Weaver is part of a consortium of business leaders planning
to bring merit pay to a school near you.
It is interesting seeing all these business guys sitting
around talking about merit pay because I doubt they would employ something like
it in their businesses; now follow me for a second.
If somebody came to them and said lets try idea x, now I know it has been tried over and over again and has had no success but lets try it again here, they would laugh him out of their offices. That's merit pay. Over and over again merit pay has been tried and over and over again it has failed and that's because it doesn't measure the level of instruction, it measures the level of the kid.
If these business leaders really wanted to help those schools improve they would insist we put in place things that made success possible, smaller classes, social workers and mental health counselors because why kids act up or do poorly in schools often has nothing to do with school, wrap around services, curriculums that played to their strengths, a longer school year to give them more time to learn what they needed and yes to get our best teachers to them which can be done through a variety of incentives and supports that doesn’t include bribing them and hurting cohesiveness, but they aren't and that's because education is not a business.
If somebody came to them and said lets try idea x, now I know it has been tried over and over again and has had no success but lets try it again here, they would laugh him out of their offices. That's merit pay. Over and over again merit pay has been tried and over and over again it has failed and that's because it doesn't measure the level of instruction, it measures the level of the kid.
If these business leaders really wanted to help those schools improve they would insist we put in place things that made success possible, smaller classes, social workers and mental health counselors because why kids act up or do poorly in schools often has nothing to do with school, wrap around services, curriculums that played to their strengths, a longer school year to give them more time to learn what they needed and yes to get our best teachers to them which can be done through a variety of incentives and supports that doesn’t include bribing them and hurting cohesiveness, but they aren't and that's because education is not a business.
These business guys just don’t get it and as long as the
powers-that-be listen to them do, our kids and schools will never get what they
need either.
Read more about the plan here: http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/news/2014/02/05/business-leaders-help-fund-merit-pay.html?page=all
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