Dear Editor,
A classic example of why student achievement should not be the
determiner of bonuses or merit pay for teachers or schools was
demonstrated by Downtown College Prep High School in San Jose.
Dear Editor,
A classic example of why student achievement should not be the determiner of bonuses or merit pay for teachers or schools was demonstrated by Downtown College Prep High School in San Jose.
DCP had years of steady gains in the Academic Performance Index (API). This past year four popular teachers were terminated, and the students held a three-day walkout and conspired to “bomb” the STAR tests. As a result DCP had a 200-point API drop in one year.
So who suffers with this student protest? The students? Nope. Graduation is not tied to the STAR tests. Students come and go, yet their legacy resonates forever based upon how they feel when taking the tests.
Will the teachers suffer? Probably not. Monetary gain is not tied to student achievement. All their hard work was dumped down the proverbial toilet as students, despite having been taught correctly, decided to “tank the test.”
Was the school hurt? Most certainly as two years in a row of not meeting the federal Adequate Yearly Progress puts DCP into Program Improvement whereby the state could eventually take over the school with consistently poor scores.
When it comes to offering bonuses to teachers based upon student performance, the students are in charge. They always have, and they always will be. Student achievement cannot determine who is a good teacher or who is a bad teacher. If a bonus for teachers was a good idea, it would be used nationwide. Simply, it’s not because it doesn’t work.
Hopefully, ideas like the Denver ProComp plan can be developed and applied to teacher performance and remuneration as well as student achievement. Until then, “bonuses for good teachers” is just a sound bite with no teeth.
Dale Morejón, Gilroy
