California tops itself
Wow. Just when I thought the news from California couldn't get any worse...
The Davis administration has suspended its much-touted education awards program for this academic year, apparently stiffing more than 2,300 high-performing campuses and their teachers out of millions of dollars in bonus money. Administration officials acknowledged Thursday that the state's budget crisis has made it impossible to fund the awards -- a key element of the state's accountability program -- which have slowly been scaled back as economic woes have worsened...
The only money currently available in the budget for awards--$144 million--is going to retroactively pay last year's winning schools, she said. The separate $100-million bonus system just for teachers was dropped last year for lack of money and is not expected to be funded retroactively.
The loss of award money has dismayed some educators. "This is not good news at all," said Crystal Whitley, principal of Fontana Middle School, which had planned to use award money for new furniture, overhead projectors and textbooks. "We're talking about losing basic things that kids and teachers need."
Not surprisingly, this dilemma is fine with those who disagreed with the awarding of money in the first place:
Some teachers and principals, however, said they won't miss the award money, calling huge bonuses for individual teachers divisive and unnecessary. Many teachers and lawmakers said it was unfair to reward some and not others. "I am glad we're not getting the money," said Nancy Sassaman, an English teacher at Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona. "I would rather students improved, not because schools got money, but because they genuinely learned more."
Yeah, bonuses based on performance sure are divisive. And it certainly is unfair to reward some people and not others - in the teaching world. The rest of the working world tends to disagree with those statements.
John Wilber, principal of Fillmore High School, said the money is irrelevant to the more pressing goal: ensuring that all students pass the state's new high school exit exam. "I don't see any difference in how hard our school tries on these tests each year, with or without the economic rewards," he said. "It's always nice to have extra money, but it doesn't make any real difference."
OK, so some schools apparently need that extra money, while others don't. Some people are convinced that teachers should work hard solely for the love of the art of teaching, while others (myself included) don't see why teachers should be expected to be different from other hard-working people, who would like to see monetary awards for better performance.
Ah, California. Always grist for the testing blogmill.