Most companies motivate and reward employees with bonuses based on excellent job performance. However, educators do not receive the same benefit.
The superintendent of Dallas ISD, Mike Miles, plans to put a performance pay program in play to rid the district of underperforming teachers. This program bases the salary of teachers on how well their students perform.
“If, over time, we professionally develop you and you don’t raise student achievement… or you can’t raise student achievement… or improve the quality of instruction… we can’t have you teaching our kids,” Miles said in a statement to Channel 8 News. “And I’m not going to apologize for that.”
Dallas ISD is very influential on the surrounding districts. Some teachers in Wylie have a different view on the policy as well as the superintendent.
“A business man gets paid based on his profit and that makes sense, but when you transfer it to teachers we have a different product,” History Teacher Chris Bailey said.
Teachers in high school aren’t able to cherry pick their students. Kids with special needs or kids that have high grades are not dispersed evenly.
“Some teachers might have a lot of students in higher classes, other teachers might have a lot of lower-performing students, and so you can’t really control who your students are,” Bailey said.
Superintendent, Dr. David Vinson also doesn’t believe that the Performance Pay Program will work for Dallas ISD. There is no rubric for a performance based salary in the education profession.
“How do you have a performance level if there’s no assessment to evaluate it by? Is a P.E. teacher more important than a physics teacher?” Vinson said.
Kids come to school from all different backgrounds and home lives. It is difficult to level the playing field.
“If the score’s 10 to one and you’re supposed to win the game that’s pretty tough. I have a hard time believing you’re going to find an objective way to measure [performance],” Vinson said.
This new policy will not be coming to Wylie anytime soon. For right now the focus is on the new standardized test, STAAR.
“The state has raised the bar anyway. They’re asking us to raise our expectations two or three fold from what we’ve had before,” Vinson said.
Teachers make the difference in a student’s educations. Dr.Vinson is here to insure that is what’s happening.
“If I can take care of teachers and I can take care of kids, since they are my first two customers, everything else will take care of itself,” Vinson said.
