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House Education vice chair: Votes not there for merit pay framework bill

12:41 pm April 28, 2010, by Maureen Downey

I just spoke to the vice chairman of the House Education Committee about the chances that the merit pay framework bill — my name for Senate Bill 521, not the governor’s — will pass on the final day of the Legislature tomorrow.

“The votes aren’t there to pass it,” said state Rep. Fran Millar, speaking on the phone from New York. “It is not going to pass this year.”

To update you on this fast-moving story: Gov. Sonny Perdue could not get a pure merit bill through the Legislature, but wanted to show the federal government that Georgia was at least warming to a system that used student performance/scores to assess and pay teachers.

The White House wants states to adopt performance-based pay, believing that it spurs higher student achievement, and has made merit pay a consideration to win a Race to the Top education reform grant.  Georgia did not win the $400 million grant it sought in the first round of Race to the Top, coming in third after the two winning states of Delaware and Tennessee. Georgia is now redoubling its efforts in this final round, believing the grant would be a boon to schools in the state and to reforms already under way in our schools.

Last week, Perdue successfully added a diluted merit element to another education bill on dual enrollment. Under the Perdue amendment, teachers would be evaluated in part of how well their students perform but their pay would not directly be affected. Teachers saw the amendment as a conduit to merit pay down the line and protested the measure.

It appears that their protests have paid off or at least made the General Assembly wary of the amendment.

While he doubts the amendment will succeed tomorrow, Millar said that teachers have to accept that student performance will eventually become part of their evaluations. “I do think we are going to go in that direction,” he said. “But it’s in its infancy now.”

Please keep in mind that with or without this amendment, the 23 systems that have signed onto Georgia’s Race to the Top application have agreed, in essence, to test merit pay. No details on how the merit pay system would work are spelled out in the RTTT application, but merit pay is part of the state’s reform model.

So, while the teacher protest may have stalled the change, I also believe that it is coming and that Georgia teachers ought to grab a seat at the table, even if they have to elbow their way into the discussion.

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Teacher/Learner

April 28th, 2010
5:59 pm

Read Librarian’s comments at the top of the page…she wrote concisely what is at issue.

TELL THEM NO

April 28th, 2010
6:03 pm

SB 521 Returns to the full house floor Thursday in spite of the majority of the House Rules committee voting NO to the amended bill. Rep. Benton proposed to remove Section 4 (merit pathway) and the chair, Rep Bill Hembry, denied the move and just ignored it.
TELL THEM ALL WHAT YOU THINK.

roberta.abdul-salaam@house.ga.gov; staceyabrams@gmail.com; kathyashe@me.com; blackellis@bellsouth.net; tbrooks@legis.state.ga.us; rbruce5347@aol.com; debbie.buckner@house.ga.gov; amy.carter@house.ga.gov; toneycollins95@gmail.com; rickcrawford@bellsouth.net; dee.dawkins-haigler@house.ga.gov; elly.dobbs@house.ga.gov; rondodson@comcast.net; pat.dooley@house.ga.gov; dren16999@aol.com; wdukes_2000@yahoo.com; carl.epps@house.ga.gov; hughfloyd@mindspring.com; vfludd@mindspring.com; gloria.frazier@house.ga.gov; mike.glanton@house.ga.gov; jcraig@statewidehealthcare.com; gerald.greene@house.ga.gov; keith.heard@house.ga.gov; michele.henson@house.ga.gov; segaeducators@gmail.com; wayne.howard@house.ga.gov; carolyn.hugley@house.ga.gov; lynmore.james@house.ga.gov; terry.johnson@house.ga.gov; kevinlevitas@bellsouth.net; ralph@ralphlong.name; repmangham@gmail.com; marinstatehouse@aol.com; barbara.reece@house.ga.gov; rahn.mayo@house.ga.gov; doug@dougmckillip.com; bily.mitchell@house.ga.gov; alisha@alishamorgan.com; mosb7101@hotmail.com; quincy.murphy@house.ga.gov; mmo@mmolaw.com; duboseporter@gmail.com; nikki.randall@house.ga.gov; jay.shaw@house.ga.gov; calvinsmyre@synovus.com; mickey.stephens@gmail.com; pam.stephenson@house.ga.gov; stuckey@mindspring.com; rashadjtaylor@gmail.com; rteilhet@yahoo.com; bwthomas@bellsouth.net; lee.thompson@house.ga.gov; earnest.williams@house.ga.gov

adam

April 28th, 2010
6:05 pm

All the chicken man wanted to do with merit pay was not win fed $$$$ for GA schools but to get even with teachers for his terrible time in school in the 1930s. He also wanted to get $$$$ and funnell it in into his faith based grabage Christian private schools.

adam

April 28th, 2010
6:07 pm

high school students in new jersey walked out of school to protest cuts in their funding by their newly elected Tea bagger governor. The students up there have more of a say in public school education than teachers in GEORGIA !!!!!!!!!

Hank Rearden

April 28th, 2010
6:07 pm

Giving Sonny the keys to GA Education is about like giving the unabomber a mail route.

Attentive Parent

April 28th, 2010
6:14 pm

adam-

Please read the above link.

There’s no reason to envy anyone involved in Newark education.

Those tragic stats are in a system with current funding at about $28,000 per student.

Taxation in NJ is so high that high earners are leaving and taking their businesses with them causing a decline in the tax base but not the overall population.

What would you have Christie do under the circumstances?

catlady

April 28th, 2010
6:47 pm

Let’s give New Jersey the RTTT money! At least give it to the kids! Perhaps they are more in tune than S. Purdue.

Stop THE LIE

April 28th, 2010
6:47 pm

Stop THE LIE that merit pay will pay teachers more. Since merit pay advocates are COMPLETELY SURE that merit pay will improve teaching, why don’t they GUARANTEE more capital outlay for teachers’ salaries?

BECAUSE THEY ARE LYING!

the prof

April 28th, 2010
6:47 pm

Disregard PBM. He is not black and getting quite desperate.

M G

April 28th, 2010
6:52 pm

TELL THEM NO,

It was a voice vote. A request for a roll call vote and a request for a vote by show of hands were both denied by the chair.

catlady

April 28th, 2010
6:57 pm

I am certain that if merit pay becomes law in Georgia, the “base pay” will be “adjusted” to a much lower level, with the carrot dangled that you can “improve” your salary by doing a great job with your students. Then, with a combination of subjective reviews and poorly conceived testing/data analysis, it will (magically) be found that very few teachers “deserve” the merit pay. And in bad years, there will be such a limited amount of money available for the merit pay, that the $200 will shrink to $100. Then, new “requirements” will be put in place to further limit how many will get the ever-shrinking pot of merit money.

School Marm

April 28th, 2010
7:30 pm

@ catlady 6:57 PM You are so right. Does Sonny think we are all idiots to fall for his BS?

Attentive Parent

April 28th, 2010
7:33 pm

Maureen,

I’ve been stuck in the filter quite a while.

Help!

ms teacher

April 28th, 2010
8:58 pm

I will gladly ok my pay being based partially on student performance if these things are made mandatory:

1. parents must attend a conference when requested by their child’s teacher(s)
2. a child must stay for afterschool detention if they do not do their homework
3. a child with low/failing grades must attend before school or after school help sessions prior to a test
4. any child with more than 10 absences excused or not must have a court hearing and their parents be present and held accountable as well
5. any child that disrupts a class repeatedly be removed from class/school and have their parents come pick them up

In return I will:
1. continue to give of my time and my family’s for before and afterschool help sessions (that no one attends)
2. continue to come in before and after school to have parents not show up for conferences
3. continue to contact parents only to hear “I don’t know what to do with him/her”.
4. continue to jump through hoops and design behavior plan after behavior plan in hopes to “modify behavior” when all the kid really needs is a swift kick in the behind
5. continue to support and genuinely help my students day in and day out despite the lack of support and understanding from my administration, county administrators, and tragically, students’ parents

ScienceTeacher671

April 28th, 2010
9:04 pm

The shame of it all is, dual enrollment is a good idea for some students, but the General Assembly may end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The other sad thing is that even if we vote them all out, we’re unlikely to get much improvement with the new batch.

Where are GAE and PAGE?

April 28th, 2010
9:12 pm

Will GAE or PAGE be willing to really, truly support teachers by demanding the things ms suggested be put into legislation?

Or are they too concerned with the burden that might put on their administrative members that they will leave their teachers out on the vine to wither and die?

Teachers are always complaining their voice isn’t heard. But when you let timid voices speak for you, is it any wonder no one respects you?

ScienceTeacher671

April 28th, 2010
9:45 pm

True, GAE and PAGE aren’t doing much for us, but where’s the alternative?

Chalkboard Flu

April 28th, 2010
10:34 pm

Adam,

You are so right. The students in New Jersey cared enough about their teachers to take to the streets. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the right-wingers in Georgia control everything and our education stinks. In the terrible, awful teacher union states, the students support their teachers and people are not going to put up with the stupidity we take for granted. Welcome to the real world, Gov. Christie.

I don’t get why right-wingers get so upset when educators refuse to take them seriously. If they feel so passionate about their ideas for education, they should get qualified and come and join us in the classrooms. There’s nothing stopping them.

Attentive Parent,

You seem to spend a good bit of time on right-wing education blogs. I didn’t know that such things existed, so thanks for enlightening me. I glanced at your latest link. Hirsch is not a right-winger, though many think he is. He has a perspective that is valuable, though it is quite traditional. Many of my colleagues find sympathy with his approach, but I think that such instruction may no longer be the best approach in the age of the net.

I’m highly dubious of the claim that right-wingers want high standards. In my experience, most right-wingers want students trained to be useful workers, not educated to be independent agents. You may truly support high standards, and, if so, I would hope that we could find common ground.

FWIW, I actively supported Obama (of course), and I hate what he’s doing in education. I don’t see much difference from B*sh, though it pains me to say that.

Here’s hoping for some discourse on this blog. Every time I offer to exchange ideas, right-wingers start name-calling and making unsupported claims, but perhaps you truly support a high level of education for all students.

GoodforKids

April 28th, 2010
11:40 pm

Chalkboard Flu,
Me too re: supporting Obama but struggling to find the good in what he and Duncan have thus far proposed. Where are the reasonable voices at the table telling them to RUN from all that NCLB has done to education.
By the way, my first grader took CRCT’s a week or so ago yet she is now engaged in further, copious assessment (bubble tests, lots of items, three mornings worth of testing) in order to determine continuous achievement levels for next year. My third grader will have to endure another round too. When he heard, he asked, “What about CRCT’s? Can’t they use the CRCT to figure that out?” Supposedly all of Fulton does this at the end of the year.
Seriously, when will it stop? Students have been reduced to data points.

Chalkboard Flu

April 28th, 2010
11:53 pm

I’m so sorry your kids are going through all this bubbling. What is the point?

Just a note: tonight at Johns Creek was Sharon Anderson’s last concert with her elementary orchestra. What a sad day. Couldn’t our useless school board have found a way to save the elementary orchestra program? Cindy Loe, there is eternal punishment in your future.

Colin

April 29th, 2010
12:23 am

Kohanim –

lol. If you don’t think the national unions aren’t going to spend truckloads fighting this thing tooth and nail (or any other merit pay proposal anywhere), then you’re sorely mistaken. Anything that makes a teacher’s job even a little less secure will not be tolerated.

“Votes not there” to pass teacher merit pay SB 521 – but teachers should elbow their way into the table « Stop the CRCT Madness!

April 29th, 2010
7:32 am

[...] “Votes not there” to pass teacher merit pay SB 521 – but teachers should elbow their way into the table From Get Schooled by Maureen [...]

octex

April 29th, 2010
8:17 am

Georgia paid 5 million dollars for Carnigie Math series. Students do not take home math books anymore. NO MATH BOOKS?!? And our school computers do not support Carnegie. I feel this state is like 10-15 years in the past from the rest of the country.

Jordan Kohanim

April 29th, 2010
8:32 am

Colin–That is pure conjecture with no evidence.
As for your impact argument, last time I checked, education was a STATE’S right…that is until Sonny panders to the national government enough to garner Race to The Top money. Then, and only then, will your scenario come true.

So in essence, your argument turns in on itself and your scenario only comes true if merit pay is enacted. Like I said, research more and listen to talking heads less.

Attentive Parent

April 29th, 2010
9:02 am

octex-

The idea is that Carnegie Learning has software that caters to the performance tasks in the Instructional Frameworks. In February 2008 Carnegie announced that they would develop a Math 2 edition as soon as Georgia release the math 2 Curriculum Frameworks.

The state uses the math content in the GPS to show places like Fordham that we have “rigorous standards” but what actually goes on in most classrooms in this state is based on the Instructional Frameworks instead. Classic bait and switch.

Why does this matter now still?

Because that seems to be the lesson that Common Core has taken from Georgia and wants to nationalize. Put enough math content language in that desperate reformers will see improvement.

Yet you deliberately include ambiguous language to push the actual implementation away from explicit, sequential, example based math instruction toward an inquiry first, explorational approach that at best highly inefficient.

That’s why the math standards have so many references to “Understand” instead of “perform and illustrate why it works that way”.

It’s no accident that parts of the Common Core math standards are verbatim from Connected Math.

We need to be tackling the current bad ideas in Georgia education, not working through RTT to export them nationally.

Finite public dollars need to be used for effective teachers and effective instruction. We no longer have the money at the federal, state, or local level to throw at bad ideas.

Stupid Questions

April 29th, 2010
11:59 am

If teachers in Georgia are so opposed to RTTT and feel their voices are being ignored, is there a way for them to do an end-run around the RTTT application? Can the teachers in Georgia somehow let the folks making the decision know that they’ve not bought in to the plan? Is the federal government just taking it on faith that the state governments are giving them correct information? Is there someone at the federal level to contact when and if the issue comes up again?

Librarian

April 29th, 2010
1:38 pm

the main component of the UNKNOWN is the evaluation tool- is Classkeys the item we need to be concerned with? Change is coming in order to be a part of any federal ed. funds. IN the RTTT linked above the appendix that lists the methodology for the evaluation tool is not part of the 200 page document. the Appendix in either A11, or A16 or A25. I would like to see those. The outline includes something called Career teachers and Leader teacher and includes some sort of training requirement and added responsibility- so are the colleges who now mandate and train masters, specialistsr and doctorates going to establish these training programs? well that just sounds like new terminology for the same thing we have now.The uncertainty of the researched based evaluation instrument that WILL BE DEVELOPED by a vendor is what upsets most of us. NCLB was never fully funded, QBE reform was never fully funded, RTTT will never be fully funded however all of those programs required/s major change at the Classroom level. I understand the need to write for the RTTT , however I am reticent to stand behind “underfunded progress”- hey we just need enough working computers and projectors and library books to do the basics, and can’t get any funding for those. We have meet AYP 8 years in a row. ( no compensation)We just want to work , get paid on time and the amount promised and have parents support us. Most of us are getting the job done- why fix what isnt broken? Lets just get through this current economic mess with a steady hand on the rudder, pray for smooth seas and stay the course. Until things settle down, please

Valerie

May 11th, 2010
9:11 pm

What about the parents who are working with their children at home, during the summer, to make sure that they stay ahead of the game? Why is it fair that their teachers are getting extra pay for something they did not do. What about the teachers who work in the urban schools who have no control over the fact that their school district engage in social promotion and those teachers have students in the eighth grade that are reading on a third grade level who will not pass the test

Georgia Teacher

July 17th, 2010
2:50 pm

I am a high school teacher in Georgia and would love merit pay only if the entire U.S. Government took merit pay also. Lets tie merit pay to every Congressmen, Justice, and the President to say… the overall job they do in this country. We as the voting population will rate their successes and determine whether or not they should take home more money or less. Also, we should ensure that the only money these politicians earn is from their work as a politician… Not from handouts from every interest group possible! Then I will have no problem with merit pay…
Hey if its good for teachers then why not politicians?

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