Kim Marshall on Merit Pay

This commentary from Kim Marshall is a great run-down of the objections that many have to merit pay programs. It's an important read especially right now, where the grab for the Race to the Top cash is going to be one of the top stories in education this year.

Read more here, if any.

Washington Education Week #3: Thanksgiving Turkeys Edition

The Race to the Top: With the lull between budget announcements and Legislative Assembly Days, most of the blog chatter this past week has been looking at how Washington State measures up in the federal Dash for the Cash Race to the Top grant program. The League of "Education" Voters has done a 6 part series on their blog that's worth your time to read; also with several blog posts that boil down to "Teachers suck, change everything" are the Partnership for Learning, here. And, just to clear out my RSS reader: Publicola.

I'm working on my own posts on each of the impacted areas, but one thing I do have to chuckle at is just how earnest some of the folks on the pro-RttT side are. "We have to allow the state to just take over failing schools!" they'll protest, without seeming to make the connection that we have laws regarding school boards and local control that are every bit as ingrained in the people of this state as dams and snowy mountain passes.

You can get an inkling of the fight if you go and look at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation's School Report Cards. Using their metrics, the worst high schools in the state are in places like Toppenish, Walla Walla, Pasco, Aberdeen, Puyallup, and Coulee City--all represented by Republicans, all places where the community will revolt if you try to send in a bunch of "outsiders" from Olympia to run their schools. "It's for the kids!" needs to be overwhelmingly supported by the evidence to make school takeovers work, and I'm not convinced in the slightest that plan that the State Board of Education has in place gets us where the LEV and SFC want to go.

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Randy Dorn Cares for Children/Randy Dorn Hates All Children: The reaction to the recent proposal by Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn to delay the math and science graduation requirements is still bringing in a ton of reaction. Dorn tried to get out in front of the storm, and a hell of a storm it is: when papers like the Walla-Walla Union-Bulletin are saying that you "continue to undercut the effort to reform — and improve — education", you've got a publicity problem.

Personally, I think that the best, most sensible reaction came from Cliff Mass, a meteorologist of some note at the University of Washington. Keeping science and math as graduation requirements punishes the kids for the failures of adults to get the system right, whether it's the 20 different iterations of testing that we've had in the last decade or trying to define exactly what standards we want to hold them to. The failure of the kids is also the failure of the system, and right now we certainly don't have the system in place to get them all where we want them to be. This thread from the Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession is also quite well written and on point. Check out Crosscut as well.

Also not really working in Dorn's favor: President Obama came out this week with a new initiative on expanding STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. When the Department of Education is saying higher standards, and the President is saying higher standards, it's pretty clear that Dorn is going against the tide.

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The State Budget: Amber Gunn of the EFF stirred up a hornet's nest over on Crosscut when she echoed Sen. Zarelli's call for a special session to start cutting into the state budget right now. You've got some elected officials in the thread saying pretty incendiary things, and that's always fun!

(Personal aside: You don't hear anyone from any of the professional school organizations talking about a special session, because in a special session there's absolutely nothing good that could happen for schools.)

Publicola has a link to a video that Governor Gregoire put out talking about just how bad things are; consider it the anesthesia before the emergency appendectomy come January. The Capital Record also has the video and some pull-out quotes, here.

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"Merit" Pay in Action, and Inaction: The Superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools, Maria Goodloe-Johnson, met 4 of her 20 performance goals last year. That's a bad batting average, a really bad spelling test, and not exactly anything to write home about on the job.

That's also $5,280 more in her pocket, according to the Seattle Times.

The way that Goodloe-Johnson's contract is strucutred she can earn up to 10% on top of her base salary for meeting her 20 goals; that means that each goal met is worth $1,320. Under the goose/gander school of thought, if the state designed a plan to allow every teacher to earn up to 10% of their salary in incentives, the legislature would have to allocate about another $250,000,000 just to cover the costs.

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Other bits of note from the week:

• Joanne Jacobs on Why Arts Education Isn't a Luxury. The half-time art teacher in my district already knows that she's at risk of getting cut in the budget crunch to come; hopefully, I can use this to help mount a good defense.
  
  
• I love this and want to marry it.
  
  
• The United Faculty of Washington State has put together a great blog on higher education issues here in Washington; you can check it out here.
  
  
• People are flocking to community colleges, which isn't a surprise given high unemployment and a down economy.
  
  
• This commentary on what happens when school levies fail is important, particularly given the current state budget realities.
  
  
• When the teachers take over the schools.

Read more here, if any.

I Go to Brainstorm for Great Education Posts

.....and this from Kevin Carey, on merit pay for University professors, is a big part of the reason why. There's a lot in what he's said that could apply to K-12, too.

Read more here, if any.

Eduwonkette on the DC Merit Pay Proposal

Probably the most important post you can read today is this piece from Eduwonkette on the merit pay proposal that Michelle Rhee is working on in Washington D.C. It really gets to both sides of the argument, particularly if you read the entire comments section, and it matters on the micro- level for what could be in the works here in Washington State.

I've got a post percolating on what the administrator's contract in my district says regarding "merit pay"; I'll try and share that soon.

Read more here, if any.

I ain't sayin', but I'm just sayin'....

Dino Rossi released his transportation plan this week. As can be expected he's getting gleefully savaged several times over by the commentators over at Horse's Ass, where transportation is king.

Transportation is what it is, and for many folks it's The Big Issue. As an education guy my piece is to worry about the effect on the schools if you take $10 billion out of the general fund (COLAs suspended again? Full-day kindergarten delayed? A retreat on standards?), and if Sen. Rossi is going to stick to the line on spending there are going to have to be cuts, or the math doesn't work.

But how can I reconcile that with this from Rossi's website?

Making education our paramount duty

• Today, too many politicians in Olympia do not treat education funding like it is their paramount duty.
  
• As governor, I will make funding education one of my top priorities.

Elsewhere in his education platform he calls for increased salary for math and science teachers (more $), merit pay (more $), new initiatives in the STEM subjects (more $), and alternate routes to certification (more $).

I realize that this is the game that politicians from either side play, but I'm really curious to know--how will Dino pay for it all? How can he criticize Gregoire for her spending habits, when here it really looks like just more of the same?

Read more here, if any.

Oh, You Silly....!

The News Tribune is a great punching bag, because they almost never get it right. The latest example of that is this editorial from the March 7th edition talking about the general low state of math education in Washington. Consider:

Washington’s community colleges have long complained about the large numbers of incoming students who need remedial math instruction. But when University of Washington professors join the chorus, you know our math problem has reached epidemic proportions.

Yes, because unless the U-Dub says it, it must not be true. Never mind that math has been an integral part of the WASL since 1993, or that "Math Wars" has become part of the cultural vernacular, or the many reports that have chided K-12 for not sending colleges math-prepared students; since Montlake has spoken, we may now attend to the matter.

(I may have lived in Cougar country for too long)

Later on:

Face it: Differential pay is the future. Washington needs skilled teachers if its students are to get the math and science education they need to compete in the real world. Simply ramping up teacher recruiting won’t be enough.

And this is why I support the budget line item in question, because it raises an interesting issue: exactly how much money would it take to get our best and brightest to commit to teaching in the public schools? If software engineer can net you six figures easily for work that you can do on your own time in your own home, then shouldn't teaching with its myriad responsibilites be paid at an even higher rate?

And what of the private schools? I've long wondered if they have the same problems getting math teachers. Another interesting case would be a place like KIPP or Green Dot, too--do they struggle to get math and science certified people, or does the attractiveness of their program put them in a better position?

Read more here, if any.

The Schoolyard Bully

From the tone of this article, you'd have to think it's the NEA and the AFT.

A piece from the article that doesn't work:

Or consider performance-based pay. Forty percent of teachers leave the classroom within their first five years on the job — in some measure because they don’t stand to gain the same performance-based pay raises available to their private-sector counterparts. Merit pay would help public schools retain good teachers by paying them more.

Let's note first that "in some measure" is a wonderfully inexact phrase; it could be one teacher, it could be all of them. Let's note too that as long as teaching is a government function there's a built-in incentive to keep costs vis-a-vis payroll down, so this idea that there's an untapped funding source out there just waiting to go to teachers is a figment of the imagination.

I'm taking a school law class now taught by a former superintendent who now does a ton of work for school districts locally as a hearing officer, investigator, and superintendent search consultant. He looked kindly on the proposed merit pay plan out of Idaho that would have given teachers raises of about $3,000 in return for giving up tenure; if you extrapolate that same number into Washington, with 80,000 teachers, you'd be looking at a cost of $240,000,000. It's not doable.

I think that if you do it right merit pay could work, under the perfect conditions and appropriate reasons. We can't pretend, though, that merit pay is a way to solve the salary gap, and it has to be acknowledged that (as with most things in life) it's impossible to do in a completely fair manner.

I do enjoy the discussion, though.

Read more here, if any.

Goldhaber Watch, Day 102

I’ve talked about the work of Dan Goldhaber out of the University of Washington before; smart guy who does a lot of good thinking about how to reform the system, even if I bitterly disagree with some of the things he’s tried in the past. In the December 19th Seattle Times he’s got a guest editorial spun out of the work that he’s doing with the School Finance Redesign Project wherein he talks about the perils of trying to implement differentiated pay for teachers based on subject, SES, board certification, etc. It’s worth reading, if only so you can be the weatherman who tries to tell which way the wind blows.

For what it’s worth (zero!), here’s some of my thinking on changing the pay structure:

Let’s Pay More for Math and Science Teachers! I’m not against this, if there’s proof that they’re getting results. If you’re going to give extra money to the same bad teacher doing the same lousy teaching that they’ve always done, that makes the whole system look foolish. If you’re giving extra money to a teacher who gets 40 kids a year to achieve at the highest level on the AP exam, now we’re talking.

(Sidebar: Those interested in the math/science teacher issue should check out the December 21st issue of the Chronicle Review for Linda Darling-Hammond’s article. It’s a great overview of the topic, and she’s a very readable author.)

Let’s Pay More for National Board Certified Teachers! Long time readers might think I’m against this. They’re right. I think that the National Boards are a waste of money, and I’m annoyed that they’ve been embraced by both my State Superintendent and my union.

Let’s Pay More for Teachers in High Poverty Schools! I’m all for it, because I’ve never heard a good reason not to.

We know that high teacher turnover is one of the factors that keeps low-SES, high poverty schools stuck in a never-ending cycle of rehiring and retraining. If making more money can convince teachers to stay there longer, that’s a good thing that will save us taxpayers money in the long run. If a bump in pay attracts successful teachers to those schools, that’s a good thing because those are the kids who need them most!

My only worry is that you might attract the wrong sort of teacher. Take Mr. Ennui, for example, who’s getting pressured by his principal to improve his practice but doesn’t really want to because hey, he’s been doing it forever and he’s only got three years until he can retire and it’s not him who’s the problem it’s the kids so why should he work hard—you might know him by reputation, even if you don’t know him personally. If he took a job in a school with a higher pay grade just for the sake of boosting his retirement, that’d be a damn shame for the kids.

Let’s Pay More for Teachers Who Live in Mercer Island! Um, no. My understanding is that at one time we had a differentiated salary schedule based on what part of the state you live in, and that just seems asinine to me. Sure it’s more expensive to live in Seattle, but there are advantages to the city that you won’t get living in Stehekin. It’s not always easy to attract teachers to some of our more distant towns, either—why would you go and teach special ed in Curlew if you could make more doing it in Spokane? The single salary schedule might have it’s weaknesses, but let’s not forget the strengths.

Also, I should be paid more. Just because.

If you could change one thing in our state salary structure, what would it be?

Read more here, if any.

Performance Pay in the Spud State

Idaho is working on a statewide merit pay proposal, according to the Spokane Spokesman-Review:

A sweeping proposal from state Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna that would give substantial pay raises to teachers who give up tenure, work at high-performing schools, assume leadership roles or take difficult-to-fill positions drew praise from local school leaders Thursday for its innovation.

The North Idaho school administrators who gathered in Coeur d'Alene on Thursday to hear about the plan raised questions that underscored part of the reason Luna was there: He's seeking input early on what will help the plan win the Legislature's approval next year.

The plan will never be perfect, he said, but "I would encourage you to get behind this, support it, help make it better."

Because the proposal would create two contracts for teachers to choose from – one with tenure and one without – some school leaders questioned how the contract would compare in the instance of forced layoffs. Others wondered how the plan would appeal to school employees like counselors, who under the current proposal wouldn't be eligible for every extra pay incentive, such as more cash for taking on leadership activities.

"Some of those are trials that have yet to be worked out and some are details that could be tweaked," said Melissa McGrath, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education. "People really support the plan and like it, they may have a few questions here and there but it's mostly about details."

Luna's proposed budget for the 2008-09 school year calls for a 7.9 percent increase over the previous budget – with about half, or $60 million, going to the performance pay program. Teachers who keep existing contracts with tenure could get increases as high as $6,000 if their schools show growth or proficiency on the ISAT. But teachers who forgo tenure could get added pay for things like certification in multiple subjects.

Key points of the proposal include:

•$2,400, one-time pay increase for all certified staff in a school that's in the top 25 percent statewide and shows improvement on the spring Idaho Standards Achievement Test; $1,200 if the school scores in the 50th to 25th percentiles; $1,200, one-time pay increase for certified staff at a school that performs in the top quartile overall.

•$2,400 per person annually for positions deemed difficult to fill by the school district. •$2,400 annually to give up tenure.

•$2,400 annually for non-tenured teachers who take on extra leadership activities like supervising after-school programs.

•Up to $2,400 for non-tenured teachers who earn additional expertise certificates.

A six-step procedure would be in effect for teachers who choose to forgo tenure for more pay.

"Some teachers already do this when they go into administration," Luna said. "We want to give them the opportunity to take this and remain in the classroom."

The current starting salary for Idaho teachers is $31,000. If the Legislature funds Luna's proposal, a first-year teacher who forgoes tenure and fills an in-demand position would make nearly $5,000 more.

"That's what it's going to take if we're going to attract the best and brightest," he said. "… We're never going to get teacher pay where we want it if we're just going to add 2, 3, 4 percent on the base pay each year."

Though most had questions about the details and suggested changes, school leaders commended the overall plan, saying it is bold and well thought-out.

Post Falls School District Superintendent Jerry Keane asked what the proposal could mean for administrative salaries, which are already closely aligned with top teacher salaries. "That gap is getting smaller as a result of this," he said. "I know you can't take on the whole world … but it's something to think about."

Calling it "a great start," Coeur d'Alene School District Superintendent Harry Amend said the proposal works to address a number of issues "that we have been hammering on in Idaho for a number of years" such as higher pay and attracting teachers to in-demand subject areas like science and special education.

"The point is, it's significant dollars for teacher salaries," said Chuck Kinsey, superintendent of the Lakeland School District. "The window's right to pass it."

Skyway Elementary School third-grade teacher Paula Marano, president of the Coeur d'Alene Education Association, said local educators have questions about the proposal such as how the Legislature will be able to sustain such a substantial increase in the education budget. The union will hear from state union leader Sherri Wood at its next meeting regarding Luna's proposal.

"It's controversial," she said.

In what's becoming my modus operendi, here's a couple of thoughts:

1. Right message, wrong messenger? Tom Luna isn't the most respected politician in the state of Idaho. His degree has been called into question, and his bona fides on education are sketchier than you'd like to see in the person in charge of all education in your state.
   
   
2. The option to have a tenured or non-tenured contract is interesting--I don't know that I've seen that in any other proposal--and it also begs a question of whether a teacher could switch between the two, or whether they're locked into one for life.
   
   
3. The statement from his spokesperson seems odd; it doesn't speak well of anyone that they would support a plan without knowing the details. It means they either don't care about the details, or they're thoughtless. Neither is attractive.
   
   
4. I emphasized the first bullet point because I'm either misreading it or the reporter doesn't understand percentile rankings, but if you give a bonus to those schools in the highest (75th to 99th) percentiles, then a different bonus to those schools in the 25th to 50th percentiles, you've oddly skipped the schools from the 51st to 75th. I can guess what the plan is, but the reporter worded it very awkwardly.
   
   
5. Note that all of the support statements are from superintendents, who have absolutely nothing to lose from this. It'll be interesting to see how the IEA, toothless as they are, respond.

Read more here, if any.

I am confused by Brad Jupp

In addition to reading Tough Liberal, the excellent biography of famed New York teacher's union leaderAl Shanker, I'm also working on the decidedly longer-titled Pay for Performance Teacher Compensation: An Inside View of Denver's ProComp Plan.

ProComp rather fascinates me. It's a performance pay plan that the teacher's union developed in concurrence with their local school board, approved by the rank and file, and financed by a vote of the people of Denver. It's easy to write off--spend a few minutes over at NYC Educator's place to see what the educators of the big apple have agreed to in recent contracts--but never before have we seen all those factors come together into some form of agreement. Brad Jupp has emerged as the union face of ProComp, and he's one of the three listed authors of the book above.

And yet, I've got this mistrust of Brad Jupp that I can't quite explain. He appears to be a visionary union leader, perhaps even in the mold of Shanker, but he also doesn't work for the union any more--he took a job at the central office for Denver Public Schools in 2005. This, after the Progressive Policy Institute named him their Innovator of the Year in 2004, based mainly on that much ballyhooed vision.

But let's think about vision. Can we really applaud Jupp's, when he saw fit to get out of ProComp and go for the administrative money instead? What does that say about his vision, if anything?

Last year EduWonk played a punk card on the UFT when they implied that Jupp couldn't be trusted to present the teacher's voice during the Aspen Institute meetings on No Child Left Behind, but I can't say that I disagree with the point. It's rather like making a jump from theism to atheism; do you carry any of the old beliefs with you, or does the label define you?

Read more here, if any.

A Technical Review of Merit Pay

The National Institute for Excellence in Teaching recently released a report, “Creating a Successful Performance Compensation System for Educators,” which compiles much of the existing research on the subject into a very vanilla but functional read on the issue.

It is interesting to see where some of the programs draw their money from. In one of the appendices they take a look at a merit program in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana and how they developed their financial model, including drawing money from Title I, II, V, IDEA, and the K-3 Reading Initiative. If they’re pulling the money for the teacher merit pay program from student programs, I sure hope the merit program is working. If not, it’s a terrible injustice.

Those interested in the issue might also get a kick out of “Performance-Pay for Teachers: Designing a System that Students Deserve,” from the Center for Teaching Quality. It’s a much easier read than the NIET report, with some solid examples on how a performance-pay program could work. You can find it here.

For a mildly contrarian point of view, consider finding a copy of the April 11th, 2007 edition of Education Week and reading the editorial “Not Performance Pay Alone: Teacher Incentives Must Be Matched by Systemwide Change.” You can’t get to it online without being an EdWeek subscriber, so try your local library (or here!). Written by Theodore Hershberg and Barbara Lea-Kruger of Operation Public Education, it makes the valid point that implementing merit pay without making some important systemic changes is a formula for failure.

Someday, a district here in Washington will take the leap. It’ll be a seminal moment.

Read more here, if any.