In the Moe reading, the author discusses the accountability teachers should have for their teaching. She brings up several ways that would hold teachers to certain standards. One of the examples was having the success of our students affect our pay. This is a ridiculous idea! There are several variables that could affect the achievement of a student that the teacher can not control, so why would it help to reduce our already terrible pay to an even smaller amount? A solid education reform will not be successful until everyone jumps on board for the same program.

Zach, I am with you. I think cutting teachers pay is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard. I think that in order to make reforms that will work, we need to ask the teachers. Teachers know what is going on in their class better than anyone else, so they know what works and what dosen't.

I think that if people really want to reform the jobs of teachers, then first the pay of teachers must be raised, not lowered based on poor performance. A higher pay would, in essence, create more competition so there could be higher standards.

I think it would be an awful idea to decrease pay based on a student's performance because that would lead to a discouraged teacher. If the teacher is only concerned about helping their students in order to get more money, they might not create a strong relationship with them.

I agree with the point that for a reform to be successful it must be from the ideas of fellow teachers. Politicians have no idea what it is like inside a classroom and we give them all the power to decide how to educate! The only experience that some of our representitatives have is in their private schools that their rich parents paid for. Must of them have only visited public school and they get this brief image of what they are like. From this brief image, they feel they can govern the education of the general public.

I agree that pay based on results is not a great idea. In the same thought though, it would give an incentive to some teachers to put that extra work in. Its a sad day when the choices we make are based on money. One way that I think that we can raise performance while raising pay is to have performance based raises. When your students are doing exceptionally well over a period of time you should be rewarded. We as teachers have it drilled into our head that we need to have positive reinforcement, so why should we live to the double standard that is presented there?

I agree with the idea that while decreasing teacher’s salaries because of bad performance is a bad idea, I also agree that teachers should be rewarded for good performance. In many jobs good performance is accompanied by either a pay raise, or a promotion. Because there is no real way for a teacher to be “promotedâ€