The Manhattan Beach Unified School District and the Manhattan Beach Unified Teachers Association agreed to a tentative system of teacher evaluation this past October. Since then, the groups have made strides toward a merit-based system within the district, but as this new pilot program continues to be tested at Mira Costa, the system should use incentives to encourage exceptional teaching through positive reinforcement, as done in other districts.
The current pilot program within MBUSD evaluates teachers on six MBUSD Teaching Standards that are mandatory for all non-tenured teachers in the district. The standards range from having knowledge of the subject to being driven toward constant professional development. The evaluations are based off regular observations of class time by administrators.
MBUSD should consider a system in which bonus pay and peer evaluation are both readily available and used, similar to steps made by other districts.
Bonus pay is not always a wise component to include in teacher assessment systems, but with the passage of Proposition 30, more money could be allotted toward this system. In this scenario, teachers would receive bonus pay, potentially a salary raise of $5,000 annually, for instructing in “hard-to-teach” subjects, which would vary based on school needs, and also a similar reward for improving test results.
Merit-based pay systems have traditionally received fervent opposition from unions, but concessions, such as a peer-based evaluation system, would help facilitate a compromise. Such an agreement was reached in the Newark School District, in which the union passed by an overwhelming majority a merit-based pay system that was contingent upon veteran teachers, rather than administrators, assessing other teachers. Part of the reason this was able to pass was because standardized tests play a smaller role in evaluations, a prime example of a concession made to teachers to make the agreement more feasible.
The current pilot program allows tenured teachers to volunteer for being reviewed but gives no incentive to do so. If tenured teachers were offered to attain merit-based pay raises that were contingent on going through the evaluation process, MBUSD would kill two birds with one stone: this progressive, rewarding system would draw talented teachers to the district, as well as attempt to bring ineffective educators up to speed with their peers. Newark’s system still requires tenured teachers to be evaluated but less often than their non-tenured counterparts. The middle ground they reached eases the burden on tenured teachers but still holds them more accountable than the current MBUSD system of teacher evaluation.
If teachers were unable to improve, even with attempted instruction from peers, a committee consisting of half administrators and half teachers would then vote on how to proceed. MBUSD and MBUTA are in the beginning process of a program that will clearly take years to polish. With more substantive incentives for both sides of the debate, the district would be able to achieve a cohesive, agreeable program that would be more exact and less arbitrary in evaluating teachers. An evaluation program such as this should be considered as the union and district continue to move forward with this pilot program.
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