Seeking GREAT Missouri Teachers

At the same time we desperately need to bring up the grades in Math and Science, in our state and in our country, we continue to overlook the need to provide incentive to quality teachers who can find better wages in the free market and fail to lure quality individuals to the teaching profession to inspire young minds to become the scientific leaders our country truly needs heading into the new millenium.

In the most recent Science Teachers of Missouri's newsletter, a report by the National Research Council, the main operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, said,

"At no time in history has improving science education been more important than it is today. Major policy debates about such topics as cloning, the potential of alternative fuels, and the use of biometric information to fi ght terrorism require a scientifi cally informed citizenry as never before in the nation’s history. Yet after 15 years of focused standards-based reform, improvements in U.S. science education are modest at best, and comparisons show that U.S. students fare poorly in comparison with students in other countries. In

addition, gaps in achievement persist between majority group students and both economically disadvantaged and non-Asian minority students. In part, these achievement gaps mirror, inequities in science education and take on greater signifi cance with the looming mandate of the No Child Left Behind Act that states assess science beginning in the 2006-2007 school year. Thus, science education in the United States has become a subject of grave and pressing concern."

According to The Washington Post "Schools in Houston, Denver, Minnesota and elsewhere have...tried to link teacher pay to performance, but those efforts have been either less focused on test scores or narrower in scope. The Minnesota plan, enacted last July, is voluntary, and thus far more than a third of the state's 339 school districts have expressed interest in the system, state officials said. Districts that join the effort must base 60 percent of teacher raises on a handful of factors, including student test scores. Florida recently implemented a plan to link improved performance with teacher pay.

"We don't have all the answers today," Education Commissioner John Winn said, "But we will work with teachers to develop a system. I know it adds pressures, but what profession doesn't add pressure for performance?" Winn asked. Though no perfect system currently exists, it is inspiring that some states are giving it a serious 'go', involving teachers, administrators and educators to come up with something that works.

Performance Pay Is the Right Step

Performance pay is a main subject up for debate these days, especially in the political arena. It is getting the attention it deserves, while some is not positive and some is not. The presidential candidates are voicing their strong opinions about performance pay loud and clear. As it turns out, it is not a republic or a democrat issue; they seem to be split on the idea. They all seem to realize performance pay is an important issue, which not only affects the teachers’ lives but also severely affects the education level the students receive.

It looks like Texas is going down the right path; almost half of the school districts there are joining the merit pay plan. The plan recommends a $3,000 bonus for each teacher that shows student improving test scores and any other signs of student progress. I am hoping Missouri will enact something similar.

My city, a small one at that, could really benefit from some version of performance pay for our teachers. Our teachers are phenomenal. Unfortunately, I have seen many of them leave the career for better offers. Not only are our teachers leaving our town, they are leaving the field. The greatest teachers are hard to find and we need to reward them accordingly and keep them around. It is our children they are teaching, why would we not want to?

Teach Great

Being a good teacher requires many attributes, some innate, some learned, or some earned. Teachers are the people who are shaping and instructing our children, shouldn’t they be paid a reasonable amount? If we used incentive based pay for teachers, we may increase the quality teachers entering the field, retain the best teachers while eliminating the worst, and encourage teachers to use innovative and creative teaching methods.

According to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), teachers should be rewarded for excellent teaching. If all teachers are paid based on the number of years teaching, there is little incentive to become a better teacher. Without merit pay, there is the potential loss of great teachers who find higher paying jobs elsewhere and the retention of low performing teachers who may get tenure and realize there is no chance of getting fired. The Cato Institute also realizes the importance of merit pay. Two teachers may get paid the same amount while one strives to teach well and the other may be doing the minimum to get by. It is unfortunate the students will suffer because of this.

Our small community has trouble retaining the best teachers, as it is easy for them to find higher paying jobs in bigger surrounding cities. There are few other incentives to recruit quality teachers to our area. With merit based pay, we could attract people to the field that could excel in the teaching profession. Teachers usually do not enter the field for the money, but many leave it because of the lack of money or lack of motivation to stick around. Without this, we may lose more and more great teachers, while only retaining the mediocre ones.

School Choice in a Rural Setting

As a smaller community, we need to reward the great teachers we have. However, there are some teachers that could use some improvement. There have also been many teachers I have seen start their careers in teaching, only to leave shortly after because of the low pay and little room for their own creative teaching ideas. There needs to be some overhaul of the way teachers are paid.

Overall, our community does a good job of educating our young. A community close by does not have the same advantages. Their schools are suffering and all the great teachers there seem to have moved on. It is unfortunate those children do not have the same advantages that ours have. Many of them would like other options besides their mediocre schools. School choices for those children would be a great solution to the problem.

The children are the future and we need to educate them wisely and teachers need to have incentive to do so. Children need more options if their current school is not working out. Many schools are truly suffering. This in turn gives every child fewer chances of an adequate education therefore a smaller possibility in being successful later in life. There needs to be an overhaul of the education system in Missouri and starting with choices and ensuring excellent teachers is the way to begin.

Teachers

Many people are aware there is a problem with our public education system. However, not everyone can clearly describe the best ways to fix the schools. Private schools and charter schools have an advantage—they are not bound by all the red tape forced on public schools. The teachers have the opportunity to be creative in their teaching methods, leading to a happier and more productive teacher, which in turn educates the children better. One option to help the public school teachers would be to offer them incentives. They joined the teaching career hopefully to make an impact of the lives of their students.