Domain IV Rights and Responsibilities
1:10 p.m.- 1:40 p.m.

Elaboration:
Today I ate lunch with my teacher. She was talking to me about the new bills that congress would like to sign to do merit based pay for teachers. She was telling me that although she can see that many teachers aren’t doing what they are supposed to do, there are many good teachers who could also suffer as a result of this bill. Because it is strongly based on administrators and principals’ evaluations, this could become very biased. Also, she said that even now, if an administrator observes them, they are told exactly when they are coming to observe them.

Analysis:
There are many good and bad teachers in the world. Some teachers do very little to help their students, while other work very hard. It is very difficult to have an accurate picture of what a teacher does by just having one preplanned observation. I believe that it is the teacher’s responsibility to consistently teach developmentally appropriate material to children. I also believe teachers who do this should be protected, regardless of how their students perform on standardized testing. You can choose the most wonderful teacher in the world and you will still see a huge difference between gifted children and those who are at risk when they are tested. It doesn’t seem that this is a fair way to decide which teachers are truly doing their jobs.