Posted on 12/20/2019 7:14:54 AM PST by Dacula
An anonymous Collins Hill High School teacher donated their performance-based bonus to 160 colleagues on Thursday, protesting the new compensation system.
“With vastly different classroom content, different levels of student abilities, and different student home lives, each teacher faces very different challenges. Trying to boil it all down to a number to pit teachers against one another is like comparing apples to battleships. Just 30% of the teachers at this school got any kind of monetary recognition for their efforts but I know how hard all the teachers in this school work to inspire and help our students grow and I believe that the 70% who got nothing deserve more than that. Well here it is, I’m sharing what I got with you: $31722.15 (after taxes)/160 teachers = $20 (I rounded up). Teaching should not be a competition! Merry Christmas!
“P.S. If all the recipients of this award did this, we’d all get about a $1300 raise!”
A $31,000 bonus???
This kind of thinking from a teacher in the top 30%?
If she really was in the top 30, Lord help us.
Gwinnett County just extended the Common Core Superintendent for two more years.
My son caught on to this scam years ago. He graduates in May. He deliberately fails the first two tests that the county uses to enhance the teachers’ performance. He calls it “Christmas Treeing’ the test. He randomly picks answers to make his test sheet look like a Christmas Tree.
Today is the last day of finals for the semester. He is taking four college accredited courses, two required courses, and one elective. He is already guaranteed to get all A’s this semester.
“An anonymous Collins Hill High School teacher donated their performance-based bonus to 160 colleagues on Thursday, protesting the new compensation system.”
An ... their. My goodness.
A $31,000 bonus???
It is only my tax money.
I have to question this persons teaching ability of they thing 32000/160 is 20.
This kind of thinking from a teacher in the top 30%?
If she really was in the top 30, Lord help us.
Socialism. Spread the wealth and make no incentive to try harder. Give participation trophies to all of the teachers and never fail a kid because you could hurt them emotionally.
“To Sir With Love “.....this ain’t. ...but then I’m a smelly Walmart people. ....
Shut it down. These government forced welfare parasites are the problem. Screw them. .....ohhhhh but the monkey. ....
J. Alvin Wilbanks signs two-year contract to remain Gwinnett County Public Schools superintendent
Wilbanks’ base pay will be $380,971.88, effective Jan. 1, 2020. He will receive a transportation allowance of $1,500 per month, an expense allowance of $1,200 per month, a retirement supplement of $3,500 per month and a longevity supplement of $6,250 per month. An annual contribution also will be made on his behalf to the Georgia Teachers Retirement System with the payment for year one being $31,822.31.
Yes and no. While it is a dumb way to give raises, those top teachers should be awarded in some way. Or perhaps the bottom 30% need firing.
What exactly is performance based awards system based on? Test scored? Then the spec ed and d-hall teachers will never get a raise but that doesn’t mean they’re not good teachers. There’s no such thing as art, music, regular P.E. or sports state testing. Ok, if the football team makes it to the playoffs then they praise the coaches but that doesn’t mean the coaches aren’t total holes. Guarantee the nice janitor who makes sure to get lost coats and lost homework back to the students isn’t getting a pay raise. Does the teacher who’s having sex with students getting a raise just because the school did well on the math portion of the state test?
It is the teacher’s money to give, but as a tax-paying citizen, I am offended.
“Their” is now used to refer to a person that is obviously singular. It grates on my grammar nerves as well. It is to avoid the formerly used “his” when we did not know the sex of the unknown person or the awkward but correct “his or her”. I am not sure what grammar questions could be asked on any standardized test today.
> ““With vastly different classroom content, different levels of student abilities, and different student home lives, each teacher faces very different challenges.” <
I taught in urban high schools for 30 years. The teacher is correct. That’s why I’m against these teacher bonuses. Even the time of day makes a difference.
For example, suppose you taught an Algebra 1 class first period. Kids would still be straggling in. No way could you cover the material as effectively as another teacher who taught Algebra 1 third period.
My “bonus” system would be this: Pay the good teachers what the pays scale says. Fire the bad ones. By the way, I estimate that perhaps 5% of the teachers I taught with were bad. That’s not saying the rest were outstanding. But only about 5% deserved to be let go.
All good comments and yet almost everyone at a school knows who the “good” teachers are after a few years.
I know this because I was a teacher and I understand the work some parents go through to gain the privileged of helping the school enroll their kids in the classes that they want. These parents join the school foundation, PTA, or similar body and literally are allowed to see the next years’ classes for their kid before it is too late to modify them.
In my school they let students enroll by grade, (seniors first Etc. My class was full by the time the sophomores went through the gym. — I taught a sophomore class but I always had many from the higher grades enroll before they left the school. Also some freshmen got into the class using some process I did not understand because the child had advanced to the sophomore level while still in middle school.
We also paid on a seniority basis and laid off teachers on a seniority basis — because this is how the union wanted it.
The process made no sense and I formed the opinion that it would be better to re-sign a teacher’s contract each and every year. My approach would have used test scores, student favor ability rating, parents rating, administration rating, counselors rating, some rating that took into account the work the teacher did for the school as a whole — like a music teacher who put on several performances each year without receiving extra pay. This was never tried but I suspect some private institutions used an approach like this, I just never worked for them.
I believe a teacher who received higher pay as a recognition that the teacher contributed highly to the school should take the money and work even harder for more. The concept of sharing with everyone sounds nice but is a little like giving away part of your paycheck to someone who habitually arrived late in the morning and habitually left early in the afternoon — and left you to lock up and put the tools away.
KC,
Excellent comment.
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