Arnold Schwarzenegger may be the ultimate tough guy, capable of slaying dragons or gunning down a building full of armed men without breaking a sweat - but I'm betting even he's not ready for the battle over merit pay for teachers:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's controversial proposal to tie teachers' salaries to performance is not widely practiced and is likely to face fierce resistance.
Detractors question how the governor will pay for such a program when education may face further state cuts. They also want to know what criteria will be used to evaluate teachers. Will it be standardized test scores? Principal evaluations?
The governor was short on details, but he said the state must buck the practice of paying teachers for their length of service and educational level and instead reward them for their ability to impart knowledge and turn out top- notch students.
...some California education analysts consider Schwarzenegger's proposal a tactic to distract people from the real problems they see with education in the state -- chronic under-funding.
"Rather than saying, 'Our schools are hurting because we have a terrible deficit and can't fully finance the schools,' he appears to be blaming teachers for the state of public education," said Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley professor of education and public policy and co-director of Policy Analysis for California Education.
Arnie vs. Berkeley. Who's your money on?
Oh, and Arnie's also battling the NEA on this, although that should surprise no one. Already, the NEA wins the "stupefyingly-dumb sound bite" award on the topic:
...[the proposal for merit pay] will most likely be a tough sell. The National Education Association in Washington, D.C., does not support performance-based pay. Teachers do not function well in an unsupportive environment, said Reg Weaver, NEA president.
Oh the poor dears. Me, I plan to charge into my office Monday and inform my (new) boss that I would consider any objective judgments of my work, and any association of my pay with those judgements, to be awfully "unsupportive," and it hurts my feelings to boot.
I think I'd get about 12 seconds to clean out my desk, as should anyone who opposes merit pay on the grounds that teachers, unlike every other professional, should expect to forever teach consequence-free. There are reasons to oppose merit pay (Eduwonk, in particular, is unimpressed by the Governator's plans), but to say that it's "unsupportive" to judge teachers is just plain silly. Any opposition which claims that California's schools are just fine the way they are should be mocked as well.
Posted by kswygert at January 8, 2005 11:05 PM