In a move of incredible cheapness and stunted vision, the school leaders of Tipp City, Ohio, have decided to institute performance based pay. It's a good look at just how ridiculous such a system would be.
Tipp City is a bit north of Dayton and has a population of just under 10K. It used to be named Tippecanoe, and was later Tippecanoe City, but there's another Tippecanoe in Ohio and so Tipp City had its name changed. This was apparently a big deal. Fun fact: Kim Deal of the Pixies is from Tipp City.
The school district actually conducted its own phone survey, and respondents overwhelmingly rated the district's education excellent, and its use of tax dollars good.
But the phone survey also touched on another issue facing Tipp Schools--
Tipp City lost many teachers last year to higher paying jobs and nearly 40% of teachers reported they were looking or planned to look for jobs elsewhere. Do you think this is a very important, somewhat important, or not very important concern?
61.1% of respondents (who were overwhelmingly old and without children in the system, because apparently this phone survey was run during the daytime) rated that a Very Important Concern. It came in behind older schools' lack of modern facilities, and the too-small, run-down sports stadium as an important issue for the district. However, because this is Ohio, a state in which schools must go hat in hand to the voters for everything, the survey also checked on support for raising taxes to pay for holding onto teachers. From this we learn that there's a certain percentage of folks who want teachers to stay-- they just don't want to pay for it personally.
So why are Tipp City schools having a personnel problem? They spend less per pupil than eighteen of the surrounding twenty districts. Their personnel problem might be that the teachers have been frozen on their salary step for four years, and for two of those years they have had no cost-of-living increase, which means two years of real-money pay cuts. Working for Tipps is worse than working for tips.
In fact, things have gotten so bad that Tipp teachers are in the midst of forming a union. Seriously. This is playing well locally:
“I am incensed over the fact that we stand on the precipice of having
a union in this town,” resident Pete Schinaman said. Schinaman is the
co-chair of the levy campaign. He asked the board what could have been
done to prevent the teachers association from forming.
Which brings us back to the merit pay.
This is not merit pay as in "additional pay above your step." This is merit pay as in "we're scrapping the entire pay scale and replacing it with this." The proposal is that teachers rated "accomplished" get a 1% raise. (Yes, that's 1 %, with a 1.) "Skilled" teachers get a .75% raise, and "developing" teachers get a .5%. Some quick math tells us that for someone currently stranded on a $50K pay step, the resulting raise will range from $500 down to $250.
So, still losing real dollars every year. I can't imagine why these teachers felt the need to unionize.
I am not sure on which planet this classifies as "trying to retain talented and capable teachers." I'm pretty sure that it sends a clear message and the message is, "If you're waiting for us to finally reinstate a decent pay program, you can stop waiting and start freshening up that resume."
Meanwhile, while other Ohio superintendents are standing up to the state over high-stakes testing, Tipp City's super has sent out a letter reminding parents that while they can opt out, they really shouldn't because it will have bad consequences for the schools, the community and maybe their child, and if they want to opt out, they'll have to do it in person or by phone. Did I mention that administrators can earn up to 3% raises?
So, good luck to you, Tipp City Exempted Village Schools! You have identified a problem and a need, and you have responded to it with a resounding thud, an idea so small and unhelpful that it seems more like mockery than a real attempt to help your teachers thrive and survive, like leaving a one cent tip for the wait-person instead of stiffing them entirely. I hope you enjoy your new union, but if you're worried about that, don't fret, because teachers will probably be too busy packing to bother joining in the first place.
Showing posts with label Merit Pay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Merit Pay. Show all posts
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Punishing Teachers More Effectively
David Brooks' column praising small miracles made note of a new piece of research from Harvard that argues that while carrots may work better than sticks, the best way to use the carrot is to jam it into the horse's eyeball. (h/t to edushyster for the tip, not the carrot)
Our magic term for the day is "loss aversion," which is a fancy term for "people hate to give stuff up." The paper we'll be looking at is "Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives through Loss Aversion:A Field Experiment" written by Roland G. Fryer, Jr. (Harvard University), Steven D. Levitt (The University of Chicago), John List (The University of Chicago), and Sally Sadoff (University of California San Diego). Let's learn some stuff, shall we?
Intro
Sigh. We know we're in just great shape when we lead with references to the baloneyfied research that "proves" that a measurable improvement in teacher quality creates the same measurable improvement in student achievement as a decrease in class size (the old "we don't need small classes-- just great teachers" research) and follows it up with Chetty's silly "a good teacher means your kid will grow up to make more money" research. And that's just the first paragraph.
In the second, we get the sideways assumption that VAM is a good measure of teacher quality and that unions make it too hard to get rid of bad teachers. In the third, we lament that merit pay hasn't done any good. "Good" of course means "has students with high test scores." Because when people talk about "good teachers," all they're thinking of is students scores on standardized tests. That's all we want from teachers, right?
On this foundation of sand and jello, our intrepid researchers set out to build a mansion of teacher improvitude.
The experiment (oops-- "field test") was performed in Chicago Heights. Teachers were randomly assigned to one of two groups-- either they were in the Gain group, working toward a possible end-of-year bonus, or they were in the Loss group, receiving a bonus up front which they would lose if their students didn't achieve bonus-worthy results. Bonuses for both groups were the same. Additionally, the researchers used the "pay for percentile" method developed by Barlevy and Neal, which is basically a stack and rank system where there are winners and losers. One would think that might have some significant effects on the field test, but apparently we're just going to barrel on assuming that it's a great idea and not a zero-sum dog-eat-dog approach that might shade the effects of a merit pay system.
Their findings were that there was a significant gain in math scores for Loss teachers' students (the significance was between 0.076 and 0.129, so make of that what you will) and, as expected, no significant affect for Gain teachers' students.
To the library
Part two of the paper is the review of the literature. If you're interested in this, you're on your own.
Program details
Chicago Heights is about thirty miles south of Chicago. They have a 98% free and reduced lunch population in elementary and middle school. The program was implemented with the cooperation of both the superintendent and the union. Of 160 teachers, 150 opted in. Maximum possible bonus pay was $8,000.
Working out the assignments of teachers was hard. So hard that apparently the researchers kind of gave up on tracking the reading side of this experiment and focused on the math. This was further complicated in that the design called for some teachers to be up for bonus on their own, while others were bonusing it up in team fashion.
And while the researchers keep saying that the teachers were assigned randomly, it turns out they were re-randomized with an algorithm that kept swapping teachers based on a set of rules until they were best aligned with the selection rules. So, unless I'm missing something, this was kind of like saying, "We randomly assigned people to groups of people with identical hair color and gender. So, we put all the blond women randomly in one group."
Teachers in the Loss group were given $4,000 at the beginning of the year and signed a contract stating they would give back the difference if their earned bonus came in below that amount. If they earned more, they got more. The tests used were the ThinkLink tests, which are described as otherwise low stakes tests, which again strikes me as a fairly critical factor that the researchers breeze right past.
Data and research design
Basically, these guys went in the back room and whipped up a big kettle of VAM sauce. You know. The same kind of thing that has been so widely discredited that the National Association of Secondary School Principals has come out against using it as a means of evaluating individual teachers. Also, they use some more math to deal with the event of a student having mixed teachers (on Loss group, one Gain group) during the day.
Results
You've already heard the big take-away. Other interesting bits of data include a much higher effect for K-2 students (though, since the VAMsauce depends on data going back four years, I'm wondering how exactly we crunched the little kids' numbers). There is a bunch of statistics-talk here as well, but much of it boils down to fancily-worded "Nothing to see here." There are charts for those who enjoy charts.
Interpretation and pre-emptive kibbitzing
The interpretation is simple. Merit pay will yield better test results if you let teachers hold it in their hands for nine months and threaten to take it back if their students don't do well on the Big Test.
The researchers anticipate three areas that might be used to dispute their results, so they address them ahead of time.
First, attrition. They anticipate the complaint that teachers will find other ways to improve their test scores including getting Little Pat McFailsalot out of their classroom, at least on test day. They tran some numbers and decided this didn't happen to any notable degree.
Second, liquidity restraints. We're talking about teacher money here. Teachers might spend their own money in the classroom to improve their bonus-earning chances, which would be a level playing field if all teachers were wealthy, but in a world where teachers have very little extra money to spend in the classroom (or Wal-mart or anywhere else), an extra $4K in September might tilt the field. In other words, did the group that got a $4K run out and spend it to make sure they kept it? Survey says no. Interesting sidelight-- when asked in March, 69% of the Loss teachers had not cashed their bonus checks yet.
Third, cheating. They decided that wasn't a factor because, reasons. Seriously-- isn't the whole hypothesis here that the bonus will motivate teachers to raise test scores any way they can? I have no reason to believe these teachers were cheating, but if this were my experiment, that would certainly be something I'd look for. What kind of pressure and temptation do you suppose will will be felt by a teacher who has already spent his "bonus" on house payments and groceries?
But it gets better. They argue that the proof that no cheating occurred is that results on the state test-- which had nothing to do with their incentive program-- came out about the same. So, the test results from the incentivized program were pretty much the same as the results that they got with no incentives at all. Maybe that means that test prep for the one test is also good test prep for the state test. Or maybe it means that the incentive program had no effect on anything.
Wrapping it up
I see enough holes in this very specific research to drive a fleet of trucks through. But let's pretend for a moment that they've actually proven something here. What would we do with it?
First, we'd need to convince a school district business office to let teachers hold a big pile of district money for nine months, thereby giving up a bunch of interest income and liquidity. At the same time, we'd have to get the administration and board to budget a merit pay line item for "Somewhere between a small amount and a huge mountain." These are great ideas, because if there's anything business managers love, it's letting someone else hold their money, and they only love that slightly less than starting a year with an unknowable balloon payment of indeterminate size next June.
When school districts talk about merit pay, they talk about a merit lump sum set aside at the beginning of the year so that teachers can fight over a slice of the already-set merit pie. As I've said repeatedly, no school board in this country is ever going to say to the public, "Our teachers did such a great job this year that we need to raise taxes to cover all the well-earned merit pay bonuses we owe them."
Of course, somebody would have to figure out the merit system. How many Harvard grad students work in your district? And how exactly will you figure out the math score bonus for your phys ed teacher?
Districts could manage the financial challenges of this risk aversion model by pre-determining the aggregate merit pay in the district. This, combined with "pay for percentile," would absolutely guarantee open warfare among staff members, who would be earning their merit bonuses by literally ripping them dollars out of colleagues' hands. Boy, I bet teaching in that school would be fun.
The largest thing they haven't thought through
Instituted, this system will not play out like a merit bonus at all. If I start every year with an "extra" $4K (or whatever amount), I've gotten a raise, and every year I don't make my numbers is a year that I get a punitive retroactive pay cut.
In no time at all, this system morphs from a merit pay bonus system of rewards to a bad score DEmerit system of punishments. Rather than a bonus that really lifts up teachers, these folks have come up with a way to make punishment for low results even more painful and effective. A miracle indeed.
Our magic term for the day is "loss aversion," which is a fancy term for "people hate to give stuff up." The paper we'll be looking at is "Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives through Loss Aversion:A Field Experiment" written by Roland G. Fryer, Jr. (Harvard University), Steven D. Levitt (The University of Chicago), John List (The University of Chicago), and Sally Sadoff (University of California San Diego). Let's learn some stuff, shall we?
Intro
Sigh. We know we're in just great shape when we lead with references to the baloneyfied research that "proves" that a measurable improvement in teacher quality creates the same measurable improvement in student achievement as a decrease in class size (the old "we don't need small classes-- just great teachers" research) and follows it up with Chetty's silly "a good teacher means your kid will grow up to make more money" research. And that's just the first paragraph.
In the second, we get the sideways assumption that VAM is a good measure of teacher quality and that unions make it too hard to get rid of bad teachers. In the third, we lament that merit pay hasn't done any good. "Good" of course means "has students with high test scores." Because when people talk about "good teachers," all they're thinking of is students scores on standardized tests. That's all we want from teachers, right?
On this foundation of sand and jello, our intrepid researchers set out to build a mansion of teacher improvitude.
The experiment (oops-- "field test") was performed in Chicago Heights. Teachers were randomly assigned to one of two groups-- either they were in the Gain group, working toward a possible end-of-year bonus, or they were in the Loss group, receiving a bonus up front which they would lose if their students didn't achieve bonus-worthy results. Bonuses for both groups were the same. Additionally, the researchers used the "pay for percentile" method developed by Barlevy and Neal, which is basically a stack and rank system where there are winners and losers. One would think that might have some significant effects on the field test, but apparently we're just going to barrel on assuming that it's a great idea and not a zero-sum dog-eat-dog approach that might shade the effects of a merit pay system.
Their findings were that there was a significant gain in math scores for Loss teachers' students (the significance was between 0.076 and 0.129, so make of that what you will) and, as expected, no significant affect for Gain teachers' students.
To the library
Part two of the paper is the review of the literature. If you're interested in this, you're on your own.
Program details
Chicago Heights is about thirty miles south of Chicago. They have a 98% free and reduced lunch population in elementary and middle school. The program was implemented with the cooperation of both the superintendent and the union. Of 160 teachers, 150 opted in. Maximum possible bonus pay was $8,000.
Working out the assignments of teachers was hard. So hard that apparently the researchers kind of gave up on tracking the reading side of this experiment and focused on the math. This was further complicated in that the design called for some teachers to be up for bonus on their own, while others were bonusing it up in team fashion.
And while the researchers keep saying that the teachers were assigned randomly, it turns out they were re-randomized with an algorithm that kept swapping teachers based on a set of rules until they were best aligned with the selection rules. So, unless I'm missing something, this was kind of like saying, "We randomly assigned people to groups of people with identical hair color and gender. So, we put all the blond women randomly in one group."
Teachers in the Loss group were given $4,000 at the beginning of the year and signed a contract stating they would give back the difference if their earned bonus came in below that amount. If they earned more, they got more. The tests used were the ThinkLink tests, which are described as otherwise low stakes tests, which again strikes me as a fairly critical factor that the researchers breeze right past.
Data and research design
Basically, these guys went in the back room and whipped up a big kettle of VAM sauce. You know. The same kind of thing that has been so widely discredited that the National Association of Secondary School Principals has come out against using it as a means of evaluating individual teachers. Also, they use some more math to deal with the event of a student having mixed teachers (on Loss group, one Gain group) during the day.
Results
You've already heard the big take-away. Other interesting bits of data include a much higher effect for K-2 students (though, since the VAMsauce depends on data going back four years, I'm wondering how exactly we crunched the little kids' numbers). There is a bunch of statistics-talk here as well, but much of it boils down to fancily-worded "Nothing to see here." There are charts for those who enjoy charts.
Interpretation and pre-emptive kibbitzing
The interpretation is simple. Merit pay will yield better test results if you let teachers hold it in their hands for nine months and threaten to take it back if their students don't do well on the Big Test.
The researchers anticipate three areas that might be used to dispute their results, so they address them ahead of time.
First, attrition. They anticipate the complaint that teachers will find other ways to improve their test scores including getting Little Pat McFailsalot out of their classroom, at least on test day. They tran some numbers and decided this didn't happen to any notable degree.
Second, liquidity restraints. We're talking about teacher money here. Teachers might spend their own money in the classroom to improve their bonus-earning chances, which would be a level playing field if all teachers were wealthy, but in a world where teachers have very little extra money to spend in the classroom (or Wal-mart or anywhere else), an extra $4K in September might tilt the field. In other words, did the group that got a $4K run out and spend it to make sure they kept it? Survey says no. Interesting sidelight-- when asked in March, 69% of the Loss teachers had not cashed their bonus checks yet.
Third, cheating. They decided that wasn't a factor because, reasons. Seriously-- isn't the whole hypothesis here that the bonus will motivate teachers to raise test scores any way they can? I have no reason to believe these teachers were cheating, but if this were my experiment, that would certainly be something I'd look for. What kind of pressure and temptation do you suppose will will be felt by a teacher who has already spent his "bonus" on house payments and groceries?
But it gets better. They argue that the proof that no cheating occurred is that results on the state test-- which had nothing to do with their incentive program-- came out about the same. So, the test results from the incentivized program were pretty much the same as the results that they got with no incentives at all. Maybe that means that test prep for the one test is also good test prep for the state test. Or maybe it means that the incentive program had no effect on anything.
Wrapping it up
I see enough holes in this very specific research to drive a fleet of trucks through. But let's pretend for a moment that they've actually proven something here. What would we do with it?
First, we'd need to convince a school district business office to let teachers hold a big pile of district money for nine months, thereby giving up a bunch of interest income and liquidity. At the same time, we'd have to get the administration and board to budget a merit pay line item for "Somewhere between a small amount and a huge mountain." These are great ideas, because if there's anything business managers love, it's letting someone else hold their money, and they only love that slightly less than starting a year with an unknowable balloon payment of indeterminate size next June.
When school districts talk about merit pay, they talk about a merit lump sum set aside at the beginning of the year so that teachers can fight over a slice of the already-set merit pie. As I've said repeatedly, no school board in this country is ever going to say to the public, "Our teachers did such a great job this year that we need to raise taxes to cover all the well-earned merit pay bonuses we owe them."
Of course, somebody would have to figure out the merit system. How many Harvard grad students work in your district? And how exactly will you figure out the math score bonus for your phys ed teacher?
Districts could manage the financial challenges of this risk aversion model by pre-determining the aggregate merit pay in the district. This, combined with "pay for percentile," would absolutely guarantee open warfare among staff members, who would be earning their merit bonuses by literally ripping them dollars out of colleagues' hands. Boy, I bet teaching in that school would be fun.
The largest thing they haven't thought through
Instituted, this system will not play out like a merit bonus at all. If I start every year with an "extra" $4K (or whatever amount), I've gotten a raise, and every year I don't make my numbers is a year that I get a punitive retroactive pay cut.
In no time at all, this system morphs from a merit pay bonus system of rewards to a bad score DEmerit system of punishments. Rather than a bonus that really lifts up teachers, these folks have come up with a way to make punishment for low results even more painful and effective. A miracle indeed.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Seasoned Teachers Not Getting Filthy Rich
In other news, scientists anticipate the sun rising in the East tomorrow morning.
Okay, this might actually be news to some folks. To listen to the merit-based pay crowd, you would think that we are currently throwing bales of teachers based on years of experience. But an issue brief released last week by the Center for American Progress suggests that in many states that's simply not true.
"Mid- and Late-Career Teachers Struggle with Paltry Incomes," authored by Ulrich Boser and Chelsea Straus, opens with the tale of Richie Brown, a former teacher of the year candidate and "the type of teacher every principal should want." Brown left at the end of six years because he couldn't support his family, having gone several years without a raise at all.
Brown, of course, was teaching in North Carolina (motto: "We hate teachers and hope they will go away"), but Boser and Straus show that North Carolina is not so much an outlier as a trendsetter. Here are their findings.
Mid- and Late- career teacher base salaries are painfully low in many states.
Here's where the paper throws in the striking stats that truck drivers, sheet metal workers, and flight attendants make more than 10 or 15 year teaching veterans in some states.
In some states, ten year teachers who are breadwinners often qualify for various aid programs.
Large numbers of teachers work second jobs. The paper keeps using the term "base salary" to distinguish the teachers' teaching income from their total annual income, which may include their work at other glamorous jobs.
The paper provides two charts that help provide context. Here's one that shows salary growth by state between the first year and the tenth.
And since people do so love to compare us based on international data from the OECD, here's a chance to do that
Okay, this might actually be news to some folks. To listen to the merit-based pay crowd, you would think that we are currently throwing bales of teachers based on years of experience. But an issue brief released last week by the Center for American Progress suggests that in many states that's simply not true.
"Mid- and Late-Career Teachers Struggle with Paltry Incomes," authored by Ulrich Boser and Chelsea Straus, opens with the tale of Richie Brown, a former teacher of the year candidate and "the type of teacher every principal should want." Brown left at the end of six years because he couldn't support his family, having gone several years without a raise at all.
Brown, of course, was teaching in North Carolina (motto: "We hate teachers and hope they will go away"), but Boser and Straus show that North Carolina is not so much an outlier as a trendsetter. Here are their findings.
Mid- and Late- career teacher base salaries are painfully low in many states.
Here's where the paper throws in the striking stats that truck drivers, sheet metal workers, and flight attendants make more than 10 or 15 year teaching veterans in some states.
In some states, ten year teachers who are breadwinners often qualify for various aid programs.
Large numbers of teachers work second jobs. The paper keeps using the term "base salary" to distinguish the teachers' teaching income from their total annual income, which may include their work at other glamorous jobs.
The paper provides two charts that help provide context. Here's one that shows salary growth by state between the first year and the tenth.
Though I will gladly note with pride that we beat Estonia on this one.
The authors note that this is probably part and parcel of the general downturn for the entire middle class.
But what we can also note here is that we are not exactly pouring money into the salary raise pool. Which raises a couple of questions.
For one-- what exactly does the merit pay crowd propose to do. If the intention is to base raises on performance, will it really help if the merit-based raises are just as paltry and inadequate as the raises given for longevity? CAP uses its conclusions to make a case for more merit- and assignment-based bonuses, but this remains a pipe dream. Merit and bonus pay will not work. Beyond the issues of evaluating teacher worthiness of such bonuses, there is a more fundamental problem. Businesses pay bonuses out of the extra money they made by having a good year. School districts do not make extra money, and no school board in the country is going to go to its taxpayers and say, "Our teachers did so very well this year that we need an extra couple mill to give them the merit bonuses they deserve." CAP's data are interesting; their proposed solution is bogus.
The other big question is the same old one. Exactly how do you attract people to a profession that does not promise the ability to provide an actual life, like a grown-up family-supporting adult?
That question itself is premature, because it assumes that reformsters want to do that. The lack of career-level salary scales may well be yet another indicator that for some folks, the goal is not to attract people to teaching, but to turn teaching into a temporary job that people do for a year or two before moving on, providing schools with a cheap pensionless labor force. If that's the goal, it would appear many states are right on track.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
TNTP Lost on Search for Truth
Any time TNTP writes a blog piece with "truth" in the title, you know we are about to go down the rabbit hole. But not surprisingly, an unnamed contributor over at TNTP has decided to clue us in on "The Truth About Teacher Pay." How can that possibly end badly? Let's see what truths they have uncovered!
Fact: Most districts now have multiple high quality options beyond experience and credentials for making pay decisions.
At first they start out well:
Setting teachers’ pay strictly on factors like experience or academic credentials may have been the only option before most districts had tools in place to assess teachers’ performance.
Unfortunately, they immediately head into the weeds. The correct next sentence is "We still don't have any other reliable measures of teacher performance in place, but when someone comes up with those some day, we should jump right on those. Anybody working on a real teacher eval system? Anybody?"
Instead, they compare "lockstep pay" (which is emerging as the preferred reformster term for the traditional system) to paying basketball players by height. This could have been fun if they had gone to explain how their idea (evaluating teachers for "talent, hard work, and performance") resembles the way basketball players are actually paid, but, no. Also, shed a tear for all those students who had great young teachers untimely ripped away from them.
Which is a hard drum to keep beating, since one-year-experience teachers are the largest sector of the teaching pool, and also the section mostly likely to quit the profession. If we worried about that loss of bright young things, perhaps we could talk about retention, or at least see what the numbers are when we stack the Number of Teachers Who Are Unjustly Laid Off next to the Number of Teachers Who Get Out of Dodge Early. Do you have those Numbers of Truth handy, TNTP?
Fact: Very few districts have tried true performance-based pay, but where it’s been tried it seems to be working.
Who knew? DC schools have made it possible to earn 100K in year four, and so teacher pay has dropped as a leading reason to get the hell out of DC schools. Wait. Doesn't that help prove that performance pay doesn't help retain teachers? And supposedly it's really helping in Tennessee, where this big report that, frankly, I'm still too jet-lagged to read in its entirety, but check out the abstract:
We report findings from a quasi-experimental evaluation of the recently implemented $5000 retention bonus program for effective teachers in Tennessee’s priority schools. We estimate the impact of the program on teacher retention using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. We exploit a discontinuity in the probability of treatment conditional on the composite teacher effectiveness rating that assigns bonus eligibility. Point estimates for the main effect of the bonuses are consistently positive across all specifications, and for teachers of tested subjects the program appears to have an effect that is generally both statistically and substantively significant. Implementation concerns, including the timing of application process and observed noncompliance in bonus distribution, present obstacles for both the program’s effectiveness and its evaluation
Oh, guys, stop. You had me at "fuzzy regression discontinuity design."
Fact: Performance-based pay can easily be structured to value experience when it is accompanied by strong performance.
Hey! It's an actual fact. Way to go, TNTP!
Fact: The research base has become much stronger in recent years on the question of distinguishing levels of teacher performance. Evaluation systems that use multiple measures to rate teacher performance can help school systems recognize and reward those who are getting the best results in the classroom.
So much for facty stuff. Our single link of "proof" here takes us to that golden oldie, the Gates Foundation MET study. TNTP tells us that we need multiple measures (a phrase they use so often that I imagine it cropping up in odd contexts, like a reformy version of "that's what she said.") and to check with the community and make sure that administrators know what they're doing and give teachers a way to up their game and, hey, I already have that system finished. When is my gazillion dollar grant coming, anyway?
Fact: Teachers in the same school won’t be competing with one another for slices of a static pay pie because performance-based pay isn’t a zero-sum game.
Oh, TNTP. Mostly this blog of your has been an exercise of fuzzy discontinuity with the truth, but this is just a lie. Or you are dumb as rocks. One of those two. Your explanation is so short that I suspect you figured you'd better get out quick before you started laughing.
TNTP says "There is no cap." I look forward to watching them explain that to taxpayers. I want TNTP to come to a school district and stand before taxpayers to say, "There are so many awesome teachers in your district that you have no choice but to raise taxes ten mills to fund their performance-based pay levels." In referendum states, that will be particularly entertaining.
Or maybe we'll get to enjoy watching TNTP explain to a district, "We had to cut the arts program because the English teachers all get super-huge capless performance based pay."
Of course performance-based pay is a zero-sum game. School districts do not make more money when they do well. The pie is fixed by the tax rate. Performance-based pay means we must all get out the knives, either for the pie or each other.
Fact: School systems can implement performance-based pay by re-allocating existing funds.
See above.
This does get closer to the real motivation behind the new fix-the-pay initiative. See, we move to evaluation-based employment decisions. We up pay at the lowest levels. We rig the system to favor people who don't want to have a teaching career, because it reduces overall costs both in obvious and unobvious ways.
When we look at the spread of TFA, we tend to focus on how cheap they are to hire. Sometimes we forget the ticking time bomb in many states that is teacher pensions. Teaching temps aren't just cheap now-- they're cheap later, because No Pension Costs!
See, TNTP, when you say stuff like this:
School systems that decide to pay for great teaching can afford to do it because they will no longer be constrained by the rigid boundaries of lockstep compensation.
It's hard to take you seriously. We're going to get rid of all the imaginary legions of allegedly crappy teachers and replace them with the best and the brightest, and we're going to pay all the best and brightest top dollar no matter how long they've been there.
IOW, it would be like a district under the current system where all teachers are long-timers who are on the top step.
How can that not be expensive as hell? Only if the top step becomes lower than it is under the current system, or if the school cuts programs, or raises taxes, or hires fewer teachers, or has no pension funding liabilities because all teachers leave within five years.
So thank you, nameless TNTP functionary, for searching for the truth for us. But I suggest you get back out there are search some more, because what you have brought back looks kind of old and dead and also smells funny.
Fact: Most districts now have multiple high quality options beyond experience and credentials for making pay decisions.
At first they start out well:
Setting teachers’ pay strictly on factors like experience or academic credentials may have been the only option before most districts had tools in place to assess teachers’ performance.
Unfortunately, they immediately head into the weeds. The correct next sentence is "We still don't have any other reliable measures of teacher performance in place, but when someone comes up with those some day, we should jump right on those. Anybody working on a real teacher eval system? Anybody?"
Instead, they compare "lockstep pay" (which is emerging as the preferred reformster term for the traditional system) to paying basketball players by height. This could have been fun if they had gone to explain how their idea (evaluating teachers for "talent, hard work, and performance") resembles the way basketball players are actually paid, but, no. Also, shed a tear for all those students who had great young teachers untimely ripped away from them.
Which is a hard drum to keep beating, since one-year-experience teachers are the largest sector of the teaching pool, and also the section mostly likely to quit the profession. If we worried about that loss of bright young things, perhaps we could talk about retention, or at least see what the numbers are when we stack the Number of Teachers Who Are Unjustly Laid Off next to the Number of Teachers Who Get Out of Dodge Early. Do you have those Numbers of Truth handy, TNTP?
Fact: Very few districts have tried true performance-based pay, but where it’s been tried it seems to be working.
Who knew? DC schools have made it possible to earn 100K in year four, and so teacher pay has dropped as a leading reason to get the hell out of DC schools. Wait. Doesn't that help prove that performance pay doesn't help retain teachers? And supposedly it's really helping in Tennessee, where this big report that, frankly, I'm still too jet-lagged to read in its entirety, but check out the abstract:
We report findings from a quasi-experimental evaluation of the recently implemented $5000 retention bonus program for effective teachers in Tennessee’s priority schools. We estimate the impact of the program on teacher retention using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. We exploit a discontinuity in the probability of treatment conditional on the composite teacher effectiveness rating that assigns bonus eligibility. Point estimates for the main effect of the bonuses are consistently positive across all specifications, and for teachers of tested subjects the program appears to have an effect that is generally both statistically and substantively significant. Implementation concerns, including the timing of application process and observed noncompliance in bonus distribution, present obstacles for both the program’s effectiveness and its evaluation
Oh, guys, stop. You had me at "fuzzy regression discontinuity design."
Fact: Performance-based pay can easily be structured to value experience when it is accompanied by strong performance.
Hey! It's an actual fact. Way to go, TNTP!
Fact: The research base has become much stronger in recent years on the question of distinguishing levels of teacher performance. Evaluation systems that use multiple measures to rate teacher performance can help school systems recognize and reward those who are getting the best results in the classroom.
So much for facty stuff. Our single link of "proof" here takes us to that golden oldie, the Gates Foundation MET study. TNTP tells us that we need multiple measures (a phrase they use so often that I imagine it cropping up in odd contexts, like a reformy version of "that's what she said.") and to check with the community and make sure that administrators know what they're doing and give teachers a way to up their game and, hey, I already have that system finished. When is my gazillion dollar grant coming, anyway?
Fact: Teachers in the same school won’t be competing with one another for slices of a static pay pie because performance-based pay isn’t a zero-sum game.
Oh, TNTP. Mostly this blog of your has been an exercise of fuzzy discontinuity with the truth, but this is just a lie. Or you are dumb as rocks. One of those two. Your explanation is so short that I suspect you figured you'd better get out quick before you started laughing.
TNTP says "There is no cap." I look forward to watching them explain that to taxpayers. I want TNTP to come to a school district and stand before taxpayers to say, "There are so many awesome teachers in your district that you have no choice but to raise taxes ten mills to fund their performance-based pay levels." In referendum states, that will be particularly entertaining.
Or maybe we'll get to enjoy watching TNTP explain to a district, "We had to cut the arts program because the English teachers all get super-huge capless performance based pay."
Of course performance-based pay is a zero-sum game. School districts do not make more money when they do well. The pie is fixed by the tax rate. Performance-based pay means we must all get out the knives, either for the pie or each other.
Fact: School systems can implement performance-based pay by re-allocating existing funds.
See above.
This does get closer to the real motivation behind the new fix-the-pay initiative. See, we move to evaluation-based employment decisions. We up pay at the lowest levels. We rig the system to favor people who don't want to have a teaching career, because it reduces overall costs both in obvious and unobvious ways.
When we look at the spread of TFA, we tend to focus on how cheap they are to hire. Sometimes we forget the ticking time bomb in many states that is teacher pensions. Teaching temps aren't just cheap now-- they're cheap later, because No Pension Costs!
See, TNTP, when you say stuff like this:
School systems that decide to pay for great teaching can afford to do it because they will no longer be constrained by the rigid boundaries of lockstep compensation.
It's hard to take you seriously. We're going to get rid of all the imaginary legions of allegedly crappy teachers and replace them with the best and the brightest, and we're going to pay all the best and brightest top dollar no matter how long they've been there.
IOW, it would be like a district under the current system where all teachers are long-timers who are on the top step.
How can that not be expensive as hell? Only if the top step becomes lower than it is under the current system, or if the school cuts programs, or raises taxes, or hires fewer teachers, or has no pension funding liabilities because all teachers leave within five years.
So thank you, nameless TNTP functionary, for searching for the truth for us. But I suggest you get back out there are search some more, because what you have brought back looks kind of old and dead and also smells funny.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
To Tim Elmore: Here's What You're Missing
At Growing Leaders, Tim Elmore ends his column "The Cost of Bad Teachers," with a question: "Am I missing something here?"
Yes, Tim, I believe you are. I will, as you request, try to talk to you.
You lead off with a pair of questions:
Can you imagine a world where doctors, who are simply pitiful at practicing medicine, get to keep their jobs as physicians? Or where CEO's, who can't lead a company into a fair profit margin, get to remain as CEO, regardless of their unacceptable performance?
First, before the punctuation nazis get in an uproar, yes-- as punctuated, Tim, you just said that all doctors are pitiful and all CEOs are incapable of leading companies. I'm going to suggest that punctuation nazis relax so we can talk about what you clearly meant.
These questions are really beside the point, but I'm weary of the continued assertion that out in the Real World folks win and lose strictly on merit. Because without using imagination at all, I can take you to a world where hospital staffing has way more to do with politics and connections than quality. And I think we can all imagine a world where executives make choices so reckless and irresponsible and arguably illegal that they crash their company and, in some cases, bring the nation's economy to the brink of disaster, and yet these executives get to keep their jobs, get bonuses, and in some cases, receive appointment to highly lucrative government positions.
Again-- none of this really means a thing as far as dealing with less-than-stellar teachers. But I think it would be useful to stop pretending that all other sectors are humming along in perfectly-functioning meritocracies. Pretending that we have established meritocracies before just adds to the illusion that we can do it for schools. In a sense, this is like opening your argument with "Why aren't schools powered by cold fusion generators?"
You go on to refer to tenure as a "job guarantee," and you put it in quotation marks, which tells me that you know you are overstating your case here. Tenure does not guarantee a job for life. It guarantees a teacher due process, and is still a protection against being fired for reasons from benching a school board members kid in sports to campaigning for the wrong party to speaking up against a school policy that is wasting the taxpayers' money.
This suggests that teachers' unions are somehow really devoted to keeping bad teachers in the classroom. I defy you to find me ten union teachers anywhere in public school who would agree with that sentiment.
You go on to cite some stats from the Vergara trial. The "number of bad teachers" estimate turns out to be a fabricated number (as explained by the person who fabricated it). The data about how much money a student loses over a lifetime by having a bad teacher has been debunked many, many times. Here's one example.
You then ask people to reflect on good and bad teachers they had back in school. I agree we can all do this. But as you're drifting back in memory, I want you to take it a step further. Can you remember a good teacher that every single solitary student in the classroom thought was good? Because that's our problem here. One of the teachers cited as grossly ineffective was also a multiple award-winning teacher; follow this link and you can find video of her teaching and students praising her work. But a single student in her classroom has now made this teacher a national poster child for gross ineffectiveness?
That door swings both ways. You and I both can come up with teachers that we thought were terrible. But even though Mr. McDull was uninspiring to me, I'm not so sure that I can swear definitively that he never inspired any other students at all.
My point is not that bad teachers do not exist. My point is that identifying them is far more difficult than you seem to think it is.
You say that often the union won't let schools fire bad teachers. I don't know of any school district in the country where a union has that kind of power. Now, in some large urban districts, the union can certainly make the process and long and costly, and that is absolutely and unquestionably a problem that needs to be solved. But "solving" it by destroying tenure is like solving the problem of ugly drapes by burning down your house.
You invoke supply and demand, and honestly, I have no idea what the heck that has to do with tenure. But you do wheel around to the idea that everybody should add value, and while I would argue that we should not talk about schools as if they were toaster factories, I'll play along for the purposes of this conversation, because even if we use the language of value-added, we come down to a basic problem-- we haven't got a clue how to measure it. Not a clue.
We have folks pitching the idea that we can measure it by looking a student scores on standardized tests. There are (at least) two major problems with that--
1) We don't know how to do it. We especially don't know how to do it for teachers who don't teach the testing subjects or students, but we're now looking at systems that judge teachers based on how students they never had in class do on tests of material that said teacher never taught. IOW, a school where the fifth grade phys ed teacher is evaluated based on third grade reading scores. And even if we want to evaluate the third grade teacher on those scores, are we really prepared to assert that the teacher is 100% responsible for the student scores?
2) Go back to your memory of the great teachers that inspired you. Would you say that getting you to do well on standardized tests really captures what makes you remember them as a great teacher? I didn't think so.
You finish with five statements about human nature that you believe apply here:
1) We are at our very best when we have the opportunity both to succeed and to fail.
I don't disagree. But what happens if we are operating in a system where "success" and "failure" are determined by factors that are completely beyond our control? Does that bring out our best?
2) Without the guarantee of tenure, I will strive to find a job in my strength area.
I'll be honest. I'm not sure what you're saying here. If I don't have tenure, I'll try to get a job matching my certification, because... I don't know. Having tenure in a crappy job that doesn't allow me to excel will somehow discourage me from looking for the chance to have tenure in a great job that suits me perfectly? I'd refer you back to your first point-- I will look for a chance to be my best, and that's a job where my strengths can be used to achieve success. I don't see a connection to tenure here.
3) I have incentive to keep improving when I know I must work to keep my job
And if keeping my job has nothing to do with improving? What if keeping my job means giving the school board member's kid straight A's and the lead in the school play? What if keeping my job means never ever ever questioning my administrators, even when they are making what I believe are professionally irresponsible choices? What if keeping my job means keeping a low profile and being just as bland and boring I can be?
Removing the protections of tenure does not equal "must work to keep my job." In many states and districts, it means something else entirely.
4) I become the best version of myself when I give my very best each day.
Don't disagree. But how is this connected to tenure. Do you really believe that you, personally, would stop doing decent work if you had job security? Because personally, and I try hard to show this to my students, and I think most of them find it true-- doing your best and being your best self is rewarding all by itself. I have just never met the person who I can imagine saying, "Yeah, being my best self feels okay, but not any better than being my most mediocre self, so why bother?"
5) In the end, the students lose and the faculty gains with teacher tenure.
You realize that you didn't really support either of these assertions.
As is often noted, teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions. Students benefit from teachers who can keep all their focus on teaching, and not the politicking and CYA needed to hold onto their job in an "at will" setting. Students benefit from a stable school where teachers are not regularly cycled out because they are too expensive. Students benefit from having teachers who are committed to a lifetime of teaching, just as they benefit from maintaining teaching as a profession that is actually attractive to the best and the brightest.
You do not attract the best and the brightest by saying, "We're not going to pay you much-- in fact we'll fire you if we think you're getting expensive. We won't give you much autonomy or chance to gain power and responsibility over your work conditions. And we'll fire you at any time for any reason, including reasons that have nothing to do with how good a teaching job you're doing."
But it's possible that I'm the one missing something. In your vision of a tenureless teaching world, how do you see yourself convincing people to pursue teaching as a career?
Yes, Tim, I believe you are. I will, as you request, try to talk to you.
You lead off with a pair of questions:
Can you imagine a world where doctors, who are simply pitiful at practicing medicine, get to keep their jobs as physicians? Or where CEO's, who can't lead a company into a fair profit margin, get to remain as CEO, regardless of their unacceptable performance?
First, before the punctuation nazis get in an uproar, yes-- as punctuated, Tim, you just said that all doctors are pitiful and all CEOs are incapable of leading companies. I'm going to suggest that punctuation nazis relax so we can talk about what you clearly meant.
These questions are really beside the point, but I'm weary of the continued assertion that out in the Real World folks win and lose strictly on merit. Because without using imagination at all, I can take you to a world where hospital staffing has way more to do with politics and connections than quality. And I think we can all imagine a world where executives make choices so reckless and irresponsible and arguably illegal that they crash their company and, in some cases, bring the nation's economy to the brink of disaster, and yet these executives get to keep their jobs, get bonuses, and in some cases, receive appointment to highly lucrative government positions.
Again-- none of this really means a thing as far as dealing with less-than-stellar teachers. But I think it would be useful to stop pretending that all other sectors are humming along in perfectly-functioning meritocracies. Pretending that we have established meritocracies before just adds to the illusion that we can do it for schools. In a sense, this is like opening your argument with "Why aren't schools powered by cold fusion generators?"
You go on to refer to tenure as a "job guarantee," and you put it in quotation marks, which tells me that you know you are overstating your case here. Tenure does not guarantee a job for life. It guarantees a teacher due process, and is still a protection against being fired for reasons from benching a school board members kid in sports to campaigning for the wrong party to speaking up against a school policy that is wasting the taxpayers' money.
Teacher’s Unions have filed an appeal, but parents are not budging.
They want good teachers “in” and bad teachers “out.” - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.bwO6UUjJ.dpuf
Teacher’s
Unions have filed an appeal, but parents are not budging. They want
good teachers “in” and bad teachers “out.” - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.b7yFgLWQ.dpuf
Teacher's unions have filed appeals but parents are not budging. They want good teachers "in" and bad teachers "out." This suggests that teachers' unions are somehow really devoted to keeping bad teachers in the classroom. I defy you to find me ten union teachers anywhere in public school who would agree with that sentiment.
You go on to cite some stats from the Vergara trial. The "number of bad teachers" estimate turns out to be a fabricated number (as explained by the person who fabricated it). The data about how much money a student loses over a lifetime by having a bad teacher has been debunked many, many times. Here's one example.
You then ask people to reflect on good and bad teachers they had back in school. I agree we can all do this. But as you're drifting back in memory, I want you to take it a step further. Can you remember a good teacher that every single solitary student in the classroom thought was good? Because that's our problem here. One of the teachers cited as grossly ineffective was also a multiple award-winning teacher; follow this link and you can find video of her teaching and students praising her work. But a single student in her classroom has now made this teacher a national poster child for gross ineffectiveness?
That door swings both ways. You and I both can come up with teachers that we thought were terrible. But even though Mr. McDull was uninspiring to me, I'm not so sure that I can swear definitively that he never inspired any other students at all.
My point is not that bad teachers do not exist. My point is that identifying them is far more difficult than you seem to think it is.
You say that often the union won't let schools fire bad teachers. I don't know of any school district in the country where a union has that kind of power. Now, in some large urban districts, the union can certainly make the process and long and costly, and that is absolutely and unquestionably a problem that needs to be solved. But "solving" it by destroying tenure is like solving the problem of ugly drapes by burning down your house.
You invoke supply and demand, and honestly, I have no idea what the heck that has to do with tenure. But you do wheel around to the idea that everybody should add value, and while I would argue that we should not talk about schools as if they were toaster factories, I'll play along for the purposes of this conversation, because even if we use the language of value-added, we come down to a basic problem-- we haven't got a clue how to measure it. Not a clue.
We have folks pitching the idea that we can measure it by looking a student scores on standardized tests. There are (at least) two major problems with that--
1) We don't know how to do it. We especially don't know how to do it for teachers who don't teach the testing subjects or students, but we're now looking at systems that judge teachers based on how students they never had in class do on tests of material that said teacher never taught. IOW, a school where the fifth grade phys ed teacher is evaluated based on third grade reading scores. And even if we want to evaluate the third grade teacher on those scores, are we really prepared to assert that the teacher is 100% responsible for the student scores?
2) Go back to your memory of the great teachers that inspired you. Would you say that getting you to do well on standardized tests really captures what makes you remember them as a great teacher? I didn't think so.
You finish with five statements about human nature that you believe apply here:
1) We are at our very best when we have the opportunity both to succeed and to fail.
I don't disagree. But what happens if we are operating in a system where "success" and "failure" are determined by factors that are completely beyond our control? Does that bring out our best?
2) Without the guarantee of tenure, I will strive to find a job in my strength area.
I'll be honest. I'm not sure what you're saying here. If I don't have tenure, I'll try to get a job matching my certification, because... I don't know. Having tenure in a crappy job that doesn't allow me to excel will somehow discourage me from looking for the chance to have tenure in a great job that suits me perfectly? I'd refer you back to your first point-- I will look for a chance to be my best, and that's a job where my strengths can be used to achieve success. I don't see a connection to tenure here.
3) I have incentive to keep improving when I know I must work to keep my job
And if keeping my job has nothing to do with improving? What if keeping my job means giving the school board member's kid straight A's and the lead in the school play? What if keeping my job means never ever ever questioning my administrators, even when they are making what I believe are professionally irresponsible choices? What if keeping my job means keeping a low profile and being just as bland and boring I can be?
Removing the protections of tenure does not equal "must work to keep my job." In many states and districts, it means something else entirely.
4) I become the best version of myself when I give my very best each day.
Don't disagree. But how is this connected to tenure. Do you really believe that you, personally, would stop doing decent work if you had job security? Because personally, and I try hard to show this to my students, and I think most of them find it true-- doing your best and being your best self is rewarding all by itself. I have just never met the person who I can imagine saying, "Yeah, being my best self feels okay, but not any better than being my most mediocre self, so why bother?"
5) In the end, the students lose and the faculty gains with teacher tenure.
You realize that you didn't really support either of these assertions.
As is often noted, teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions. Students benefit from teachers who can keep all their focus on teaching, and not the politicking and CYA needed to hold onto their job in an "at will" setting. Students benefit from a stable school where teachers are not regularly cycled out because they are too expensive. Students benefit from having teachers who are committed to a lifetime of teaching, just as they benefit from maintaining teaching as a profession that is actually attractive to the best and the brightest.
You do not attract the best and the brightest by saying, "We're not going to pay you much-- in fact we'll fire you if we think you're getting expensive. We won't give you much autonomy or chance to gain power and responsibility over your work conditions. And we'll fire you at any time for any reason, including reasons that have nothing to do with how good a teaching job you're doing."
But it's possible that I'm the one missing something. In your vision of a tenureless teaching world, how do you see yourself convincing people to pursue teaching as a career?
Ineffective faculty members get to keep their jobs, regardless of their
poor performance in the classroom. It’s a “job guarantee” that takes
away incentive for many… - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.b7yFgLWQ.dpuf
Ineffective faculty members get to keep their jobs, regardless of their
poor performance in the classroom. It’s a “job guarantee” that takes
away incentive for many… - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.b7yFgLWQ.dpuf
Can
you imagine a world where doctors, who are simply pitiful at practicing
medicine, get to keep their jobs as physicians? Or where CEO’s, who
can’t lead a company into a fair profit margin, get to remain as CEO,
regardless of their unacceptable performance? - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.b7yFgLWQ.dpuf
Can
you imagine a world where doctors, who are simply pitiful at practicing
medicine, get to keep their jobs as physicians? Or where CEO’s, who
can’t lead a company into a fair profit margin, get to remain as CEO,
regardless of their unacceptable performance? - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.b7yFgLWQ.dpuf
Can
you imagine a world where doctors, who are simply pitiful at practicing
medicine, get to keep their jobs as physicians? Or where CEO’s, who
can’t lead a company into a fair profit margin, get to remain as CEO,
regardless of their unacceptable performance? - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.b7yFgLWQ.dpuf
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Let's (Not) Pay Teachers More
In education reformster land, words often mean the opposite of what they say. So, for instance, "Let's protect excellent teachers" actually means "Let's fix it so that any teachers can be fired at any time."
But a popular new opposites-land reformster refrain is "We need to pay teachers more."
It has been featured in a many StudentsFirst campaigns (including a crowdsourcing plea on a breast cancer site?!) and is a prominent feature of new initiatives like the one being discussed in Indianapolis. Arne Duncan has said, "Let's pay great teachers $150K"
You would think "Let's pay teachers more" would be a fairly straightforward proposal. We could raise state taxes or even use some of that free federal money that DC makes appear out of nowhere. Whatever the source, we could fulfill this goal with a simple two-step process:
1) Gather up more money
2) Give it to teachers
The problem with that plan is Step 1. If there is anything reformsters are in absolute agreement on, it is that public school systems should cost less. So how are we going to pay more and make schools cost less?
The Indianapolis proposal shows part of how this works. "It... challenges the traditional step salary scale by proposing a cut in the pay for experience to instead create a funding pool for bonuses." By cutting the traditional experience-based scale, districts can free up a bunch of money which can then be divided up based on extra responsibilities and rewards for excellence. In other words, the new process would be:
1) Gather up money that used to be for raises
2) Let teachers fight over it
There are, to put it mildly, many challenges in a system like this. One is the damage to any sort of collegial atmosphere as everyone has to fight over a slice of the pie. This is not just a matter of greed; depending on how this system is structured, I may need to beat you out in order to pay my gas bills this winter so, no, I will not help you figure out a better way to teach that unit, and under no circumstances will I stand by and let you transfer Johnny Rocksforbrains from your class into mine.
Another huge problem with this system is the same problem with almost everything proposed by reformsters. When StudentsFirst says "Those who show they can move kids along academically should be compensated accordingly" what it means is "Pay teachers whose students get good test scores."
So, get a good class, get a bonus. Get a lousy class, get no bonus. And you teachers who teach subjects that aren't one The Test? Sucks to be you. And if school has many excellent teachers? Too bad. I've always maintained that one of the reasons schools can't do true merit pay is that no school board is ever going to say to the public, "Hey, we have so many excellent teachers that deserve merit bonuses that we must raise taxes to do it up right." That pie is never going to get bigger.
Some systems may fold test scores in with observations, but most of us have already heard the refrain-- "Super-duper awesome excellence (or whatever your state calls it) is a place you visit, not a place where you live." Translation: you will only get bonus-worthy evaluations occasionally. Reformsters are willing to offer big money to "great" teachers because they are so certain that most teachers aren't great at all.
So would people want to pursue a career where their pay might not even keep pace with inflation over the course of their professional lives? Actually, North Carolina has been experimenting with this very approach, and the busloads of teachers quitting North Carolina schools is our answer. Even people who love teaching find it hard-to-impossible to devote their lives (and their family's support) to a job where the pay starts out mediocre and then shrinks ever year afterwards.
But it turns out that's a feature, not a bug. Mike Petrilli from the Fordham Institute (motto: the best thinky tank money can buy) states it plain in the New York Times: "Our public education system is among the only institutions in the land still pretending that professionals will spend their whole careers in a single job." Petrilli is pretty sure that millennials don't even want lifelong careers, which is great, because "lifers" are a drag on the education system.
Part of the reformster model of a perfect school is one where the staff churns and turns regularly. This not only keeps direct staff costs down, but also solves the problem of those nasty pensions, which can get so expensive if someone spends a whole career in education.
So "Let's pay teachers more" really means "Let's pay some teachers a little more for one or two years and hope they go away before they start to really care." It definitely does not mean "Let's turn teaching into a career that features really impressive career earnings."
But a popular new opposites-land reformster refrain is "We need to pay teachers more."
It has been featured in a many StudentsFirst campaigns (including a crowdsourcing plea on a breast cancer site?!) and is a prominent feature of new initiatives like the one being discussed in Indianapolis. Arne Duncan has said, "Let's pay great teachers $150K"
You would think "Let's pay teachers more" would be a fairly straightforward proposal. We could raise state taxes or even use some of that free federal money that DC makes appear out of nowhere. Whatever the source, we could fulfill this goal with a simple two-step process:
1) Gather up more money
2) Give it to teachers
The problem with that plan is Step 1. If there is anything reformsters are in absolute agreement on, it is that public school systems should cost less. So how are we going to pay more and make schools cost less?
The Indianapolis proposal shows part of how this works. "It... challenges the traditional step salary scale by proposing a cut in the pay for experience to instead create a funding pool for bonuses." By cutting the traditional experience-based scale, districts can free up a bunch of money which can then be divided up based on extra responsibilities and rewards for excellence. In other words, the new process would be:
1) Gather up money that used to be for raises
2) Let teachers fight over it
There are, to put it mildly, many challenges in a system like this. One is the damage to any sort of collegial atmosphere as everyone has to fight over a slice of the pie. This is not just a matter of greed; depending on how this system is structured, I may need to beat you out in order to pay my gas bills this winter so, no, I will not help you figure out a better way to teach that unit, and under no circumstances will I stand by and let you transfer Johnny Rocksforbrains from your class into mine.
Another huge problem with this system is the same problem with almost everything proposed by reformsters. When StudentsFirst says "Those who show they can move kids along academically should be compensated accordingly" what it means is "Pay teachers whose students get good test scores."
So, get a good class, get a bonus. Get a lousy class, get no bonus. And you teachers who teach subjects that aren't one The Test? Sucks to be you. And if school has many excellent teachers? Too bad. I've always maintained that one of the reasons schools can't do true merit pay is that no school board is ever going to say to the public, "Hey, we have so many excellent teachers that deserve merit bonuses that we must raise taxes to do it up right." That pie is never going to get bigger.
Some systems may fold test scores in with observations, but most of us have already heard the refrain-- "Super-duper awesome excellence (or whatever your state calls it) is a place you visit, not a place where you live." Translation: you will only get bonus-worthy evaluations occasionally. Reformsters are willing to offer big money to "great" teachers because they are so certain that most teachers aren't great at all.
So would people want to pursue a career where their pay might not even keep pace with inflation over the course of their professional lives? Actually, North Carolina has been experimenting with this very approach, and the busloads of teachers quitting North Carolina schools is our answer. Even people who love teaching find it hard-to-impossible to devote their lives (and their family's support) to a job where the pay starts out mediocre and then shrinks ever year afterwards.
But it turns out that's a feature, not a bug. Mike Petrilli from the Fordham Institute (motto: the best thinky tank money can buy) states it plain in the New York Times: "Our public education system is among the only institutions in the land still pretending that professionals will spend their whole careers in a single job." Petrilli is pretty sure that millennials don't even want lifelong careers, which is great, because "lifers" are a drag on the education system.
Part of the reformster model of a perfect school is one where the staff churns and turns regularly. This not only keeps direct staff costs down, but also solves the problem of those nasty pensions, which can get so expensive if someone spends a whole career in education.
So "Let's pay teachers more" really means "Let's pay some teachers a little more for one or two years and hope they go away before they start to really care." It definitely does not mean "Let's turn teaching into a career that features really impressive career earnings."
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Why Teacher Merit Pay Is Stupid
Sometimes we forget the obvious, so let me spell it out. Here's why teacher merit pay will never make sense.
In a business, here's how merit pay is supposed to work. Watch carefully:
1) International Widgetmakers, Inc makes $1,000,000 more profit than originally projected.
2) CEO Mr. McMoneygutz says, "Wow, that's great. Let us share this bounty with the hard workers who helped earn it in the first place."
3) A large slice of the million bucks is divied up and handed over to grateful employees based on how much help they were in earning it.
In business, here's how merit pay sometimes actually works. Again, pay attention.
1) International Widgetmakers, Inc makes $1,000,000 more profit than originally projected.
2) CEO Mr. McJerkface says, "Hey, Board of Directors. You're so lucky to have me. You should give me a pile of that there extra moneys."
3) A large slice of the million bucks is handed to the CEO and hardworking employees get screwed again.
Notice what each of these versions of merit pay have in common: An extra stack of money lying around. That's why companies having lean times don't give out merit bonuses-- because to give out bonuses, you have to have extra money.
So to discuss the wisdom of teacher merit pay, we don't have to talk about its motivational qualities, or its philosophical validity. All we have to ask this question:
When and where has it ever been possible to describe a public school system with the phrase "has an extra stack of money lying around."
When a company does well, that means, by definition, that it has made a ton of money. When a company does poorly, it has NOT made a ton of money. But the amount of money a school district takes in is exactly the same regardless of how good a job it does.
Reformy business guys know this. In fact, it is one of the things that drives them crazy, because it offends their very understanding of how the world is supposed to work, just as their notion that a school whose students get low test scores should get less money makes us see red. It is one of the bedrock fundamentals on which private sector and public ed people disagree. Much of what has happened in education reform can be understood as business guys doing their damndest to force schools to conform to what they view as fundamental rules of the universe.
(There's a whole other piece of writing to be done about why the free market profit motive (which I happen to have a great deal of respect for) does not belong in many human service sectors. For now, I'll just observe that when your most beloved family member needs heart surgery, you do not look for the cheapest doctor you can find, nor do you want the doctor who is preoccupied with how he's going to make his mortgage payment. You do not want the doctor who will look at your beloved as some sort of obstacle standing between him and his pay check.)
No school district has extra money. (In fact, no school district "has" any money-- it all belongs to the taxpayers.) The only way to have extra money would be for the district to say, "Taxpayers, our teachers did so well this year we'd like to collect an extra three mils worth of taxes so we can pay them appropriately." Call me crazy, but I don't see that happening.
Merit pay is extra money. There is no extra money. So what we're talking about in schools is not "merit pay," but "pay." Any school district proposing "merit pay" is really saying, "See this bucket of money? We are going to let you teachers compete to see who gets the biggest chunks of it."
This is certainly a creative way to rewrite salary scales. But it is not merit pay.
In a business, here's how merit pay is supposed to work. Watch carefully:
1) International Widgetmakers, Inc makes $1,000,000 more profit than originally projected.
2) CEO Mr. McMoneygutz says, "Wow, that's great. Let us share this bounty with the hard workers who helped earn it in the first place."
3) A large slice of the million bucks is divied up and handed over to grateful employees based on how much help they were in earning it.
In business, here's how merit pay sometimes actually works. Again, pay attention.
1) International Widgetmakers, Inc makes $1,000,000 more profit than originally projected.
2) CEO Mr. McJerkface says, "Hey, Board of Directors. You're so lucky to have me. You should give me a pile of that there extra moneys."
3) A large slice of the million bucks is handed to the CEO and hardworking employees get screwed again.
Notice what each of these versions of merit pay have in common: An extra stack of money lying around. That's why companies having lean times don't give out merit bonuses-- because to give out bonuses, you have to have extra money.
So to discuss the wisdom of teacher merit pay, we don't have to talk about its motivational qualities, or its philosophical validity. All we have to ask this question:
When and where has it ever been possible to describe a public school system with the phrase "has an extra stack of money lying around."
When a company does well, that means, by definition, that it has made a ton of money. When a company does poorly, it has NOT made a ton of money. But the amount of money a school district takes in is exactly the same regardless of how good a job it does.
Reformy business guys know this. In fact, it is one of the things that drives them crazy, because it offends their very understanding of how the world is supposed to work, just as their notion that a school whose students get low test scores should get less money makes us see red. It is one of the bedrock fundamentals on which private sector and public ed people disagree. Much of what has happened in education reform can be understood as business guys doing their damndest to force schools to conform to what they view as fundamental rules of the universe.
(There's a whole other piece of writing to be done about why the free market profit motive (which I happen to have a great deal of respect for) does not belong in many human service sectors. For now, I'll just observe that when your most beloved family member needs heart surgery, you do not look for the cheapest doctor you can find, nor do you want the doctor who is preoccupied with how he's going to make his mortgage payment. You do not want the doctor who will look at your beloved as some sort of obstacle standing between him and his pay check.)
No school district has extra money. (In fact, no school district "has" any money-- it all belongs to the taxpayers.) The only way to have extra money would be for the district to say, "Taxpayers, our teachers did so well this year we'd like to collect an extra three mils worth of taxes so we can pay them appropriately." Call me crazy, but I don't see that happening.
Merit pay is extra money. There is no extra money. So what we're talking about in schools is not "merit pay," but "pay." Any school district proposing "merit pay" is really saying, "See this bucket of money? We are going to let you teachers compete to see who gets the biggest chunks of it."
This is certainly a creative way to rewrite salary scales. But it is not merit pay.
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