Dear Mr. President,
Education will be a priority when you take office, so here are recommendations based on my experience as an educator.
1. Pay for Performance
When Pay for Performance was introduced to Fairfax County more than twenty years ago, I was in a pilot school. Teachers participated because it eventually meant more money. We embraced the hope that what we did in the classroom would be appreciated and rewarded.
It was a fiasco—albeit one that lasted several years before the Fairfax School Board voted it out during the budget crisis of the early 90s. The reasons were simple, and we should have anticipated them: principals and vice principals don’t always make decisions based on classroom performance, and some don’t recognize effective teaching when they see it.
There were principals who championed the quiet and obedient class; they were not impressed by group interaction and lively discussions. Others only rewarded teachers who had student-centered classrooms, and didn’t appreciate marvelous lecture-format ones.
Principals often became defensive about their judgments and wouldn’t let teachers participate in the process. In that first pilot year, I was new and didn’t realize my school had decided not to rate any new teacher highly. I was given a “competent” rating rather than an “effective” one. Even though money was not yet tied to this decision, I appealed, won my case, and later underwent a much-improved process at another school and was awarded “merit pay.”
The difference between the first process and the second was the quality of the principal. Ten years later I became the first “National Board Certified” high school English teacher in Fairfax County—a great honor, yet one not reliant on variable principals.
So before you introduce Pay for Performance to schools, you have to figure out how to guarantee principals will reward teachers for the right reasons.
2. No Child Left Behind
“The right reasons” should never be wholly dependent on test scores. That’s the major weakness of NCLB. I have taught in schools where scores were stellar and schools where scores needed some improvement, and my experience substantiates studies that show socio-economic levels have an enormous impact on standardized test scores.
Parent involvement and what kinds of responsibilities students have outside the school setting are also important factors. Teachers, schools, and administrators can’t be judged by scores alone—and certainly should not be held to a 100% pass goal now or anytime in the future.
3. Teacher Dignity
This last is all-important. When I have asked my high school seniors how many planned to teach, they have answered with guffaws, and a couple of hesitant hands. Students are embarrassed to admit they want to teach. Parents get an “I feel sorry for you” look on their faces when they tell teachers they appreciate us. Teachers are tired of being objects of sympathy! We should be treated like professionals, with salaries commensurate with our educational backgrounds. We don’t want to be charity cases.
Mr. President, you will have four or eight years to effect change in our schools. If you help to give our profession dignity, our nation’s children will never be left behind, and will be eager to re-enter the classroom as teachers.
Erica Jacobs has taught high school for 23 years and college for 33 years. Email her at [email protected].
