Mandates cheat students, educators

[tonysam]

Despite the recent cheating scandal in Georgia schools, there is a movement afoot to have "merit pay" for teachers based in part on test scores.

Our teachers are being cheated; cheated out of the opportunity to teach, not teach to a test, or teach about a test, but to educate our youth and teach them to think about things that matter.

Principals are also being cheated. Instead of being out and about in the community communicating with parents, at a football game or in the hallway greeting and supporting students, they are, instead, burrowed away in small “war rooms” with reams of test data taped to all four walls, trying to come up with ways to increase standardized test scores so they can find equitable ways to implement a law that is very underfunded. If their schools do not make AYP there is a great chance they may lose their jobs.

Teachers and principals are often vilified in the media and made scapegoats by politicians and pundits who do not want to commit to the costly measures of real education reform: Those who do not want to pay the high cost of things that actually increase student achievement, like smaller class sizes, extracurricular activities, parental involvement programs or teacher aides. Instead we give tests; then place the blame for poor school performance on principals, teachers and students instead of looking at the actual culprit, which is, in part, the yearlong test prep our students are receiving in lieu of an education.

And now, with the punitive “pay for performance” suggestion by Gov. Sonny Perdue, the amount of pay a teacher receives could be influenced by these same standardized test scores. This in itself could be cause for even more widespread cheating! The very thought is ludicrous.

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