Teachers as Performers and Pay-4-Performance Plans*
Teaching makes teachers into classroom actors. But their classroom performance is thoroughly divorced from the reform du-jour of “Pay-4-Performance.” These schemes call for teachers to be evaluated and paid, in part, on the basis of their students’ test scores. I want to unpack the idea that “good” teaching is, in part, artistic performance and the ways that “Pay-4-Performance” plans strangle that notion.
First, classroom performance. I begin with the two imperatives facing all teachers whether they teach high school physics, middle school social studies, or kindergarten on Cleveland’s East Side or in Beverly Hills: know your subject (the academic role) and know your students (the emotional role). These competing demands upon teachers require both distance from students (the academic role) and closeness to students (the emotional role).
In teaching first graders to read, 9th grade Algebra or Advanced Placement courses, teachers must convey knowledge and cultivate skills of students. Then they have to judge the degree to which students achieve
