This post is in response to a letter written by Mark Stoner who is the outgoing President of the Mehlville School District's Board of Education. Below is the link to his letter.
Although I do not live in the Mehlville School District, I
nonetheless receive their literature. I saw Mark Stoner’s essay on the
consideration of performance pay for teachers in their district. Mr. Stoner
offers no insight to the merits of performance pay. He starts by quoting E.
Lipscome. Who is E. Lipscome? I think he means Ed Lipscomb. Nonetheless, it is
a quote about freedom and individuality. Then Mr. Stoner states that the
antithesis of the individual is socialism. First of all, socialism is a theory of
social and economic organization and the individual is one human being. Thus,
one is not the antithesis of the other. It would serve his point more to use
the word individualism.
Semantics aside, Mr. Stoner’s key point seems to be that
teachers cannot be motivated to do better because there is no incentive built
into the current pay system. I don’t disagree with the idea of incentives but
money is not the only incentive that motivates people. Why would social workers
ever go into the field if money was their only incentive? Moreover, why does
anybody do anything when they are not getting paid for it? There are numerous
sources of motivation and money is one of them but certainly not the only one.
Mr. Stoner’s ends his non informative essay by stating that
performance pay is about giving our students an excellent education. But what
happens when you give a horse water and he doesn’t drink? If I pay the person
who is giving the horse water more money will that cause the horse to drink?
Perhaps, but if not, I have to figure out why the horse won’t drink. In the
end, I may never figure this out no matter how much money you give the person.
This is what happens in school every day. Indeed, it is not
only the job of the educator to provide the student with knowledge on a given
topic, but to also figure out why a student is not learning. There are of
course many reasons for this but one of those reasons is that some students are
not motivated to learn. The reasons for this are also many and varied. One of
those reasons is that individuals in a FREE society make decisions about how
they want to live their life. Sometimes individuals make choices that make it
very difficult for their children to succeed. This is unfortunate but this is
the reality of INDIVIDUAL choice.
You could try and teach me all you want about your personal
views of freedom and the individual but just as this letter will fall on deaf
ears, so too will your views. The same is true with any dissemination of
information. Why can’t everybody understand Shakespeare, computer programming,
or car maintenance? In fact, in schools the ability and interest levels of
individuals are varied yet our educational premise is that everyone must learn
the same things at the same times. This sounds like socialism to me. Yes, the
very concept of everyone learning the same thing at the same time seems to me a
very socialistic idea. Why not let students who are excelling faster than
another student move ahead? Why do schools continue to promote students who
have not achieved their grade level reading goals? It is commonly known as
“social promotion.” One must stay with their age “group.” In fact, the very
idea of school spirit is socialistic. You are not an individual you are a
Panther or a Flyer. How many times have you heard someone say “be a team
player”?
If individual freedom is what you seek then why not do away
with mandatory school attendance? After all, why should the government tell me
what to do in regard to my child’s education? Shouldn’t the decision to educate
or not educate my child be my choice? If you say no to this then you are
thinking like a socialist which is to say that you think that our collective
good makes it necessary to force someone to do as the group does.
The whole idea of educating the masses serves both our
individual and collective good. So, Mr. Stoner, why not state definitively what
your point is instead of throwing out loaded words like socialism. These words
only serve to distort the many issues contributing to the state of education in
the United States. I’m sure there are ineffective teachers out there just as I
am sure there are exceptional teachers. I am also sure that rules regarding the
dismissal of an ineffective teacher favor the teacher, but how does performance
pay address this issue?
In the end Mr. Stoner, please put some thought into
your essays and provide your district taxpayers with information that will
allow them to make informed decisions about your district instead of tossing
out words like freedom and socialism which add nothing to your promotion of
performance pay.
