If mean that mentoring and collaboration are substitutes for objective assessment, I disagree. They have their place, but not in assessment. And I never said that mentoring and collaboration should be disallowed.
I agree that merit pay shouldn't be based only on test scores. If a teacher does an incredible job on some random project, s/he should get some kind of appropriate bonus. If a teacher consistently takes on extra work and does it well, s/he should be rewarded (such as with a promotion to a higher pay grade). I don't understand why there's so much resistance to this idea.
I wasn't suggesting that mentoring and collaboration are a substitute, or that they would be disallowed, more that I think merit pay in a field like education would discourage collaboration and mentoring, which I think would be a significant loss. I'm glad to hear that you don't see test scores as an adequate measure. Specifically, what do you see as good measures?
People in the military are rewarded for doing their jobs well. So are people at the FBI, the forest service, scientists at federally funded labs, tenure-track scientists and technicians at state-funded universities...the list goes on. Why is this practice okay in these places but not okay for teachers?
Banning merit-based bonuses, promotions, and other rewards is extremist and protects mediocre people while providing disincentives for going beyond the call of duty. When there's no reward for doing a really good job, many talented people will seek employers who recognize their talents --- just like the parents of many gifted kids opt out of public schools in favor of educational environments that recognize the talents of their children.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to be recognized for doing good work. Appropriate recognition is healthy. Yet you implied that the only two choices are taking no credit or narcissism. This is close to a straw man argument, as I never said anything like this.
I agree that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be recognized for doing good work, I just don't see merit pay as the way to do that. Promotions are something I could support, although I don't have a clear picture in my head as to how that would work. One of the problems I see in the field currently is that the only "promotion" opportunities involve leaving the classroom to become a teacher leader or an administrator. Every time a particularly talented colleague leaves the classroom to lead other adults I think that more has been lost than gained.
I did not intend to imply that the only possibilities when it comes to recognition are no recognition or narcissism. In fact, I wasn't implying narcissism at all. I do not, however, think that it is necessarily the "best" who get top recognition. Yes, they are usually noticed in some way, but I too often see people who are good at self-promotion getting far more credit than appropriate, and ending up in positions they shouldn't be in at all.
The GRE does not measure many of the skills that make a teacher great.
So you're using this as an excuse for not knowing subject matter? It's wonderful if Miss Smith relates well to her 8th graders, but if they don't learn much from her because she doesn't really understand algebra, what's the point?
I get frustrated when discussions about teachers are framed along the lines of "it's better to have someone who's good at teaching than a subject matter expert."
Do I think it's ok for Miss Smith who is teaching 8th grade not to have command of algebra? Of course not, and that's not what I said. However, I believe in a generalist model in elementary school and would not want to see it go to a middle or highschool model. I'm pretty sure that in my previous post I distinguished between what an elementary vs. a middle or high school instructor needs. I agree that a math teacher at middle/high school should have a solid command of their subject, but I do not think that a fourth grade math teacher needs to have that same level of proficiency. If they are teaching students who are working on algebra, then yes. However, that speaks to how staff are assigned which is a somewhat different topic.
I wonder about the GRE scores you mention. The lowest compared to math and science masters? Or also compared to english, language, fine arts, etc. masters? I would expect math and science masters to have higher scores because they would be consistently making use of that math either in practice or--as is often the case--because they have just finished their undergraduate degrees and classes are fresh in their minds. While some teachers combine certification and masters to begin with, or do their masters fresh on the tail of their BA or BS, in my neck of the woods it is far more common for people to do masters work after a few years of teaching. Math seems to be a "use it or lose it" subject for many people, so I would expect that to impact scores as well. I guess what I'm wondering is, what happens when the data is disaggregated by criteria other than type of masters--e.g. amount of time between undergraduate degree and GRE; relationship of major to skills on the GRE; time spent preparing to take the GRE; etc.
Look, I have no objection to filling schools with teachers who can earn top GRE scores in every subject as long as they have the other requisite skills to teach effectively across the learning spectrum. I don't think districts would turn these teachers away either. However, I highly doubt that the American public is anywhere near paying teachers enough to compete with what other fields would offer these same people. I also don't believe that lack of opportunities to be promoted is what drives most teachers from the field. In my experience, most teachers leave the field either due to burnout or because their idea of what teaching would be was not a match for the reality of what teaching is. Increasingly, teachers are also leaving because the costs are beginning to outweigh the benefits: the heated rhetoric has made them feel dumped on and unappreciated; they are being expected to do significantly more with significantly less; and the love they have for teaching is being overshadowed by the stress of that combination.
I do believe that children on the "tails" need a more specialized type of instruction and I have no objection to separate or additional requirements to teach or co-teach those students. However, I would point out that not all gifted children are gifted in math and science; and not all adults with great math and science skills have the love of writing and literature that children who are gifted in those areas need, so I would want to be careful in overemphasizing one type of knowledge over another for an entire profession or subset of a profession.
