Supporting Teacher Talent
Research by Public Agenda and Learning Point Associates examining the views of Generation Y teachers shows that 71 percent are open to financial incentives for teachers who consistently work harder and put in more time and effort, with 25 percent "strongly" favoring such measures.
At the same time, only ten percent say student performance on standardized tests would be an "excellent" measure of teacher success.
The findings, which include an exploration of attitudes toward unions, are part of a national study designed to provide a comprehensive and nuanced look at the question of whether different generations bring different aspirations, concerns and perspectives to teaching.
Supporting Teacher Talent: The View From Generation Y is the second in a series of three reports funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Joyce Foundation.
Check out the other reports in this series: Part I, Teaching For A Living: How Teachers See The Profession Today, and Part III, Convergence And Contradictions In Teachers' Perceptions Of Policy Reform Ideas.
Is there evidence that teacher "talent" (“performance”, “intellect”, “motivation” or whatever vague metric you want to use) has declined or become more erratically distributed over the last century? Would providing teachers incomes that are a significant percentage of the incomes of Wall Street traders make a difference to student learning? While the Education profession has not attracted the best and the brightest in the population it is not clear to me that programs that seek to do so or at least financially reward “talent” will make a difference.
Could it be that the failures of American Education are more the result of changes in American society? In the 1950s and 1960, for example, when America was striving to compete with the USSR militarily, technologically, scientifically and culturally intellectual interest in each of these areas was encouraged and funded. Kids were given chemistry, electronic and erector sets as toys not Legos and action computer games with mindless themes. I remember going to the chemical supply houses to buy chemicals, glassware (beakers, test tubes, flasks, etc.) and other equipment to conduct experiments as well as making bombs for which nowadays a kid would be put in prison. Bill Hewlett of Hewlett Packard grew up doing the same thing including making rockets.
The shift from a manufacturing economy to a consumer economy paralleled a shift in status from what you invented, were interested in or made to what you consume. As kids have become the targets of all manner of consumer goods companies their intellectual interests have been subverted or perverted. Distractions have multiplied. For example, cell phones, Twitter and FaceBook are not only bottomless distractions that can consume a kid’s waking hours they are addictions that impede successful Education. Nel Noddings, the philosopher of Education (and education) points out that kids need caring to learn and develop as moral human beings yet that is precisely what American society based as it is on corrosive individualism, social Darwinism and market fundamentalism discounts.
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