MCEA Members for Reform- Voices of Teachers

In an effort to raise awareness and influence the conversation on performance based pay in Montgomery County Public Schools, I am starting a new series.   In these posts, MCEA members will voice their thoughts on evaluation reform.
The first contributor  is a social studies reource teacher and member of MCEA.

It’s broke. Let’s fix it! American students consistently lag behind their counterparts in other industrialized countries. The current American education model is not working. As educators, we can point fingers at a number of variables—bad parenting, bad administrators, poverty, the achievement gap, a “dumb is cute” culture, effect of technology on attention spans and literacy, No Child Left Behind, etc. Or we can be part of the solution to overcome these challenges and increase the quality of education our children receive. Our children deserve a fresh approach. We deserve to be compensated based on effort and growth, not to achieve some silly 100% metric, but to improve the quality of education for ALL students. We’re generally hard-working professionals. We’re not immune to accountability, high standards, and professional development. Professional growth must be incentivized. We need an evaluation and compensation system that rewards and promotes hard work. Yes, we should proceed with caution as reform is research and implemented. But the solution is not to reject any change to the status quo. A carefully designed and implemented system can benefit both children and educators.


-Joe Sangillo