Rethinking Schools Extra credit

EDSS 530 Rethinking Schools

Creating Democratic Schools (Extra credit)

The article states democratic school culture is the best professional development. It also states very early in the article that it cannot be done with a faculty that is not convinced and involved. Teachers may want to get involved but the habits developed over the years are hard to change. The other conditions for successful endeavor is a positive environment, a small school with small classroom size, ongoing communication and updates, an empowered committee that is flexible in size and in reasoning and a timeless group that supports continuous dialogue, content and social change.
The environment becomes a key factor whether or not the conditions are present for the thoughtful teachers to work collaboratively and openly or encourages resistance, secrecy and sabotage. In creating a democratic school culture, the size of the school is important. It’s hard to turn a giant cruise liner on the ocean, but yet a small power craft is able to turn on a dime. That kind of flexibility is needed to insure the rapid adjustments to change and modifications in a democratic school culture.
The staff’s timepiece has no minutes. They must spend countless hours reviewing and developing issues of behavior, school management, and student-teacher relations. Even a seemingly minor item like wearing hats requires attention, discussions, and a decision. These changes don’t require red tape and time consuming bureaucratic deliberations. Small makes democracy and rethinking schools feasible.


EDSS 530 (Debate over differentiated pay) Extra credit


Having experienced the corporate world with major companies and being in business for one’s self you get different perspectives on compensation plans. Pay for performance or alternative compensation is rapidly becoming a debate in education. My first job was a very good job with an excellent company. The employees were paid a very fair market wage. At the end of the year we were evaluated and a raise was received based on previous year’s performance. The raises were usually from 3-7% of your salary. It became the talk around the company that why break your balls for that extra 2-3 percent. Coast and a at the end of the year your still making a good wage. Some employees can accept that philosophy, others couldn’t.
Is there a parallelism between that job and teaching? Merit pay seems to be a negative in the eyes of progressive teachers and their union activists. Younger teachers struggling can’t run up the career ladder without post graduate degrees could be outstanding teachers and not be paid what they are worth. Of course the opposite is true also, with the statistics and rankings of education in California, most of the teachers are being overpaid. Do results count? Do you link results to test scores? Some say it’s unfair. Are the changes really going to improve the learning curves? Now is a time when teacher retention is a problem and it is hard to attract and retain young teachers who feel the current pay structure is unfair because they have to wait 20 years to catch up to the pay scale of the burned out veteran down the hall. If they move they lose their seniority.
Pay modifications occurred in Florida and was done by politicians and the business community. Based on test scores, 75% of teachers in affluent communities received merit pay, yet only 3% of teachers in low income schools received merit pay. The parallelism here is the corporate world where one salesman has a great territory the other salesman has a schlock territory. That schlock territory will perform because that salesman is motivated to make money and will find a way. Those teachers in the low income areas can perform and should be paid if they find a way (that is what there are paid to do) and no pay if they don’t.
The teachers need to be involved and there are ways to compensate performance. Too many teachers are satisfied with their comfort levels as the employees in my first example and don’t want change. Performance pay structure works in the private sector where unions are not involved