If I hear one more teacher ask if climate surveys impact their pay under TEI, I'm going to call a poorly attended press conference on the matter. Where is this coming from? Principals walking around to PLC's saying that climate surveys "aren't for airing out [the campus'] dirty laundry" and that "[climate surveys] affect our pay." Is that true?
The answer? NO!
As a teacher, your TEI scores are not impacted by pay; however, your principal does feel the sting of a poor climate survey.
I know, could this just be a rumor? If I hadn't heard this principal on multiple occasions, some blogged about here, make things up, I'd check a few more sources. I'm a blogger, not an investigative journalist. I'll leave that to the pros like Tawnell.
What I did check on was my TEI knowledge. I reached out to a few people that know it way better than I to so that I could ease some of the fears floating around this evening. Climate surveys don't impact the pay of teachers.
This doesn't just upset me because it's dishonest. Everyone lies. We'll talk about why principals lie in the morning.
It upsets me because when principals do this, they are clearly bullying and taking advantage of people that aren't paying close enough attention to the details of these complex systems.
It's cowardly and it's mean. Teachers can't dig into this stuff because they're busy helping kids. Show some compassion and some respect.
Benefit of the doubt - I understand that some administrators are poorly informed too. Even if that's true and it isn't the intentional spread of misinformation, it's still using this "we're all in it together" sentiment to strong arm teachers into cooking the books for you. You're still in the position of power even when you're smiling with your arm around them. Not nice.