As a teacher, I've heard again and again, "Throwing money at education won't fix anything."
Yet, one of the top answers for fixing education? Give teachers pay incentives for student scores on standardized tests.
Never mind studies from Vanderbilt University and others that show that incentive pay not only doesn't work, but teachers don't really want them. Politicians and business people think that waving money in their faces will make teachers drool and work harder.
Let me tell you about how it is down here in the trenches...
Our school participates in a special program that is designed to push us more. We have more coaches, more science-based researched curriculum. We meet each week for meetings to discuss new ideas. We have more evaluations, more paperwork, and more outside people coming in to tell us what to do. Truth be told, we all really enjoy it, though. When Common Core came along, we were ready for it. While other teachers in other schools sat wide-eyed listening to changes in education, we had already implemented most of it and have been well ahead of the curve on most every new idea out there.
And yes, we get bonus incentive pay for having exceptional test scores and evaluation scores. They are very, very tough scores. Most of our mentors are told to score us 3 out of a scale of 5 if we're very good teachers. Supposedly, only Jesus could earn a 5.
Today, we had to fill out evaluations of our mentors and of the program. In the questionnaire, we were asked about 5 different ways if getting more pay in November made us work harder or gave us more desire to stay in our tough inner-city school. We all looked at each other and laughed.
Yes, it is nice to get a few thousand extra dollars before Christmas. But, in all honesty, each and every one of us gives everything we have every day in those classrooms. No one ever says, "Oh, I have to get the kids to study more for that TCAP test, so I can get a few more hundred dollars in November!"
And is this what the State of Tennessee wants? People who are interested in money in charge of students?
However, there is a list of items that would allow us to work harder and would (as studies have proven and we can personally attest) bring up those vaunted test scores: 1.) Smaller class sizes. (If class size is so unimportant, why do all our neighboring private schools brag about how small their class size is) 2.) More training on technology, psychology, pedagogy, as well as insights to the latest studies. 3.) More assistants and people who can help with the kids.
Of course, that stuff causes money.
And throwing money at schools doesn't solve problems.