Basing Teacher Pay on Test Results
* Ronald Brownstein perpetuates the erroneous notion that teachers alone are to blame for their students’ failure to master the curriculum (“Make the Buck Stop With Teachers by Linking Raises to Student Results,” Feb. 5). Daily, I hear the complaints of my colleagues that their students fail to take schoolwork seriously. A sizable percentage of them don’t study, listen, do homework, read directions or appear to care what grades they are receiving. I offered a student a grade of B rather than a D for the semester if she was only willing to spend several hours finishing a poster design she had started. She preferred the lower grade.
Teachers have little influence on their students’ motivational level, desire for success, study habits or educational readiness. Parents are the missing component in this equation. Unfortunately, it is not politically expedient to admit this.
DAIN OLSEN
Los Angeles
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* Shame on Brownstein and artist William Bramhall for portraying not only children but their teachers as dunces. Brownstein writes: “Straightforward logic argues for tying teacher pay to student achievement. In most professions, the best performers take home the biggest checks.” By no means are only the best doctors, lawyers, engineers, artists, professors or accountants the richest; perhaps those who have the richest clients are.
My colleagues and I are helping to prepare often idealistic and always committed women and men to become elementary school teachers. Our most recent graduates could tell you that district and administrative support on site, parental support at home and social and economic level will seriously affect their ability to truly engage their children in learning. If you look at listings of statewide scores you can literally draw a map of this state based on socioeconomic status. The problem of how and what children learn is complex and can only be solved by the university, the districts, the school sites, the unions, the parents and the teachers working together.
SHEILA G. McCOY
Professor of Liberal Studies
Cal Poly Pomona
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* The continual emphasis on standardized testing as a measure of school performance is annoying and sad. Why do we assume that every child currently in school is eligible to go to college and earn a four-year degree? Not every child--not every person--is intelligent in that way. I don’t mean this as a criticism of people not able to go to college. When I was in high school, we still had vocational “shop” classes: auto shop, wood and metal shops. I attended high school with guys who couldn’t spell “cat,” if you spotted them two consonants and a vowel, but they could assemble a carburetor blindfolded and build useful and beautiful articles out of scrap wood and iron. When did these vital skills suddenly become less valuable than mere book learning?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could take all the money we’re spending on testing and redirect it into vocational education? Send the kids who aren’t as academically biased as others to vocational college, and let them know their contributions are just as valued as a piece of paper with “University of” inscribed on it. Who do you think is going to be repairing our cars and building our houses when they’re through?
SUSAN BUCKNER
Seal Beach
