Total Pageviews

Search This Blog

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

The Times Union lets down teachers and children again

I was very disappointed in the Times Union’s stance on the teacher’s merit pay bill. I didn’t expect the T.U. to dislike the bill because teachers are overwhelmingly against it. I didn’t expect the T.U. to dislike the bill because all the evidence points to merit pay not working. I didn’t expect the T.U. to dislike the bill because its parameters are very broad and potentially unfair. I didn’t even expect the T.U. to dislike the bill because it takes away even more local control. In my opinion the paper has been on the wrong side of those issues for months now.

I however did expect the Times Union to dislike the bill because it isn't paid for. It is an unfunded mandate that is going to cost school districts billions of dollars, given to school districts at the same time their education budgets are being slashed by billions. Unfunded mandates is an issue that the Times Union has come out against.

So Times Union which is it? Are you for unfunded mandates or not. This is a one question test and as you wrote, life is full of them.

2 comments:

  1. I am a JUNIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL and I DON’T think merit pay is right…

    Just because a student gets a bad score/grade it’s not the teachers fault it’s the student who got the bad score/grade’s fault. If I get a bad score/grade i don’t blame the teacher I blame myself. If students get low scores/grades it shouldn’t be up to the teacher to fix it. I think it’s wrong that teachers can be fired for the scores/grades their students get.

    PARENTS are more responsible for their kids’ grades/scores THAN TEACHER are. At home some parents don’t care about scores/grades so then the kid doesn’t care. Then they get bad scores and the teacher is the one blamed not the student or parent.

    Here are many questions I have for whoever came up with this…

    What happens to teachers that have all special needs students? Or what happens if the student is just a bad test taker? What if the student doesn’t care? What happens when a group of students don’t like a certain teacher and decide to get bad grades to get the teacher fired?
    These are just a few questions that I have alone…

    I know there are many more...
    I hope that the government STOPS merit pay all together it’s NOT RIGHT OR FAIR TO OUR HARD WORKING TEACHERS!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The answer is, the teacher will be punnished... yoiu have a lot of good questions and concerns, my advice is write paper and your represenatives and ask them.

    This merit pay bill is bad for students and teachers alike..

    ReplyDelete