Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
‘Pay for Performance”
As a 7th grade teacher in a Brooklyn public school, I am concerned about the expansion of merit pay in our schools as described in Joel Klein’s article [Oped, “Pay for Performance,” October 23, 2007].
To date, the Department of Education has put forth only one measure of improved student achievement: student scores on state exams. Mr. Klein’s article references a “sophisticated new accountability system” but does not explain its details. I worry that state tests, which already occupy an amount of curricular time disproportionate to their value as an assessment tool, will only gather more weight once their results are linked to increases in teacher pay. While it is essential that our students leave school with strong reading, writing and math skills, an accountability system that looks only at one measure of those skills is inherently faulty.
Perhaps the prospect of more money will spur teachers to hold themselves more accountable for their students’ achievement. However, most teachers I know go well above their contract hours to provide the best possible education for their students. What they are lacking is time, resources, and support to plan consistently high quality and rigorous curriculum, which, according to the most recent issue of American Educator, is a key factor in predicting student success in college. If we truly care about raising student achievement in New York City, and I believe most teachers do, we need to make sure teachers have time within the school day to collaborate with each other, and we need to take up less curriculum time practicing for and taking state tests. Perhaps we should also look at rewarding teachers who already spend much of their own time meeting with students, talking with parents, studying best practices, researching and building new curriculum and looking closely at their students’ work to evaluate their students’ learning on a more specific and relevant level than a standardized test ever can.
AMY MOGULESCU
Brooklyn, N.Y.
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