Kansas City was the only Missouri school district to receive the grant money -- $13.6 million that, according to KMBC, will be used to reward teachers whose students perform well on state-wide standardized tests.
But those tests have been driving teachers unions mad for years, and directly tying teachers' pay to the tests is something the union won't let happen without a fight. Andrea Flinders, president of the local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, says that how the money will be spent has not been undetermined, but that the union will try to limit how much is tied to the tests.
"We don't believe
you can just tie test scores to teachers," she tells Plog. She says she hopes to spread the money evenly throughout schools that perform well -- which pretty much defeats the purpose of the grant. Where school reformers want to reward the best individual teachers and either weed out or inspire the worst ones, the union wants everyone treated fairly and evenly.
Which is exactly what got Oprah so pissed in the first place.
Waiting for Superman hasn't been slated for release in Kansas City yet, but when it does, expect to hear a lot about it -- and expect to hear Flinders trashing it as short-sighted.
"There are no magic bullets," she says. But the movie disagrees, and the bullet has her union's name on it.
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I taught in the KCMSD for two years as part of Teach For America, and while I used to support evaluations based upon test scores, I am now adamantly opposed to such a system.
There are dozens, if not hundreds of variables that affect a child's performance in school. The teacher is but one factor. To make a direct connection between test scores and teacher quality is scientifically invalid.
In districts like the KCMSD, teachers often have the added frustration of dealing with out-of-control students who are allowed to disrupt class day after day, ineffective principals who refuse to hold students accountable for behavior and academics, some parents who fail to actually parent, and school leaders who create unprofessional and often toxic environments.
Unfortunately, those who promote such evaluation systems do so not because they're effective, but because it's politically expedient at the moment. Like usual, it comes down to politics and not what's good for the kids.
I'm just glad that I no longer work for the KCMSD. I left immediately after my two-year commitment with TFA was finished. I've never in my life seen a more chaotic, dysfunctional, unprofessional, poor excuse for a school district. I prefer to teach in a real district, in one where I am not a scapegoat for the failings of district leadership.
While it may not be easy to measure or quantify teachers' ability, it is certainly no more difficult that assessing the outcome of other service industry professions. The teachers unions haven't been the least bit helpful in trying to measure results or pay for performance, rather deciding to spend their time, energy, and political clout on arcane work rules and defending incompetent people who most certainly should not be in the classroom. When you have a dropout rate of almost 50% and only 8% of high school seniors read at a grade-appropriate level, common sense tells you that something has to change.
The new board and superintendent of KCMSD have had the courage to begin crafting and managing a district that is actually looking out for the kids and their welfare for the first time in recent memory. And they've had the guts to change the status quo of all the "contractors", employed family members, loud mouths, and hangers-on who have had their snouts in the trough for way too long.
If the union now wants to stand in the way of progress, financial responsibility, and learning, they will find that the public has already turned its back on their obdurance and lack of results.
How the heck to you "norm" the results from class to class, school to school? Answer that and then discuss how to distribute the money? Teacher's classes are luck of the draw. One year you may have several special needs or english as a second language students, and the next have a group of low income students struggling to find dinner at night. Compare those classes to a different school in a more affluent area, and bingo you suddenly have "underperforming" teachers. It is the school district's JOB to weed out ineffective teachers before they get tenure. Tenure should never be given lightly by a school district, but it is a given that most if not all new teachers will be tenured after 5 years. Food for thought...
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