And in other news, no correlation between CEO pay and company performance.

Of course there is SOME correlation, it is a fact that higher pay attracts higher caliber workers. But, when is increasing pay for specific items starting to get diminishing returns, which I think is a valid question that the Senator asks.

And, why have the legislature try to micromangage schools? Why not challenge Randy Dorn, the districts, and the teachers to improve education, within the existing budget.

"Tom noted teacher salaries are based on time on the job and post-bacheloreate education. He said a study of figures...shows almost no correlation between spending on teachers and graduation rates."

Tom is correct, and that is by the WEA's own design. The teachers, via their union, have fought tooth-and-nail against anything that measures their job performance, especially when it will apply to their salaries. Look at how hard Seattle teachers battled against the MAP tests, which (by their own admission) was only about measuring the progress of their students. That's a BAD thing? There is no real accountability allowed.

For too many people, teaching is just a job with almost guaranteed pay hikes, benefits, a pension and a three-month summer vacation. The kids are nothing more than means to their ends while parents and taxpayers alike are supposed to just accept that without question.

Well, I question it.

You'd question it more if you spent time with more teachers.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in teachers. I also do not believe in unions.

Research has always shown a very high correlation between poverty and student achievement. If we follow Senator Tom's reasoning, why would dentists or doctors want to work with children from impoverished homes? Certainly, they have worse diets and more health problems than kids from more affluent homes. Students who come from more affluent homes enter school with vocabularies that number in the thousands of words. Students from low income homes enter school with a vocabulary of about 600 words. The fact is that some teachers want to work in schools and districts that have high percentages of free and reduced lunches because they see teaching as a calling, and they want to make a difference. I am a National Board Certified teacher working in a elementary school with 80% free and reduced lunches. Do I make an impact? Absolutely. Sometimes my students grow two years and make great gains. However, their home lives affect their learning. If dad is in jail, or mom is strung out on drugs, the emotional base is not there for learning. Tying my salary into factors that I can't control is short-sighted to say the least. Our state legislature supports funding a small National Board Certified Teachers stipend so that we can work in schools that have a high percentage (for elementary schools it is greater than 75%). Research shows that students who cannot read well in 4th grade have a higher incidence of incarceration than those that are readers. Rodney Tom, and others like him, may want to raise the banner of "bad teachers" who are just out for money. However, if teachers were just out for the money, wouldn't most of them be making a mass exodus out of low performing schools? I think the record speaks for itself. As we all know, more and more duties are being placed upon teachers. We not only teach, we counsel students, we feed them, we encourage families to seek medical care. We even counsel parents. In many ways, society is placing the role of raising children on educators. Rather than tying teacher pay to test scores, perhaps our legislature should thank teachers who give so much of themselves with so little respect, trust, and appreciation.

Fine job of critical thinking. Without the ability, or at least its occasional demonstration, citizenship gets reduced to picking the best match between increasingly partisan sides and one's own ill-gathered faith-based opinions. Crosscut is remarkably suited to such occasional demonstrations, long may it live.

Private sector strategies, solutions, and sensibilities don't apply in the public sector because all of the private sector thinking is predicated on the profit motive, which is absent from the public sector.

All teachers, regardless of their skills, provide exactly the same amount of economic value to the school district - they lead one class. Whether they do it well or poorly doesn't have much of an economic impact on the school. So, according to private sector thinking (used by Senator Tom), all teachers should be paid the same regardless of their experience or training. Sounds good, right?

Only ask yourself this: who would become a teacher if there was no opportunity to progress in salary? Teaching, instead of a career, would become a McJob - like barista - taken by newly graduated college students while they looked for something else, something in their field, something with a career path. Teaching would become de-professionalized as essentially every teacher would be like a Teach for America corps member.

Don't suppose that Senator Tom and other so-called Education Reformers don't know this. It would not be an unintended consequence - it is, in fact, their object. They would like all teachers to earn little more than the current starting pay for teachers. Yes, it will ruin education, but it would save them and their cronies a few dollars on their taxes and it would improve the market for private schools, charter schools, and off-the-shelf educational software. That's their real goal: the privatization of education through the destruction of public education.

Remember that Senator Tom and the other so-called Education Reformers think a lot about putting incentives in the teacher contract, so they are thinking - at times - about what it would take to attract and retain talented teachers. They know how eliminating raises for experience and training would impact the hiring pool. These career steps cannot be replaced with bonuses for effectiveness when the no objective measures of effectiveness have been shown to be meaningful. Graduation rates, used in this example, are not measurably attributable to any individual teacher. How would they measure the graduation rate for a third grade teacher anyway?

I'm usually more annoyed at how feeble and transparent they are than I'm angry at their efforts to erode the institution that made America great.

That's a lot of words to say "I'm a teacher and I want a raise."

Except that I'm not a teacher. Stop trolling.

Yet clearly you are involved. What is your school district role?

@GuiltyBystander, how about you actually try to answer some of those questions. What measure of teacher effectiveness would you propose?

Student test scores? Which teachers? What test score will you use for teachers in non-tested subjects? What evidence do you have that student test scores are, in any way, attributable to the teacher?

If you are going to hold the teacher responsible for a student's test score, then shouldn't the teacher also be granted authority over the factors that contribute to that test score? Shouldn't the teacher have the authority to provide students with the preparation and support they need to succeed? And shouldn't the teachers also have access to the funding necessary to provide that preparation and support?

Without this authority and funding, teachers can hardly be held responsible (or, in your words, accountable) for factors outside their control. Who would take that job? Would you take a job in which your performance review was determined by roulette wheel? Would you make a career of it? No reasonable person would.

@GuiltyBystander: "Look at how hard Seattle teachers battled against the MAP tests, which (by their own admission) was only about measuring the progress of their students."

That simply isn't true. The big complaint that I heard coming out of Garfield and the other schools was about the amount of time required for the MAP, which when piled on top of time for the other testing required was quickly becoming a large plurality of the time allowed in a year.

The Seattle Education Association contract is a model for how unions can take a reformist lead on issues like this. To the point: http://neatoday.org/2010/10/20/seattle-creates-a-new-model-of-teacher-accountability/

Rodney Tom lives in a dream world. He is still imagining that his "majority" listens to him.

I agree with RT, and I am a retired teacher. You could suddenly pay every teacher a million dollars a month, and that wouldn't guarantee more effective teaching. That pay might make it more competitive on who got the job in the future, but department chairs have already been overwhelmed with applications so I believe the change would be minimal.The educational process is a barometer of the health of a society; fill classrooms with uneducable students and consequently mandate the teaching process and you have disastrous results, similar to what we are now experiencing.

Thank you for your candor.

"fill classrooms with uneducable students and consequently mandate the teaching process and you have disastrous results, similar to what we are now experiencing."

Breakdown of society?

Or, should schools be refusing more students?

Dan Pink pointed out in his book "Drive" that compensation is not the primary motivator for people who do creative work. The key motivators for creative people are (1) autonomy--train them well and trust them to do their jobs; (2) mastery--the desire to continuously get better at what they do; and (3) purpose--to have a sense that they are making a difference, that they are making the world a better place. If that doesn't describe the characteristics of the people we want teaching our kids, what does? Pink also points out that while creative types are not primarily motivated by the money, they perform best when they are paid well enough that they don't have to worry about it. In other words, paid like professionals in any other field.

So the question I would put to Tom and to others who are sympathetic to his point of view is this: What kind of people do you want teaching our kids? Do you want poorly trained, low-paid babysitters, or do you want talented, creative, spirited professionals?

Tom is right only in this sense: In the short run giving existing teachers a bump in their pay will have little short-term effect, but what kind of effect will it have in the long run? We have very good teachers in our schools now, but the Tom logic about teacher pay will drive the best ones out and make teaching so unattractive for the kind of people we want to attract into the profession that it can only have a long-term degrading effect on our kids' education. That's just common sense.

Thank you. I agree that intrinsic motivation goes beyond money. I plan to read the book Drive. Education will suffer if teachers are subject to oppressive and capricious evaluation.

Thank you. May I add, we could resolve many of our social illnesses by simply raising income and wealth from the bottom up. When students, their parents, our nieces and nephews, and grandkids see the value of work and education it will be due to our efforts being rewarded. I am loathe to quote Reagan so I will paraphrase "The best welfare programe is a WELL PAYING job".

Not only do I want talented, creative, spirited professionals, but I want them to be well paid so the best of the best stay in teaching (instead of staying for 4 or 5 years, and moving out), but I also want teachers measured by some performance scale that mirrors private business performance scales.

In sales, if you don't sell, you don't keep your job. In schools, if you don't get kids to achieve, then what? You are retained anyway because your job is too protected.

How does that serve the greater good?

One further thought: American education isn't as bad internationally as the stereotype promotes. See this piece by Linda Darling-Hammond, who, alas, almost chosen as Obama's Sec. of Ed.: http://www.alternet.org/education/teachers-make-handy-scapegoats-spiraling-inequality-really-what-ails-our-education-system

When I was running for school board in 2011, everybody was talking about the "achievement gap" and the pervasive narrative then was to blame teachers and schools for it, to bemoan the cataclysm besetting American public schools and how despite the money we spend our rankings are so low in international testing (they're not--see article above).

And if I pointed out that poverty is at the core of the problem and not teachers and schools, I was told my attitude was rooted in "the soft bigotry of low expectations", that the real reason was that teachers looked at poor kids and didn't have the high expectations that they had for more affluent kids, that education was the way out of poverty, and that the solution was to have an excellent teacher in every classroom. A good propagandist knows how to take a partial truth that resonates with uncritically accepted popular assumptions and then to make it the whole story.

I guess we've been told for so long now that education is the way out of poverty that a lot of Americans have bought this story as applicable for all children everywhere. I'm not going to deconstruct the silliness of this assumption here it here--it's too tedious and obvious to anyone who thinks about for a few minutes. But it has become a commonplace, and still is, that the schools are the problem, and newspaper editorialists across the nation for the last decade and more have ardently supported the so-called "reformers". who have been behind this idea of closing failing schools and replacing them with charters, of blaming teachers and insisting on tying their evaluations to student progress, and of promoting high-stakes standardized testing as a way of improving academic standards.

None of the reformers wants to look at the root cause, which is poverty. All of them are promoting ideas that are driving the good teachers out of teaching because they don't understand the intrinsic motivations that drive all good teachers. They don't understand how they are making things worse--or if they do, they don't care because they have other fish to fry. Coolpapa points to those in his comment above.

Rather than a "2011-2013 state operating budget proposal," I think the author meant 2013-15, along with perhaps a supplemental for the remainder 2011-13. On the other hand, session may stretch until July 1, which would eliminate the need for a supplemental.

Apparently, there is no correlation between legislator pay and legislative achievement, eh?

I agree with that too. Seattle's city council, for example, is tremendously overpaid. Their salaries should be cut by 40%/

I think he is wealthy by marriage. Pay is meaningless.

"Tom noted teacher salaries are based on time on the job and post-bacheloreate education." Does he want to abolish those or just make some adjustments?
Perhaps the post bacheloreate pay bumps shoud be reduced by a third.
Perhaps they should stop paying seniority increases after 15 years.
Perhaps all state wages should be indexed to the cost of living.

Whatever they do, making it more complicated, bureaucratic, and cumbersome is not the answer. Simplify the system.

Mr. Tom's dedication to the conservative Republican tax mantra, along with his need to keep his ducklings in line, leads him to a double-barreled sophistry.

His suggestion that the McCleary decision is about teacher salaries' effect on graduation rates is as obfuscating as trying to relate doctors' income with death rates. Similarly, the implication that graduation rates are a valid measure of an amply funded basic education misses McCleary entirely.

McCleary reminds us that the Legislature defined basic education in ESB 2261 in 2009. The Justices state that funding the needs set forth in 2261 would meet the fiscal requirement for an "ample provision" of education for our children. There is no mention of either teacher compensation or graduation rates. A program that effectively doubled both would not meet the Court's mandate.

Mr. Tom, of course, was silent on his Caucus' proposals for stripping waste from an emaciated budget. Perhaps dumping the 520 bridge?

The Tim-Tom Republicans need to face the legal and moral imperative of public education in this state instead of playing my-money-is-more-important-than-your-kids.

The McCleary decision should be ignored. The Supreme Court has no authority to dictate appropriations.

No one said it did. The Supreme Court is the body that is authorized to determine whether the State is meeting its constitutional mandates -- in this case, adequately funding K-12.

Okay, then let the Supreme Court keep saying it. Who cares? What are they going to do about it?

Funny, it sounds like you are saying ignor the law of the land. A little civics lesson here. There have always been 3 branches of government in this country (since the original Constitution was ratified in 1787)and all state Constitutions are modelled on the federal Constitution (at least since the Civil War period). The Legislative Branch, who's power is derived from the Constitution, writes bills, that if signed or tabled by the Executive become laws. The Executive Branch (Governor in this case), who, in accordance with the powers that are given to him/her by the Constitution, either signs a bill or tables it, which results in the same consequence, is also tasked with executing the laws that are created. The third branch, the Judicial,(and in this case the Supreme Court) who also derives their power from the Constitution, is tasked with interpretting whether or not the laws written are Constitutional or not (legal). In this case the Supreme Court did not find that the current laws are unconstitutional, they found that the current laws, which are constitutional, are not being funded by those that are responsible for funding them (again defined by the Constitution). They have the power to do so (based on the language of the Constitution) so in essence by ignoring them you are by extension, saying ignor all those that are part of the process (which again is saying ignore the Constitution). Not sound logic to me.

Typical condescending, arrogant Seattle "progressive" who assumes (s)he knows everything. How tedious. I'm an undergraduate history major. If you want to examine the tension between branches of government, and particularly between the judiciary and other branches, go have a look at the tiff between Andy Jackson and the U.S. Supreme Court. To wit: "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"

So, I think the legislature should tell the Washington Supreme Court to enforce their meaningless attempt to encroach on legislative power to levy taxes and determine appropriations. I know what I am talking about. Do you?

Of course you won't find a correlation between a teacher's pay and student success. I doubt a correlation could be fabricated from any amount of existing data. This holds true through out private industry as well. I have hired any number of craftsmen over the years that have impressive resumes, but they can't work or think. Talented people with critical thinking skills move towards the greatest level of reward for their efforts. The common denominator here is that if you are the facility that provides consistently high rewards for work, you will attract the most talented / motivated employees. Public education should be considered in the light of this simple fact.

The crux always comes down to how to decide which teacher is a success, and which are "not so much". I think this should come down to the principal, and district supervisors. Perhaps they could be aided by parent volunteers that actually observe and assist teachers in the classoom.

While we are looking for correlations, has anyone looked into state micromanaging and student acheivement?

There no coorelation between Rodney Thom and effective leadership either.

And there is no correlation between Jay Inslee's pledge not to raise taxes and fulfilling that pledge. It was a "progressive" lie from the very moment Inslee made his empty promise.

And Mr. Tom also notes that there is no correlation between a top real estate agents' pay and their skill or ability to actually sell your home.

According to Mr. Tom, "there is no correlation between agent financial achievement and selling a home"

It's the lack of intelligent details that we miss the most.

As a history teacher, veteran, and former and current business owner, I've always found that the best place to start a story is at the beginning so I will tell a condensed version of what I believe is apparently going on here. It begins a decade or more ago, when there was the need for many politians and by extension business lobbiests, to compare the quality of education received in the U.S. with the quality of education of other industrial countries around the world. As a former private sector employee/er I've observed that, the best way to attack a competing corporation or company (in this case public education) is to show it's perceived weaknesses, blow these weaknesses out of proportion and capitalize on the public sentiment in order to manipulate the new market that will be created.

So, some politicians used what they described as "comparable test scores" to illustrate that we (the U.S.) were far behind most other countries in educating our youth. For those of us (non-politicians/lobbiests) that were able to get out and travel to many of these countries and by extension, see the control group of foreign students that were being tested first hand, what politians weren't telling you was that in those countries they were testing what amounted to as a control group. You see, many countries have a tiered learning enviroment. Most students are schooled together in elementary schools but as they progress through the system, those "identified" (another story) are tracked off from the collegebound students to occupational/vocational fields. If I was to interject anything significant, I'd say that this might be a reform worth considering. Those then tested are the students bound for college. So that even if a politician tells you that 100% of the students at the school were tested, they are really telling you that 100% of the remaining college bound students are being tested.

Now on to where this all going. Teachers are compensated very well in these countries where they test better than us (now that we know who is really being tested). Finland, which statistically is the best test taking nation, rates number 1 in the world currently. Teachers make nearly three times as much as beginning teachers in the U.S. and twice as much as a teacher in the U.S. at the top of the scale, based on the national average. So in a manner of speaking, what Tom is saying is true, compensation does not equate to student performance that measures test takers/college bound students, but it does act as a powerful incentive for those remaining in the collegebound track to move on to a career in the education field. In truth, what matters here is manipulating the playing field in student achievement outcomes. Educators make wages similar to doctors and lawyers in Finland (in the $100,000 - 150,000+ range despite what CATO Institute says - remember, I've been there, they represent their base and will report what they want).

Common sense (Oh, if Thomas Paine were still alive today) dictates that if we in society truely want to attract the best of the best in the colleges to teach the future generations in this country, we have to provide a compeditive salary to those that will be teaching or in part a benefit package that defers wage compensation today, for financial security tomorrow to those professionals that are interested in entering the field. At least to cover the student loans that they are paying as a result of always increasing tuition. (Remember education majors are paying the same rate of tuition that doctors, lawyers, engineers are paying in our colleges, but will make considerably less in their occupations). We as a nation need to get out priorities straight.

Tom, instead of attacking the profession that you and many of your fellow collegues pay lip service to before and on election day see as "vital", we need to elevate it in status instead of belittling it.

Senator Tom, the fact of the matter is, (and yes I can back this up statistically) Washington (though we still have a long way to go) is blessed with great teaching. Nationally (which is a truer indicator of comparison since we test everyone including our special education population), among the highest in SAT scores, AP results, historically (yes I mean historically) high graduation rates, and ever increasing literacy/math and science scores, since we are so test driven all the while ranking 42-44th in the nation in teacher compensation, is pretty compelling.

You're a teacher? God help us! Forget about your point of view; didn't anyone teach you how to write, spell, or compose? I am embarrassed for you, not to mention worried that someone so incoherent might actually prepare course materials. You wouldn't have passed my fifth-grade English class! Please, for the sake of your young victims, get your functionally illiterate self to a community college and take a remedial class or three!

You teach / taught 5th grade? Do you provide the same level of critical thinking in your classroom as you do here? I'm sure you inspired many students in your day with a barrage of belittlement.

Part of critical thinking is to know the difference between a fact and an assumption. I never taught fifth or any other grade, and didn't claim to.

NotFan

Really? You can't do better than that? I was going to defend our my college for giving me a bachelors degree in English, but then, after reading your input regarding this article, (and others) I decided, why bother.

It's terrible to object to a semi-literate teacher. Mea culpa.

See, you don't even make sense when you want to. Come back and argue about anything when you have an argument. I hope your going to become more enlightened throughout your education. Perhaps you'll even have a clue about what I'm talking about, with time. I hold out hope for everyone. See you in another blog.

I think it's fair to say that you and I have formed a mutual lack of admiration society.

Historybrave,

Acknowledging that NotFan led the conversation to the level of a bar fight, his pride in his undergraduate superiority warrants challenge. Anyone who uses Andrew Jackson's racist and anti-constitutional response to the Supreme Court's refusal to sanction his "Indian removal" strategy is certainly no scholar. In fact, there is some doubt that Jackson is the source of the "let him enforce it" quote. It's ironic that NF uses the first Democrat President to support his Tea Party sputum, and it is a telling comment on higher education today that he so blithely repudiates the entire concept of tripartite balance of power.

I never claimed to be a scholar. As for Jackson's taunt, apocryphal or otherwise, it's not that I agree with his removal of the Cherokees to Oklahoma. Rather, I mention the incident as a classic example of the limits of any court's power.

Closer to home, the McCleary decision is not just an example of a vast judicial overreach, but also an example of a horribly muddled opinion. The legislature should ignore it, and thereby implicitly dare the Washington Supreme Court to do anything about it. The courts do not have the power to levy taxes or make appropriations, period.

We have a concensus, we didn't consider you a scholar either. However; I at least will give you cudos for stating something here as opposed to denigrating someone elses point.

Is this the usual condescension from an arrogant, smug Seattle "progressive" who's so smart that he/she/it can't even spell kudos or consensus, or use an apostrophe or a semicolon correctly? What's the deal? Did you people flunk elementary English, or are you just too stoned to care?

Anyway, could you hurry up with that tall skinny mocha? I've got places to be. Thanks!

p.s.: I might not ordinarily point out all of these errors, but this is a discussion about education, so it's probably a good idea to at least appear minimally literate.

NotFan

Finally we see an argument and so I will respond and since you we're somewhat civil I will put things in perspective for you. First off this is a blog, had it been something more formal I would have put more effort into my composition skills earlier. So call it what it is, a rough draft.

A little background information here too. Historically, I grew up in a conservative home and have have remained pretty conservative even to this day. Yes, there are Republican teachers. Most of my peers and close friends are Republicans.

I do not live in Seattle. i live in VERY red Eastern Washington.

Next, I do not believe in hand outs. But I do believe that if one is in need, you assist them until they get back on their feet. Hopefully you teach them along the way the skills to be successful so they will not be in need again.

I have a very close friend that is in the Senate and that voted for many of these reforms. He remains my friend because we value our friendship and can put politics aside. Though we are cut from the same mold, we can disagree with one another. One of the traits I've always thought was characteristic of being a Republican was that we are critical of what we hear and question issues when we have concerns relating to them. I am married to a wonderful lady who teaches college, is a Democrat but rationalizes issues very well. We have splendid conversations and I have been swayed on some points as she has also.

As for my literacy, let's just say that it's has rarely been questioned (that's ok, you didn't know). I hold a BA from Central Washington, with a triple major (English, History, Business). I also hold a Masters in Sped from Maryland (with honors)
so let's just leave it at that.

As for my students, I like to teach them how to look at information, check for bias, analyze it, process it and use it to develop their own understanding of it. My AP history students scored well above the national average last year so my approach is working.

Now on to the response I promised. When I cricize Tom, I am taking exception to his argument that you don't get a better product if you don't pay for it. when I owned my small business, my employees made over minimum wage. That didn't guarantee that I would get the best labor but it drove up the level of competition, which allowed me a higher quality labor force. Money did equate to quality in this case, but I understand that public education is a unique situation. Tom's experience outside of the legislature is in business so he knows what I am talking about. He has (i believe, very little experience in teaching and in public education from my point of view). Considering the past four years, and the fact that the legislature has taken 2.6 billion dollars out of a system that was under funded to begin with (I'm not talking teacher salaries here) I wonder why he needs to add reforms in order to put back what they took out, not even counting their under funding before the cuts.

As for your statement before regarding, not listening to the McCleary decision, you were right that the legislature isn't as of yet compelled to follow any decision. However, my argument to this is if checks and balances were not allowed to perform as designed, then what is there to stop abuse in the future?

Jackson didn't stop Georgia from displacing the Cherokees. In hindsight that was tragic. I would like to consider what might have happened he complied with the court's decision? It would be an interesting conversation given the politics of the time.

NotFan

Give me the benefit of the doubt on the last entry. I typed on my iPhone so there will be typos.

BTW In Marbury v Madison the SC established its power of Judicial Review so despite whether or not you agree with their decision they have the power to decide what they did. Remember the decision was not unanimous (7-2) so in your opinion was the entire court muddled in rendering its decision?

Here's an interesting possibility of abuse in reverse. What would happen if all laws challenged in court and appealed were heard and declared unconstitutional?

With all due respect, I can't believe that someone with a Master's in communication from UW would use a misspelling like "bacheloreate." Anyway, it proves his point, since someone from a more expensive private college would spell the word correctly as "baccalaureate."