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I think extra money is a clear enticement for teachers. Some will move, others will stay where they are. I don't think the extra $10,000 will get people into the field if they weren't intersted in the first place.

The one part of this equation that is most often overlooked are parents. If you dont' have support of parents and the community, if education is not a high priority in the home, then nothing done in schools will help the majority of students.

GREAT! It's great that UNC and local businesses are supporting the local schools. That could never be a bad thing.

What I have a problem with is throwing money at a problem. Until we answer the question "WHY" we even have "Low performing Schools" we will not be able to solve the problem.

I truly don't think the problem is with the teachers. The problems are at home.

ALL teachers deserve a raise, not just a few at a "under-performing" schools.

Those kids will have NO idea what the teacher is getting paid. Really, is it going to make them want to learn math?

The extra 10 K should be given to ALL teachers. Soon they're just going to throw in the towel--especially in Guilford County where they are expected to perform miracles under a dictatorship.

Since we're talking math here, I'll first point out that nearly half of the teachers are below average.

So, if you're talking about giving raises to all teachers, you're including those who are below average as well as the top performers.

Sure, the home environment is important, but the school district has the ability to change the teaching staff, not however 10s of thousands of home environments we're talking about.

There's no question in my mind that putting top-performing teachers in under-performing schools is going to make a significant difference. Just how much of a difference is the only question.

If it makes a big difference, those teachers have proven the case that they should be paid even more. If it makes no difference, no one is worse off, and the district and its supporters can save themselves the cost of paying incentives to put top teachers in the schools where they're needed the most.

Emery Would,

How do you know that "nearly half of the teachers are below average"? What does below average mean? is that below average for GCS, North Carolina, or countrywide? How did you determine this? Have you been reviewing teachers' evaluations?

Also, it seems to me that throwing these dollars at the problem at the high school level may be a waste. Since high school math should be advanced courses, such as algebra, how will those teachers be able to improve the performance of low-performing students when they have not laid the groundwork in elementery and middle school by learning the basics of math, such as the multiplication tables? You don't build skyscrapers if you haven't laid a solid foundation and expect it to stand. It has been reliably reported that many middle school students are promoted to high school, and they simply do not possess the necessary basics. How does paying $10,000 more to high school teachers overcome this problem? It seems that we need to take this initiative back about 5 years in the students' careers to be effective.

Before anyone says that I am against teachers, let me say that I am in favor of teachers making more money. Perhaps, it is time for academia to move toward a business model of merit pay. This means having a pay range for teachers and paying teachers within that range based on merit as determiend by performance. Of course, teachers will find this approach suspect as it would require a high level of trust with the administration to use and apply the system fairly. We all know that everyone's' trust account with this administration is bankrupt.

Stormy,

I'm afraid you're not really qualified to comment on this particular topic, seeing as how you seem not to understand what averages are and your spelling appears to be sub-average, as well.

I think Stormy's question was valid. Below average, where?

As for misspelled words...maybe some people have trouble with big words and we should just stick to four-letter words when dealing with Emery.

Most of the people that are drawing salaries under Mission Possible are current teachers. To say that more money will make a teacher teach better is an insult to the hard working teachers we have. Do you get better golf when the jack pot is bigger. I think not. We are now paying the BOE members over twice what they made a couple of years ago. Did this improve performance? Money is helpful, but you are barking up the wrong tree it you think it will be our slavation.

Joe Stafford,

That is the MOST brilliant analogy to date! Thank you for pointing out that increasing the pay of the BOE members has NOT paid off!

Bloody Brilliant, Sir!!

Emery Would,

I question your ability to judge anyone's comments, especially in your usual jerky style. I understand the meaning of average, and I also understand that the word "average" has many meanings depending upon the context. A synonym for "average" is "mediocre" which stresses the undistinguished aspect of what is average. Is this what you meant that nearly half of our teachers are not even mediocre? Average also applies to that which is midway between extremes and imply both sufficiency and lack of distinction. So, are you saying that nealry half of our teachers lack even sufficiency or distinction? Harsh judgment there.

I think that you better clean-up your condemnation of our fine teachers here in Guilford County. They don't deserve to be judged and criticized by jerks like you.

Now, want to answer the questions that I presented to you or remain being a jerk?

By the way, for what it is worth, I had a conversation with Alan Duncan about two years ago and suggested that they offer teachers an incentive to teach in low-performing schools. His statement was that it wouldn't work. I said what if they were offered $10,000 incentive above their regular salary (about 20% incentive over salary for just changing work location), and he said that still wouldn't be enough. So, does this new program mean that teachers have changed as to what incentives they will respond to, or is GCS doing this merely because there is outside money available?

I don't recall any of Duncan's research and couldn't find any citations on the web, but then I'm not at work so don't have ready access to the UNC library indexes. Where were the findings of the study he cites published?

Sorry - being a smart aleck egghead there. I'm getting the hang of The Chalkboard, I guess. :)

Honestly - I'm not completely up-to-date on my teacher incentive research either but have followed it enough to know that "not enough money" is not cited as a primary reason teachers become dissatisfied enough to leave the profession, or to take positions of relative ease. It's a little difficult to see how the $$ incentive intervention alone would make a substantial difference, particularly since there's no true teacher performance assessment in place to assure that the individuals who take GCS up on this offer are actually "good teachers."

To be fair though, there is more to the MP thing than just the additional money. Teachers in the program are supposed to get additional professional development, collaboration, and administrator support; and it's part of the plan that their classes will be smaller. Both of these strategies bear on more commonly cited reasons that teachers bail. If the program works, it will likely be because it is bears on multiple, related conditions influencing the problem.

It will be interesting to watch how Mission Possible plays out in practice. I'm particularly intrigued about possible unintended consequences, having watched the dynamic when teachers were offered bonuses based on student achievement test performance: Not surprisingly, the primary result was that teachers fought to move to schools where the kids were achieving.

Unfortunately, debora's point is too good. We (educators) insist on treating education as an oversimplified input-output kind of undertaking - and we keep trying to change outputs by tweaking the input factors that we CAN rather than the ones that may in fact have the greatest influence on outcomes. These factors continue to be VERY complex, so if we want to look at "quality teachers" as an element of a successful education program, we ought to think more holistically about improving the professionalism of the job.

Problem One is that teachers have historically contributed to the perception that they are not professionals - at least in the sense that society sees engineers, doctors, and BMW mechanics as such. They should endorse ceasing the practice of giving raises based strictly on years of experience or education level and encourage policies that support and reward good practices. Equally, teachers might consider sticking up for themselves professionally and stop getting sucked into the trap of "doing what's best for kids," at the expense of their financial, emotional, and physical wellbeing.

Districts should take the next logical step beyond the pay incentive element of Mission Possible and pay teachers based on what the market will bear, considering their education, area of specialty, balances of supply and demand, and their actual skill level. Base teacher professional evaluations on skill- and knowledge-based assessments their actual abilities and performance - the quality of what they DO - and FINALLY accept that the intervening variables that students bring with them have a profound impact on whether quality teaching translates into quality learning.

Judging teacher performance based on student achievement scores is like measuring rainfall by seeing how tall the hay is - a poor, indirect measure of performance at best, since it can rain all spring and still, poor soil or any number of other factors can result in a low crop yield.

I'm one of those weirdos who decided a couple of graduate degrees in education would be cool: I've done pretty well since my bachelor’s degree days but I quite literally flunked a couple of classes during those first six college years - not because the teachers were bad but because I didn't care to do otherwise. The same dynamic is at work in our public schools and the current policy levers completely neglect it.

Mission Possible MIGHT be effective. (I sure hope that there's a sound evaluation plan in place to see if this is the case, although common practice suggests this is unlikely.) However, it looks to be another overly simplistic attempted solution to a horribly complex education problem that neglects some important issues.

K

I think it is worth a try since the funds are from private sources BUT more money as someone said doesn't make a teacher any better AND

helping children in math MUST start much earlier. The best math teacher cannot bring a high school student up to snuff on several years of math in one year even with extra tutoring. The best math teacher cannot teach in a class if there are constant disruptions in the classrooms OR students choose not to pay attention.

Children are leaving fifth grade who do not know their multiplication factors, don't understand decimals or simple percentages. Students move into Algebra who may get a C or D in Pre-algebra. This doesn't mean they get the basic math concepts. It is a building skill like learning a language.

Problems must be idenitifed early on. There must be intervention at the earlier grades. By high school, it is usually too late.