s proposal to base teacher salaries on student achievement. Though some liked the concept, there were serious concerns about how such a system could be implemented. Excerpts from these teachers comments, edited for style and length, appear below.
“I kind of think like I do (about) No Child Left Behind. The federal government implements these cookie-cutter decisions when kids aren’t cookie-cutter. ... If you’ve got a good administration that does their job, those teachers are already being held accountable. You have to have good people in charge.”
Teri Adams
Teacher, Twiggs County High School
“I think this proposal is another in a series of state actions which have really made teaching less attractive.”
Bert Bivins
Retired Bibb County teacher, current Bibb County commissioner
“Although the plan looks good at first glance, there are several flaws that become apparent when you look closely and begin to ask questions. Georgia cannot adequately fund existing teacher salaries. Where will the money come to pay these additions to the teacher salary? The development of assessments and the implementation of the program will require a great deal of money. In this economy, we cannot afford to fund education adequately already. Using funds to develop this system seems like an expensive and ongoing drain of state funds. ... As teachers, we are told to instruct our students in such a way as to take into consideration their learning styles, their background and foundation in the subject, and all sorts of variables that affect how they learn. If we always adjust our evaluations based on a constantly changing stream of variables that affect instruction, why is the state planning to evaluate us using one tool that they expect to apply to all teachers in all grades and subject areas? Their evaluation system is too large and unwieldy to adjust to the constant changes that must be made in student education every year.”
Laura Byrd
Teacher, Houston County High School
“My opinion is that’s very ridiculous. No matter how hard a teacher teaches, that student achievement is based on what they get at home ... if they are not getting any help at home, their achievement is not going to be any good. I don’t know how you could (weight a formula to correct for that).”
Claudette Crocker
Retired Bibb County teacher
“I am in favor in some sort of salary increase based on student achievement in theory, but I think you’re going to have to be very careful with how you gauge ‘achievement.’ If we base it solely on test scores, then you’ll have trouble finding teachers to teach the most challenging students (including those with special needs). The criteria will have to be based on some sort of student growth, and it will have to be fair across all subjects, locations and student levels. I’m not sure how realistic that is. ... I would favor a three-part review that would provide teachers bonuses. The three parts would be: administrator evaluation, student evaluation and peer evaluation (one fellow teacher from within their department or grade level conducting an evaluation). Teachers would be graded by all three, average them together and you get a score. The top 5 percent get a bonus in the amount of ‘X,’ the top 15 percent would get “Y” bonus, etc... Bonuses would be paid out over the course of the next contract.”
Will Dennison
Teacher, Baldwin County High School
“For most of my career I taught advanced and AP courses. My students uniformly scored well on standardized tests, and most were truly prepared to do college work when they left high school. Typical students were curious and eager to do well so that they could make good lives for themselves. A few years ago, I asked to be moved to a different student population. In my hubris, I thought, ‘they deserve good teachers, too,’ and I hoped I might make a difference to students who were unaccustomed to success. Currently, my failure rate is over 50 percent. ... Our public schools are in crisis, but decisions governing them seem to be made by people who have never seen the inside of a public school. Teachers have ideas about how to fix some of the problems we face. Ask us.”
Sandy Dimon
Teacher, Baldwin County High School
“I think that teachers are already performing with what they have. ... They all care about the performance of their students. ... Parents are the key factor in student achievement.”
Henry Ficklin
Teacher, Southwest High School in Bibb County; former Macon city councilman
“I don’t like the governor’s plan because you have a certain amount of raw material that you work with. And no matter what you teach, sometimes it doesn’t stick.”
Betty Futral
Retired Peach County teacher
“I was a teacher in Houston County for 30 years until retirement, and I’ve seen this ‘teacher pay linked to student achievement’ come up time and again. ... I think the teacher pay link to student achievement is a very dangerous idea, period, but for us to be considering this idea at this time with the present economic situation, we are forcing our good people into situations where they must compromise their principles to keep their mortgages and their families fed. I have witnessed those who teach only the material over which their students would be tested because they felt they had to. I have seen others change grades on report cards to have better percentages of passing grades to turn into the county office. No teacher can afford not to perform well. No teacher is perfect nor should be expected to be anything other than human with the same weaknesses we all have. Every workplace in present society has ‘bad apples.’ We all know them and can probably name a few at our own jobs, no matter what kind of work we do. Look at professional athletes and others who have had lofty ideals but have bent under the weight of success. We all have clay feet, but most strive to be better. I think what we need to focus on is not ‘what is the school coming to, but what is coming to school.’ ”
Terry Gambill
Retired from Houston County schools
“I teach reading in eighth grade, and my classes have scored in the 90 percentile on the CRCT for the past five years. My school is a Distinguished Title 1 School because of the improvements we have made, but we are grossly underpaid as it is. Just recently teachers have been furloughed, shot at and fired all across this country. We are not the enemy. Gov. Perdue should be embarrassed that teachers are paid so little and even more embarrassed for trying to take away that small amount.”
Stacey Lester
Teacher, Dooly County Middle School
“Speaking for the school I work at, everybody’s trying. ... Even though it’s small and even though it’s poor, everyone’s trying hard. ... I don’t know what the solution is. I know these furlough days are killing us.”
Scott King
Teacher, Wilcox County Middle School
“I have a specialist degree (commonly called six-year degree) in social studies and also administration, although I have spent all my 30 years in the classroom. I do not think advanced degrees necessarily make a better teacher. Some of the best and most dynamic teachers I know only have bachelors degrees. ... As a teacher of 30 years, I resent Sonny Perdue’s merit pay plan. ... Some teachers who have low-level classes are working harder than anyone in the building, but it will never show on exams or students’ grades. Those who get the merit pay would be resented by those who do not, creating bad morale problems. Sometimes it can be political as to who gets the honors and AP classes being determined by who you know and who you are friends with. ... Finally the art of “teaching the test,” which has already become a major part of education, would become all we do. The bottom line is you cannot have merit pay or run schools like a business. We have to work with what walks in the door.”
Gary Gill
Teacher, Upson-Lee High School, Upson County
“As a teacher in a low socio-economic status area of Georgia with students who begin school behind and suffer from a lack of parental involvement in their education, I wonder how Gov. Perdue believes that teachers with talent will dedicate themselves to the least among us with so many barriers to success in the first place. ... There is a story behind every test score in every school in Georgia beyond the new scripted educational format now being promoted by our state department of education. Advanced degrees ensure that teachers are more highly trained and can be more effective. No one really talks about the real issues that are barriers to the success of our children. I find the discussion to be yet another form of elitism that has begun to creep into education itself.”
Deborah Heckwolf
Teacher, Dooly County High School
“Teachers are already under so much pressure to increase their test scores that some have resorted to cheating on standardized tests. Imagine how it will be if our pay is based on test scores. ... Please include that my observations are based on media accounts. I’ve never seen any cheating on the CRCT.”
Phillip Hull
Teacher, Crawford County Middle School
“What is this going to do to the special education teacher? ... The whole bill is just full of holes. They don’t even say how they’re going to do that — how to measure achievement.”
Sheila McDaniel
Teacher, Houston County Career and Technology Center
“I am a retired elementary educator having retired in 2009 after teaching at the same school for 30 years so I feel like I know a little bit about student achievement. ... While I agree that there needs to be a method for paying those teachers who go above and beyond the call of duty, using test scores is not the way. ... The governor, who educators put in office, has not been the education governor he said he would be if elected.”
Ann Shaw
Retired teacher at Gray Elementary School, Jones County
“How will the state guard against discrimination and litigation charges if some teachers are assigned all the better students versus teachers who are assigned all weaker students? Will teachers in schools with lower academic achievement ever have the chance for sustained pay raises or any at all?
Will the teachers who opt out of the proposal then be assigned the ‘weaker’ students since they ‘have’ their pay and nothing can change it? ... Or will the opt-out teachers get the better students so that the 2014 new hires and opt-in teachers won’t get a raise and thus save the state money?
Will the pay raises only be for the year earned, or will a teacher have to earn their higher pay every year thereafter? Will a teacher’s pay roll back if they have a bad year or two?
Basically this sounds like we are asking teachers to work on commission when they have very little control of the product before it gets to them.”
Yvonne Stuart
Media Specialist, Hutchings Career Center, Bibb County
“Will the most honest teachers be tempted to cheat to get their raise? How fair is it to expect the same results from teachers of inner-schools and affluent schools? One could go a step further and ask, if I go to the doctor and he doesn’t make me healthy, is it the doctor’s fault? Should I pay him if I don’t get the results I expected?”
Lynn Waldron
Teacher, Sonny Carter Elementary School, Bibb County
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