Teacher Pay and Student Test Scores

* Re “Tie Teacher Pay to Student Performance,” Commentary, March 30: When it comes to teacher incentive pay, there are winners and losers.

Winners: teachers with “gifted” classes; politicians.

Losers: society--when teachers begin concentrating on teaching the test, rather than the needed 90% that is not testable; teachers who have classes with special-needs students, at-risk students, English-as-a-second-language students or discipline-problem students.

Humans are not blocks of metal that can be easily and consistently machined into any desired shape. Teachers need tools that will help them get the required knowledge into the diverse student body so that the students can become communicating, cooperating and contributing adults. The current problems in the schools reflect the lack of appropriate tools for the teachers.

LARRY SEVERSON

Fountain Valley

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* I agree with the commentary in favor of tying teacher pay to some measure of performance. Indeed, why is it that of all the jobs and occupations out in the world, it seems that only teachers (the self-proclaimed guardians of the next generations) are not rated, evaluated or compensated based on performance--only on tenure, or length of service.

An incompetent teacher who has been pumping out functional illiterates for 20 years is paid more, has more tenure, can pick “choice” assignments and is generally revered by the teachers union more than a one-year teacher who improves student performance.

It just doesn’t add up--which, given the abysmal math performance of students being graduated from California schools, somehow makes an odd sort of sense.

JOHN M. HAYTOL

Newport Beach

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* I am a high school English teacher; my school completed its SAT-9 testing on the same day Thomas Dawson’s commentary was published. Any teacher can tell you that one cannot control the actions of students during standardized testing. One boy in my testing classroom finished a 55-minute math test in 15 minutes. He barely glanced at the problems and merely “bubbled” random guesses to the problems’ answers.

Dawson should explain this to me: How is it possible to tie teachers’ salaries to something over which they have no control?

JOAN SWENSON

Bakersfield