June 24, 2005

Bill Helps Educators Pay Classroom Expenses

As a result of intense lobbying by NEA, a bill was introduced in the House this week that increases from $250 to $400 a tax deduction for educator expenses and broadens the deduction for the first time to include out-of-pocket professional development expenses. Significantly, the "Teacher Tax Relief Act of 2005" (H.R. 2989), sponsored by Congressman Dave Camp (R-MI), also would make the deduction a permanent part of the tax code.

To be eligible, the educator must work at least 900 hours in grades K-12 during a school year. The bill covers teachers, instructors, paraprofessionals, counselors and principals. Among the qualified expenses would be books, lesson materials, flash cards, crayons, computer equipment (including related software and services), supplementary materials used in the classroom, and professional development.

The current educator tax deduction expires this year. It is estimated that every teacher spends on average $443 of her or his own money each year on classroom materials. The bipartisan bill currently has 17 cosponsors.

5-Minute Activist

Urge your Representative to cosponsor the Teacher Tax Relief Act of 2005.

House Education Budget Nears Finish

The House had not finished its work on the education budget as this update was being written, but based on one and half days of debate and votes it appeared that minor improvements were being made, though the budget still will fall well short of meeting the needs of America's children and public schools, might not be as damaging as originally drafted. Credit for lessening the budget's impact goes to NEA members, other educators, parents and others who registered their concerns with their Members of Congress.

Among the noteworthy votes was the approval of an NEA-approved amendment to rescind a proposed cut of $100 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the defeat of an amendment opposed by NEA to add $70 million to President Bush's new merit pay program for teachers. Also defeated was an amendment supported by NEA that would have provided a $50 million increase in state grants for students with disabilities. In a positive development, House budget and education leaders committed to trying to find additional money for Pell Grants when the budget is in conference with the Senate.

The House was expected to finish its work on the budget this afternoon. The Senate will take up its version of the education budget in late July or August.

Missed adding this link to capwiz.com that enables you to contact your Rep.

Why would the NEA oppose cuttin' $100 million that could then be used on education? Also why would the NEA oppose adding more money for teachers' merit pay? 'Tis a puzzlement, eh?

p.s. See, methinks you didn't believe I read these notes...... I've been tryin' to find out 'bout these two things since you first started this thread, but couldn't so I figured I'd just ask.

Teachers in our area spend large amounts of money on supplies- so I sure hope this passes ! They are underpaid to begin with, have normal expenses for transportation, clothing & the like (just as most workers do), but then have to buy their own supplies ? A tax deduction for those supplies would ease the burden a bit. Good for the NEA !

Fly: I may be reading this wrong, but I think the NEA opposed the cuts to Public Broadcasting (understandably). The merit pay thing is very controversial among teachers, as they do not think it is based upon good measures. Kinda like NCLB- a bunch of bunk. But I defer to teachers about whether I am interpreting that correctly.

I'll answer the second question by sharing this with you. Thank you for taking an interest in these issues and asking questions flydangler.
KT

http://www.cta.org/CaliforniaEducator/v9i8/Feature_4.htm

All teachers merit good pay
Teachers are insulted by the governor's contention that they're guilty of "just showing up" in the classroom and that some way of linking teacher pay to student performance is necessary to address the problem.

"I don't know any teachers who 'just show up,'" counters CTA President Barbara E. Kerr. "The teachers I know work extremely hard under very challenging conditions."

The governor's merit pay proposals do nothing to help students learn. Instead, she says, they're merely a way "to divert attention from the fact that he broke his promise to provide adequate and stable funding to our schools."

CTA and the Education Coalition have successfully sidelined legislation - SCAX1 1 by Republican Senator George Runner - containing the governor's merit pay proposal.

As for the merit pay initiative filed by Tony Strickland [School Employment Decisions. Employee Performance], it is still being circulated, but not for the special election. However, it could be dead on arrival, thanks to hastily drafted language that inadvertently eliminates the part of the Education Code that prevents convicted felons, drug users and registered sex offenders from becoming teachers. Instead of helping to attract and keep quality teachers in the state's classrooms, the initiative would actually allow predators into the schools.

The initiative would do that by requiring that all school district employment decisions - hiring, firing, transferring, assigning, promoting, paying, etc. - be based "solely on employee performance as measured annually" and primarily determined by student improvement on standardized tests.

"Standardized tests are not the best way to measure student achievement since not everyone learns at the same pace or in the same way, even those in the same classroom with the same teacher," says Kerr.

California has no system for tracking individual student performance and no way to establish who gets credit for improvement. How well a teacher gets along with his or her administrator might influence the decision more than effective teaching.

In Denver, the school district and teachers union have been designing a performance pay plan for nine years, but are still waiting for voters to approve a $25 million tax increase necessary to fund it. If the same model were applied to California, the estimated cost would be $1.8 billion.

In 2001, California handed out monetary awards to teachers whose schools increased their test scores, but the program was suspended when so many qualified that the state ran out of money to pay for it.

There is no evidence that merit pay leads to improvements in student performance. In fact, merit pay plans do not have a good track record.

Cincinnati's merit play plan, which was adopted in 2000, was voted out by a 95 percent majority two years later. Observers say the plan failed because it was punitive, inconsistent and chronically underfunded.

Educational historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban say most districts that embrace the idea of merit pay drop it after a brief trial. Even though failure has been a persistent pattern, it hasn't prevented officials "from proposing merit pay again and again."

In her article, "Incentives for Teachers: What Motivates, What Matters," published in Educational Administration Quarterly, researcher Susan Moore Johnson concluded that merit pay can change the relationships between teachers and students because poor students can pose a threat to the teacher's ratings and rewards. Performance-based pay might "perversely reward teachers for success with able students, while discouraging efforts with those who make progress more slowly."

"To the best of my knowledge, no controlled scientific study has ever found a long-term enhancement of the quality of work as a result of any incentive system," notes education author and researcher Alfie Kohn in Education Week. "In fact, numerous studies have confirmed that performance on tasks, particularly complex tasks, is generally lower when people are promised a reward for doing them, or for doing them well. As a rule, the more prominent or enticing the reward, the more destructive its effects."

Merit pay plans can divide faculties and set teachers against their administrators, making them inappropriate for organizations like schools that require collaboration and cooperation. In practice, merit pay plans are plagued by inadequate evaluation methods.

Now that the issue of merit pay has resurfaced, teachers and even administrators are fearful of the impact it would have on those who teach in schools with low-income students. One example is the Bassett Unified School District, which has campuses in La Puente and the City of Industry, all of which have been hard hit by budget cuts. At Don Julian Elementary School, teachers are upset at the thought of having their pay linked to their students' test scores.

"It's not fair to have merit pay based on student academic performance," says Linda Rodriguez, a Bassett Teachers Association (BTA) member who puts in long hours. "When you work in an area where the children face more challenges, teachers also face more challenges. And to be told we're not doing our job is ridiculous."

"We have children whose parents are incarcerated or whose parents are working two and three jobs just to survive. They don't have time to help their children with homework or read to them - they are busy providing food and shelter."

At schools like Don Julian, where most of the students are English language learners, teachers figure they'd be at a disadvantage if salary were determined by test scores," says Marion Woodward, a first-grade teacher. "Our school is 96 percent Hispanic and most students are limited English proficient. But they are tested in English. They take a test that they don't understand. Even when they come directly from Mexico, Latin America and South America, we give them the test. We raise them several levels within a year, but they don't become fully proficient in a year's time. It's a process. And it's not fair to put that onus on teachers when it comes to salary."

"It's very upsetting to me to think I might get penalized because my students are poor and don't have the resources that students do in wealthier communities," says Penny Sakuma-Wolf, a fourth-grade teacher at the site. With merit pay in place, "it would definitely be harder to recruit teachers and keep them here."

Bassett schools often serve as a "stepping stone" for new teachers, who leave for better-paying, wealthier districts after they get some experience under their belt, says BTA President Maryellen Daners. "If merit pay were in place, it would be even more difficult to recruit and retain qualified teachers for the students who need them the most."

Even Principal Barbara Boyd is against the idea of merit pay. "It would be terrible to have teachers paid based on student test scores. We have a high rate of transiency here, with students constantly arriving and leaving. Lots of students arrive here with emotional problems. My teachers work hard and come in at the crack of dawn, and many stay until 4 or 5 at night and take work home. They all deserve good pay."

"I invite the governor to come and visit our classrooms," adds Boyd. "I would like him to see how hardworking our teachers are. They aren't in this for the money. They want to help improve the future of these kids. They want each and every kid to be successful. And they are doing everything in their power to accomplish that."

SPG

Thanks Pie and KT for your thoughtful responses, eh?

Methinks I still can't figure why PBS can't find a way to share in the profitability of enterprises that have made so many million$, probably more like billion$ from exposure through them. 'Twould seem the Muppets for instance are now almost a billion $ entity thanks to PBS programs, but I believe have not really shared the wealth. $100 million would be a nice chunk of change to put into education, at least as long as 'twas actually targeted towarded needed areas like mandated special ed that's so woefully underfunded by the feds now.

Also 'twould seem teachers and their unions got folks smart enough to find a way to get merit pay to the best teachers in a meaningful way. Such a program gives others another reason to strive to be the best, eh? Oh well, 'tis evident folks smarter'n me have passed judgement on this.

Noonan, were are you on this?

"Also 'twould seem teachers and their unions got folks smart enough to find a way to get merit pay to the best teachers in a meaningful way. Such a program gives others another reason to strive to be the best, eh? Oh well, 'tis evident folks smarter'n me have passed judgement on this."
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

NO! NO! NO! NO! AND HELL NO!

KT

Really good question, Flydangler, and I think it comes from a big misconception. I read KT's answer and am familiar with Barbara Kerr's letter to educators- it came out in the CTA journal.

But it's more than that. Most 'professions' do not lend themselves to such 'merit' type compensation; having worked on commission- 'merit pay' in its purest form- before becoming a teacher, I know this to be true.

Should a doctor be given 'merit pay' because he keeps his/her patients healthy? Should they be docked pay if they die? How would that affect the gerontologist or oncologist, whose patients have a much higher probability of dying under that specialist's care? What about a policeman or a fireman? Should they be given merit pay for every arrest they make, or for every fire they extinguish?

Each of these professions has something in common with teachers: each has little or no control over the events or the people involved. Some teachers are given AP classes in which every student is expected to go on to college, but does that mean their service is more valuable that the teachers teaching the severely handicapped, most of whom will never be able to function in the modern world? Or the teachers in continuation schools teaching kids rejected from comprehensive schools? Or prison classrooms? How would you determine the merits of these extraordinary circumstances? Is the value of a teacher who inspires a recalcitrant 9th Grader to read and write at their grade level less valuable to society?

Finally, I will tell you this- and I never believed it until I went into teaching- most teachers are not in it for the money! In California, it takes as much to earn a teaching credential as it does to get through law school and pass the bar, yet the average teacher makes about 1/3 the income of a lawyer. In California, a prison guard with a high school diploma starts at a higher income that most first-year teachers. You have to love it for something else, because you'll never get rich.

I am one of those teachers opposed to merit pay. I've been around a long time and have seen a variety of teachers. Most have been working their hearts out to do the best job they could for the children. There have been a few duds along the way, and I would encourage finding a way to get rid of the slackers rather than highlight the best ones by paying them more.

Merit pay encourages a vile kind of competition. The best schools have teachers who are cooperating with one another, encouraging each other and sharing ideas. Merit pay would have teachers hiding away in their rooms keeping their good ideas to themselves.

Teachers are a diverse group as I have learned over the years. We each have our own style and I wouldn't want to change that at all. There are some of us who are shy people and don't perform well when being "watched" by an adult or group of adults. I am one of those. When I am alone with my class I come alive, and we have our own little magical world. When someone walks in, it shuts down until they leave. I have magaged to make it through evaluations and various other visits, but no one but the children have ever seen "me". I have loved this job since the first day I started and still feel a sense of surprise that they pay me to do something I love so much.

I have been "Teacher of the Year" and received several awards over the years, and been nominated for more than I bothered to fill out. The only reason I happened to receive the big one was because, as anyone who has been TOTY knows, you have to fill it out and write all about what you do and your philosopy, etc. It was very embarrassing to do since it was "tooting" your own horn, but had it been based on someone coming in my room then it never would have happened.

In spite of the many years of working late into the night still in the classroom, crunching over the roaches as I picked my way out in the darkness of the empty hallways, for all the time spent in the summers planning, for all the money spent to make things happen that otherwise wouldn't, I never have wanted a dime more than any other teacher. I don't want other teachers compared to me nor to be compared to them. Each teacher has his/her own special gift, just as each child.

Adding to what TiSC says above, I feel that beyond the insane idea of basing my pay on how well my students do, the one of the core problems with NCLB is tying school monies to test scores. (Shoud this be a whole new thread, or is the last NCLB thread still around somewhere?)

We've had many schools around the country (anyone teach in Texas?) where teachers have been fired for helping or encouraging students to cheat on state tests. I can understand the pressures that would drive them to do this.

Heck, based upon my test scores, I would be promoted one year, awarded TotY the following year, and then fired the next. There is so little control we have over how students perform on tests, that I cannot fathom how people can seriously consider and advocate for merit pay, unless they really hate teachers.