The REWARD Campaign

REWARD Campaign PSA

2011-05-30T09:11:00.000-07:00

President Obama Talks Education Reform

2011-05-24T22:09:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, President Obama devoted his weekly address to the nation to a discussion the need for quality education reform. In his talk, the president emphasizes the need for sustained education reform policies at the state and local levels that produce results. He also briefly outlines his “Race to the Top” program that rewards successful new reform initiatives with federal dollars. According to the President, “reform just can’t wait,” and “education reform matters.” Check out the video.

Public Opinion Isn’t Working

2011-05-24T20:09:00.000-07:00

To many, democracy is a powerful word. It means that the majority opinion will usually win out in the political arena, as long as such a policy does not deprive those in the minority of individual rights. Usually, public opinion drives politicians as well as policy. Let’s look at the numbers:

·
Opinion: 39% of Americans favor the use of increased nuclear power, while 52% oppose the measure. (Pew Charitable Trust)
Policy: A new nuclear power plant has not been built in the United States since 1973. (MSNBC)

Opinion: 49% of Americans favor the right to own a gun, while 46% are in favor of gun control laws. That figure is almost exactly the same as a September 2010 poll, which demonstrates little has changed, even after the recent shooting spree in Tucson, AZ. (Pew Charitable Trust)
Policy: States continue to be conflicted on gun control laws. 40 states have “right to carry” laws for guns which allow their citizens to carry concealed weapons. The states do however have varying restrictions. 4 states allow concealed carry with no restrictions, while the rest have varying levels of regulatory control. (NRA)

Opinion: 58% of Americans are opposed to the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy and are in favor of openly gay men and women serving in the military. Only 27% are in favor of the policy.
Policy: On December, 22^nd, 2010, President Obama signed a bill repealing DADT.

There are many more examples of public opinion dictating policy change, but sometimes the majority doesn’t win out. Such is the case with merit pay initiatives for public school teachers. According to a September 2010 Time Magazine poll, 61% of respondents thought teachers were underpaid, 64% thought that at least part of teacher evaluations should be based on standardized test scores, 66% opposed tenure for public school teachers, and a booming 71% of those polled supported merit pay (Time Magazine). Despite the vast majorities in public opinion polling, few districts have instituted the practice. A recent report from the National Center on Performance Incentives (NCPI), located at Vanderbilt, outlines the bleak numbers. According to the study, “merit pay plans for teachers have been implemented in no more than 500 school districts out of some 14,000 districts nationwide, only 3.5 percent of the total.” (Education Next)

The electorate is more in favor of merit pay than ending DADT, gun control or gun liberalization, and a moratorium on nuclear power plants. Politicians must listen to the overwhelming public opinion, align policy with populism, and push for merit pay provisions in future education reform bills.

The 4 Biggest Obstacles to Merit Pay Reform Efforts

2011-05-22T16:47:00.000-07:00

We’ve talked frequently on this blog about the heroic individuals striving to reform America’s education system as well as the many state and local efforts to institute merit pay proposals. This country does not, however, have a widely utilized merit pay system for public school teachers. What has become clear throughout our efforts to update all of your about the current education reform environment are the reasons why merit pay hasn’t been implemented as widely as it should be. What follows is a brief summary of those reasons, and what ways reformers can try to overcome these obstacles.

1. Unfair or Unclear Evaluation Standards: This is the biggest complaint, and perhaps the most justified, from teachers and other education professionals. Creating a system that standardizes and accurately evaluates educators is not easy. Should more weight be put on increases in student test scores or principal evaluations? How do you incorporate subjective criteria like peer or student review, when those data points will be inherently biased? How do you ensure that teachers and principals don’t bring their own personal feelings about other teachers into the decision-making process? All of these concerns are valid, but none of them are reason enough not institute such a system, just as any difficult problem should not be abandoned because of its challenges. We can try to understand and address these fears. One thing that we can do is incorporate several evaluation criteria into the performance standard, that includes principal recommendations, peer assessments, objective, numerical data like test scores, and the kinds of subjects being taught. In addition, government officials must work with teachers to develop the standard that they will be evaluated by.

2.Union Pressures: Another very common obstacle to reform is the pressure from teachers’ unions to oppose merit pay proposals. The reality is that not every current teacher will be rewarded by the reward campaign, which places unions in an uncomfortable position. Although the reward bill will benefit many of America’s finest teachers, it will also require some to find new lines of work. Unions are perhaps justifiably concerned with merit pay proposals and how they will affect their least productive members. What this bill, as well as other merit proposals, do not do, however, is take away collective bargaining power. Teachers’ unions are still able to bargain for the length of the school day, for equal pay for men and women, and should bargain for increased pay generally and for their most productive and successful members. The American Bar Association and American Medical Association laud their most successful members, while it often seems that teachers’ unions are there for the support of the lowest common denominator. We’ve also seen how unions can be the greatest allies in the effort to reform America’s schools. In Indiana, union officials were extremely supportive of the state’s new reform efforts, and it was no coincidence that recent efforts in that state are the closest to an ideal merit pay solution. Just like teachers must be included in the evaluation structure, unions must be included in the formulation process. It is vital to make sure they understand collective bargaining rights will not be compromised as well as stress that the majority of their members will make more money under merit pay bills.

3. Possible Cost Increases: If teachers are paid more, the money has to come from somewhere. Many deficit hawks and budget wonks will be leery of increasing education expenditures. In addition, the costs would most likely be passed on to the state and local governments, even if merit pay was instituted at the federal level. The national government pays for only nine percent of all education spending. In California, for example, education spending is 52% to 55% of the state budget (California Department of Finance), but education spending varies across state lines. According to the Federal Education Budget Project, “Per pupil spending – which includes funding from federal, state, and local sources – ranged from as little as $5,978 per pupil in Utah to as much as $17,620 per pupil in New Jersey in school year 2007-08" (Federal Education Budget Project). To be certain then, the budgetary impact on merit pay proposals would affect different states and different levels of government quite differently. It would have little impact on the federal budget. In the end, this hurdle comes down to a value judgment. Do states value increased education spending or tax breaks? To be sure, both education spending and a balanced budget are important, but they are not mutually exclusive, and the merit pay proposals, including the REWARD bill would not preclude states from achieving fiscal responsibility.

4. The Status Quo and other Political Obstacles: Finally, reformers will have to tackle the status quo as well as political obstacles. According to a lecture given by Geoffrey Canada at Dartmouth College on April 25^th, teachers’ unions are the single largest campaign contributor in the United States. Democrats, and some Republicans, are, in part, able to succeed in politics because of the substantial political support that teachers’ unions garner. The powerful groups deliver not only votes but also produce financial benefits, and provide volunteers to knock on doors, make phone calls, and provide other support for the campaigns themselves. In some ways this problem is similar to the others we’ve talked about. Teachers’ unions have an interest in maintaining power over their members and at all points during the political process. Losing any members of the union, even if it means gaining new members, is not politically popular. The status quo is a powerful force to overcome, but reformers need to talk about common sense solutions (like the REWARD bill and other merit pay proposals) to important problems in order to combat the illogical arguments of many entrenched interest groups.

Nevada Aims for Education Reform

2011-05-22T11:14:00.003-07:00

Nevada lawmakers are the most recent group attempting to change the state of education in this country. Two measures have been approved by the Senate Education Committee. The first amendment would require that at least fifty percent of teacher evaluation criteria is based on student academic achievement; the second reform would require all school districts to institute pay for performance programs for public school teachers. According to reports, the committee also voted to “extend a mandatory probationary period for new teachers to three years and send teachers back to probation if they receive unsatisfactory evaluations two consecutive years.”

Unfortunately, several reform efforts stalled in the committee, which voted down an amendment to end “last in, first out” practices of teacher layoffs. That system requires that the most recent teachers to be hired are the first to be fired if districts are forced to institute layoffs, instead of other factors like performance, classroom absence, disciplinary history, or a criminal record.

The article, while certainly promising, highlights the political difficulties inherent in education reform proposals. The Senate Education Committee is comprised of four Democrats and three Republicans. On many of the most “controversial” measures, like the last in, first out policy, members of the committee voted strictly on party lines, with the four Democrats defeating the proposals. Education has become a “Democratic issue” in this country, but upon closer investigation it is clear that this does not refer to the passage and proposal of good policy. Democrats garner some of their most reliable and massive political support from teachers and union officials. They risk losing money, man power, campaign support, and votes if they vote in favor of amendments that put quality education above the entrenched interests of teachers (good or bad). In order for education reformers to successfully leap these political hurdles, Democrats in state and national legislatures must chose to put the needs of America’s students ahead of job security for bad teachers.

More information can be found here: http://www.lvrj.com/news/teacher-tenure-reform-bills-advance-to-senate-vote-122381909.html?ref=909

Value-added: An important measure

2011-05-19T18:27:00.000-07:00

A fantastic study published by the Brookings Institute called “Evaluating Teachers: The Important Role of Value-Added,” explores the benefits and challenges of a system that evaluates teachers by their students improvement on objective measures like standardized tests.

Here are the main points of the study and discussion:

Current evaluation systems that use principals to evaluate teachers end up classifying 99 percent of teachers as effective. Obviously principal evaluations alone cannot accurately determine a teacher’s effectiveness.

Value-added is “not a perfect system of measurement,” but it can “complement” other measurements like parent and student feedback, observations, and self assessments.

Many teachers are skeptical of value-added systems because they are afraid of being labeled as bad teachers solely because of their students’ test scores. “But framing the problem in terms of false negatives places the focus almost entirely on the interests of the individual who is being evaluated rather than the students who are being served. It is easy to identify with the good teacher who wants to avoid dismissal for being incorrectly labeled a bad teacher. From that individual’s perspective, no rate of misclassification is acceptable.”

The authors of this study illustrate the problem with this argument well when they point out that SAT scores are only moderately correlated to success in college, and between-season batting averages for baseball players are only moderately correlated to professional batting averages. Nevertheless, we use these measurements because they are the best we have. In the authors’ words, “We should not set unrealistic expectations for the reliability or stability of value-added. Value-added evaluations are as reliable as those used for high stakes decisions in many other fields.”

Value-added measurements are especially important when we examine the alternatives for measuring teacher performance: seniority (experience) or principal evaluations. This study finds that value-added measurements are the best way to determine effectiveness.

Teachers are worried that value-added indicators unfairly measure their effectiveness. While it is true that value-added will not be a perfect measure, it is still an important one. Combining an objective measure of student performance with more objective measurements is the only way to create a fair and comprehensive evaluation system.

StudentsFirst: A Call for Respectful Education Reform Dialogue

2011-05-17T21:55:00.000-07:00

It is important to remember that in the education reform debate, teachers, unions, school administrators, government officials, parents, and students all have a lot at stake. Each party in the reform movement, however, is either fighting for personal reasons (i.e. for government officials to keep their jobs), for selfless reasons (i.e. what’s in the best interest of your child), or a combination of the two. While all of the sides may disagree about the problems within the American education system as well as the perceived effectiveness of proposed solutions, each party in the reform debate does not have to be disagreeable. One would hope, that at least on some level, all parties involved are advocating for greater success among American public school children, and that is a goal that we can all agree on. Unfortunately, education reform debates have turned ugly in many areas recently.

Olivia Demas, a mother of three from Ohio blogged Sunday on the Students First website about the actions that many opposed to education reform measures are taking to halt progress. While I’m sure that both sides of the debate have, at times, been less than civil, the drastic responses from teachers, unions, and other official outlined by Demas must end. Active debate in the education arena should be encouraged, but when that debate turns into the usurpation of free speech rights and the intimidation of parents and teachers who want the best for their kids, we fail to have a constructive dialogue and all parties in the education reform domain lose out, one way or another.

The article, published on StudentsFirst, can be found here: http://www.studentsfirst.org/blog/entry/a-call-for-civility/

How Expensive Is It (Federally)?

2011-05-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

Soon, I will be publishing a blog post that highlights the four most daunting obstacles to education reform in America. One of those reform barriers is the perception that switching to a merit based system for teacher pay would drastically increase education expenditures at the local, state, and national levels. While deficit hawks are sorely needed in today’s fiscally irresponsible Washington atmosphere, education reform is simply not the policy arena that they should be scrutinizing for two reasons.

First, the education of American students is absolutely critical for the future success of this country. While it is almost impossible to cut spending in entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, the government simply cannot focus on critical domestic policy arenas, like education, to try and appear fiscally responsible. Second, education spending is a miniscule part of the federal budget, taking up approximately 1.8% of federal spending annually. Although a majority of the education spending in the United States comes from state and local government coffers, there are far larger sectors of the federal budget for those interested in fiscal responsibility. These statistics and a wealth of additional information can be found at the Federal Education Budget Project.

For those interested in exploring how federal education spending affects the national budget, be sure to check out the Committee For a Responsible Budget’s budget simulator. You’ll notice that only a few levers within the domestic part of the simulator touch on education reforms, and these changes do not drastically affect the overall federal budget. Try the simulator yourself at: http://crfb.org/stabilizethedebt/ .

Great video: Student First

2011-05-12T08:56:00.000-07:00

There's a great two-minute video that really gets to the heart of how our current hiring/firing policies for teachers disadvantage our students:

The video explains three main issues:

1. How budget cuts means firing more teachers

2. How we fire teachers by an "outdated last in, first out" policy that always fires the newest teachers, no matter how good they are. Through "seniority based layoffs," we fire some of the best teachers, we have to fire more teachers to meet the budget requirements since the newest teachers are paid the least, and low performing schools "get hit the hardest" since they have the highest number of new teachers.

3. Teachers matter. Having a bad teacher for one or two years is enough to put a student at a substantial disadvantage for the rest of his/her education.

The video is short and interesting. I recommend taking the two minutes to really understand the research behind our current policies and their effects on students.

Students Struggle in Civics

2011-05-11T08:06:00.001-07:00

In 2010, fourth, eighth, and twelfth grade students across the country took a civics exam administered by the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). The results of the exam demonstrate just how immediate the need for education reform is in this country. According to the exam, only twenty-five percent of American high school seniors are “proficient” in civics, and only seven percent of eighth graders could identify the three branches of the federal government. That’s twenty-five percent proficiency in civics for a group of people who will be eligible to vote within the year. If students cannot even reach proficiently, it makes sense that even fewer are sophisticated in the subject; only four percent of twelfth graders, and even fewer fourth and eighth graders were “advanced” civics students. These statistics make one point demonstrably clear: the American education system is not working, and government officials owe it to the children of this country (and this country’s future) to fix it. *

The article lists several other takeaways from the disturbing results of the exam, including the following:

· Only 50% of students could identify the purpose of the Bill of Rights

· 12^th grade scores on the exam actually decreased since the last test administration, while 8^th grade results stayed the same.

The results seem dire, but there may be an unfortunately simple explanation. According to Ted McConnell, Executive Director of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of School, the No Child Left Behind Act disproportionately emphasizes the teaching of certain subjects. While the act inundates students with reading, math, and science, it focuses little on art, music, social studies, and the humanities. In order for schools to attain NCLB funding and improve their students' chances of scoring well on exams that “matter,” little time is devoted to other extremely important subjects.

But are math, science, and reading pursuits more important than other academic areas like social studies? I think that answer is a resounding no, and so does Peter Levine, director of Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement at Tufts. According to Mr. Levine, “America has always relied on active citizens to solve our most serious problems. If the next generation of kids can’t rise to that challenge, we’ll be in trouble.” It is impossible to expect out governmental structure to work effectively if only half of America’s children understand the function of the Bill of Rights. We’ve been endowed with the longest lasting and most successful democracy in the history of the world, but if we fail to produce an educated mass of citizens, that system will fail to work properly and we may lose the freedoms that have defined us for so long.

This gaping hole in NCLB’s evaluation and incentive method can, however, be used as a teaching tool. In any future reform legislation, it is critical that certain subjects are not promoted over others. It may in fact be beneficial to pay teachers in math and science more, if it is harder to recruit people to fill those positions. What is not effective, however, is incorporating only certain subjects into potential teacher performance metrics, or driving many more resources into one academic area over another. We must learn from the pitfalls of past education reform bills, because giving academic preference to certain subjects is a problem that all future legislation must avoid.

The full article may be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/04/federal-civics-test-shows_n_857776.html

*Note, portions of this post are drawn from a strategy paper written for COCO 3 at Dartmouth College.

The Onion gets it right

2011-05-09T21:33:00.000-07:00

Straying a bit from the usually serious tone of this blog, I wanted to share a fantastic article from the satirical news source The Onion entitled "Budget Mix-Up Provides Nation's Schools With Enough Money to Properly Educate Students."

The article is great because it points out the absurdity of our education problem and our reluctance to properly fund a solution.

The link to the article is provided above, but I copied the text of the article here for easier reading:

WASHINGTON—According to bewildered and contrite legislators, a major budgetary mix-up this week inadvertently provided the nation's public schools with enough funding and resources to properly educate students.

Sources in the Congressional Budget Office reported that as a result of a clerical error, $80 billion earmarked for national defense was accidentally sent to the Department of Education, furnishing schools with the necessary funds to buy new textbooks, offer more academic resources, hire better teachers, promote student achievement, and foster educational excellence—an oversight that apologetic officials called a "huge mistake."

"Obviously, we did not intend for this to happen, and we are doing everything in our power to right the situation and discipline whoever is responsible," said House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), expressing remorse for the error. "I want to apologize to the American people. The last thing we wanted was for schools to upgrade their technology and lower student-to-teacher ratios in hopes of raising a generation of well-educated, ambitious, and skilled young Americans."

"That's the type of irresponsible misspending that I've been focused on eliminating for my entire political career," Ryan added.

Ryan went on to tell reporters that the $80 billion budget slip-up will "unfortunately" help schools nationwide to supply students with modernized classrooms and instructional materials. Struggling to control his frustration, Ryan said he prayed the costly mistake would not allow millions of American students to graduate with strong language skills.

Jeff Sessions (R-AL), ranking minority member of the Senate Budget Committee, called for a full investigation into how the nation's schools were able to secure the necessary funds to monitor teachers and pay salaries based on performance.

"The fact that this careless mistake also ended up financing new teacher training programs, allowing educators to become more than just glorified babysitters, is disgraceful," Sessions said. "Now we are left with a situation where schools can attract talented professionals who really want to teach our children, which will in turn create smarter and more motivated students who wish to one day make a contribution to society."

"In all my years in government I have never seen such a shameful error," Sessions added. "Our appropriations process has gone horribly awry, and I for one demand to know how it happened."

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) echoed congressional leaders and vowed to do "everything in [his] power" to resolve the costly error that led to schools updating their curriculums to emphasize math, science, and language arts, and provided students with instruction on how to use newly purchased computers to aid their research.

"Once these kids learn to read and think critically, you can never undo that," Boehner said. "In 20 years, we could be looking at a nightmare scenario in which vast segments of our populace are fully prepared to compete in the new global marketplace."

"It could take a whole generation to cancel out the effects of this," Boehner added.

Congressional leaders also stressed that providing the nation's students with an adequate education that prepared them for college or supplied them with a solid grasp of basic knowledge could also have a devastating impact on the economy by creating a new class of citizens uninterested in settling for fast food meals and useless plastic knickknacks.

"And politicians will be adversely affected as well," Boehner said. "What will our nation do if the next generation knows that all we care about is our own selfish interests and pandering to the wealthy elite? Is that the future you want? Not me."

Source: http://www.theonion.com/articles/budget-mixup-provides-nations-schools-with-enough,20350/

"The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries"

2011-05-07T14:20:00.000-07:00

About a week ago, The New York Times published an editorial that proposed some pretty radical and interesting solutions to our education crisis.

The editorial addresses several points, and is worth reading in its entirety, but I wanted to discuss some of its most interesting ideas.

The first is a question of properly using incentives to achieve a desired outcome. The federal government's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) rewarded succeeding schools with additional funding and punished failing schools with less funding. So already-failing school were granted fewer resources, which ultimately punished students. In other words, the NCLB Act did not use incentives effectively.

The idea behind merit pay is to line up the incentives so that individual teachers work as hard and effectively as they can for their students. We believe that incentives should be based on individual performance so that they will incentivize individual teachers to do their jobs well. Most economists will tell you that incentives work best on the individual level. The failure of NCLB is a case in point. And as the editorial's analogy with the military goes, "when recruiting is down, we offer incentives."

The second interesting point is that with many teachers so near retirement, now is the time to rethink the way we treat the teaching profession in this country. The editorial discusses the percentage of teachers who leave before they have taught for five years (46) and the percentage of teachers who work second jobs to make ends meet (62). The editorial suggests recruiting elite college graduates to become teachers and treating the profession with more respect by increasing salaries.

While we agree that higher salaries would be a fantastic way to increase the prestige of the teaching profession, we also believe that even a ten percent bonuses for good teachers would do a lot to increase its appeal. Increasing the appeal of teaching by tying salaries to performance would make the applicant pool larger, and the more selective the teaching profession becomes, the easier it will be to hire the best teachers. The editorial provides examples of countries that have successful education systems because they have made teaching an important and respected career.

Indiana Law Gets it Right

2011-04-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

State lawmakers “got it right” in Indiana on Saturday, when Governor Mitch Daniels signed one component of his comprehensive education reform package into law. The bill overhauls the way teachers are evaluated and incorporates merit pay into the education lexicon in the state of Indiana. According to WISH-TV, “among some of the provisions, teacher performance is now a factor in hiring, promotion, salary and dismissal.”

Under the new law, students would not be required to have an “unsatisfactory” teacher for more than one year, without parent approval. Additionally, the educators that rank in the bottom two of the four categories used for evaluation would be ineligible to receive automatic pay increases, and all new, incoming teachers, would be ineligible to receive tenure. Under Indiana’s current system, 99% of teachers are rated effective educators, but nearly 25% of the state’s children fail statewide examinations. It’s clear that 99% of Indiana’s teachers are not effective at what they do.

One important factor to note is the way in which Indiana will evaluate its teachers. The evaluation scheme for educators in the state will incorporate “objective student performance” or test scores into the assessment criteria, but it will not be the sole component of any scheme. In addition, performance reviews will become an annual occurrence, teachers will be evaluated based on how well and how often they use their best available resources, and peer and principal reviews will be incorporated into the overall assessment model.

Work with unions has been essential to the bill’s success, and will make the overall bill more effective than measures in other states. The previous union contracts, for example, prohibited yearly reviews of the state’s teachers. In addition, Indiana unions can see the collective bargaining big picture: it’s vital to both ensure good teachers are paid well and to produce high academic achievement for America’s children. The ABA, as well as the AMA, promote the welfare of their members, but they also make certain that their associates achieve the profession’s loftier goals and regulate the profession.

Daniels’ bill does take some collective bargaining rights away from the teachers’ unions in Indiana, but they don’t remove the organizations’ abilities to negotiate for wages and benefits. What is no longer in the purview of union negotiations is educational curriculum, classroom size, and other components of the general education system. These components do not drastically affect the working conditions of the teaching profession, but are vital to the success of public school children. In addition, many of the subjects now outside of the realm of negotiation, like classroom size, impact students and teachers in the same way. A smaller class size is a calmer environment for teachers and increases student performance (and in the case of the new bill, should increase teacher pay as well). Other state and federal teachers’ unions must emulate the union response in Indiana.

Finally, opponents cite two problems with the reform bill. First, they fear that any evaluation metric will fail to fairly grade teacher performance; and second, they claim that teachers are not in the education field for the money. While the first concern is always a valid one when a new metric is introduced, the Indiana bill goes as far as any can in producing a fair evaluation. The system incorporates both concrete, quantitative measures, as well as objective peer and administrator teacher review. In addition, the four levels of performance are much more expansive than what many other states currently use when evaluating performance (either effective or ineffective, or a third, middle category). When a choice is between lower student performance and a pay scale that rewards teaching longevity rather than performance, or higher student performance and a scale that, may somewhat imperfectly, reward the best teachers, I’ll choose the latter.

The second argument against the bill, even if a valid concern, demonstrates why this legislation was so necessary. According to Senator Earline Rogers, "I don't think teachers are in it for the money. If they had been in it for the money, they would have chosen another profession." This is precisely the problem. Although we would never discourage passionate individuals from becoming teachers to help children, the low salary of the teaching field dissuades many from ever giving it a shot in the first place. Some of the most highly qualified individuals and some of the most academically successful students would never dream of entering the teaching field, because the pay is so much lower than what they could earn at another job. Why would anyone strive to be a high quality teacher when they could succeed in finance, law, or medicine, and make five times the salary? What’s more, Senator Rogers is implying that the joy educators get from being a high quality educator and the impact they have on their students are more motivating than financial rewards. If this is true, then most, if not all, public school teachers should get the most out of their children, and American students should all be passing their standardized tests. That, however, is not the case.

The Indiana bill shows the considerable progress that we can make in education reform efforts if government bodies and teachers’ unions work together. Merit pay systems for public school teachers not only reward educators for high quality work, but they raise the level of all teachers, and in turn, improve the academic performance of America’s students.

For more information, visit Governor Daniels' website at: http://www.in.gov/portal/news_events/69879.htm.

Teachers Matter

2011-04-28T21:29:00.000-07:00

At this point if you’ve been reading the blog, you know the daunting and unsettling statistics that rank American student test scores towards the bottom of the developed world. Our group has argued that among other reform measures, the United States has to end teacher tenure and increase teacher salaries in order to improve its education system. Higher teacher salaries would encourage higher achieving college students to enter the teaching profession, and it would reward quality teachers for stellar performance. The logic goes that if the monetary incentives are strong enough to both recruit (academically successful) teachers, and then retain only those who perform the best, teaching would become a prestigious and financially rewarding career, and, in turn, American students would be more successful. While it must be a part of a larger solution, we firmly believe that it is one of the most important factors in any large scale, education reform package. And a brand new paper written by education experts with McGraw-Hill agrees.

The paper, written by former West Virginia Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Steven L. Paine and the Director of the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment, Andreas Schleicher reach two conclusions. First, teacher quality is more important than any other factor in predicting and increasing student performance. Second, the prestige of the teaching profession must be strengthened to recruit high quality teaching candidates. Their study, “What the U.S. Can Learn from the World’s Most Successful Education Reform Efforts,” examined education systems in Singapore, Canada, and Finland, and found opportunities for the United States to improve its own education practices, as well as surmount many of the possible barriers to those reforms.

To begin, the paper argues that America needs to increase the number and quality of the individuals applying to become teachers. Finland, for example, only accepts 10% of applicants for teaching positions. Some opponents may argue that upon further analysis of the study, Finish teachers make about the same amount as American teachers ($39,000), which is true. What they fail to note however are the distinct cultural and economic differences between the Scandinavian state and the US. In Finland the teaching profession is just as highly respected as medicine or law, but in the United States, about half of all teachers graduate in the bottom third of their college classes. In a country like the United States where both wealth and high levels of education usually garner significant respect, the low pay, and sometimes lower quality of the teaching pool leaves room for drastic improvement. It’s impossible to radically increase the prestige associated with teaching overnight, but what reformers in the United States can do rather quickly is increase teacher salaries in order to recruit high performing college students into the education field.

Educational success throughout the world also shows us how to overcome some of the problems that develop when trying to implement successful reforms. In particular, other reform movements prove that teachers’ unions and the government can work cooperatively and effectively to both improve student performance and ensure equitable and competitive working conditions and benefits for teachers themselves.

Teachers’ unions and the government must work closely to align each party’s incentives. The lawyer’s job is to defend his client or prosecute a criminal; a doctor’s job is to heal the sick; and a teacher’s job is to effectively educate children. The teachers’ union and government officials used this logic to improve student performance in Ontario, Canada. According to the report, “The educators, through their union, agreed to accept responsibility for their own learning and the learning of their students; the government agreed to supply all of the necessary support.” The Ontario example proves that high teacher benefits and compensation and a strong union are not principles that diametrically oppose student success or rewards for high quality teachers.

The McGraw-Hill report should give us all hope. Not only does it shed light on concrete practices that have proven effective in global education reform efforts, it demonstrates that changes to the educational system are indeed possible. A strong union of educational professionals does not preclude education reform initiatives from incorporating measurements of teacher quality. In fact, success for America’s students will be the most profound and dramatic when government initiatives are combined with a strong teachers’ union devoted to the academic success of this country’s youth.

Measuring performance...

2011-04-27T13:46:00.000-07:00

The governor of Ohio signed a new merit pay law on March 31. The bill provides merit-pay bonuses for effective teachers, while poorly performing teachers will not be able to renew their contracts.

Although we are very excited that another state has adopted a merit pay scheme, we are also troubled by one aspect of the law. According to the bill, teacher performance will be measured by “in-class observations and class performance on a yet-to-be-developed test.” The test doesn't have to be developed until July 1, 2012, over a year from now. The article can be found here.

One of the reasons why even wonderful teachers are uncomfortable with a merit pay scheme is because they don’t know how they will be evaluated. Replacing a dependable tenure system with an uncertain and “yet-to-be-developed-test” is understandably concerning for America’s teachers. Passing merit pay laws without a clear sense of how they will be implemented is ultimately unfair. And in order for teachers to support this policy, they need to be evaluated fairly and transparently.

Of course, this is easier said than done. The most challenging aspect of the merit pay debate is how to measure teacher performance. Unlike in the business world, where an objective metric like profits can easily determine who is successful in their career, the education world is not so simple. There are countless challenges in the classroom that vary among regions, schools, and individual students. There is no easy way to measure a teacher’s competence. Standardized tests, for instance, have a lot to do with a student’s home life, individual intellect, and previous educational background.

That is not to say, however, that measuring performance isn't possible. Other professions also struggle with objective evaluation but still manage to create standards and reward competence. The key to solving this issue is combining many forms of evaluation and using them comprehensively and consistently to measure teacher performance.

This is a major issue that districts and states should work out before passing merit pay legislation. It is unfair to teachers when governments ask them to accept a new policy without even specifying what that policy entails. Several districts and states have figured out evaluation systems that are working so far. Those systems will the subject of future posts, but it is important to create a fair evaluation scheme before passing merit pay legislation.

Dartmouth Events

2011-04-25T14:48:00.000-07:00

The two education related events that occurred over the past few days at Dartmouth were fantastic. As I wrote last week, I would encourage all of our readers to check out “Waiting For Superman.” My hope was to be able to post Geoffrey Canada’s Dartmouth lecture directly to this blog. Unfortunately, Mr. Canada’s lecture at Dartmouth was not video recorded, but if you have a few moments, please watch the clip below. It’ll make you want to watch all of “Waiting for Superman,” and it gives people great insight into the work that Mr. Canada is doing and the charisma and passion that come across whenever he talks about education. Enjoy!

Awesome Website Application

2011-04-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

I wanted to pass along a fantastic online information source that is really worth checking out. In 2010 NBC News put together the "Education Nation Summit" to address education reform as a national issue. The media outlet believes that it is the duty of quality journalists to inform the country about pressing national issues, and NBC believes that education is perhaps the most important problem facing our country today.

The most direct use for anyone interested in learning about the quality of their child's (or their own) school, is the Education Nation Scorecard for Schools. The application allows anyone to view specific data regarding test scores, graduation rates, and numerous other categories about individual public schools in their area. In addition, the application allows users to compare school ratings to other schools in the area, as well as compare their region to others in the state, and their state to other states in the country. The scorecard can be found at the following link: http://nbcscorecard.greatschools.org/

The 2011 Education Nation will begin the week of September 25th.

Learning from the Experts

2011-04-21T18:58:00.001-07:00

Students here at Dartmouth have a few exciting opportunities to learn about education reform over the next few days, and I wanted to give all of you a chance to do the same. Tomorrow night, there will be a film screening of the award-winning documentary, Waiting for Superman, and Monday afternoon, students will have a chance to speak with Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Fund. We will bring you coverage of both events here on the blog, but both sources provide a wealth of information about education reform generally, as well as merit pay for public school teachers in the United States.

I would encourage all of you to take the time to watch Waiting for Superman. Not only is the film extremely entertaining, but it is also one of the more informative education documentaries produced. It is also clear that the filmmakers didn’t write their thesis first and do the research second. The film is not politically biased, and the amount of research that went into the production was immense. Improving public education in the United States was the primary goal in the film, not ending teacher tenure, or promoting a Democratic or Republican education platform. You can learn more about the film here:

http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/

Finally, for those serious about education reform, it is impossible to ignore Geoffrey Canada’s work or the Harlem Children Zone. Canada’s began his vision to give all American children a quality education in 1997. Today, the project has a budget of $75 million and serves tens of thousands of children in one of this country’s most difficult neighborhoods. Canada even guarantees that any child who attends an HCZ school will have the opportunity to go to college. For those of you who are suspicious of the charter school approach, or for people who distrust many of the proposed education reforms (including increased merit pay), please review Mr. Canada’s success with HCZ and other American charter school programs.

http://www.hcz.org/home

Stay tuned for more coverage.

Professional Development

2011-04-20T19:28:00.000-07:00

A recent article posted on StudentsFirst, the organization founded by former Chancellor of D.C. public schools and education guru Michelle Rhee, included a comment that caught my attention:

"Bonus pay by itself is not the answer, however. The reality is most teachers need additional training and support to increase student achievement. As such, we need to create a system that not only provides higher salaries for our top performers to incentivize improvement, but also offers high-quality professional development aligned to teachers' needs. New compensation systems will work only if they are coupled with meaningful feedback and support teachers need to grow professionally."

(The full article, written by Theodore Hershberg, professor of public policy at the University of Pensylvannia and Claire Robertson-Kraft, a PhD candidate at Penn's Graduate School of Education, can be found here).

This insight really speaks to the broader purpose of merit pay. While merit pay schemes are partially designed to reward good teachers and fire bad ones for the sake of government efficiency and fairness to tax payers, that is not their ultimate purpose. Their ultimate purpose is to ensure that all students receive a quality education. The article quoted above estimates that two-thirds of all teachers are effective. This means that one in every three children are an educational disadvantage.

One of the problems with this debate, however, is that we assume that there are immovable categories like "good" and "bad" when it comes to a highly complex profession like teaching, a profession whose success is greatly impacted by outside factors like a student's upbringing and a school's resources, just to name a few. Acknowledging these challenges is essential to creating a merit pay program that works for both teachers and students.

One way to acknowledge these challenges is to provide "high quality professional development" for public school teachers. It is important to treat teaching as a profession. Practicing a profession is a process of continuous learning and growing. Part of tying pay to performance means valuing performance. This involves allowing teachers to work within their professional community to help each other improve their methods and share ideas. Because ultimately, merit pay is just a way to hold teachers to a higher standard so that America's students are prepared for the future.

But...does it work?

2011-04-19T20:18:00.000-07:00

Before charging forward with this idea about merit pay, it's important to step back and ask: does merit pay actually work? From an economic perspective, it seems like the obvious answer is yes. Tying pay to performance should incentivize better performance from teachers, which should then translate into better performance from students. But many people question this logic. After all, students are influenced by so many factors outside of the classroom- how can teachers be held so responsible for a student's performance? Also, is rewarding better teachers really the best way to increase students' performance?

Well, according to a new study that compared educational outcomes in countries with and without merit pay programs, the evidence in favor of merit pay is pretty overwhelming. To quote an article in Education Next,

"A little-used survey conducted by the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] in 2005 makes it possible to identify the developed countries participating in PISA [Program for International Student Assessment] that appear to have some kind of performance pay plan. Linking that information to a country’s test performance, one finds that students in countries with performance pay perform at higher levels in math, science, and reading. Specifically, students in countries that permit teacher salaries to be adjusted for outstanding performance score approximately one-quarter of a standard deviation higher on the international math and reading tests, and about 15 percent higher on the science test, than students in countries without performance pay. These findings are obtained after adjustments for levels of economic development across countries, student background characteristics, and features of national school systems."

The full article with deeper analyses and helpful graphs can be found here.

The next step is conducting long-term research within the United States. There has been one study that claims that merit pay doesn't work because offering bonuses to less than 300 math teachers in one school district for three years did not dramatically increase student performance. There are a few problems with the study. The first is that the benefits of merit pay must be enjoyed by students throughout their entire education. A year or two (many students did not have teachers who participated in the merit pay program for more than one year) with a competent teacher is simply not enough to boost student performance in any significant way. Secondly, the bonuses were tied exclusively to better performance on standardized tests-- a metric that most teachers and policy makers agree does not form a comprehensive assessment of teacher performance. Lastly, the study acknowledges that the sample size (less than 300 teachers for the same age group in the same school district) is not large enough to provide many fair answers.

As districts and states implement real merit pay programs that span across grades, it will be easier to measure their effectiveness. The Merit Pay International Study is compelling because its examines countries that have adopted merit pay systems as their norm, which allows researchers to measure long term effects on individual students' performance. More research must be conducted, but the results of merit pay on a global scale are promising.

Chicago Is Next

2011-04-18T15:17:00.000-07:00

I have become increasingly optimistic as our group continues its research into the benefits and feasibility of a merit-based pay structure for public school teachers. We’ve discussed systems recently implemented at the state level in Florida, and at the national level with President Obama’s Race To The Top plan. Recently, that progress towards sweeping education reforms again saw promise, but this time at the local level. Today, Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel named Jean-Claude Brizard the new Chicago Public Schools CEO. Brizard is the former superintendent of schools for Rochester, NY and during his reign supported both an increase in charter schools and the introduction of merit-based pay for teachers. Emmanuel conducted a nation-wide search for his new Chicago Schools CEO and settled on the man that has drawn the scorn of New York teachers unions for his stance on the merit pay system. According to Janet Knupp, CEO of the education reform group the Chicago Public Education Fund, “The difficult choices that he’s making there [Rochester], he’ll have to make here.”

The merit-based system has shown its diversity in each of the first three content related posts on this blog. Efforts to institute the system are occurring or have already been implemented at all three levels of government. What’s more, is that both Republicans (Governor Rick Scott in Florida) and Democrats (President Obama, and more recently his former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) who have endorsed the need to move the teaching profession away from a tenure system to one more dedicated to performance. With each political party beginning to understand the benefits of such a system, it now seems possible to implement a bipartisan education reform package that includes merit-based pay for teachers.

Race to the Top

2011-04-15T20:17:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, the New York Times Magazine published an article that
explored President Obama’s “Race to the Top” program, a competition that
provides federal grants to states that come up with innovative ways to
improve education.

The really cool thing about this program is its focus on improving teacher
quality by linking salary increases and layoffs to teacher performance. Any
profession that ignores performance and only rewards seniority risks
alienating its most qualified potential members and allowing incompetence to
thrive. Although teachers’ unions serve some very valuable purposes (like
allowing for collective bargaining and providing some essential legal
protection), their insistence on divorcing pay from performance punishes
America’s most valuable teachers while allowing its most ineffectual
teachers to keep their jobs indefinitely.

You can click around the official “Race to the Top” website and see which
states won grants last year.

Some of the programs are really fantastic. They have built “common academic
standards,” created systems to reward teacher effectiveness, and made plans
to prioritize the lowest performing schools.

Another issue that the New York Times article addresses is charter
schools. Charter schools are an important alternative for students who have
no good public school options. They can also serve as an experimental model
for what a publicly funded school looks like without bureaucracy and unions.
However, students are admitted through a lottery system. For students in
these areas, receiving a quality education is based entirely on the luck of
the draw. So instead of relying on charter schools to fill the gaps in our
public school system, the successes of certain charter schools should be
used as models for improving public schools.

These are just a few of the issues addressed in the article, which you can
find here.

Florida Works to Protect Successful Teachers

2011-04-14T19:49:00.000-07:00

On March 24^th, Florida Governor Rick Scott officially signed the Student Success Act into law and started Florida down the road to quality education. The bill has many components, but I want to address those sections that are most critical for success in education reform.

First, SSA modifies the way that teachers are evaluated in the public school system by expanding the scale used to define quality and by incorporating student achievement gains in performance reviews instead of only relying on peer and administrator evaluations. It is vital to be able to identify exactly which teachers are producing results and which are substandard educators. In Florida’s previous system, 99.7% of teachers qualified as satisfactory when evaluated. The challenge, which Florida attempts to solve, is creating an evaluation method that does not categorize every teacher as satisfactory, but also incorporates multiple reliable means of assessment.

Second, the legislation identifies the subject areas that fail to attract qualified teachers and promises to pay them more. Educators qualified to teach high school math have far more employment options than those qualified to teach social studies or music. By paying these teachers more, the school system will be able to attract more qualified people willing to teach math and science and draw them away from what are usually higher paying careers.

Finally, and perhaps most critically, Florida abandons its tenure system. Instead of granting teachers tenure after three years of employment, the state will begin to hire teachers based on annual contracts. This piece is crucial to successfully reforming the public school education system. When teachers receive tenure, it becomes very difficult to terminate their services, no matter how poor their job performance becomes. By instituting a system of annual contracting, the Florida school system will ensure that their education professionals remain both professional and effective.

Other states must look to the Student Success Act and institute similar measures. Florida does not take away collective bargaining rights nor does it strip away union access to the state’s teachers. It also increases the rate of pay for some of its teaching professionals. Florida’s measures would reward successful teachers, especially those in subject areas where other high paying opportunities exist, and it would force those who performed poorly to either shape up or leave the classroom.

More information on the act can be found on the governor’s website:
http://www.flgov.com/2011/03/24/governor-scott-signs-student-success-act/

Welcome!

2011-04-13T06:06:00.000-07:00

Greetings, and welcome to NewEdu, a blog designed to inform the public about news and present information about the current state of America’s teachers. Our diverse group of three Dartmouth College students will frequently be updating this blog over the next two months. We believe that overhauling the American education system will inevitably be an arduous and lengthy process, but reform in this area will be key to the future success of the United States. The education issue itself is vast and no individual reform will be able to solve this important problem on its own; there is no education panacea.

Therefore, instead of discussing education generally, this space will be used primarily to discuss and promote one aspect of the push to improve America’s schools: the need for quality teachers in public school classrooms. One way to achieve this result is by ending teacher tenure, instituting merit pay schemes, and defining a concrete and effective means of evaluating teacher performance. These ideas are not new, nor are they uncontroversial, but we are certain that teachers, above all other factors, are the number one determinant of classroom success. Maintaining high levels of performance for public school teachers will only be possible by incentivizing talented individuals to teach (who may have otherwise chosen more financially rewarding careers) and by identifying and rewarding the teachers who make the greatest impact on our children. Like members of any other profession, teachers must consistently perform well in order to keep their jobs.

Our group, which consists of members from all political perspectives, understands that some special interest groups will oppose these measures. We are confident however that once these opposing forces appreciate the actual benefits of these measures for both students and teachers, they will learn to support our efforts as well. Stay tuned for more updates throughout the weeks and months ahead, and thanks for reading!

Ryan