I APPRECIATED Lawrence Harmon’s support for Massachusetts not to dumb down its own high education standards to secure a federal grant (“Not a race to the top for Massachusetts,’’ Op-ed, April 6).
However, I was frustrated by his statement in agreeing with “legitimate weaknesses’’ federal regulators found in Massachusetts’ Race to the Top grant application: “Teachers unions are too quick to resist linking teacher evaluations to student performances in statewide tests.’’
Doesn’t he know that the Massachusetts Teachers Association and many teachers unions, including the Cambridge Teachers Association, of which I am a member, signed on to the state’s application, specifically because we wanted to be part of the conversation? How does that desire to collaborate translate to being “quick to resist’’?
Moreover, I have thought about merit pay often in my career. I reject it in its simplest form, not because I am “quick’’ in my assessment, but because I have yet to find research that supports the claim that it improves student achievement.
How will teachers of non-tested subject areas be rewarded, as they can have a subtle yet powerful impact on student success? Couldn’t merit pay create an insidious incentive to shuttle the most difficult students between classes and schools? Mightn’t it risk eroding effective collaboration if one teacher is perceived as favored in class assignments?
Finding answers to these types of questions is the very reason I voted, along with my union colleagues, to partner with the Massachusetts Department of Education in its grant application.
How ironic that even after we join in the conversation, we are dismissed as resistant.
Julie Craven
Cambridge
The writer teaches seventh- and eighth-grade humanities at the King Open School.
ANDY SMARICK’S “The teacher challenge’’ (Op-ed, April 4), with the subhead “Race to the Top loss gives Mass. a chance to rise to new heights,’’ is the same false sell that education reformers are attempting to market. The ideology of tying teacher jobs to student achievement is a nonsensical recipe for disaster, especially since the number one long-term determinant of student success is parental involvement.
Even education research from the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2008 shows blatant inconsistencies between teacher ratings and student outcome. Massachusetts teachers were given a C-, yet student achievement in Massachusetts was the best in the nation at a B. North Carolina’s teaching profession received a B, yet student achievement for the state was a D+.
As for the two states that won Race to the Top money because they tied teachers to student performance, Tennessee and Delaware both rated teachers higher than Massachusetts, at C and C+, respectively, while student achievement for both states was a D+ and C-, respectively.
Derrick Z. Jackson’s April 3 op-ed column “Bring in the parents’’ had it right. Although excellent teachers matter in classrooms, parents matter more.
Teachers have been used as the convenient scapegoat for way too long.
Anne McGuire
Weymouth
The writer is a former public school teacher.
