Merit Pay For Teachers

Merit pay is a touchy subject in education circles. This comment (to a post at Joanne's site) points out so many of the thorny issues besides simply "knowing" who's a good teacher and who isn't.

Rough Day For Education Unions!

As Chancellor (superintendent) of the DC Public Schools, Michelle Rhee has a difficult job. Type her last name into the search box at the top of the page to read what I've previously written about her and about my respect for her.

Then read this story:

So far, Rhee has streamlined Washington's central office by firing nearly 100 employees. She dismissed 36 principals she considered ineffective, including one at the elementary school her two daughters attend. She also sent termination letters this summer to 750 teachers and teacher's aides who missed a certification deadline...

By soliciting donations from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other groups, Rhee wants to make Washington's teachers among the nation's best-paid with salaries that could reach $131,000.

However, teachers would have to give up seniority and spend a year on probation, exposing them to the possibility of being fired.

Weingarten, whose national organization includes the D.C. teachers' union, said there's nothing inherently wrong with pay-for-performance plans. But she doesn't believe they should be based on standardized test scores _ something Rhee has indicated she supports. Negotiations with the union are ongoing.

So while Chancellor Rhee is kicking butt and taking names, we have the president of the American Federation of Teachers admitting that there's "nothing inherently wrong with pay-for-performance plans".

If that isn't enough to put a smile on your face, Mickey Kaus at Slate (not a conservative publication by any stretch) points out that some prominent Democrats are badmouthing teachers unions! But wait, it gets better:

The party would "have to admit as Democrats we have been wrong on education." Loud applause!

Gotta love that. There may be hope after all.

Update, 8/26/08: It just gets better.

American Federation of Teachers’ President Randi Weingarten told me today she is “really pissed” about the anti-union bent of yesterday’s Education Equality Project event.

While the Democratic National Convention here in Denver is supposed to be about uniting the party, Weingarten said that yesterday’s “Ed Challenge for Change” forum, sponsored by the Democrats for Education Reform, and a press conference before promoting the Education Equality Project, was more about creating division than showing leadership on school reform.

Nothing like admitting your union is an arm of the Democrat.

By the way, Randi: as my grandmother used to say, "It's better to be pissed off than pissed on." She really used to say that!

Excellent Teachers

Here's a Time Magazine article that touches on excellent teachers and merit pay.

Merit Pay

A few days ago I linked to this suggestion about merit pay. Tonight I link to this one. The author doesn't pull many punches, either.

Merit pay, or any system thereof, is not an end onto itself. It must be a means to the type of ends that will improve our schools and systems. We do this not because teachers get so little after giving so much (awww...) but because the principle behind this particular reform take us to all kinds of places public education needs to go in order to survive.

Merit Pay and Student Evaluations

Sure, there are flaws in this system--there are flaws in any system. But this idea is certainly novel.

I propose instead that institutions should empower graduating seniors to reward teaching excellence. Colleges should do this by giving each graduating senior $1,000 to distribute among their faculty. Colleges should have graduates use a computer program to distribute their allocations anonymously.

Be sure to read the comments, too, as they've probably already addressed many of the pros and cons of this topic.

A Bad Merit Pay Plan In NYC?

This author evidently thinks so, and he'll tell you why.

New York City Teachers Approve Merit Pay

Read about it here, with a top o' the hat to NewsAlert.

Has anyone read how the Denver merit pay program is working?

Update: Here's EIA's take.

NEA--Making Teachers Look Bad Again

Massa Reg went to Iowa and said some stupid things. Here's my favorite of the bunch:

"Pay for performance has nothing to do with student achievement," said Weaver, a middle school science teacher from Harvey, Ill.

Think about that for a moment. Think long and hard. Relish the idiocy of that remark.

There were some others, and fortunately one of the online comments at the end of the article called him on it:

"We'll think about pay for performance if the president and Congress are paid for their performance"

was countered with

" The Congress and the President can be voted out of office. How many years does it take to fire a bad teacher thanks to your crappy union? "

Besides, don't you love the Congress now that it's run by so-called Friends of Education? And if Clinton gets elected, what will you say then?

This man isn't fit to lead a Girl Scout parade, yet he's the president of the largest union in America. He's legally entitled to the money of millions of teachers who don't want him to have it, but cannot be teachers unless they pay him. This is legalized extortion, and it must stop.

Obama Supports Merit Pay

So Barack Obama supports merit pay.

Hillary Clinton is the accepted front-runner for the Democratic ticket, but Obama raised significantly more campaign money than Clinton last quarter. I have no way of knowing if Obama is sincere in his merit pay proposal, but could it be more than just a coincidence that he's swinging a bit to the right here in order to try to pick up some moderates and fence-sitters? After all, he has nothing to fear in such a move--if he were to become the party nominee, the NEA would support him no matter what. They've given Nancy Pelosi their 2007 Friend of Education Award, and have never supported a Republican for president (and they've been stumping for Presidents since Carter). They support candidates who send their own children to private schools, so why not someone who supports merit pay? It's not like a federal merit pay system would ever become law anyway--how could it?--so it's an easy point in Obama's favor with some voters, a point he'll never have to make good on.

The only way the NEA wouldn't support a Democrat for president is if that candidate were to be anti-union or if he/she were to support "right to work" laws. Otherwise, the NEA is an easy endorsement--just put a "D" after your name. Had President Bush said the same thing as Obama, he'd have been crucified by the NEA and the press.

This is a smart political move for Obama.

Update: EIA has more details on Obama's statement.

Merit Pay For Teachers

Joanne (see blogroll at left) has a post about a University of Florida study on merit pay, and for the conclusions drawn I can only say "duh."

Really, what did they expect to find?

Governor Schwarzenegger's Merit Pay and Tenure Proposals

While I don't know of any teacher who thinks of him/herself as a below-average teacher, about half of all teachers outside of Lake Wobegon are below average. Is that bad? Even if every teacher were Superteacher, there still would be some Superteachers who were not as good as other Superteachers. This is what happens when you use norm-referenced criteria--someone is always on the bottom.

The question should be: is a teacher competent? If a teacher is competent, but not as good as Superteacher, that teacher should still be able to teach. Not every wide receiver in the NFL is as good as Jerry Rice (used to be), but there are certainly other wide receivers worthy of an NFL job. I have no doubt some airline pilots are better than others, but given their frequent evaluations I'm sure they're all competent. Not every choir is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but plenty of choirs hock their cd's on infomercials, so they must be good at singing.

The question becomes, how do we determine if a teacher is competent or not? And then, how do we determine if a teacher is really a Superteacher and thus reward him/her with merit pay?

Governor Schwarzenegger is backing some proposals to initiate merit pay and increase the number of years, from 2 to 5, for a district to grant tenure to a teacher. You can read the Sacramento Bee blogger's takes on those proposals here, here, and here. Said blogger, Dan Weintraub, usually has his head screwed on straight when it comes to education issues. I think he's pretty much got it right in these cases as well.

I support merit pay. I'm not convinced I'm Superteacher, although I do try, but I'd like to think there would be a financial payoff for becoming Superteacher in addition to just the psychological benefit of a job well done. Of course there are problems with certain merit pay proposals, and I discussed the subject of merit pay here.

I don't understand the governor's tenure proposal, though. Why should it take 5 years before a school district determines that a teacher is incompetent? Is it not better to make this determination in the first 2 years, rather than let 5 years' worth of students get a substandard education? What is truly accomplished by not granting tenure after 2 years?

Let me be clear here. I'm all about competence testing. In fact, I had to pass 2 fairly rigorous, and 1 not-so-rigorous, tests to become a math teacher. Of course, that was after passing the at-most-8th-grade-level California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST), which doesn't test educational skills as much as it tests if you have a junior high knowledge of math, reading comprehension, and written communication. Had I received my Bachelor of Science in math here in California, instead of at West Point in New York, I would not have had to take the 3 subject matter competency tests mentioned above. Seemed a bit odd and unfair to me; every prospective teacher should take subject matter competency tests. That would establish a level of competence in the classroom; I'm not sure how you'd go about testing the ability to convey knowledge, the essence of teaching, without some kind of value-added study. Something like that would have to be worked out.

So what is the governor trying to accomplish with his tenure proposal? There's no doubt he's after the California Teachers Association (CTA), and rightfully so. I've addressed the CTA in this blog so many times that I won't even link back to the posts here, but you can find posts about the CTA in each of the monthly archives listed in the left column. I think that with this proposal, Governor Schwarzenegger has missed his target--he aimed for the union, but got the teachers instead. Making enemies of teachers not only isn't smart politically, it's just plain not smart. Teachers aren't necessarily the problem. Teachers don't determine if they themselves are competent, teachers often don't get input on curriculum, teachers often lack the authority to truly deal with students who disrupt the learning of an entire class. A teacher will try to teach, however, if the state credentials them and a school administration doesn't tell them they're doing anything wrong. Fix the kinks in the licensing program and actually expect administrators to evaluate their newest teachers, and not within 5 years. Give substandard teachers the opportunity to improve their craft. There will of course have to be some due process in place, but let's not make it so difficult to identify a truly substandard teacher (as opposed to a competent teacher who isn't Superteacher) and remove that substandard teacher.

Remember, as nice as it would be for every teacher to be Superteacher, that's just not realistic. Nor is it reasonable. But it's entirely realistic and reasonable to expect every teacher to be competent.

I don't see how the governor's tenure proposal accomplishes that goal.

Merit Pay

I wrote the following for the May 2000 issue of my union newsletter, but given Governor Schwarzenegger's recent comments it's rather timely.

*****

We've all heard about the concept of merit pay. In fact, there are some pretty strong voices on either side of the "do we or don't we" debate. What's wrong with the idea? Well, there's not as much wrong with it as some would have you believe.

On its face merit pay seems like a good idea--reward good teachers. Look a little deeper and you might get concerned. You might even hear some of the arguments against merit pay: present teachers can't control what students have or have not learned in the past, students should not be able to dictate a teacher's pay, etc. Look even deeper and you may find something sinister, and for these ideas I borrow from the CTA President's column in the December 1999 California Educator magazine: "it insults teachers and ignores the real causes for students' difficulties in measuring up," "it will deflect pressure for a real increase in teacher salaries," it would cause teachers "to refuse basic math and special education classes," and it "will hurt teacher morale and promote subservience to administration." In fact, the CTA President even goes on to say, "I hope not one teacher or one association in California will even contemplate any merit pay proposal."

I grant that certain simple ideas of merit pay have irreparable flaws. Merit pay based solely on administrators' recommendations is not a good idea. Merit pay based solely on student performance on standardized tests is not a good idea--in fact, it's illegal. But isn't there some way we could objectively identify those outstanding teachers who are working wonders for students, and reward those teachers? Just as a starting point for discussion, what if we looked at student improvement over the course of a school year instead of just student grade-level performance?

I'm concerned that as professionals we seem to feel we cannot be objectively evaluated. Additionally, I worry that we seem to feel that we're not at all responsible for student learning. If we have no impact at all, then perhaps we truly do deserve the slings and arrows that have come our way of late. But if we do have an impact, then let's work together to find out how to identify the best among us, learn from these people, and ensure they're rewarded for their work!

Again I quote the CTA President: "Does anyone really believe that any single classroom teacher is actually responsible for how well or poorly these children do on a standardized test?" Such cynicism is not worthy of the $53 a month we pay to CTA. We deserve better.
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Joanne has more on merit pay on her blog at http://www.joannejacobs.com/mtarchives/014790.html