You might ask then, why I am against merit pay and
promotions for teachers based on test scores of the children they teach? Simple answer, the control of my client base
is in my control. Teachers don’t have
that some control. Teachers must deal
with whoever is placed in front of them.
If the prospects on my current list will never make a
purchase, I find new prospects to replacement them. If the people that are buying from me can
only spend a small amount of money, I find others that can spend more
money. With some exceptions, if the
geographic area that is my territory is economically depressed, I can move away
from the territory. In short, I find a
client list that will purchase, that can spend lots of money and in a territory
that allows a return. I then build a long
term relationship with them.
Teachers are not able to do that. If the students in the class are not
interested in learning, if they family doesn’t support the children and the
community ignores them at best, the teacher can do a lot of things, but she is
working against the culture. The teacher
has no control over the family life and the community the kids live in. Finally, they only have most of the students
for nine months of the year. A new batch
clears the old out each school year.
Starting over from scratch is a tough thing to do.
It is like working in a factory building cars. The people that work in the factory are
always blamed if the cars are lemons.
But, in many cases, the material that the parts are made from are bad,
the parts will be defective. The worker
assembles the car the best he can, but when the parts are bad, the car will not
run like it should – if at all. Would it
be appropriate to reward the workers that assemble cars made from good parts
but not the workers who worked just as hard but were provided defective parts?Don’t take any of this the wrong way. It is not my intention to let bad teachers off the hook. I worked with schools professionally for six years as a public relations director. There is nothing more frustrating for administrators then teachers that don’t care and do nothing to improve their methods. Administrations work with them for as long as they can, then find ways to get them out of the classroom.
Every teacher should work as hard as they can to get the
interest of the kids they are given and get them to learn. Over 90% of them do just that. But, without the control of the product, you
can’t make judgments about the teacher.
