Kite Runner Survey

At my high school where I teach, parents have recently called the appropriateness of The Kite Runner, a novel in the sophomore curriculum, into question. While I did not experience any problems with my students or their parents, the other two English II teachers did. I decided to perform a survey to determine how my students felt about the novel. I wish I had used SurveyMonkey, which would have analyzed the results for me. But I figured taking the survey in the computer lab would take way too much class time, so I had to tabulate the results myself.

Without further ado, I present to you the results of the survey.

Kite Runner Student Survey Jan 2011

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Merit Pay Woes

• I wrote this persuasive essay as an example for my students.

Merit Pay Woes

Throughout my career as a student, I tested well. In elementary school, I received 99% on most categories on the annual achievement test. In high school, I got a 32 on the ACT. I paid attention in class, did my homework, and studied occasionally. Learning and testing were easy for me. My younger sister worked just as hard as me, perhaps harder. But while I had coasted through math, she struggled, spending two to three hours each night on homework problems she didn’t understand. During standardized tests, she worried about the time and second-guessed herself. Her highest ACT score? A 21. Some people are better test-takers than others, and that is just one of the reasons I believe merit-based teacher pay is a terrible idea.

In case you haven’t heard, some reformers in education want to tie teachers’ salaries and/or bonuses to how well their students perform on standardized tests. This practice is known as merit pay. The theory behind merit pay is that good teachers should be rewarded and bad teachers should be encouraged to leave the profession. (The thought is that bad teachers wouldn’t get paid as well, would get discouraged, and would quit teaching.) As the current pay system works, every teacher is paid the same for their years of service. But merit pay is hardly a solution. It’s actually more of a problem.

First off, not every subject has a standardized test. In fact, more teachers teach a class that is not tested than a class that is (Toch). The solution to this, say the reformers, is to write more tests. But test creation takes lots of time (and money), and some subjects like drama and athletics don’t lend themselves to standardized testing. Moreover, teachers don’t get to choose their students, let alone the exact classes that they teach. How can teachers be held accountable when so many variables are out of their control?

If merit pay were in place, some teachers would spend more time on test-taking strategies, rather than actual content instruction (Hulleman 28). This would lead to decreased learning, even though student test scores might still be high. I actually know of a teacher who did very little instruction throughout the year except for test preparation. This teacher’s students had higher scores on the end-of-the-year standardized test than students whose teachers had taught the required curriculum. This hardly seems fair. Moreover, the validity of some standardized tests is questionable (Ramirez 56). Basing teacher pay on a faulty test is like following MapQuest directions with a wrong destination. You can’t argue with correct data, but you can argue with wrong data. And who’s to say standardized tests are always fair and accurate?

Merit pay is not a new idea. It first surfaced at the start of the twentieth century, appeared again in the 1960s, and last emerged in the 80s (Johnson and Papay 49). At the end of all these movements, merit pay never took hold as a popular way to compensate teachers. In fact, merit pay is rarely used in any profession. Only around 3% of occupations feature a compensation system like merit pay (Clabaugh 17). Why would reformers want to adopt such an unpopular system?

Of course, teachers would like to get paid more. Instead of merit pay, though, they can take on extra duties at school for stipends beyond their regular paycheck. Plus, they can get a part-time job during the summer instead of lounging around for two months. My eighth grade math teacher had a very successful lawn care business, and some of my colleagues teach night classes at a local community college.

One of my biggest problems with merit pay is that it operates under the assumption that paying bad teachers less will encourage them to leave the profession. The real issue at hand is how those teachers gained tenure in the first place. If they are really so bad, why aren’t they being fired? Poor teachers shouldn’t be paid a few hundred dollars less than their colleagues. They should find another profession altogether.

Merit pay, in essence, places all the responsibility of student learning on the shoulders of teachers. Sure, they are the professional adults, but students should be responsible for their learning as well. Teachers can’t always help it if a student refuses to pay attention, to attend class, or to study. Would you want your paycheck depending on the test score of a student who only shows up half the time (Clabaugh 19)?

Finally, merit pay fails because schools don’t have the budgets to fund it. In this current economic crisis, schools are receiving less and less funding from state governments. Merit pay is simply impractical. Awarding additional money to the best teachers sounds nice, but that would mean finding a funding source. (Need I remind you how miserably State Question 744 failed, in part, because it did not have a funding source specified?) As Al Ramirez writes, “The timing couldn’t be worse to talk about bonus programs” (58).

Our current Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, supports merit pay based on testing data. He also has a daughter and son in elementary school (“Arne”). My hunch is that Claire and Ryan, much like my sister and me, won’t always score equally on standardized tests. My hope is that Arne will realize there’s a lot more to good teaching than how well a student bubbles in a form.

Works Cited

“Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education—Biography.” U.S. Department of Education, 16

Mar. 2010. Web. 23 Jan. 2011.

Clabaugh, Gary K. “Teacher Merit Pay: Is It a Good Idea?” Educational Horizons 88.1 (2009):

16-20. ERIC. Web. 20 Jan. 2011.

Hulleman, Chris S. “Performance Pay and Teacher Motivation: Separating Myth from Reality.”

Phi Delta Kappan 91.8 (2010): 27-31. ERIC. Web. 20 Jan. 2011.

Johnson, Susan Moore and John P. Papay. “Merit Pay for a New Generation.” Educational

Leadership 67.8 (2010): 48-52. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 21 Jan. 2011.

Ramirez, Al. “Merit Pay Misfires.” Educational Leadership 68.4 (2010): 55-58. MasterFILE

Premier. Web. 20 Jan. 2011.

Toch, Thomas. “The perils of merit pay: linking teacher pay to performance can’t move forward

until resolution of questions regarding fairness, teacher evaluation, and the relationship of test scores to teaching quality.” Phi Delta Kappan 91.2 (2009): 99+. Gale Student Resources in Context. Web. 20 Jan. 2011.