In her 6/18/01 Biopi-L post "Merit-based pay (was 'need some teacher
data fast')", Ann Kindfield responded to my 6/17 Biopi-L post as
follows:
"I think merit-based pay systems are highly problematic for at least
the two following reasons:
1. they promote competition among teachers due to the fixed set of
resources - I prefer community building and think it's much better
for kids, and
2. there are no legitimate means for making such judgements in a
fair and consistent manner as far as I know (e.g., test scores don't
even come close) so the merits on which merit pay is based are highly
questionable.
It's irrelevant to me that the two physicists you cited, who likely
have little direct experience with the daily lives of teachers, are
advocates."
In my opinion, Ann may have misinterpreted my post. Perhaps she and
other Biopi-L'ers did not carefully read it, nor the cogent articles
by Heller and Langenberg.
Heller and Langenberg are NOT advocating "merit-based pay systems" in
the very limited sense of the term as evidently used by Ann
Kindfield: piddling salary increases doled out by education
bureaucrats on the basis of insufficient evidence of merit and
constrained by a set of resources fixed by society at a poverty level.
Quite to the contrary, Heller and Langenberg are advocating DRASTIC
salary increases for nearly ALL K-12 teachers, so at to raise the
average to that of mechanical engineers' salaries. What better
community building than to (in Heller's words) "make teaching a real
profession."
In my opinion, it doesn't require direct experience with the daily
lives of teachers to realize that society drastically undervalues
their work and pays them accordingly.
Before dismissing as irrelevant the opinions of Heller and Langenberg
as two dreamy-eyed university physicists disconnected from K-12
education, I think Biopi-L'ers might take the time to study their
thoughtful articles.
I agree with Heller and Langenberg, and I do have "direct experience
with the daily lives of teachers," since my wife was a high-school
teacher for 30 years before her retirement. Also I have interacted
directly with many high-school physics teachers, as have Heller and
Langenberg.
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<rrhake@earthlink.net>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
REFERENCES
Heller, K.J. (2001). The Time Has Come to Make Teaching a Real
Profession. APS Forum on Education Newsletter, Spring; online at
<http://www.aps.org/units/fed/index.html>. Suggests raising K-12
teacher's average salary so as to equal mechanical engineer's average
salary, with a Fermi-problem
<http://www.physics.umd.edu/rgroups/ripe/perg/fermi.html> estimated
cost of about 450 billion over 10 years. A rather similar proposal
with a similar cost estimate was made by Langenberg (2000).
Langenberg, D.N. (2000). Rising to the challenge. Thinking K-16,
4(1), 19; online as "Honor in the Boxcar"
<http://www.edtrust.org/main/reports.asp>: ". . . . on average,
teacher's salaries ought to be about 50% higher than they are now.
Some teachers, including the very best, those who teach in shortage
fields (e.g., math and science) and those who teach in the most
challenging environments (e.g., inner cities) ought to have salaries
about twice the current norm. . . . Simple arithmetic applied to
publicly available data shows that the increased cost would be only
0.6% of the GDP, about one twentieth of what we pay for health care.
I'd assert that if we can't bring ourselves to pony up that amount,
we will pay far more dearly in the long run."