Who Really Pays for Pay for Performance

The new issue of PTK is devoted to pay for performance.

I’m reading my way through “Teacher Pay for Performance? Context, Status, and Direction.”

I was reading during lunch and had to put the article down to prep for my Lit & Lang 11 class. I made copies of a pop quiz I’d be giving them on the two chapters of The Jungle that we listened to and discussed yesterday.

Interestingly enough, this class presented me with a scenario regarding the issue of performance pay.

The quiz for The Jungle, chapters 10-11, was unannounced.

It was not overly difficult (in fact, I included in the directions that if they read the directions all they way through, they would realize they would only have to answer the even questions).

The quiz just hit some of the main ideas we had stopped and talked about yesterday. It also had some basic level questions. In fact, several questions were based right off the questions that they completed on the review guides for each chapter.

While I have not graded them yet, one student turned her quiz in and announced, “Well, I failed that!”

So, am I supposed support any kind of system that bases my pay her quiz?

Never.

Now, I don’t want to simply cop the traditional attitude, “Well, I presented the information. It’s not my fault if they didn’t learn it.”

I did work very hard to try to make this novel relevant to them.

In fact, I decided right away the best way to approach teaching this novel would to take them on a trip from the familiar (their lives) to the strange (the novel) and back to the familiar (our culture and society) again.

I began with an activity that got them thinking about something the things they love about their lives (their toys, their friends, money, homes, and so on). My thought was to get them to see how privileged their lives are (at least compared to the lives of their ancestors and the lives of the people from The Jungle).

At every turn I tried to get them to connect their lives and experiences to the same plight that Jurgis and his family are going through. Though it occurred over a century ago in a world and time we can hardly imagine, the emotions and obstacles the characters face and overcome and the same ones we fight with every day.

I showed several current shows (30 Days episodes on immigration, minimum wage, and outsourcing). I asked them to bring in pictures from magazines or the internet that they think illustrate their ideas of The American Dream. I had them use their iPods to listen to podcasts on the novel. I even had them text me questions and short responses.

This was in addition to traditional practices of stopping at key parts and connecting the events to all the examples from the videos we watched and the responses they made concerning their American dreams.

Yet, despite all this, I still get “Well, I failed that!”

I might have just assigned her to read the novel all on her own and spent my time doing something productive. She certainly wouldn't have gotten anything less out of the unit.

It’s mindless learning. And I don’t know how to stomp it out.

This student did her review guide, yet retained nothing.

So why give the review guide?

She watched the videos, but made no connections between those examples and the novel.

Why watch the videos? Why read the novel?

What point is my class serving her educational life?

Have students just become accustom to the ‘school game’ where they do the routine work and learn nothing? They read the words and let the abstract ideas and meaning slip through their minds like sand through a sieve (hello, Fahrenheit 451?).

What can I do?

I suppose I could - prior to the pop quiz - simply tell them the information that would be on the quiz.

Next, I could have them recite the answers back to me.

Finally, I could give them the quiz on the exact information we just reviewed and that they just recited back to me.

But don’t we already do that on most standardized tests?

I think of a teacher from another school talking about having to review for the upcoming tests and giving out worksheets to review the key skills.

I think of accounts of other teachers having to stop phy ed or languages to review reading, writing, and math to pass the tests.

Well, I’m afraid that approach would really work as well as it now does. Just look at the scores of the high stakes tests and the names of the schools not making AYP to see how wonderful this approach is working.

Do I grade the quizzes and then berate them for doing so poorly?

But is that the best way to model and instill a love for learning in students?

There is no easy answer, which makes this class the most frustrating that I teach.

Even more frustrating: toward the end of the block, students saw that I was correcting their quizzes. Said student came up and asked, “Can I see how bad I failed?”

And pay for performance is justified?

What can you do about an attitude like that? And how do you fix it?