What teachers are telling the Governor: Day 2

Day 2 of our odyssey into comments provided to the Governor by educators and other random internet commentors. Day 1 can be found here.

People asking to be on a committee or board to develop an evaluation and merit pay system are by far the most common submissions.

Subject: merit pay
Governor Kasich,
I am a Nationally Board Certified teacher with nearly 20 years of experience. I have a Lead Professional Educator license in Ohio. I have a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. I score the SAT essays for CollegeBoard, the AP English tests for CollegeBoard, and I write content for the ACT English test. I currently work in a high achieving district, but I have also worked in a very challenging school district. I am currently also working for ETS in the MET scoring pilot, which is a Bill and Melinda Gates foundation project for teacher evaluation. My wife is an elementary music teacher, so I also understand the perspective of that age level as well as how those teachers fit into merit pay. I would be happy to discuss my ideas with you; as you can see, I have multiple levels of experience that all will need to factor in to the merit pay issue.

Please contact me if you would like to discuss my ideas on education and merit pay.

Sincererly,

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I have not been contacted by anyone from the Governor's office. Please have someone contact me to let me know that he is notinterested in my input, if that is the case. If not, please have someone contact me to let me know the name of the contact person who is heading up this process.
Thank you.

The next email also follows a very common theme expressed by large numbers of educators.

Subject: Guidelines for Merit-Based Pay System
Governor Kasich,
I am a teacher and responding to your invitation to email suggesdted guidelines for a merit-based pay system. I have no suggested guidelines to offer because research has not shown that merit pay in education works towards increasing student achievement. I do request that SB5 provisions be removed from HB153.
Thank you,

Subject: have you read this yet?
The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries from the NYT:

http://nyti.ms/m55fWj

Subject:HB 153
Dear Governor Kasich,
I am writing to urge you to oppose including provisions that are the same or similar to those in Senate Bill 5 in the budget bill. HB 153 makes sweeping changes to compensation, evaluation and contractual rights of Ohio's teachers. Similar changes were included in SB 5 which, as you know, is being challenged by referendum.

Passage of provisions like this in the budget bill would serve to undercut the rights of voters to decide the fate of SB 5 in the November election. I ask that you respect the voice of voters and not circumvent the "citizens' veto" by including portions of SB 5 in other legislation. Please act to have these provisions removed from HB 153.
Sincerely,

Subject:HB 153
Dear Governor Kasich,
As a parent, community member and educator, I am in total opposition of merit pay for teachers. The current pay structure is objective and gives order to the process of determining salaries for employees. Merit pay, on the other hand, would be a cumbersome and potentially unfair, subjective process. Moreover, merit pay would not ensure that poor teachers would be motivated to improve or find different careers. Your administration has done nothing but hurt education in the state of Ohio through budget cuts and the elimination of collective bargaining. Why not listen to the professionals involved in education to determine what is necessary to support education?
Sincerely,

We hope this wasn't sent while driving! Just Kidding...

Subject: Hey!
I am not a teacher but I really believe teachers r under paid. I just drive a school bus. Seen too much happening in the schools.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

We'll bring you more tomorrow.

New Guidelines on Teacher Evaluation and Accountability Approved at 2011 RA

The NEA just announced new guidelines on teacher evaluations.

On Monday, the 8,000 delegates to the 2011 National Education Association Representative Assembly voted to adopt the NEA’s policy statement that revamps teacher evaluation and accountability. The development, implementation, and enforcement of high-quality teacher evaluation and accountability are top priorities for NEA and its affiliates.

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel believes the new statement signals a commitment to a new, more prestigious profession of teaching and reflects the first broad endorsement by NEA of the need for evaluation and accountability reform.

“As more states and districts seek to improve teacher evaluation, the risk is that reform is done to teachers rather than with them,” said Van Roekel. “This policy statement was written by and for teachers while heeding others’ expertise as well. It outlines a system to help teachers improve instruction and meet students’ needs. It offers sweeping changes to build a true profession of teaching that is focused on high expectations.”

The policy statement is based on a recommendation of a workgroup of NEA leaders convened in the spring by Van Roekel and led by Secretary-Treasurer Becky Pringle. It outlines guidelines for an evaluation and accountability system that focus on enhancing the practice of teachers, instead of identifying teachers for dismissal.

The statement reflects the importance of maintaining high standards, not lowering them and calls for robust evaluations based on multiple indicators. The statement supports state or local affiliates to use standardized tests for evaluating teachers if the standardized tests are of proven high quality and provide meaningful measures of student learning and growth.

Here's the policy document.

NEA Statement on Teacher Evaluation and Accountability