more in the new contract we were about to negotiate. We were prepared for that... Everyone knew how much the cost of living had increased. We might be able to hold the line at that number, but if we had to go over it just a little, we could live with that. But if we did, I argued, we ought to find some money for incentives – some way to reward good work, especially by young teachers... and perhaps even light a fire under some of the older teachers who were just coasting, waiting for the next summer seminar while they piled up longevity points. I did some research and reached out to some think tanks, where I was told, essentially, “Good luck and where do you want the body shipped?” So the plain fact was, good teachers who were young and lacking both seniority and a long record of attending the summer indoctrinations were being treated unfairly.
We had only a dozen or so teachers in our little school. Everyone in town knew who the good teachers were... also the bad ones. Parents would talk about how a child was having a down year with “Miss _______,” while others would tell you how their child was doing “wonderfully” with “Mrs. ________.” Most, but not all, of our teachers were women, which is – unfortunately, I think – true of most elementary schools. Since teachers’ pay was a matter of public record, it was easy for me to learn that there wasn’t much correlation between performance and pay. An indifferent teacher who had been around a long time earned “step” raises. She was rewarded, in other words, for longevity (which I’ve always considered to be its own reward) and not for performance. That same teacher would be given points (or “steps”) for attending those summer workshops, which were supposed to enhance a teacher’s “professional skills.” In my view, these were classes where the only skill teachers learned was how to speak fluent bureaucratese (than which there is no uglier language). So the plain fact was, good teachers who were young and lacking both seniority and a long record of attending the summer indoctrinations were being treated unfairly. And the only way for them to get a raise was to A) live and teach longer and B) attend more workshops. There was no way they could accelerate their own aging and, as for the summer workshops, it was commonly conceded that no teacher would endure a stretch at one of them if it weren’t for – wait for it – the incentives . The board knew that we would be paying
WHERE COMMON SENSE GOES TO DIE
I found a couple of allies on the school board who were as naively idealistic as I. There were some people in the town who had experience writing contracts in the business world, and a couple of them agreed to help, though they couldn’t manage to conceal their skepticism. We came up with a system (“contraption” might be a better word) that factored in teacher evaluations by our principal, input from parents, in-class observations
American Consequences
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