Teacher Incentive Plan A Bust
Who needs incentives? Since when is it necessary to provide teachers with incentives to teach?
Who needs incentives?
Since when is it necessary to provide teachers with incentives to teach?
I’ve had experience in the two worlds of business and education. In business, I was director of information services in government and the private sector. As a retired teacher, school administrator and university professor, I am insulted by the attempt at the national and state levels to “bribe” professional educators to teach our children “better.”
In fact, all teachers should be insulted and outraged by this latest legislative absurdity. Texas legislators and business leaders determined that teachers should be paid incentives to improve student performance, thereby achieving success in school. It was doomed for failure.
Teaching is NOT an industrial assembly line position in which the more pieces you finish, the more you earn. The whole honorable point of becoming a teacher is that you want to plant a positive educational foundation and a love for learning into each student you teach and then to increase each child’s knowledge in ongoing increments so he or she may move toward a successful future with a positive work ethic.
Furthermore, if the state would provide professional teachers with a professional salary, there would be no need to complement the salary with incentives for additional teacher income.
Follow that up with a more intelligent and productive methodology for improving learning outcomes than the current “pass-the-state-exam” mentality.
Another priority for successful teaching and improving learning outcome must be smaller teacher to student classroom ratios.
The whole idea of incentives for teachers is ludicrous.
Legislators, business leaders and educational administrators had better review their priorities and educational reality before giving teachers an incentive program. Maybe these folks are NOT the ones who should decide how to improve public education, since for the past decade they have been unsuccessful in doing so.
An incentive plan for teachers is irresponsible and inappropriate thinking, and it sends a negative message about the honorable field of teaching.
If we want to start an incentive program, perhaps we should start one by giving legislators incentives for each intelligent proposal they come up with.
(Peter Stern, a former director of information services, university professor and public school administrator, is a disabled Vietnam veteran who lives in Driftwood.)
