Advancing the Teaching Profession

Economists: Return Your Salaries for Producing Flawed Studies

Would it be outrageous for economists to have to pay back part of their salaries if their theories don’t improve the economy? What if education economists had to return consulting fees to the think tanks that paid them if their methods were flawed? Or if their conclusions ignored other research findings and the realities of teaching?

If you think this would be a good idea, then Harvard professor and MacArthur Genius Grant winner Roland Fryer and Freakonomics co-author and University of Chicago professor Steven Levitt (and colleagues John List and Sally Sadoff) might just have to cancel their vacations this fall. They would have to return the pay they received for their recent paper and recommendation that teachers must return salary bonuses (paid up front) when their students’ test scores do not improve sufficiently from one year to the next.

The Study: What It Said

Funded by the Broad Foundation—and drawing on a study about how Chinese factory workers are paid (see page 2)—the report concludes that teacher-incentive programs should be framed in terms of losses rather than gains.

Frustrated by study after study showing that single-minded merit-pay plans don’t improve student achievement (e.g., see the RAND report on New York City’s program, and the exhaustive longitudinal Nashville experiment), these highly touted scholars are on a mission to prove, as one journalist suggested, that “the promise of a larger paycheck will motivate (teachers) to work harder when they're up in front of the chalkboard.”

Fryer and colleagues analyzed the student test results (from the ThinkLink Assessment System) of 150 K-8 teachers from Chicago Heights, Illinois. The teachers were divvied into one control group and four treatment groups, with opportunities to be rewarded or punished for individual and team gains or losses. The “gain” treatment group worked under a traditional year-end bonus structure, similar to merit pay proposals of past and present. This group could earn up to $8,000 extra based on their students' standardized test scores.

Another treatment group—the “loss” treatment group—was given $4,000 at the beginning of the year and knew up front that if their students scored below expectations on the end-of-year test, they'd have to return part of this payment, proportionate to their students’ results.  The researchers found that the gain group showed no significant differences in student achievement, while the loss-treatment group’s individual and team results were comparable to increasing teacher quality by one standard deviation.

What It Missed

I am certain that this study was conducted by very smart people, but people who know too little about teaching and learning, schooling and community, teachers and students.

Consider these issues:

1.     The methodology is built on the assumption that money makes teachers more effective, but there is a wealth of evidence, including a recent Gates-funded study, to the contrary.

2.     The researchers used a low-stakes standardized diagnostic test that is supposed to be aligned with state standards, but there is no evidence that is the case. Did the researchers read this recent report on how off the mark many standardized tests are?

3.     While the teachers were assigned randomly to the control and treatment groups to control for working conditions, the researchers do not own up to the fact they are making a summative judgment about teacher effectiveness on the basis of a 25-50-question multiple-choice test that may not be aligned with the standards that teachers had been using all year.  

More Considerations

The researchers did show some concern for how other factors might affect the achievement of these students.  They looked at student mobility. Check. They look at cheating. Check. They look at liquidity constraints. (What?)  Fryer and company considered how teachers who received upfront payments might have competitive advantage if they “purchase certain materials that facilitate instruction.” My first reaction was to offer kudos to Professor Fryer. Not so fast.

Fryer was concerned that teachers who had additional dollars up front might go out and buy “new workbooks or dry-erase markers” that would allow them to teach more effectively than those in the control and gain groups. Really? These concerns tell us so much about how little these researchers know about teaching and learning.

Other studies have shown that teachers are more effective when they loop with their students for more than one year, when they teach the same course (in secondary school) for more than one year, when they have high-quality curriculum materials, and when they work with a team to plan curricula and evaluate student work. All these factors contribute far more to effective teaching than the loss-aversion merit pay schemes posed by this study.

More questions arise about how Fryer’s scheme would work in reality: Would districts have to hire more bureaucrats to collect the dollars awarded to teachers when test scores did not increase? How would such a pay scheme affect teacher morale? What about the impact on collaboration, given that the authors’ statistical model promotes competition among teachers?

Economists like Fryer and company—and their funders—are desperate to find some kind of empirical link between short-term test score gains and teacher pay (or firings). The researchers found a model—based on a Chinese factory where “loss” workers saw only a 1 percent increase in productivity—and decided to use it in such a complex enterprise as teaching.

If they were truly interested in improving schools, they might want to take a look at teachers’ own bold ideas about pay. If they were truly interested in improving schools, they might want to take a look at a larger body of research on teacher incentives and student achievement. Perhaps in the future, economists like Fryer and company will have to return their consulting fees if they don’t.

Steven Brill Does a 180: Teachers and Unions Can Save Our Schools

This guest post is by Kristoffer Kohl, a former classroom teacher who recently joined the Center for Teaching Quality as a policy associate working toward the vision of TEACHING 2030. He previously worked with a team of accomplished teachers from across the country to produce “Transforming School Conditions: Building Bridges to the Education System that Students and Teachers Deserve.”

The clamor for education reform continues on the pages of the Wall Street Journal, but not in the manner you might think. Rather than calling for vouchers, charter schools, and an end to collective bargaining, guest columnist Steven Brill suggests that the solution for saving our schools will be found in the skill and leadership of so-called ordinary teachers and the unions who represent them.

In an essay that appeared in Saturday’s print edition, Brill, author of Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools, dispels some of the myths that have informed faulty proposals for fixing public education. With 50 million students in 95,000 public schools, we cannot charter-school our way to meaningful reform, nor can we rely on the unsustainable model of super-teachers working endless hours at a tireless pace. In a profession numbering over three million, it is the “rank and file” that must be mobilized for actual reform to take root. Brill nods to the profound role that organized labor will play in the process by adding, “The unions are the organizational link that will enable school improvement to expand beyond the ability of extraordinary people to work extraordinary hours.”

I could not agree more. Teaching is the nation’s largest college-educated occupation, and we need millions of teachers to work together over time in their communities (and in and out of cyberspace) to serve students and families well. As Gary Sykes and Dick Elmore suggested decades ago, it is time to build a school system in which ordinary people can do the extraordinary work of education.

As a Teach for America alum who taught in Las Vegas for almost five years, I can attest to the need to focus on the working conditions that allow teachers to teach effectively.

As the Center for Teaching Quality continues to evolve, we are working with teachers to rethink what it means to “organize” as a profession. We encourage unions to set aside their past rules and tools (which won them much-needed concessions from reluctant administrators) to become professional guilds. Transformed in this way, unions could enforce teaching standards among the ranks and broker the kind of teacherpreneurial efforts needed for 21^st-century schools.

In the post-industrial age, teachers need professional organizations that defend not only their rights but their profession’s commitment to high standards, the interests of children, and a public education system that protects American democracy and spreads the expertise of its most effective practitioners.

Imagine if teachers were to earn differentiated membership into their unions based on the quality of their teaching. Imagine union leaders selected for their classroom expertise as well as their leadership skills and organizational prowess. How might such a leadership structure dramatically alter the voice that unions have in the reform debate?

As recent survey results from the Gallup/PDK Poll on public education demonstrate, the American public trusts teachers and believes they should have the flexibility to teach in the ways they think best without being tied to a prescribed curriculum. Likewise, we should trust the perspective of teachers and demand a meaningful role for them when big decisions are being made about education in this country. Too often, education policy is crafted by those who have never taught in a classroom. With the nation’s best teachers informing policy decisions, legislative mandates would be driven by the realities and challenges of our schools.

Our New Millennium Initiative teachers in Colorado (part of a larger network that includes communities in Washington, Illinois, Florida, and California) are promoting a series of innovative solutions related to implementation of the state’s teacher evaluation legislation, SB 191, also known as the Ensuring Quality Instruction Through Educator Effectiveness Act.  In his new book, Brill describes the Colorado law as landmark legislation. However, SB 191 and similar laws will fail unless we use new technologies and organizational structures that equip expert teachers to implement high quality teaching evaluation systems.

It is reassuring to hear that Steven Brill has opened up the conversation a bit more for teachers to lead the way.

Accountability Gone Amok and Pay Policies Gone Awry

So it turns out that high-stakes tests—and the accountability systems based on them—aren’t working out so well.

Earlier this week, The New York Times reported on a new study showing that the NYC district’s $56 million merit pay system has had no payoff for student achievement. The investigation, conducted by the RAND Corporation, concluded that “the bonus program had no effect on students’ test scores, on grades on the city’s controversial A to F school report cards, or on the way teachers did their jobs.”

The RAND study lines up with the myth-busting report of the National Research Council which concluded earlier this year that test-based incentive programs “often use assessments too narrow to measure progress….(and) have not increased student achievement enough to bring the United States close to the levels of the highest achieving countries.

Despite the evidence, district officials seem bent on finding a merit pay program that works. If NYC administrators are serious about finding a teacher compensation model that students deserve, then they should take a look at our inaugural TeacherSolutions report or a recent report by Florida teachers on pay-for-performance. A smart approach would value the spread of teaching expertise, not just reward high-performing teachers.

Meanwhile, in other high-stakes testing news, the Atlanta story just keeps getting uglier.

According to The New York Times, district administrators “humiliated principals who didn’t reach their (test score) targets,” who in turn, “demean(ed) teachers with whom they worked.”

One Atlanta principal “had teachers with low test scores crawl under a table.” He may have been following the example of his district’s superintendent, who “gathered the entire district staff at the Georgia Dome,” seating “those from schools with top scores” on the Dome floor while staffers from schools with low scores were sent to the stands.  

How do these shenanigans help children succeed? They don’t. Such actions only intensify the pressure that teachers feel. Should we be surprised that cheating occurred in such a climate?

Decades ago, eminent social scientist Donald Campbell observed, “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”

As noted in a just released report by the U.S. Department of Education, top-performing nations do not draw on the same kinds of high-stakes standardized tests and top-down accountability systems used here in the United States. Instead, these nations (e.g., Finland, Singapore, etc.) invest in teachers, who are deeply prepared to serve as experts in assessing their students. 

We have options. We can stick with high-stakes test scores (and the accountability systems that hang on them). Or we can create the results-oriented profession that students deserve. We can invite teacher leaders to help create robust accountability systems that draw on varied assessments, many of which are designed and scored by classroom experts themselves. We can compensate teachers in ways that encourage them to spread their expertise.

These options are within reach, as described in a paper I wrote with three master teachers. We argue that policymakers should look to expert teachers to develop meaningful assessments and ensure the conditions necessary to implement high standards with fidelity and rigor.

And real-world evidence of teacher leaders’ contributions to better teaching and assessments is in the works. This fall, CTQ will launch, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a virtual network of National Board Certified teachers who will be part of an effort to implement and assess new approaches to teaching and learning. Their work will demonstrate the value of formative, authentic assessments as an integrated part of effective instruction. They will help refine just-in-time ways to determine whether students are meeting the high academic standards represented by the Common Core not just at the end of the year, but every single school day.

Our students deserve assessment and accountability systems that are sophisticated enough to prepare them to meet the demands of a global economy. Accomplished teachers can help make it happen. 

Tapping Teacher Expertise (What We Haven’t Tried)

Below: Graphic facilitator Sunni Brown captured our TEACHING 2030 team's brainstorming session about the potential roles of teacherpreneurs...

Sometimes it seems like America has tried everything. Various flavors of school reform have come and gone, often without securing real or lasting improvements for students. But there’s one thing we haven’t tried (not on a widespread basis, anyway): fully tapping the expertise of our nation’s accomplished teachers.

Our most effective teachers possess a wealth of knowledge and experience could be applied to the pressing problems faced by our schools. And students do not have to “lose” their best teachers (as is so often the case now when teachers are promoted into full-time administrative roles).  Instead, we can design roles that allow teachers to advance their careers by spending part of their time working with students—and part of their time on innovative efforts to improve teaching and learning.     

Our public schools need more of these teacherpreneurs, expert teachers who keep one foot in the classroom while also pursuing results-oriented projects:

1.     Leading peer review processes for their schools to ensure that teaching evaluations are valid and drive improvement;

2.     Developing tools and strategies for teaching the Googled learner who has grown up experiencing virtual reality;

3.     Taking part in assessment reforms such as those linked to the new Common Core standards, and using technology to better capture, analyze, and publicize data about schools’ effectiveness;

4.     Identifying effective strategies for teaching students who are increasingly diverse — by 2030, 40% or more will be second-language learners;

5.     Organizing school-neighborhood partnerships that can support student learning through cradle-to-college solutions; and

6.     Transforming unions so that they become self-policing professional guilds that help ensure the quality of teaching that students deserve.

This list is not comprehensive. It’s just a sneak peek of the important work that “teacherpreneurs” could perform—while continuing to teach students for at least part of their day, week, or year. (For more on the teacherpreneur concept, see chapter 6 of TEACHING 2030, a book I coauthored with twelve talented classroom teachers.)

Investing in Teacherpreneurs

Unfortunately, teachers’ salaries remain too low to attract and retain enough talented, well-prepared professionals to fill our nation’s high-needs classrooms — much less to cultivate the 600,000 teacherpreneurs we call for in TEACHING 2030. Unlike in other top performing nations, teachers in the U.S. are considerably underpaid, compared to other professionals with similar training and responsibility. American teachers are paid, on average, 60 percent less than other comparable college graduates.

But investing in expert teachers isn’t just about salaries—it’s about how the work and the school day are structured. Other top-performing nations invest in teachers by expecting more administrators to teach so teachers can lead. U.S. teachers teach students about 80% of their total working time—while their international counterparts spend about 60% of their time teaching, with the remainder of the time spend planning lessons and fulfilling leadership responsibilities.

America’s top-down model of managing schools has led us to allocate resources less effectively than we otherwise could. Of the 70,000 employees of the Los Angeles Unified School District, only 50% are practicing teachers. Embracing teacher leadership—creating roles that enable teachers to guide and add value to their schools—could help us put our education dollars to better use.

Finally, we must take a good long look at how our investment in expert teachers compares to what we spend on other efforts. Consider the war the United States is waging in Afghanistan, which is expected to cost $113 billion this next fiscal year, according to The Washington Post. As Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, noted, “It is fundamentally unsustainable to continue spending $10 billion a month on a massive military operation with no end in sight.”

Could the costs of war be applied to lowering the federal deficit? Could we apply a small fraction of the savings to funding our public schools in ways that meet children’s needs? Creating and funding roles for expert teachers is a wise investment—and one that is critical to safeguarding America’s future. 

As we stretch the school dollar, let's not rip out the seams of our public system

I just came across Bruce Baker’s scathing critique of the new “15 ways to stretch the school dollar” policy brief, penned by Mike Petrilli and Marguerite Roza for the Fordham Institute.

Baker’s analysis turns the brief on its side (if not on its head), using pages of hard evidence to poke holes in the claim that the proposed reforms would actually reduce state spending on schools or help districts make better budget-trimming choices by eliminating "onerous" policies. Both the brief and Baker's response are must-reads for anyone trying to peel the onion of school funding mandates.

The policy issues raised by Petrilli and Roza need to be addressed. But it's important to do so carefully and thoughtfully, and despite Baker's aggressive style, he does lay out research-based counter arguments that deserve a full response, also framed by credible research.

As I looked through the list of 15 policy recommendations to "stretch" school dollars, I had some questions of my own. For instance, Petrilli and Roza propose that states and school systems:
 
• End ‘last hired, first fired’ practices. I would ask what happens when administrators, who know little about teaching and learning, undervalue the pool of experienced teachers who have grown up in a community and know students and families well.

• Remove class-size mandates. I would ask what happens when teachers cannot differentiate instruction and don't have time to carefully assess progress on the Common Core Standards because they have too many students to teach.

• Eliminate mandatory salary schedules. I would ask what happens when an impoverished school district does not have finances in place to ensure that teacher pay does not fall below the level necessary to attract talent.

• Redesign teacher compensation. I would ask what happens (this would be a good thing) to the savings when many teachers perform well within the incentives-driven redesign, and the district needs more money for salaries, not less.

• Redesign sick leave and stop spending on substitutes. I would ask what would happen if ALL administrators were expected to do some teaching (an issue that P&R do not address), both to reduce the need for subs and to keep all school professionals current about what it takes to teach today's students.

• Limit the length of time that students can be identified as English Language Learners. I would ask what happens when students are automatically or arbitrarily removed from a program, even when their teachers make the professional judgment that they still need those services.
 
School reformers often call for education policy solutions that are far too detached from the realities of the classroom and what it takes to educate students in the 21st century. It's hard to imagine that some of these proposals could survive a thorough vetting by expert teachers and principals who understand what it takes to be successful in every kind of school these days. I'd encourage policymakers to carry out such a vetting before leaping into new policy pants.

There are certainly other actions school districts can take to cut costs. As I mention above, one might be to create the expectation that all administrators teach and work with students some of the time. If they're not qualified to do that, perhaps they should be the first to be let go. As a decision maker responsible for educating students to high levels, I would definitely pursue this idea well before I let go all of my experienced and proven teachers (because they cost too much) -- or before I eliminated substitute teachers, who make it possible for teachers to spend time sharpening their teaching practice on behalf of the students they serve.

Let's be very careful how we stretch the school dollar. We don't want to rip out the seams of America's public school system, which I and many others still believe is vital in holding our democracy together. 

The Highest Paid Anybody

I have said for some time that I will continue to advocate for the teaching profession until the highest paid anybody in a school system is a practicing teacher. Think about the implications: For this idea to become a reality our education system would have to not only identify excellent teachers, but have a variety of venues to make them more visible to policymakers and the public as well as their fellow practitioners.

These top-paid educators would continue to teach part of the day, week, or year, but also spread their expertise in a variety of ways — perhaps as Teacherpreneurs (a concept outlined in Teaching 2030, a book I've penned with 12 of my teacher colleagues from the Teacher Leaders Network, with generous support from MetLife Foundation.)

While teachers and parents cheer when they hear me offer up this possibility, many of the D.C. policy pundits roll their eyes and quietly scoff at the idea. Well now a group of economists have confirmed that teachers are worth quite a bit — perhaps more than many of our top-paid urban superintendents.
 
Raj Chetty and colleagues found that even very young students who had more effective teachers and learned more in kindergarten were more likely to go college and earn more (and in doing so) produce more economic benefit to society. An effective kindergarten teacher, according to the economists, is worth $320,000. The researchers found that the effects of effective teachers were not found in year-to-year gains on standardized tests but in long-term adult outcomes. (They study drew upon a database of 12,000 children who were part of a well-designed scientific investigation in Tennessee in the 1980s and are now in their 30s.)

A recent New York Times article calls the findings “explosive.” I would suggest they are re-affirming our work at the Center for Teaching Quality — and should provoke a new narrative on how policymakers frame efforts to recruit and reward effective teachers.

• We need to think and act well beyond the narrow (and narrow-minded) strategy of focusing on ridding schools of a few ineffective teachers or paying teachers for short-term gains determined on 20th century standardized tests.

• We need to begin to blur the lines of distinction between those who lead schools and those who teach in them.

• We need to place a premium on those who produce long-term results and spread their expertise to others.

We need to really value excellent early childhood teachers, like my Teaching 2030 colleague and co-author John Holland. I will be the first to say that John — a 12-year veteran of teaching three and four-year-olds from Richmond’s toughest neighborhoods who is also an artist and innovator and thoughtful blogger for Inside Pre-K — is worth $320,000 a year.

Teaching Experience and Expert Teachers

I sure hope Jonathan Alter and Jay Mathews, popular journalists, read carefully last year's New York Times article by Elissa Gootman on the making of the $125,000 a year teacher for the Equity Project Charter School in Washington Heights, NY.

Alter and Mathews, who write regularly on education and teaching, are often found praising young teachers — whom they seem to believe need little formal preparation for teaching in high needs schools — at the expense of older, more experienced teachers who have been trained in education schools and thus “burdened” with pedagogical coursework. (In particular see this recent column by Alter in which he blithely offers the descriptor "older, incompetent teachers.")

So let's take a look at teacher recruitment at the Equity Project Charter School, which garnered national headlines by announcing it would pay its teachers $125,000 a year, plus performance bonuses. Who did Zeke Vanderhoek, founder of the innovative school, recruit to teach and earn the professional salaries offered? As Gootman's story documents, most of his choices are very experienced — dare we say older? — teachers, like Oscar Quintero, who has taught for over 30 years and is in his 60s. Or Judith LeFevre, 54, a science teacher from Arizona, "who spent three decades honing her craft at public, private, urban and rural schools."

While there are also several 30-somethings on the school faculty, they all have been well prepared over time for teaching in high needs schools. They have proof of their teaching expertise and a strong track record in engaging students in high quality instruction.

What is most striking is Gootman’s description of how the teachers Mr. Vanderhoek found in his nationwide search complement each other as a team. While each of the teachers had special training, skills, and experiences, what matters most is how they fit together as a cohesive unit, ready to serve  their students from Washington Heights. For LeFevre, making the move to NYC from distant Arizona was about “working with a team of master teachers.”

How is the Equity Project Charter School doing at the end of Year One? It's too soon for an academic progress report, but here's the NYC Dept. of Education Learning Environment Survey Report 2009-2010 for the school, which "provides a view of a school's learning environment based on responses from parents, teachers, and middle and high school students." The satisfaction scores are some of the highest in the city.

Skills and experience, collaboration, cultural competency, demonstrated expertise — these are the qualities that matter in today's teachers, whether they're 25 or 65. These should be the drivers of education policy and reform — not the notion that somehow, de facto, younger is better.

Effective Teaching: It's about Teams, Not Lonely Heroes

A few months ago I posted an entry about an important new study demonstrating the powerful effect of teacher collaboration in producing greater student achievement gains.

Using 11 years of student data in North Carolina, researchers from Harvard and Cornell have found that most value-added achievement gains are attributable to the make-up of teacher teams, not the traits and characteristics of individual teachers. Put another way, the collaboration model—not the lone-teacher-hero model loved by Hollywood and a surprising number of ed-policy wonks—produces the most student growth.

Despite the conventional wisdom posed by some inside-the-Beltway policy analysts, researchers Jackson and Bruegmann found that teaching experience (and qualifications) matter for student learning. Despite the barrage of criticism they have endured in recent years, it turns out that teaching veterans and those who meet standard certification requirements actually promote more academic growth—especially if they are organized for student success.

Now Education Sector, in a terrific new report by Elena Silva, explains why schools can no longer risk isolating teachers. Silva's work also raises serious questions about individualistic merit pay plans.

“The strategic positioning of teachers, where the best ones work among and with the rest, may be as important as formal training or professional development,” she writes.

However, Silva also points out that collaboration doesn’t mean less personal responsibility—that the “team approach doesn’t come at the expense of individualized growth or accountability” and the need continues to identify and reward “the specific contributions and areas of needed improvement of each individual teacher.“

To have the desired impact, new forms of performance pay must be more nuanced and sophisticated than the blunt instruments of the past. They will need, for example, to recognize, encourage and reward teamwork that impacts student learning and teachers who spread their expertise to others.

I’ll admit to some bias, but I think the 2007 TeacherSolutions performance-pay report, penned by 18 expert  teachers from our Teacher Leaders Network, describes a powerful framework for paying teachers in ways that matter most for real student learning.

As I read through the new Economic Policy Institute report Redesigning Teacher Pay: A System for the Next Generation of Teachers, I was struck by the many areas of agreement between the work of the 2007 team of classroom teachers and the ideas presented by Susan Moore Johnson and John Papay. That bodes well for the EPI work, I think. The one thing missing in most of the performance-pay schemes to date has been teacher buy-in and support. And without that, no new plan for professional compensation is going to survive for long.

New Research Confirms the Importance of Spreading Teacher Expertise

As policymakers focus on identifying and rewarding effective teaching, they should pay close attention to an important new study demonstrating the powerful effect of teacher collaboration in producing greater student achievement gains.

Using 11 years of student data in North Carolina, researchers have found that most value-added achievement gains are attributed to the make-up of teacher teams, not the traits and characteristics of individual teachers. Drawing on sophisticated analyses of this large database, they reported in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research that peer learning among small groups of teachers seems to be the most powerful predictor of student achievement over time.

Researchers C. Kirabo Jackson and Elias Bruegmann found that "students have larger test score gains when their teachers experience improvements in the observable characteristics of their colleagues." Less experienced teachers who are still acquiring “on-the-job” skills are most sensitive to changes in peer quality; teachers with greater labor-market attachment are more sensitive to peer quality; and both current and historical peer quality changes affect current student achievement.

The researchers warn that using value-added methods to identify individual teachers for merit pay and other high stakes decisions may very well be confounded by how teachers learn from each other. As one of the study’s authors noted, “If you give the reward at the individual level, all of a sudden my peers are no longer my colleagues—they’re my competitors. If you give it at the school level, then you’re going to foster feelings of team membership, and that increases the incentive to work together and help each other out.”

It is time to figure out 21st century teaching effectiveness systems that both identify expert teachers and reward them for spreading their expertise to others. I've been harping on the importance of this "spread effect" for some time. It's exciting to see research from a disinterested source that substantiates this key component of effective teaching.

Public Attitudes about Teaching: The Details Matter

 Yesterday, Phi Delta Kappa released its annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. The 2009 survey surfaced some surprising sentiments held by the American people about teachers and teaching.

The must-read findings reveal, for example, that almost three-quarters (73%) of those polled believe teachers should be paid on the basis of their students’ test score improvements. But even more (81%) believe that teachers should be paid on the basis of advanced degrees.

The dilemma for policymakers, of course, is to determine how to use test scores to assess teachers in reliable and valid ways, as I’ve written about recently. In the matter of paying for advanced degrees — that practice has long been a part of the “steps and rows” salary schedules of most school systems. What hasn’t been addressed in any large-scale or meaningful way is how we ensure that the advanced degrees teachers earn have a measurable impact on student learning and achievement.

The public’s opinion about teacher tenure — often a contentious issue between school reformers and union leaders  — is intriguing. If the pollsters asked the American people about tenure by defining it as a “lifetime contract” then very few (26%) approved. But if the pollsters defined tenure as “a formal legal review before a teacher could be terminated,” a sizeable majority (66%) approved.

The details matter when we set out to accurately gauge public opinion on teacher and teaching issues. They also matter in devising new ways to assess and reward teachers.  Watch for the launch of our New Millennium Teacher Leaders Network next month — where some of our nation’s most outstanding young teachers will focus on the future of teaching, how they should be judged and paid, and how they will take policy actions in their local communities.

Bushaw, William J. & McNee, John A. (2009, August 26). Americans Speak Out. Are Educators Listening? Phi Delta Kappan. Vol. 91, No. 01, September 2009, pp. 8-23.

Teacher Pay: Fact Check

Recently the The Manhattan Institute, a New York conservative think tank known to open criticize public schools and the teaching profession, released a report claiming that teachers across the nation earned an average of $34.06 per hour in 2005, which was $8.98 more than the average non-sales, white-collar worker. I guess the policy wonks at the Manhattan Institute got nervous when they learned that more business leaders, policymakers, independent researchers, and education economists increasingly agree that teachers need to be paid more and differently. The institute's findings were released the same day that Iowa’s Gov. Chet Culver, a former teacher from Des Moines, called for $70 million more to help increase average teacher pay in his state from 40th to 25th in the nation.

Here are the facts: According to a 2005 report the average salary of today’s teacher ($46,597 per year) is far less than those of the full professor ($94,606), engineer ($78,023), computer systems analyst ($73,269), retail buyer ($64,813), and accountant ($56,102). Over the past decade, the purchasing power of teachers has dropped as well. For example, between 1994 and 2004, for every real $1 increase in average accountant pay, teacher pay rose only 19 cents.

The cherry-picking data analyses of the Manhattan Institute relies on governmental data that calculates teachers’ work hours by examining union contracts or school district employment rules. The vast majority of teachers work more than 49 hours a week, with many after-school hours of lesson planning, parent conferences, home visits, school events and meetings with colleagues. In addition, in any given year approximately 25 percent of America’s teachers attend summer education programs to improve their skills or learn new content. Unlike what is found in most professions, teachers often pay for their own professional development. About 42 percent of America’s teachers also teach in summer school to supplement their salaries.

The institute’s analyses of the work life of teachers is naïve, at best. In 2004, the distinguished members of The Teaching Commission, chaired by former IBM chief executive Louis V. Gerstner Jr., recommended that the nation invest an additional $30 billion per year in teacher compensation, giving every teacher a 10 percent increase and providing a 30 percent increase to the “top half.” More later on what Gerstner calls for in paying the top half of teachers a lot more. Indeed across-the-board teacher pay increases are NOT the panacea for improving teacher supply, quality, and retention. However, the Manhattan Institute teacher pay conclusions are way out of step with both the research data and our nation’s business elites

Florida Pay Plan Archaic, Not Pioneering

A few days ago CNN.com blared a headline that read: “Teachers union challenges Florida's pioneering bonus-pay plan.” However, a quick look at the article and one clearly can see that the plan is not pioneering at all. At best it is archaic. The ill-conceived Florida program reminds me of merit pay plans of the past (déjà vu all over again) and the news blast represents yet another example of sloppy, sound bite journalism. The headline should read: “Unions, teachers, administrators, and parents should question Florida’s new merit pay plan program.” Why? Here are just a few reasons:

1. The program solely uses narrow standardized test scores that only measures the performance of a very limited number of teachers on just 2 subject areas (those who can have standardized test scores attached to them) ;
2. Florida’s accountability system does not measure student growth very well (e.g., consider a 5th grader who, because of language and other issues, reads on a 2nd grade level but must “measure up” on a 5th grade test that cannot identify teachers who help him move from the 2nd to 3rd grade literacy level);
3. The program’s merit bonuses of $2000 are small and inconsequential – with no evidence that the amount is sufficient for motivating teachers to teach more effectively;
4. The program does not reward teachers to use test data and spreading their teaching expertise;
5. The program does not address the core issues of teaching lower-performing students and staffing under-performing schools;
6. The program does not address at all the under-prepared and out-of-field teachers Florida hires because policymakers are not willing to address the real reasons (e.g., working conditions) behind the teacher shortages in the state;
7. The programs does not reward small teams of teachers working together producing meaningful results for students and their families over time; and
8. The program does not involve professional teachers in its creation.

TeacherSolutions, a new intiative of our Teacher Leaders Network, is the answer. Next month we will release the inaugural report of TeacherSolutions – a select group of accomplished teachers who have studies, considered, and weighed in on the complex policy problem of professional compensation.

To increase productivity, today’s management experts tell us, you must listen carefully to the advice of high performers in your workforce. Yet the insights of our most successful teachers are rarely solicited when school and teaching policies are under development. Even though teachers are not often invited to the policy table, they are frequently labeled as obstructionists when they decline to endorse “bold new plans” or point out flaws in policies that they know from experience will not yield the intended outcomes. Keep your eyes and ears peeled.

Getting the Merit into Merit Pay

The Baltimore Sun recently reported that Maryland, with leadership from Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., intends to offer teachers “financial rewards for those who take on tough assignments and produce gains in test scores.”

The devil is always in the details. However, reviewing news article surfaces several vexing issues, prompting my own hard-hitting questions for which I would like to see answers.

1. The program will allocate only $800,000 for incentives. How much do policymakers believe is necessary to “motivate” teachers to teach for effectively? Why do policymakers believe that small bonuses for gains in test scores will achieve the results they seek?
2. The news articles suggested that the proponents of the plan believe that it “is common sense to reward employees for good performance.” I would agree. However, I wonder why these proponents rarely cite the evidence revealing that ineffective teaching is most often chalked up to lack of preparation (for classes and students taught) or inadequate resources?

Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley has got it right: "What I find is that there are many teachers who are attracted to schools that are in challenging neighborhoods when they have good leadership," he said. "I think the better incentive for teachers is good and strong leaders. That allows them to use their talents to the fullest where it is the most needed. I have yet to see a merit pay system that looked workable."

This does not mean policymakers should not help craft performance pay plans that reflect the complexity of teaching. However, let’s get real: Paying teachers differently or for performance and merit is not a new educational idea. Efforts from years past—including those in the 1920s, 1950s, and 1980s, failed to resolve a variety of technical and organizational issues. Today’s policymakers and education reformers are likely to repeat the merit pay mistakes of the past by:

• using invalid, untested, or poorly designed measures of teacher effectiveness,
• neglecting to train administrators who could produce useful and trusted data,
• refusing or forgetting to involving teachers in developing plans and programs, and
• ignoring the importance of teamwork in increasing student achievement.

There are some interesting and thoughtful approaches to paying teachers more and differently. But the examples of Florida and Texas, described in the Baltimore Sun article are not good examples at all. They both focus on paying a limited number of teachers a limited reward for individually raising student test scores a few points. Let’s hold policymakers accountable for doing the right thing when it comes to rewarding teachers for what makes a difference for their profession and the students they serve.

More on Unmeritorious Merit Pay

A few posts ago I commented that the “new” Florida merit pay plan for teachers had no merit.  Reformers and policymakers in Florida (and elsewhere) are stoking the “use of standardized test scores” fire to judge and reward teachers. To be sure, our public school system needs to go well beyond the current single salary schedule. However, even the more robust and thoughtful value-added statistical formula cannot account for how different teachers contribute to the learning of individual students. Susan G. – a middle school family and consumer sciences teacher, and member of Teacher Leaders Network  — recently posted on the TLN blog:

Any "bonus" compensation that rewards individual (teachers) and ignores the contribution of (other) teachers who give students opportunities to apply that learning is short sighted and suggests the designers of the policy have no grasp of how students really learn. I live on the "elective" hall of a middle school. Last week our art teachers had students illustrating Langston Hughes poetry and using Escher's work to connect tessellation and math. In Technology Systems (formerly known as Shop), students were working with aerodynamics and robotics. My students were studying the persuasive speech of advertising as well as using applied algebra to develop a nutrition label for a recipe. The keyboarding teachers had their students working on their technical writing skills which emphasize proper punctuation. You can't even talk about music without using math and foreign language.

Reformers and policymakers would be well-advised to pay attention to highly accomplished teachers like Susan in designing and implementing new professional compensation systems. They are the ones making learning happen for students right now.