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June 29, 2005
Pawlenty's K-12 education funding proposal
The article I selected was released May 23, 2005 by the Minnesota Department of Education.
This article outlines Governor Pawlenty's proposal for the FY 2006-2007 K-12 education budget. Under his proposal the pudget will increase a total of 11.4% (4.2% in 2006 and 6.9% in 2007).
There is a more contriversial part of his proposal. In addition to the increase in the per pupal formula, his proposal includes a teacher compensation reform called QComp. Under this plan, "schools that agree to pay their teachers based on performance, not just seniority and credits, will be eligible for additional revenue of $260 per student." Schools who elect to adopt QComp will see a total two-year average state funding increase of 14.75.
I choose this article because I wanted to hear what others had to say about the QComp proposal. I have not yet decided where I stand on the issue. At first I liked the idea of paying teachers based on performance. We all know some teachers are better than others, and that the better teachers are not always the ones with the most seniority. However, there were several questions raised in class that made me rethink my position. The first is the question of how to evaluate the teachers. What are the criteria to decide which teachers have better performance? If test scores are used, teachers may only teach for the test. Someone also stated that unlike most private sector areas, there is no paying customer, so customer traffic and satisfaction cannot be used. I will be looking for more details on QComp to see if any of these questions are addressed.
Comments
Ryan, I agree that I don't know quite where I stand on this topic. I think the better teachers should be compensated more --- not just the teachers that decide to stay around forever. But the question is, how do we evaluate the better teachers? I think perhaps in middle school or high school you could survey the students if the questions were developed in a such a way to find out what they learned, not just make it a popularity contest. My daughter, who recently graduated from high school, definitely can tell me, and has, who were the better teachers, and which ones she didn't learn much from.
I don't know about the elementary school teachers. Maybe we would have to survey the parents and maybe do a peer screening.
Posted by: Debbie at June 30, 2005 11:02 AM
There are some holes is this proposal. Without knowing what kind of criteria performance is judged on, it's hard to form an opinion of it. Regardless of performance criteria, I'm concerned that the money will continue to go to those schools in more affluent communities, and the poorer schools won't benefit. Perhaps the govenor should consider a proposal offering incentives to inner city school teachers based on time in their district and other performance based criteria.
Posted by: patti at June 30, 2005 6:07 PM