Posts Tagged ‘pay for performance’

No blood in those state turnips

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Means no $ for Ed

School districts are beginning negotiations with their unions based on their 2010-2011 budget numbers, which are depressing.  If it’s impossible to draw blood from a turnip, just try to wring money from state legislatures for education.

The Colorado legislature is about to claw back $250 million+ from public schools for the ‘10-’11 year.  It will probably take back just as much, if not more, for ‘11-’12.  If school districts don’t have enough reserves, and no one does, they will be going backwards in funding for years.

Money saving tricks

Some districts are freezing salary - no COLA, no steps and levels.  Others are doing furlough days.  Others are charging for transportation.  Others are ending all technology purchases.  Others are emptying administration - no more professional development for teachers or curriculum support!  Others are increasing classroom size by one, two, or three children.  Last but not least, some districts are closing buildings.

No more investing in education!

Investment in education has stopped.  Districts that have made progress in student achievement will probably freeze in place or will start drifting backwards.  After all, if no one is in charge any more of managing the voluminous data underlying each student’s progress, how will the analytical process thrive that supports achievement?

Schools going backward in funding

The largest district in Colorado is about to cut $60 million from a $670 million budget.  The district estimates it will make the same size cut in ‘11-’12, and possibly again in ‘12-’13.  That means that by ‘13-’14, unless miracles happen, the district will be at a budget starting point roughly $180 million below where it is today.  And yet the District is supposed to get every student to meet annual growth targets.

Colorado calculates annual growth against student peers.  Proficient students are measured against proficient students, barely proficient against barely proficient, etc.  So the only good news for schools is that all students in the state are in the same hole, so the lack of annual achievement growth should be relatively similar.  This prediction will assure funding remains at about the same dismal level for all schools in the state.

Not enough tax dollars for education today

Colorado is almost last in state funding per student, at about $7300, even though the state has one of the highest college education levels.  This “Colorado paradox” happens because educated out-of-staters like to come and live here for the mountains.  The state is also reasonably affluent.  But like other western states, including California, citizens prefer to keep their money in their pockets.  Colorado has one of the lowest state income tax and sales tax levels in the country.

How’s that Obama money doing?

ARRA money has bailed districts out in 2010, but now everyone is headed towards a cliff.  What kind of help is the Obama administration offering?  Race to the Top, of course, or as some wags say, slow jog to nowhere.  Really, the $4 billion will go to schools doing education Arne Duncan’s way, which means pay-for-performance and closing non-performing schools or turning them around or starting over.

What does any of that do to help districts whose schools aren’t completely in the doghouse yet (but may be after two or three years of these budget cuts)?

What would you do if you could?

And will pay-for-performance really do the trick with teachers? Schools definitely need something beyond steps and levels, but what should that look like?  Do schools need a more streamlined way to move bad to mediocre teachers out?  Yes.  Do schools need more money for entry level teachers, so education can compete at least marginally with law and medicine for top graduates? Yes.  Do schools need a way to pay off student loans to encourage teachers to work in challenging schools?  Yes.

How about a little extra money for some teacher career tracking - giving teachers money for online course development, professional development of peers, etc.

Get your 30 in and retire

It’s true that some relationship needs to exist between compensation and how well kids learn, but that’s not the whole package.  And frankly, in Colorado, teachers and districts are going to be so busy plowing money into their PERA pension fund, they may not get a raise for years.  They are mostly going to be working for that glorious final moment when they stagger over the 30 year finish line and can get out of education altogether.  Not very pretty, is it?

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Colorado Budget Crisis, Race to Top, public schools, school accountability, school resources |
1 Comment »

School Business

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Let’s look at schools as businesses.  You need a business economist’s point of view to understand how and why some of the latest premises to reform schools have appeared.

Education Next’s April 2009 interview “Many Schools Are Still Inadequate-now what?” featured the Hoover Institution’s Eric Hanushek who has done a lot of writing on education reform, lawyer Alfred Lindseth, and Michael Rebell from Teacher’s College at Columbia whose focus is on court decisions that have affected education change.  The focus of the article was on Lindseth and Hanushek’s book about the funding-student achievement puzzle and Rebell’s concerns with aspects of reform advocated in the proposal.

Most teachers and administrators, both local and state, already agree on several reforms outlined in the article:

  • give local schools flexibility to determine a model to meet high standards
  • establish reasonable funding based on needs of the particular school and school district (including local tax payer ability to authorize bonds or establish education foundations to upgrade school financial support)
  • best of the reforms, commit to evaluate school and program effectiveness using continuous improvement models such as “cycle of inquiry”-originating from business models of improvement

Sounds good.

Difficulties arise in the evidence to support other aspects of the proposal since all must be interlocked to achieve reform, according to Lindseth and Hanushek.

The two issues that stand out are the plan for performance-based pay, a business oriented policy, and the plan to increase the choice for vouchers and charter schools, seen as sanctions against schools or districts where students haven’t achieved designated levels of proficiency.

Pay-for-performance:  Mr. Hanushek is strongly against limits on spending and regulations for the use of funds provided by state and federal sources.  Further, he wants to do away with contractual obligations, mainly negotiated with unions.

Then, teachers would be rewarded for success in, for example, improving student achievement, bonuses for teaching in hard-to-staff schools, higher pay for taking on subjects with teacher shortages.  These are all “value-added” factors used to determine the teachers’ salary or bonus for the year.  (Exact procedures for setting up this plan were not part of the article.)

Vouchers and charter schools:  Not only would schools and teachers be rewarded, but well-articulated and decisive consequences would be imposed on schools not meeting the goals.  Liberal distribution of vouchers and transfers to charter schools are the sanctions advocated.  If a public school is deemed unsatisfactory, it is unclear how to guarantee that a student’s voucher or charter school choice would be suitable.  How to fund this change is not described in the article.

Enter Michael Rebell from Teacher’s College who does not agree with the data and statistics used as evidence for the Lindseth and Hanushek book.  He says, and many who might read the article (or book) would say, that testing outcomes, pay-for-performance, rewards and sanctions, vouchers and charter schools have been studied for a long time with mixed results.

Readers may also agree the reform proposal is based on unproven business models that may, but haven’t yet, shown great results.  The move to privatization of education may be an economist’s preference, but has not yet shown to improve the academic proficiency for the vast number of students needing help.  For example, is California with more than 6 million students going to privatize every school and turn each student into a perfect product?

Rebell supports standards-based reform, but maintains it is a state education policy goal, supported by ideas from business world economists, researchers in the legal and university community, and especially teacher leaders.

Finally, perhaps the book, but not the article, describes how to resolve the funding problems due to the heterogeneity of students and regions in the United States that underlie the challenges for the education world.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in cycle of inquiry, public schools, school finance reform, school reform |
Be the first to leave a comment »

More Pay for More Performance?

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

School districts are looking for new ways to compensate teachers.  The most common system of steps and levels rewards teachers for longevity and additional education.  This method does not distinguish excellence or discourage mediocrity, which troubles some educators and many taxpayers.

I see two challenges in changing the system:  inertia and educators uneasy with compensation based on student learning, annual goals, and management observation.

Traditional teacher compensation systems

Most school districts have compensation contracts with teacher’s unions based on time on the job and amount of education credits.  This method is straightforward and objective.  It does not rely on observation of teaching skill or on results of student learning.  Management doesn’t have to haggle over whether a teacher is effective - if the teacher has ten years and a master’s degree, it’s easy to check on a grid to see how much the teacher will be paid.

New assessment tools available

This 90 year old system has simplicity and universal coverage in its favor, which was a plus before we had testing tools to measure student learning and annual growth.  Colorado now administers the CSAP, a statewide, annual student learning assessment.  The state test measures student proficiency in reading, writing, math, and science, and can compare students of “like” learning levels from one year to the next to determine “annual growth.”  This tool enables schools to identify which students have grown more or less than their peers in learning.  Schools with high growth are seen as “good schools”; schools with low growth are supposed to improve.

Some caveats

These tools make objective assessment of teacher effectiveness possible.  But where’s the money to use this assessment as a compensation mechanism?  And what about those teachers whose children are not given a statewide test - music, art, physical education, vocational teachers?

How would districts support additional teacher education?

If “levels” or additional education is taken out of the compensation formula, then there’s room for shifting pay toward effectiveness.  But then there’s no money to reward for additional education.  Would teachers pursue more graduate level training if the reward is not inevitable?  Will districts agree to tuition assistance plans to pay up front for additional education to replace levels?  Will a district that removes levels be able to compete for staff with districts that keep levels?

If school districts replace “levels” with effectiveness measures, will those measures only include student learning progress and growth?  Should other elements, such as teacher leadership, special projects, coaching and mentoring, parent relations, etc. also play a part?

How will teachers be evaluated?

A merit pay or pay for performance or pay for effectiveness system requires teacher performance evaluation.  My experience is that principals are concerned about doing annual appraisals, surely a must for merit pay.  Annual appraisal requires principals to be in classrooms observing teachers and children many times during the year.  Do principals have time for that level of oversight?  An alternative method involves “peer” evaluation, in which teachers evaluate teachers.  Will the public see that as an accurate assessment or as a means for teachers to take care of each other’s compensation?

Who will set evaluating metrics?

In the business community, companies set up performance evaluation criteria and metrics which managers use to assess their employees. Typically this system also involves setting goals each year that will merit additional compensation.  When companies have enough money for bonuses, this method enables extra pay.

Will principals sit down with each teacher at the beginning of each year to establish goals?  Will principals work with teacher teams to establish goals?  Will principals and staff establish school goals?  Will districts work with principals to evaluate the merit of school goals?  If teachers do not meet goals, will their compensation be confined to “steps,” or time on the job, and cost of living increases?

Pay for performance is not easy

A merit pay or pay for performance system is possible, but it will be more complicated.  The biggest question is whether it will produce better results for kids.  If it creates more “effectiveness” conversations between principals and teachers, if goals focus on genuine needs, and teachers work better up and down the grade level structure, then a merit system may do its job.  And it may give taxpayers more confidence when compensating teachers.  But it won’t be easy.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in program improvement, public schools, successful schools, teacher preparation |
Be the first to leave a comment »

Pay for Performance?

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

How did the business model term, “pay for performance,” morph into the preferred way to assess teachers–by the number of student’s proficient on a test?

The issue has risen in an effort to turn around low-performing schools.

In 1992 the California state legislature set rules to allow charter schools, financed with the same money that would otherwise go to a traditional public school, often perceived as playing on the monetary issue.

Over time, according to statistics from state exams that public-financed charter school students must take, elementary charter school performance is “neither better nor worse” than traditional public schools.

Pay, however,  is often an issue.  See “As More Charter Schools Unionize, Educators Debate the Effect,” by Sam Dillon, The New York Times, July 27, 2009.

So, what next?

Advocated by the Department of Education’s Race to the Top plan to close the achievement gap in low-performing schools, one strongly advised mechanism to improve student achievement is “performance pay.”

Somehow, based on their students’ scores on one test and parent feedback, teachers will find the offer of better pay an incentive to work harder.  While the model may provide an incentive to complete tasks in the office or factory in an efficient manner, thus improving production, that is not how a school is organized.

A successful school is one where children are supported by teachers who know the curriculum and the best strategies to teach.  The parents, staff, and administration animate students to learn and the buildings are safe.  Exams are one tool used to analyze where students are doing well and where they need another technique or tool to master the subject.  Such a school needs adequate funds, but “performance pay” is not the incentive.

In California for a few years before the state budget went haywire, “school-based pay” bonuses were the rage.  Successful schools, measured by the state’s Academic Performance Index (API), received a substantial amount of money to use at the school site.  Rumbles of discontent began to surface over which schools received awards and why, but the plan was dropped when funds dried up.

Some schools in some districts, Los Angeles Unified for one, have tried various plans, often called “merit pay.”  Teachers vote to waive tenure and the salary schedule negotiated by the local union for the possibility of making a larger salary if classroom instruction improves and their students do well on state exams.  Some plans have been dropped; none have become institutionalized yet.

Another plan is negotiated around “knowledge and skill-based” pay.  A district like Douglas County Schools in Colorado, set in a well-to-do area, has few problems with meeting benchmarks on state exams.  The plan addresses pay for extra duty, for professional development, for meeting goals on an evaluation plan.  The incentive pay relies on foundation support and grants.

On the other hand, the school where I worked in San Jose Unified School District with the goal of school improvement on the API, budgeted monies for time spent on professional development and leadership meetings after school hours, and set aside monies for substitutes to allow teachers to analyze test data and plan strategies to improve student learning.  Over time, student performance improved.

Here was a kind of “knowledge and skill-based” pay about which Robert Weil of American Federation of Teachers has remarked, “The best performance plans are standard operating procedure.”  See “Pay for Performance: What Are the Issues?” by Ellen R. Dalisio, Education World, 2006.

None of these models address this question:  how does performance pay help schools turn around when the sole burden on the teacher’s back is how well students do on a single test?

Here and Now in the Education World will look at those issues in the next post.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Academic Performance Index, American Federation of Teachers, Race to Top, low-performing schools, public schools, successful schools |
Be the first to leave a comment »

Am I Highly-Qualified?

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Sometimes I wonder what the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation means when it requires all teachers to be highly-qualified.  It’s still the law.  No changes yet.  No matter how often my union (CTA) brings it up in its magazine.

3rd grader reads at home

3rd grader reads at home

In the latest issue of California Educator, September 2009, the problem is seen in the Race to the Top requirements: “paying teachers based on a single test score will increase the likelihood of teaching to the test and make it harder to recruit and retain teachers.” (p. 30)

I read those words and think how does my training make me want to be paid only for teaching to make sure students pass a test?  Is that what a highly-qualified teacher does?

I spent two years taking classes in the latest research before I was credentialed.  None of it was about teaching to a test.  In reading/language arts, the curriculum focused on the best practices known to show students how to figure out unknown vocabulary and to read for meaning so that no matter what text, fiction or non-fiction, is found in the test booklet, they will be able to show what they have learned.

For mathematics, we were trained to use the most up-to-date strategies to teach students beginning set theory for little kids through pre-algebra for upper elementary students.  In my current class, the students are very strong in mathematical understanding, so I spend my time assembling enrichment materials.

In California, the same as many other states, I wrote my own research papers, using the students in my student-teaching classes as subjects to test the strategies I was studying.  I took the CBEST, the exam that new teachers must pass before being credentialed.  I observed and student-taught at three different grade levels.  I was evaluated on my lesson plans and classroom management skills for those weeks.  Even in my second year, I’m still observed and evaluated, being a probationary teacher.  I get good remarks for my work.

Doesn’t it sound like I’m highly-qualified?  I know, however, that I’m fortunate to teach students that are highly motivated and who have parents who encourage them and spend a great deal of time giving them after-school opportunities.

What if, like some teacher friends from my credentialing program, I was hired in a low-income neighborhood where the students don’t have the advantages my students enjoy?  What if the students were struggling with another language?  Enough food?  Illness?  Parents who worked all the time and still didn’t have enough money for trips to museums or the beach or the sights of San Francisco, much less a home library?

And what if, no matter all the best practices of the teachers and enthusiasm of the students, the yearly test scores improve, but only little by little, and it takes relentless struggle to reach the benchmarks set by the state each year.  Some years, the benchmarks aren’t met.

Do those teachers not deserve recognition just like the teachers in schools where most students surpass the benchmarks every year?

So how is this ‘pay based on test scores’ evaluation plan supposed to fairly identify highly-qualified teachers?

Will this be another mandate with no guidelines and no money behind it?  Please say no.  In fact, put forward other well-documented ways to help students succeed, not pay-for-test-score-performance at all.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in California Teachers Association, NCLB, No Child Left Behind Act, Race to Top, highly qualified teachers, public schools, teacher preparation |
Be the first to leave a comment »