A Pat On The Back & A Boost In The Pocketbook?

Evidently, Governor Perry is now trying to mimic Kinky Friedman’s lovely turn-o-phrases, especially when it comes to “pay-for-performance” teacher bonuses, which is just the Republican way of saying, “merit-based teacher pay:”

“You should not just get a pat on the back but a boost in the pocketbook,” Mr. Perry told teachers at Oleson Elementary School in Houston. The school qualifies for $135,000 in bonuses to be distributed as local officials decide.

Note that “as local officials decide,” line, which could mean, in theory (I suppose), “rooms at the Waldorf and hookers,  cheap coke & a case of Boone’s Farm for everyone, on the superintendent!”

I’ve complained that I didn’t think there was enough accountability in Perry’s program before. To boot, paying teachers in merit fashion is like punishing some teachers because—to put it with no tact whatsoever—they got a room full of kids as smart as bricks by the luck of the draw.

Furthermore, given that some schools can literally go up or down in the accountability ratings on the performance of one child in a special group (at risk, minority, etc.) because of school population and population of that special group, Perry’s merit-based pay approach is no more fair than the entire accountability system.

Furthermore, I don’t see how merit-based pay tied to standardized testing will make the problem of TAKS cheating any better.

Then, Perry says something that sounds more like he should be coaching football than running for governor:

“When you reward excellence the same as mediocrity, all too often mediocrity becomes the standard,” Mr. Perry said in a news release. “But when you reward excellence, excellence becomes the standard.”

That’s simply not always the case when it comes to things like education. For one thing, a kid can do bad on a test for any number of reasons unrelated to whether or not they were taught the subject matter (unless the subject matter was how to bubble in Scantron forms). There are kids who have natural test anxiety, kids who are ill, kids who perhaps had a bad night at home, etc. One or two kids in a class of 20 students with these problems and the best of teachers could end up with results that are no way reflective of his or her skill as an educator.

Instead of throwing money around on his merit-based scheme, Perry should be working to raise teacher salaries across the board.

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