NEWSPERFORMANCE PAY

This week, Baltimore's teachers will vote to ratify (or not) the newly negotiated contract with the city. The contract has been hailed as a landmark, a vanguard, you name it. Everyone seems to love it . Why? The new contract allows the city to do what many have been hoping to do for a long time: fire teachers. This is the end of tenure and seniority, the raison d'etre for teachers unions.

The contract's central component is an evaluation system (still in the process of being developed) in which teachers would be judged annually on a combination of their students' performance on state tests, any courses teachers take to improve instruction, and a menu of other less-easily measured areas like classroom instruction itself. Based on that evaluation, teachers will be able to move up a "career ladder" and earn pay increases. Some teachers could make up to $100,000 a year, more than what some principals make. The money is good, but what are the teachers giving up in exchange?

Teachers worry about the lack of job security in this new contract. In the last few days, some Baltimore teachers have been circulating petitions urging their colleagues not to vote for the contract. They say that they would be voting for something that they have not even seen yet, and that there is no research base for the proposed teacher evaluation system.

Waiting for Superman, the new movie by the team behind the climate-change doc An Inconvenient Truth, is making waves among teachers, parents, and the media for turning a critical eye to the our nation’s education system. The doc has already gotten flack for vilifying teachers unions and touting charter schools as a panacea for education. But anyone who’s seen the movie can tell you that the message is loud, clear, and compelling: whether schools are really in crisis or simply leaving too many kids behind to tolerate any longer, there are some pretty big problems with the way things are going. And something needs to change, now.

Just what’s broken, and how can we fix it? Here are the top three issues the documentary hits on:

1. Tenure and Teachers Unions: Ugly Stepsisters?

Teacher tenure is a policy which gives teachers a permanent contract, effectively ensuring them a guarantee of employment … for life. Teachers that have tenure cannot be fired unless for “just cause”, such as severe misconduct or incompetence. Critics say that teacher tenure makes it virtually impossible to fire bad teachers. Once teachers earn tenure, which, according to a charter school leader quoted in the movie, is as easy as breathing for a few years, getting rid of them can involve years of review and bureaucratic hurdles, and can cost tens of thousands of dollars per teacher.

What if teachers made as much money as engineers? What if "master teachers" made more money, teachers could afford to support a family on their salary and sub-standard teachers were shown the door?

That's the vision President Obama laid out this morning on NBC's Today Show as he stressed that the economic success of the U.S. depends on our education system.

"I want to lift up the teaching profession to honor it the way it needs to be honored in our society," he said, relating a conversation with the mayor of Shanghai, China, who told him that teaching is one of the most prestigious professions and teachers are paid on par with engineers.

Obama, who sat down with Matt Lauer in the White House, also called for a school year that is a month longer, and 10,000 new math and science teachers. In the U.S., once a science powerhouse, students rank 21st in science and 25th in math, and students in other industrialized countries go to school a month longer.

He also sent a message to teachers' unions, whose public image has taken a hit recently in the new education documentary Waiting for "Superman." "We want to work with you," he said, but added that unions can't defend a status quo where a third of U.S. students are dropping out. 

It turns out that teachers don't hold out for more cash when it comes to doing their best to teach kids.

A new study that tracked math teachers in Nashville, Tenn. over three years found that rewarding teachers for increases in their students' test scores didn't cause test scores to go up.

Offering cash bonuses to teachers based on student achievement didn't raise test scores in any sustained way, according to a new study from the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University. It didn't lower test scores, either.

Rewarding teachers based on how their students perform - sometimes called 'merit pay' or 'performance pay' - is being madly debated right now in the push for better education. The study - the first long-range, science-based look at the effect of teacher bonuses - is a welcome addition to a discussion that is often based on emotion rather than data.

However, those looking for reasons to discount the idea that better pay for teachers will lead to better education won't find it here.

Chancellor Rhee of Washington D.C. fired 241 teachers, according to the New York Times. She concluded that these teachers should be fired for poor performance. Perhaps these teachers were not performing well, but I have two questions for Kate Rhee. How do you decide what  a poorly performing teacher is? And what do you plan to do to replace them?

DC uses a system called IMPACT to evaluate teachers. Under this system, half of teacher's evaluations are determined by their students test scores, the other half is a mix of observations, and other "value-added measures." It is unclear what really goes into the stew of teacher evaluations in DC. It is equally confusing to DC teachers, as one said, "We don't mind being held accountable," said a third. "but this is not the way. It is subjective, unclear and punitive."

In the debate over whether the evaluation system is effective or not, a major point is being overlooked. In a school system that serves many low income students, how does the city school district plan to replace the fired teachers and build an effective teaching force? There is a fierce battle on both sides, mainly between teachers unions and school district administrators, on how to evaluate teachers. But the particularities of the evaluation system distracts from this larger question of how to build a high quality teaching force.

Michelle Rhee has decided that all students in all grades, in all subjects will begin getting tested every six weeks in Washington DC's public schools. A similar testing regimen is in place in my hometown, New York City. Rhee argues, as did Chancellor Joel Klein, that testing can only help teachers make better instructional decisions. But the evidence points in the opposite direction.

First, testing data, especially the kind that Rhee is proposing to use which is collected by an outsourced company, is notoriously inaccurate. There have been scores of examples of invalid scoring. From the "Texas Miracle" in which Texas officials falsely claimed that they raised test scores and lowered dropout rates by record numbers to New York's lowered exam standards so that more students could be shown as passing, there are problems with testing.

Making matters worse, teacher evaluations are tied to test data, so there is an incentive for them to do whatever it takes for their students to do well. In New York City, whole schools are evaluated on their test score data, and incidents of cheating are not hard to find.

Just recently, Florida's governor vetoed a piece of legislation that would have eliminated tenure and tied job security to student test scores. I was surprised to see this bill fail — not sad, just surprised. There is widespread support for linking teachers' jobs with student performance as a way to ensure that teachers have limited job security. If they do not improve student performance, they can be fired, like anyone else who is not doing their job well.

Interestingly, there are plenty of people who do their jobs poorly in other professions and stay on in the company or in the field. Just think about your experience with people in the service industry. Plenty are incompetent at their jobs but do not get fired.

So, why target teachers? Teachers have always been thought of as "lucky" for having an easy job — summers off, work until 3pm. Because they can get tenure, there is even more reason to resent them. They can't get fired, unless something egregious takes place. For those that do not have this level of job security, this could be a reason to begrudge teachers, but it is people who do have job security — business and political leaders — that are calling for the end of teacher tenure.

Their position is popular because they are tapping into a zeitgeist, a broader feeling that teachers need to be just like everyone else. Currently, resentment against teachers for having job security has reached a crescendo. With the economy as bad as it is, perhaps Americans feel as though it is not fair that teachers have jobs guaranteed to them. That seems backward though. With so many Americans out of work, we should be demanding that more jobs be guaranteed, not less.

What about the argument that tenure just protects incompetent teachers? I would say that any profession has incompetent (however you define it) people in it. What we need to focus on is teacher quality, and how to get high quality teachers in every classroom. Eliminating teacher tenure and tying job security to student test scores will not provide better teachers for all children, just ones that are scared of doing anything but improving test scores. So, good for Governor Crist for vetoing the legislation to eliminate tenure in Florida. We need to stop barking up the wrong tree when it comes to school reform and work on changes that can have a real improvement on classrooms.

Photo credit: Sugar Pond

How do you motivate students, especially low-income students, to do better in school? Pay them!

That's what Roland Fryer, Harvard economist, suggests. Cities around the country have done just that, paying students to earn top grades, read books, or improve their attendance. Urban school districts seemed desperate to find some strategy to improve academic achievement among the lowest achievers and the money poured in: $6.3 million to schools in four cities to fund Fryer's experiment.

In New York, a fourth grader could earn $250 and a seventh grader up to $500. In Dallas, students got paid $2 for every book that they read. In Chicago, they earned for $50 for each A, $35 for each B. In D.C., young people were paid for not getting into fights.

The experiment has been in effect for a few years, and results have come in: Money doesn't motivate young people. In the short term, it got some kids motivated to attend school more, read more, and get better scores on tests, but for the majority of the kids, it did not pan out as a good long term strategy. For most, test scores did not go up, so the monetary incentive did not seem to work.

Florida Governor Charlie Christ is in the hot seat now. On Friday, the Florida House of Representatives narrowly passed their version of Senate Bill 6 (SB 6), a bill directed at school reform. The bill now goes to the governor, who previously said he would sign it but is now wavering in his conviction. Many attribute this hesitation to his Senate bid. Others say that the vast quantities of phone calls and emails from angry educators have encouraged Governor Christ to rethink his support of the bill.

The communication onslaught is a direct result of efforts by the Florida Education Association (FEA), Florida's teacher's union, which has been encouraging teachers statewide to vocalize their unhappiness with the bill. Andy Ford, FEA's president, says the bill, "guts local control of [Florida's] public schools, vastly expands testing, bases all school and personnel decisions on a score from tests that have not been developed or validated.”

So, what's in this bill? Well, Mr. Ford summed it up pretty well. The main oppositions to SB 6 have to do with teacher contracts, salaries and evaluations. The proposed bill would mandate that teachers hired after July 1, 2010 would be subject to probationary contracts followed by one year contracts based on evaluation scores of "effective" or "highly effective."  Teachers who were hired before July 1, 2010 would need to receive "effective" marks in four of the previous five annual evaluations. What constitutes an "effective" or "highly effective" teacher has yet to be determined by the legislature. The two other new evaluation criteria, "unsatisfactory" and "needs improvement," are also undefined.

Another as yet undefined term is "learning gains." Presumably the legislature will define these in the near future, since teachers will be evaluated and their base salaries will be based on this concept. Under the new bill, teachers would earn a base salary and then be eligible for "increases" depending on student performance and subject matter. Years of service and post-graduate degrees would no longer count towards increased pay. In addition, these "learning gains" would be determined by, you guessed, standardized testing. The bill proposes using existing standardized tests to evaluate student progress and, therefore, teacher effectiveness. If a test doesn't currently exist for the subject a teacher is being evaluated in, one will need to be created.

Perseverance matters most in finding great teachers. Perseverance with teaching methods and routines, perseverance in maintaining students' focus in class, and perseverance demonstrated through exhaustive lesson plans that are well communicated to students. Perseverance and grit as a natural habit. That's the conclusion of a Teach For America study that has tracked hundreds of thousands of students and teachers. An excellent Atlantic article recounts and ponders Teach for America's discoveries and findings.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is increasingly talking about teacher accountability instead of school accountability, so he may be inclined to agree with the study and feel like the Obama administration is on the right track with their reforms. In order to win Race to the Top funds, Arne Duncan is asking states to remove legal obstacles to linking student scores to teacher performance reviews, and if you trust the findings of the Teach For America study, they're right to do so. But what are Teach For America doing to make a difference?