Yesterday’s speech by President Obama on education (and the teaching profession) was important. He pointed out even more clearly the need to advance performance pay, use data to track student progress (like in Long Beach, California), and take a hard look at charter schools (closing those that do not work and are bilking the taxpayers). The policy pundits at EduWonk suggest that teacher unions are “scrambling” because when the President said, “Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement,” he meant using test scores to judge teachers.
Outcome data must be used in any performance pay system worth its salt — but I am certain President Obama and the terrific team he is putting together know full well that current standardized tests cannot be the sole metric in judging which teachers add value and should be paid more. The reasons are legion — but tops on the list are the factors that only 30% of our nation’s teachers can have a standardized test ascribed to them, the current tests address so little of the 21st century skills the President is touting, and value-added estimates are not stable enough to be used as a sole arbiter of who is an effective teacher. This is the conclusion of many labor economists — including one who is a good friend of mine who is reporting that value-added estimates of teacher effects tallies just a mere .3 correlation from one year to the next. Not so good if one is to make a valid, high stakes decision.
So why does the question of whether test scores are to be used in P4P plans have to be yes or no? Why not — in Obama-like fashion — advance both ideas? Why not ask teachers, who cannot be judged solely according to test scores, to use the data in explaining why their students are doing better or not? Why not ask teachers, like they are doing successfully in Denver and Austin, to assemble other valid data on the effects of their efforts to raise student achievement? Why not ask teachers to design new 21st century assessments, as a part of a new P4P plan, and use the data to inform a more robust accountability system? Why not ask our best teachers (like our TeacherSolutions team or the Kansas team sponsored by the Kauffmann Foundation) to design the pay for performance systems that students deserve — and get beyond the either-or thinking and action of the past.
Indeed, the President himself has articulated his vision for the future of education by calling for higher quality tests that can tell us more about the knowledge and skills our students are learning and the system (not just the teachers) that enables them to do so.
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