Talk radio

Now that I have joined the ranks of the commuters, I feel like I'm an adult. I even listen to talk radio all the time now, and yes I love it. I think Doug Wright is awesome! KSL Newsradio 1160 really has become my favorite pre-set. Haha.

Anyway, the other day I turned on the radio at night and the man (not my beloved Doug Wright) was talking about teachers. In a gist, these were his comments. "Teachers do so much more than we give them credit for. They are overworked and under appreciated." Now, I was so happy he was saying this. I was like, Yes! Good, stand up for us! but he then went on to say "This is exactly why we need to link teacher's salaries to their success rate. We need to have a way to compensate the teacher's with high test scores and punish those who aren't performing well."

Okay, I've known this is a big issue for a long time, but this did not make me happy. There is absolutely NO way you should be compensating a teacher based on standardized test scores. Not all children in your classroom, no matter how effectively you teach, will receive "adequate scores" as outlined by the government.

Let's say, for example, that a teacher has many students for whom English is their second language. They may progress leaps and bounds past where they began in the course of a school year, but chances are they won't score as high as native English speakers. Test scores, then, would indicate the teacher is not a "good" teacher, since the whole class isn't in the exact same place.

So the government is going to punish me for being an ESL specialist? Because I have an ESL endorsement, I may have many ELLs in my classroom. Even if I do my best and help them progress past their initial level, my salary will be lower than teachers with a classroom composed mainly of native English speakers and "gifted" children.

It just doesn't make sense, and I haven't even touched on alternate assessments yet, which is something else to consider. If the salary needs to be linked to something, link it to how much students progress through the year, not on their final test scores.

How can I jump on the bandwagon and kill this idea?