Performance Based Pay

I fully believe that teachers should be held accountable for what goes on in our classroom, and the amount of learning our children gain in a year. We all understand that an easy way to be able to monitor a teacher's effectiveness is to have something that will give you simple data. The state/federal system is right, a multiple choice answer test will give you simple data. Although from a teacher's point-of-view, I fear the mention of performance based pay. Here are the reasons why.

Here's one thing that those higher up don't get. Reading/Social Studies teachers will no longer teach anything but how to read a passage, and then answer a question by picking and choosing one answer out of 4 given ones. Math/Science teachers will no longer teach through exploring and coming up with answers on your own, they will show you how to read a question and then pick and choose one answer out of 4 given ones. How do I know this? Because this is every teacher at least a month before their state assessment.

Here's a second thing that they don't get. This test is given and looked at based off of one day in my classroom. On any given day here are some of the things that my students might deal with: getting kicked out of their apartment because they couldn't pay rent, dad/mom (usually there is just a mom) didn't come home last night for whatever reason, I had to get my brother/sister up, breakfast eaten, and ready for school that's why I'm late and couldn't get myself ready, we didn't have any food in the house and I'm really hungry, gun shots woke me up last night (literally one of my student's experiences last year), my dad/mom was taken to jail yesterday now we live with person (another real life experience), and the list could continue. You can not judge my students nor myself based solely on one test. If you want to judge me and my students, give them a test at the beginning of the year, the middle of the year, and the end of the year and see how they grow. Those that make and administer these tests don't seem to take into account how these external factors can affect a student's situation.

Here's a third thing that they don't get. Are these student's college professors going to give them only muliple choice answer test? I can't even begin to tell you how many blue books I had to buy in college, and I had to be able to write a complete sentence. Are these student's job applications going to be multiple choice options? "Please choose out of the following answer choices as to why we should hire you." Are the situations that these students are likely to face in their careers going to consist of multiple choice answers? "I'm going to need for you to circle the correct answer choice for the following proposal by next Tuesday." If I try to do anything creative in my class, I get the deer in the headlights look for at least an hour. If I give my students a multiple choice answer test, it will be done within minutes. My students HATE me, because I make them answer all questions using complete sentences, and then I show them the multiple choice answers and have them match theirs up with the one given.

I fear our country will slowly begin to decline in advanced thinking. All due to the fact that our future leaders are not being challenged to be thinkers, they are being challenged to be test takers. Life does not present you with four clear choices to every problem.