Julie Bishop looks to America

Despite the frequency of stories over the past few years like U.S. Education Slips In Rankings (CBS Sept. 13, 2005) and despite OECD statistics, one chart from which appears below, Julie Bishop looks to the USA for inspiration in pursuit of the holy grail of performance pay.

Click for full size.

We have so much to learn from that source, don’t we?

See accounts of performance pay in the USA and discussion pro and con in Education World (USA).

Besides coping with resistance from teachers about changing the pay structure, developing and implementing a new system is both time-consuming and expensive for school boards and unions. “There are more costs associated with performance pay; you have to identify performances, measure those, and it is more complicated,” the AFT’s Weil said. “You have to ensure teachers it will be fair and objective; you are trying to make it objective with the many different roles teachers play.”

Advocates of performance pay often say that implementing it will attract more people to the teaching profession and make those in the profession work harder, according to Douglas Harris, an economist with the Progressive Policy Institute, who has been studying performance pay for two years.

“The policies vary based on philosophies,” Harris told Education World. “Like most reform ideas, I think it depends how you do it. If you tie a lot of it to test scores, it’s not viable. It’s hard to determine what a teacher contributes to test scores; there are so many other variables involved with students. Because goals for educators are so complicated, it’s hard to settle on factors. We’re trying to measure teachers’ contributions to learning.”

At the same time, a salary structure with performance pay could benefit the teaching profession, he said. “I think the idea of changing the system is a good one; low salaries keep people out of the profession. We need a little more financial incentive.” Any new system, though, has to be flexible enough to pay teachers more in high-demand subjects, such as mathematics and science, and in hard-to-staff districts, such as urban areas, Harris added. “But salaries seem to be less of an issue in urban areas than working conditions.”

One or two points there that Julie with her Donnelly-ised stars and stripes vision has forgotten to mention.

If Ms Bishop cares to save money she could approach this site and get them to add a recommended pay scale… Whether this happens before the whole kit and kaboodle is sold off to ABC Learning is another matter, I suppose.

## More election comment on Pathetic bully-boy rhetoric from wimps in power on Journalspace. That is what strikes me most about the government running scared from an Opposition with a brain. They can’t handle it…

Later

Mikey is on the case too: Teacher pay, according to gospel of Bishop.

So now teachers’ pay could be decided by students and their parents in the latest plan by the federal education minister to pay teachers based on performance. Yes Minister, let the inmates run the asylum. Why not let criminals decide how much police are paid? Or, god forbid, let the electorate decide the salaries of politicians? …

It does a grumpy old man’s heart good to see this from a student teacher under 21. 🙂