Merit Pay Considered in Albemarle?

Teaching is sharing, not competing.

In a seemingly unimportant story about a meeting between the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and the County School Board about compensation strategies the following screamed out at me:  "Supervisors also asked the board to consider a merit-based compensation scale. "

Come again?  One would think that something as important as Merit Pay or Merit-Based Pay would fly a little farther up the news flag pole locally but sadly that is not the case.  No worries, Teaching Underground has you covered.   In fact we've had you covered on the topic of Merit Pay something like six times already.  We will say again with a loud and unwavering voice that making kids part of the pay equation is a bad idea.   Don't believe us?  Keep reading.

"Merit Pay" seems like a Panacea for all that ails schools performance wise, but also financially.
Can this be so?  The concept is to boost student achievement and improve our schools using bonuses for teachers.   Many are supporting this flawed concept.   Common sense and mounting evidence suggests Merit Pay is not only a failed solution but that it is not even an improvement.   For this idea to be suggested is contrary to what most educators already know.

Nashville schools were part of the most scientific evaluation to date and after 3 years of study Matthew Springer, executive director of the National Center on Performance Incentives announced the following:.

 “We tested the most basic and foundational question related to performance incentives — Does bonus pay alone improve student outcomes? – and we found that it does not.”  

I tend to be wary of "centers for" things but it seems prudent to point out the above name seems to suggest they would be looking for evidence that it did positively affect student performance.   The RAND corporation's mission is to improve policy and decision making through research and analysis.  It might seem RAND has failed on the front end part of their mission here.  Meanwhile New York City, Chicago along with the State of Texas tried and abandoned such plans after showing no improvement.  But here we are.  Still dealing with faddish cavalier approaches to reform.   Education Historian and expert Diane Ravitch has a better sense of things and doesn't mince words here on the subject.

Bad  reform ideas seem more contagious than good ones.

No Child Left Behind and now Race to the Top pushed by our Education Secretary Arne Duncan fail to comprehend the complexity of what motivates all of us who teach.  A uniform system of pay does indeed do little to motivate us yet we show up every day and good teachers have yet to beat down the local government or statehouse door calling for such a shift.  We teach not to be rich but to make a difference.  Fair pay and work conditions are far more important.  It is exceedingly difficult to measure teacher effectiveness and quality and designing a valid system is elusive so we settle for something else. The only result of PfP is the further demoralization of teachers and more reliance and focus on standardized exams which are debatable in terms of their measure of showing teacher quality.  Something they were not designed to do.    The United States is constantly compared to Finland where they've focused instead on reduced class size, boosted teachers’ salaries, and eliminated most standardized testing.   It would appear we are resolved to forge our own reform path come hell or high water.  It is hard to turn the reform train around.

We could separate Merit Pay and Value Added(another topic we've covered pretty well) and they both amount to Pay for Performance.  You can pay me for what I do, or, you can pay me for what my students do.  The latter is a bad a idea and no sound example of the former truly exists.  That does't change the fact that current compensation practices are inadequate and potentially outdated.  I can only hope is the same will soon be true for Merit Pay.   Most teachers simply ask they be paid what they are really worth something that is rarely the case.

In the meantime we plan on doing our best to "educate" our local representatives on the subject with the hope that Merit Pay might not progress far beyond consideration.    We'd encourage you to voice whatever our your view is as well. 

"New" Virginia Teacher Evaluations- The Foundation for Merit Pay?

Merit Pay. A simple idea.  Increased pay will increase the amount of good teaching.   Based on the logical idea that the harder and better you work, the more your students learn and the better they perform.  So you deserve compensation accordingly.   But the practical world and theoretical world too seldom cross paths in public education.  There's too many moving parts.

Whether you stand inside or outside a classroom may have a large impact on whether you see such an effort as a good or bad thing.   The TU works in a classroom and sadly no bad idea stays dead long.  Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have shown they favor Merit Pay and have enacted policies to encourage it.  Many like-minded reforms gain widespread support at the onset, but when programs are implemented they often bring about troubling unforeseen consequences. You 'd be hard pressed to find those who thought in NCLB was a bad thing when it was passed...not so hard today. Maybe there's a lesson in that.

It is not easy to define good teaching. That reality makes Merit pay iffy. I've had kids in the same class earn the same grade and one would say I was great..the other might use more colorful language to describe my teaching.  Yet they are both correct.  One might vastly outperform the other on a standardized test despite my best efforts.  Or they might score the same  but I may have had to work much harder with one of them for that result.  So it seems reasonable I might suggest that merit and pay should stay far apart in public education.  I see people who make more money often doing less(I'm among those who make less so that cannot be seen as an objective statement).   Merit pay rewards in unreliable ways that can and have misrepresented student progress.  To suggest it should be the only way to measure teachers is dumb, to have student performance play a role might only be foolish.

Lab Rats?  The result is not always what is intended.  NCLB anyone?

 New York City tried and failed with a merit pay system.  Many other districts across the country are sticking with theirs(Houston, Denver, Chicago). Who's right?  More on this later.  I recall an article and a quote from DC Chief of Human Capital(whatever that title means) “We want to make great teachers rich.”  I'd sit that cat down and say."You can't."  If he questioned why I'd ask him to find a good teacher who took the job with getting rich in mind.  I'd then say that person is an idiot.  No offense.  If you try to sell me on something by saying "You COULD make up to $X" I will bet its either Amway or an offer written on a sign on the shoulder of the road at a stoplight.

Teachers should be paid more but we remain in sometime horrific working conditions because of the non-monetary rewards.  My colleague has called teaching a life giving profession and at times that is so true.  Merit Pay discussions are not one of those times.  It would in fact suck the life and energy from far too many teachers.  We are not lab rats after all.  Here's a news flash.  Morale matters.    Merit systems show up in a puzzling variety of ways.  If it was so simple and so effective then it should look the same everywhere.   It does not.  The simple reason is because it does not do what it promises to do long term but decision makers still accept the premise. 

I will be the first to admit that the way we are compensated today, based solely on degrees, years experience and additional duties doesn't always make sense.  There is differentiation but I think the wrong people make more money.  But if it is nothing else it is predictable and predictability in public school budgets is important.  That is not certain under a merit pay system.  There is individual merit pay and also some exploration into providing bonuses on the building level for a sort of pooled merit pay.   The attractive part in principle is that if you do a good job you students are better served and you stand to make more money.  The frightening part is that students might learn less on the whole and teachers also stand to make significantly less money over time.   If we are asked to "compete" for bonuses from a fixed amount of funds that won't foster much cooperation and collaboration, the lifeblood of teaching and developing new new young talent.  Merit supporters dismiss this and use all sorts of misguided analogies to paint opponents as whiny alarmists.  I am a lazy teacher who took the job so I wouldn't have to work hard and I'd still get paid...right?

What do teachers think will actually make them better?

Sure in some other jobs people make more or less based on performance but don't drink the kool-aid and believe what you hear from "meritists".  This commonly believed trend is in no way true in many fields and based on the changing economy the number of jobs where productivity affects pay is in decline.  Some suggest it is true in less than 6% of the workforce.(that article is a must read)  But we are not talking about other jobs where units sold, or contracts closed are tangible and make sense.  We are talking about education and our kids.   We are talking about teaching young people.  Are we able to create something that rewards MERIT in something as complex as education?  Give that some deep thought.   Is merit pay the way to achieve an improved teaching workforce?      Hardly.   I believe and some evidence and studies confirm it will achieve the opposite and do more to drive away good teachers rather than attract them.  We aren't lab rats after all    There are countless variables at work and so many moving parts that creating an equitable and potentially effective system becomes too colossal a task to complete.

One flaw is that teacher performance is only part of the equation and the students are not incentivized.  Numeric measures grow to misrepresent what students are actually learning since what is being measured becomes the focus.  I believe as a teacher I could be more effective teaching fewer students with fewer preps and more planning time.  Yet this is not even in the discussion. If indeed people did work harder why not pay me per unit..I mean pupil?  How about simply by the hour?  Money, that's why.  Many criticize proposals as simply an effort to save money and not truly a way to improve education.  I'd add that however you choose to measure teacher performance, it will always fail to fully measure everything that is involved in what good teachers do. 

With revisions to how teachers statewide are to be evaluated the cynical eye might spot a clear framework for the implementation of a statewide merit pay system. That worries me.  I've read enough to confirm my suspicions that people with influence want to bring Merit Pay to the Commonwealth.  Revised versions of a evaluation standards are intended to provide a more uniform and "objective" way to evaluate teachers.  And don't forget one that is more....cringe...data driven. 
In April of 2011 Governor Bob McDonnell announced a pilot program to institute merit pay in  169 "hard to staff" schools across the state.  In response Kitty Boitnott of the VA Education Association, which represents teachers had this to say:   “Paying teachers to work in hard-to-staff schools is one thing, but it’s totally different to allocate pay based on how students do on an SOL on a given day in a given year,

"Yes, your salary and job security depend on this student."

Many of the measures used under the pilot are simply derived ratings from SOLs.  I and many other well informed people contest that student performance on standardized tests are a poor measure of teacher performance.  Few sane people argue that.  The issues relating to the secrecy, merit, quality, and efficacy of such tests are something the TU and countless other teachers have blasted as highly flawed.  Yet standardized testing continues to be the favored approach by too many politicians and legislatures across the country as a barometer of how we are doing.   No longer a measure of just students or schools, but now individual teachers.  The key phrase I've heard used quite a bit over the last year and in particular over the past week is Student Academic Progress or Student Academic Growth.  As I write these blogs I often circle back to the constant effort by many to turn teaching from an art and into a quantifiable science.  And starting this year I will be assigned a numeric value to how well I teach. 

Maybe this effort grows from the Feds and the Race to the Top program's preference to states that had something along the lines of merit pay.  Maybe it is an effort to level the playing field and find was to more objectively measure non-core teachers in subjects like art and music.  Maybe it comes from ALEC or the Gates Foundation and their deep coffers. It is coming from somewhere and wherever that is, they are unfamiliar with good teaching.  Let's look for a moment at how VA  judges its  teachers:

------------------
The Guidelines for Uniform Performance Standards and Evaluation Criteria for Teachers set forth
seven performance standards for all Virginia teachers. Pursuant to state law, teacher evaluations must
be consistent with the following performance standards (objectives) included in this document:
Performance Standard 1: Professional Knowledge- 10%
The teacher demonstrates an understanding of the curriculum, subject content, and the
developmental needs of students by providing relevant learning experiences.
Performance Standard 2: Instructional Planning-10%
The teacher plans using the Virginia Standards of Learning, the school’s curriculum, effective
strategies, resources, and data to meet the needs of all students.
Performance Standard 3: Instructional Delivery-10%
The teacher effectively engages students in learning by using a variety of instructional strategies
in order to meet individual learning needs.
Performance Standard 4: Assessment of and for Student Learning-10%
The teacher systematically gathers, analyzes, and uses all relevant data to measure student
academic progress, guide instructional content and delivery methods, and provide timely
feedback to both students and parents throughout the school year.
Performance Standard 5: Learning Environment-10%
The teacher uses resources, routines, and procedures to provide a respectful, positive, safe,
student-centered environment that is conducive to learning.
Performance Standard 6: Professionalism-10%
The teacher maintains a commitment to professional ethics, communicates effectively, and takes
responsibility for and participates in professional growth that results in enhanced student
learning.
Performance Standard 7: Student Academic Progress-40%
The work of the teacher results in acceptable, measurable, and appropriate student
academic progress.
-------------


Standard #7 sounds good doesn't it?  But ask yourself for just a moment how that will be demonstrated to someone.  It quickly devolves into either an over-reliance on standardized testing or on a subjective judgement leaving uncertain outcomes.  This creates a threatening shadow that hangs over you as a professional.  Not the best environment to do your best teaching.

In the hopes of receiving a positive rating should I set low growth goals for my students so that they will meet expectations?  Or should push them risking that the appearance they fell short?  Should I target what is on the test, inflating perceived growth?  Will I be as likely to innovate and experiment or will I play it safe with more regimented instructional approaches?  Thinking more broadly can you even measure all that a teacher does?  And if you do, how in the world can create a measure of good teaching that fails to even watch the teacher teach?     

I simply cannot support any measure of a teacher that does not not involve spending time in that teachers classroom.  Further any system that undermines the collegial nature of education and fosters a more competitive environment is bad.  No it is worse.  It threatens the very fabric of what the best practices in teaching and learning are.  A proprietary, for profit, competitive, business minded approach to education is a terrible idea.  So for those arguing in favor, please stop.  Not only are you doing things most teachers oppose you are potentially making them worse teachers and thus hurting our pupils.    I'd strongly encourage fellow teachers in our state to educate themselves on these changes and speak up if they oppose them.

My division seems for now to have avoided the pitfall of simply plugging in SOL scores into Indicator #7.  That is a good thing. But we have to comply with new standards established by the DOE.  When push comes to shove the bottom line is simple: Is merit pay effective long term?

Getting ahead of yourself?  If only it were this simple.

Much of our state's course seems plotted by the Virginia Association of Superintendents.  They do not seem to overtly favor merit pay, but the politicians they influence often make choices based on what is politically expedient and cheaper, not what is wise.  In the "cost versus benefit" discussion their short attention span means they only hear the word cost.  Only time will tell.  Virginia's plans seem to be driven or at least be driven by the Education Commission of the States which seems to lean far more toward the establishment of that system.  That statement is backed by four of the conclusions summarized fro their report Teacher merit pay: What do we Know? :

Each of the studies of the four pay-for-performance systems found no conclusive
evidence to link the new merit pay system with higher student achievement. There are
several potential reasons why there is a lack of conclusive findings:
1. The programs are too new:
2. The implementation of the programs has been too limited:
3. Funding levels may not yet be significant enough:
4. The level of incentive pay may not be high enough to promote change:
5. Perhaps merit pay does not contribute to student achievement:

At least in #5 they are thinking like a teacher.

I'll conclude with an excerpt from the  Educational Reform in Virginia: Blueprint for the Future of Public Education  by the Virginia Association of Superintendents
Page 38 begins the discussion of Merit Pay:

Merit pay programs for educators — sometimes referred to a “pay for performance” — attempt
to tie a teacher’s compensation to his/her performance in the classroom. While the idea of merit
pay for classroom teachers has been around for several decades, only now is it starting to be
implemented in a growing number of districts around the country. One example of the increased
interest for merit pay systems can be seen in the recent increased funding level for the federal
Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF). The TIF program, which is run through the United States
Department of Education (USDOE), provides funding to school districts to help them implement
merit pay systems. The USDOE has increased funding for the TIF program this year by more
than four-fold — from $97.3 million to $437 million. But with all of this increased interest and
funding for merit pay programs — what if anything do we know about the costs versus the
benefits of these systems?

Think what you want.  Just remember in education, it is never THAT simple. Money matters but the last thing I am thinking when I am working my tail off teaching is how much I am getting paid.  Is that simple enough?

"MUST TEACH BETTER..."

Diane Ravitch at NCSS 2011

“If enough people care, the public may learn the course is not wise, not reform and backed by no evidence.  Public Education is a precious resource that must be preserved and improved for future generations.” 

-Diane Ravitch, NCSS 2011

Diane Ravitch is a voice of reason and sanity in the politically charged and reckless world of education policy and so-called reform.  The Teaching Underground had the privilege of hearing a lecture from Dr. Ravitch at the NCSS national convention this weekend in Washington, D.C.

Conventional wisdom might brand her “anti-reform,” but in reality the term educational reform has been high-jacked and turned into “testing, accountability, and choice” at the exclusion of meaningful reform seeking appropriate ways to “develop qualities of heart and mind and character to sustain our democracy for future generations.”  The Teaching Underground is ready to steal the term back and label Diane Ravitch as the voice of true reform in American education.

After hearing Ravitch’s talk we jokingly said to each other, “she stole all of her material from the Underground.”  Since our arrival in the blogging world in October 2010, we’ve learned that every challenge we’ve faced at the local level is rooted in the national education landscape.  Like Ravitch, our primary hope is that people would care, and by caring, the public will learn that our present course of educational policy in the United States often guised as reform is really no reform at all.

Ravitch’s lecture at the NCSS Convention centered around a dozen or so questions.  (I was typing fast, if you were there and see that we missed a question let us know.)  Below are the questions Ravitch addressed.  We've included a few links to related posts on the Teaching Underground.  Feel free to offer your reactions to the questions, and if you were at the talk, let us know what you thought.  We'll post about some of these topics in the months to come.

Are we in crisis?
-one of the very first posts on TU: Are We Failing?

Should public schools be turned over to private management?

Why not have a free market of choices for parents and students?
-these two questions were addressed in our post Breaking the Public Schools

Should public funded schools be allowed to make a profit?
-in April we discussed The Education Marketplace

Should teachers get a bonus for higher test scores?

Will test scores go up if teacher evaluations are tied to them?

Should student test scores ever be a part of teacher evaluation?
-each of these three questions remind me of the post Why You Should Care

Should NCLB be reauthorized?
-among other posts addressing NCLB, here is 2012 or 2014

Will Race to the Top transform?
-it will certainly transform something, here's a post on NCLB Waivers and Race to the Top

Should teachers and principals have professional training?

Will competition improve schools?

Are We Really Going There?

D.C. Schools Prepare for Nation's First Sex-Education Standardized Testing

Go ahead, click the link.  That title's not a joke.  Our capital's school system plans to use multiple choice standardized testing to gauge student knowledge in 5th, 8th, and 10th grades on a number of health related topics.  Officials created the test to comply with a recent policy enacted by the D.C. City Council.

Officials said that the test, which will also include questions on nutrition, mental health and drug use, is based on a provision of the Healthy Schools Act of 2010, which the D.C. Council passed to address health issues in the 75,000-student system.

But the legislation’s sponsor, council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), said the law requires only that the District produce an annual report describing progress on student health concerns. It does not mandate creation of another standardized test.

As silly as this sounds, every time the citizens of our nation sit back and allow passage of what appears to be reasonable education policy our schools take one more step down the slippery slope of insanity.  Did you hear about the 52 new standardized tests last year in Charlotte-Mecklenburg?  To implement the new Pay for Performance systems students took standardized tests in nearly every subject, including Yearbook!

Now, Virginia is among the bandwagon states that want to link teacher evaluation to student "growth and performance."  Here's the catch.  Can anyone argue that teachers should be rewarded for promoting student growth or assissted when they don't/can't?  Not at all.  Whether you refer to "growth models" or "value added", the idea that teachers should be judged on how much a student learns in a given year can't be refuted.  So no one pushes back against legislation that tries to enable this.

We're beginning to learn this year in Albemarle County about our new Teacher Performance Appraisal system.  We've started changing the system to comply with state requirements that at least forty percent of a teacher's evaluation is based on "student growth."  So far we haven't fallen prey to the testing craze, we don't have to specifically link all of our "growth goals" to standardized testing.  It's going to be hard.  Administrators will have to ensure that teachers set reasonable and rigorous enough goals.  They will have to make sure that standards are applied equally across the division.  Some teachers will have specific data to include (with SOL testing) while others can be more creative (music, art, Psychology, etc.)  In the end, it might look easier to just give the kids a test see how they do.

Standardized testing for Sex ed?  Really?  Wake up America.  Republican or Democrat, education policy isn't working, and until more people stand up and expose the consequences of current education policy we're likely to see more of the same until we finally break this system and start over from scratch.  That idea might sound good to some, but for the millions of students who are being broken down along with the system that is supposed to support them, that is not good enough.

Paying Attention to the School

As the "War on Our Schools" wages on the body blows are starting to take their toll. I try to avoid buying into the idea that someone is out to get us, but my ribs are pretty sore. Almost daily I have a conversation with a colleague whose ribs feel much the same. Certainly I can dismiss some of the concerns as alarmist or just complaining, but they have become so frequent that they are tough to ignore. Many good teachers are starting to leave. I'm a little worried that the current economic climate overshadows this and covers it up so no one notices. Is anyone paying attention?

As our nation looks in the mirror and asks itself some pretty important questions about the future one of those is what should our schools look like? I ask that with my knowledge as a teacher who just tries to get a little better each year. Sometimes I am successful, sometimes I am not. I try to do the job I would want done for my own children. But that feels like it keeps getting harder and this is a reflection of a system that I think is not getting better each year despite flurried reform. To the person not working in the schools they hear political rhetoric calling for reform and improvement and generally welcome the idea. These seem innocuous enough and garner sufficient support to move forward or are introduced quietly enough to go unnoticed. These reforms are creating a system that drains resources from actual instruction and are impossible to maintain. They march forward unopposed until they reach the schoolhouse. By the time we at the ground level confront what their effect is on student learning and our teaching it is too late to stem the tide. Its like when a boxer plans to come on in the late rounds but the body blows took us out before we could do much about it.

Granting the point that education has problems and we need to work hard to improve and make some changes allow me to pose another question to that mirror. What if the decisions being made are wrong? Value Added, Race to the Top, International Comparisons, the list goes on. Arne Duncan(yes picking on him) and others might be doing something that no one is asking for, at least publicly. Destroying our Public Education system as we know it. Don't believe me? You're not alone. I think that our schools should be viewed as too big to fail and there are countless teachers that say current decisions are steering us in that direction. But no one is paying attention. There is a big difference between not serving all kids as we should and not serving any kids as we should.

Ask this of top reformers and see what they respond: What have your policies done to improve our current state? Usually they'll just verbally dance around and try to appeal to their audience. What they won't say- we think we are spending too much on education, we don't support public schools, teachers are professionals, other factors affect learning, poor children have a tougher time keeping up and we should do something about poverty, standardized testing is unreliable, our teachers are overworked, rating tests are different from ranking tests, we don't know if this works, this is popular so that's why we are doing it.


So as changes are made and teachers are "consulted" it becomes increasingly difficult to tell if we are getting a seat at the table, or are on the menu. Either way the public better wake up and start paying attention before it is too late. Seems the only ones that really pay attention are those with kids in school. Smart leaders pay attention to feedback. I don't see much if any of that but instead see the political spin machines plucking and presenting a desired outcome of a change from all the information out there. It can be massaged to show what they want, not what is accurate. Aaron Pallas pointed this out when he did in fact pay attention to statements by former NYC chancellor Joe Klein. Click Here to read his response

Pay attention when private companies convince you they can do a better job with public tax dollars. Pay attention when Bill Gates, Oprah or some other billionaire gains influence over education policy solely because of their wealth(they seem to pay for attention). Pay attention when the politicians say their schools are failing but don't say specifically why or blame anyone or anything else in the community besides the school itself. Pay attention when school leaders start making claims about success based on their leadership. Pay attention when exhausted teachers leave the job citing shifts in what they are being asked to do. Pay attention when no one in the upper echelons of the educational establishment is willing to do anything except support the latest and greatest idea to come from the private sector. Pay attention when your child comes home and says their teachers complain about how testing affects them. Pay attention when your local school district makes a change driven by top down reform. Pay attention to anything labeled as "data driven decisions".

We as a nation simply need to do what we ask of our kids each day, pay attention.

Why You Should Care

Bad things are happening in Virginia.  As a public institution, our schools are part of a system "for, by, and of" the people.  Increasingly, the public has allowed too much distance between themselves and the decision-making that drives policy in our schools.  I can't help but feel that political and educational leaders are fine with this.  It makes the hard work of having to justify and take responsibilities for making decisions a little easier.

The Virginia State Board of Education recently announced a Pilot Program that was conceived as a plan to earn Federal "Race To The Top" incentive money.  The state did not receive the grant, but they've moved ahead with the plan.  The plan is easily framed in language such as "performance pay" and "measured by student growth" which sound perfectly sound on the surface.  Launching this program as a voluntary pilot also minimized potential backlash, so much so that the real news seems to have been lost.

According to the Virginia Department of Education, the essential elements of this Pilot Program have already been approved for statewide use.  Districts are encouraged to adopt them early, but the new Guidelines for Uniform Performance Standards and Evaluation Criteria for Teachers will take effect for the entire state by July 1, 2012.  I suppose that since they've adopted the guidelines already, there is no need to evaluate the efficacy of the pilot to determine the guidelines' worth.

Essentially, I see no genuine public discourse of the merit to this system and similar systems across the nation.  It is easy to promote such a plan in today's political climate.  Teachers have become a target, a scapegoat even for society.  A plan that supposedly rewards the good teachers sounds great.  The idea that you earn more pay based on better performance is quite an American ideal.  To measure performance on how much a student improves over the course of a year instead of a final absolute score sounds pretty fair as well.  This is why the public discourse is needed.  As good as this plan sounds, it is terrible.  We need more public awareness of this plan because I for one would appreciate a better explanation from our leaders about why this plan is good.  I would also like for the public to be more aware of the pitfalls of this plan so that leaders would have to address their critics and constituents.

I encourage you to read our previous post "Taking A Stand in Virginia and Texas" if you haven't yet.  But don't think that we at the Underground are a couple of lone nuts speaking out agains the system.  Mary Tedrow wrote a piece for the Washington Post "Answer Sheet" blog today specifically addressing problems with the Virginia system.  She articulates the issues much better than we are able, so we strongly encourage you to read "Virginia's Ill Advised Assessment Experiment."  Also on today's Answer Sheet you can find an article by John Ewing, president of Math for America, explaining the pitfalls of Value Added Measures.  The article "Leading Mathematician Debunks 'value-added'"is a little longer, but if you're interested in a more academic discussion of the problems with the metrics used for 'value-added' it is worth the read.  Both articles do an excellent job of moving beyond the effect on teachers and describe the negative effect on students and learning arising from this movement.

How to Make Us All Great

Greatness is a relative term and there is a growing effort focused on making the teachers we have across this country better. But there's a simple solution. Hire more crappy teachers and voila. That will effectively increase the relative quality of those currently employed. Obviously that was a joke but so are some of the suggestions currently gaining favor.

Here's a serious one, actually pay educators for what they do. One way to do that would be to pay higher ups less. Keep the money in the schools with the people who work with kids in them, nowhere else. Don't allow yourself to be naive to the degree that you fail to recognize how influential companies are slowly leeching money away from actual instruction in schools and into management and testing. Let's use that money to do what was suggested in a bad 2008 Time Article reward teachers so that "the most competent, caring and compelling—remain in a profession known for low pay, low status and soul-crushing bureaucracy". If you use student scores and similar measures to rank us some of us are going to be bad. If you must tie this information in use it appropriately and rate, do not rank. Similarly be very careful about how you choose to reward educators. It is pretty important. Why not increase teacher pay across the board?

Great teachers know their subject, they communicate well, they inspire and connect with young people, they motivate, they understand kids and their emotional needs, they have the intangibles, they are creative, dependable, organized, work hard, are patient and resilient(My English teacher would run out of red ink on that sentence). Good luck getting all that from everyone. As some yolk the momentum for change in campaign season the finger can get pointed at teacher preparation. In other professions it seems what you did in college matters, but it seems OK to have graduated and underperformed before you got a job. Each year you work what you did and learned before you were hired matters less. Not so in education. Truth is the best preparation for teaching is actually teaching, the other stuff helps but learning about teaching and actually teaching are very different. Why does this even get pointed out as a big reason our students under-perform? Many kids I know only excel when their performance affects others, when it really maters. Teachers can be much the same. Imagine 25 faces staring back at you wondering what is about to happen when you don't know either. That would suck huh? Thus it'd be great to stop implying what you learned in college makes you a great teacher.

My favorite analogy came from Katy Farber who wrote Why Great Teachers Quit: And How We Might Stop the Exodus . She said that teaching is like treading water and then being handed more and more bricks. I feel that way almost daily. The more bricks we are handed, the less great we are. To offset the increasing demands some propose raising pay but that won't make the day any longer.

Many efforts to increase pay require that increase be tied to student performance on standardized tests(see previous post). Some are calling for experience to play a reduced role compensation or even be removed all together. Would that approach make sense for doctors, pilots, police officers, or any other job? News flash: EXPERIENCE MATTERS IN TEACHING. Tenure allows teachers to take risks and improve. To have piece of mind that they will have a job and focus on developing their craft free of the burdens of probationary supervision. Opponents of tenure argue it serves to keep bad teachers around but there are far more pros to cons.

Other ways to make us all great are to allow and protect the time teachers need for effective and meaningful collaboration. Squeezing it in the schedule here and there with a shoehorn doesn't cut it. That will allow for relevant sharing of resources and ideas along with professional development among peers so they can actually support each other. This enables them to successfully navigate the maelstrom of public education. Collaboration instead of competition.

Force everyone who wants input on educational decisions to sub in schools so they'll gain understanding on how tough this job can be when working with unmotivated or disrespectful kids.

Actually go back to where the kid was the one being held accountable. The are you working to engage johnny and what have you done to reach this kid stuff goes away when a kid acts like an idiot.

Respect the profession of teaching. Foster more autonomy and individual control, allow for advancement and leadership without leaving teaching. Excellence suffers when pressures from efficiency and output are applied to the classroom.

Simplify things. Teachers need time built into the day to settle the chaos. That would allow them to model a much calmer nature and be more understanding. Schedules need to be constructed in a way to allow this. Having full time subs would be a classic example of ways to help teachers be great with simplicity.

Recognize the limitations on digital and online learning, use it to supplement instruction, not just replace it. It has a growing and important role but has limits. Just as virtual human exchanges are useful but fall short of sitting down face to face. One of the lessons of John Henry is that technology is not always better. So much of what teachers do are those more subtle things or actions that have a formative impact of kids. Online classes should maintain similar student teacher ratios to brick and mortar learning. Kids can learn content from a book or a computer but the dynamic between a teacher and student can never be replicated virtually, period.

Keep teaching authentic not out of the box top down. Let teachers use their passion to instruct and do not extinguish that trait with minutia of pupil management.

Understand that teaching is a struggle. Every day is different and presents its own unique challenges. Support teachers accordingly.

Alleviate the student load to a level that allows more one on one attention and focus. This goes for all educators, teachers, counselors on down the list.

Just do what Jeb suggests...I mean he is obviously an education expert.
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20110401/EDIT05/304019996/1021/EDIT No don't...the seismic shift referenced on that link will be good teachers leaving the job.

Try building teachers up instead of tearing the profession down. It is a human endeavor and the human spirit can accomplish some pretty amazing things when it is cut loose and kept healthy. Ask what they need and work to get it to them. Don't give them stuff then convince them to use it.

Whatever paths chosen locally, statewide and federally to encourage greatness among teachers they should be carefully chosen and well thought out to help us be great, or at least allow us to show that we are when allowed to be.
Just don't hand me more bricks.

Value Added is THAT teacher

I have read quite a bit recently about pay for performance plans in our schools. The Feds continue to push states to tie teacher evaluation and pay to student data. States have struggled to keep up creating suspect standardized tests. Resources continue to flow towards large testing companies like Pearson and away from local schools.

I have yet to read a more appropriate response to the Value Added Model being adopted of rating teachers. It comes from Superintendent John Kuhn of Texas who was testifying in front of Public Education Committee in the Texas House of Representatives. He was asked "teachers give students grades all the time...why shouldn't they be graded?" Below is the response he wishes he had given and it is how many of us feel and I encourage you to read up a bit more on these issues.

Representative, you make a good point. The state has adopted the role of teacher, and teachers are the students. And this is the root of the problem--you are a bad teacher, and that is why we students are getting rowdy now. That is why we are passing notes to one another saying how mean you are. We are not upset that you grade us. We are upset that your grading system is arbitrary and capricious. We are upset at the way you hang our grades on the wall for everyone to see, instead of laying our papers face down on our desks when you pass them back. We are upset because when you treat us unfairly there is no principal we can go to, to report you for being unjust. There is no one but you and us, ruler and ruled. Your assignments are so complicated and sometimes seem so pointless. You never give us a break, never a free day or a curve. And we heard you in the teacher's lounge talking about how lazy we are. You stay behind your desk, only coming out to give us work or gripe at us. You never come to our games; you didn't ask me how I did in the one-act-play.

Representative Hochberg, the problem isn't that Texas wants to grade us; the problem is that Texas is THAT teacher, the one who punishes the whole class for the misbehaviors of a few bad apples, who worries more about control than relationships, who inadvertently treats all kids as if they are the problem kids. This approach has made you the teacher all the kids dread. The one who builds fear instead of trust, who never takes late work or asks how our weekend was. You are the teacher and we are the student, and if you want us to mind, you should create a happy classroom, work with us, relate to us, build trust with us, seek our input, and ask our opinions once in awhile. Give us choices. Give us room to experiment and permission to risk new things in your classroom, permission to try and fail without disappointing you.

I again take the opportunity to remind folks it is not just me who thinks this is a bad idea. I am not an obstructionist, really. I am not afraid of being held accountable. I am just scared of how we are choosing to do it. I wish others would express this opinion more often. Arne Duncan and any other politician getting mileage out of this plan might want to rethink it when all is said and done. Myth and emotion are powerful forces in public debate and sometime truth and accuracy can take a backseat to political will and motivation. In Chicago for example the jury is still out just as it is in Texas, New York, Colorado and elsewhere. This conclusion is not unique and one shared by many. Love to hear other thoughts on such plans.