It all Starts in Cleveland
A while back I wrote a piece called “Teachers are Guilty”. The post was basically about how it was easier for teachers to close our doors and focus on our students and classrooms than to become involved with the ugliness of educational politics. For fear of offending some colleagues I didn’t publish the piece.
Recently The Cleveland Plain Dealer and StateImpact Ohio pulled a little PR stunt by publishing teachers names and “value-added” scores. They also made an amateurish attempt to mask this unethical report by also pointing out some of the flaws of using the data to evaluate teachers. Then, after saying it was wrong and inaccurate, they published anyway. I guess competent reporting takes a back seat to tabloid-like, website hit generating drama.
The Plain Dealer and StateImpact Ohio focused on Cleveland. Teachers across the state should pay attention because all educational ugliness begins in Cleveland.
The first Charter School Scam legislation was specific to Cleveland. While public education activists across the state tried to get it squashed the message from the charter supporters was “Don’t worry. It’s only an experiment. It’s specific to Cleveland.” And now we have failing charters all across the state.
Last year “The Cleveland Plan” was passed. While those paying attention opposed it the supporters had the same message as with the charters. “It’s specific to Cleveland.” One year later the Ohio House and Senate are trying to implement a similar plan to Columbus Schools and the Cleveland merit-pay system has been called a “statewide model” by Governor Kasich.
Flawed “value-added” scores were recently published just for Cleveland. How much longer until it’s a statewide outcry?
By Kevin Griffin, Dublin Education Association
Value-Added Scores Can Never Complete the Picture of a Teacher’s Work with Students
The following letter was sent to The Plain Dealer by fax to 216-999-6209 and through the Letters to the Editor form at http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/letter-to-editor/.
To the editor:
The Ohio Education Association was not contacted for comment on the Plain Dealer/StateImpact Ohio stories on the value-added scores of individual teachers, despite our expertise, which would have provided desperately needed context and perspective (Plain Dealer and StateImpact Ohio, June 16-17). Your reporters and editors admitted this value-added data was “flawed,” but they chose to surprise us for effect, rather than get our side in a spirit of fairness, balance and accuracy.
Had you called, we would have said this:
We are all accountable for student success – teachers, support professionals, parents, students and elected officials. And the Ohio Education Association is committed to fair teacher evaluation systems that include student performance, among other multiple measures. But listing teachers as effective or ineffective based on narrow tests not designed to be used for this purpose is a disservice to everyone.
Value-added ratings can never paint a complete or objective picture of an individual teacher’s work or performance. Trained educators can use a student’s value-added data, along with other student data, to improve student instruction. But you should never promote a simplistic and inaccurate view of value-added scores as a valid basis for high-stakes decisions on schools, teachers and students – even if Ohio legislators have gone down that misguided road.
Patricia Frost-Brooks, President
Ohio Education Association
Note: The Ohio Education Association is the largest professional education union in Ohio, representing more than 121,000 members working in Ohio schools and colleges.
Radical Rhee and the so-called education "reform" movement
The trend of blaming teachers for the problems in education probably won’t fall out of favor any time soon. Last week, School Choice Week, so-called education “reformers” did their best to scapegoat teachers instead of acknowledging the real systemic problems — such as school funding and poverty — that lead to poor performance and problems in education. Self proclaimed “reformer” Michelle Rhee, former Chancellor of the D.C. schools and founder of the political lobbying organization StudentsFirst, has said, “We will no longer describe failure as the result of vast impersonal forces like poverty or a broken bureaucracy.” For Rhee, and other so-called reformers, well-established facts confirming the correlation between poverty and the achievement gap don’t matter.
Neither do policies that work, like having smaller class sizes, increasing pre-kindergarten programs, and hiring more school psychologists and school librarians. But these reformers, with limited to no experience or training in the education field, refuse to listen to the experts, classroom teachers. Again, Rhee is a perfect example. “If there is one thing I have learned over the last 15 months, it’s that cooperation, collaboration and consensus-building are way overrated,” Rhee said. If she’s not interested in input from educators, where do her ideas for education reform come from?
Rhee never studied education. She majored in government after attending an elite private high school. Her preparation for classroom teaching consisted of a five-week stint with Teach for America (TFA) after which she was placed as an elementary school teacher in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was known for not having much control of her students. After three years, she left the classroom — 80% of TFA teachers do — and she started The New Teachers Project (TNTP), which acts as a teacher training and placement program for poor, inner-city school districts.
Rhee’s organizations, like most in the “reform” movement, are revenue-generating nonprofits and their services don’t come cheap. TNTP charged the Oakland Unified School District $807,446 from 2006-2008. Fortunately, not everyone is so entranced by her spiel. In 2011, John C Liu, New York City Comptroller, denied a five-year contract to the TNTP for $21 million He remarked, “Twenty million dollars to recruit teachers, as the Department of Education insists on laying off thousands of teachers, seems curious at best.”
In 2007, without having any experience as a principal or superintendent, Rhee was recommended to head D.C. public schools in 2007 by her friend and TNTP client, former New York public schools Chancellor Joel Klein. Frontline’s documentary, The Education of Michelle Rhee examines problems Rhee had as Chancellor of the D.C. schools. The documentary’s most startling revelation is that test scores appear to have been doctored in many schools, showing significant gains in math and English for students. Rhee paid principals, vice principals and teachers tens of thousands of dollars in merit pay for those test scores. Perhaps Rhee hasn’t never heard of Campbell’s Law, which predicts that when huge stakes are attached to quantitative data, the data becomes subject to tampering and manipulation, or of the Vanderbilt University study that found no evidence that merit pay raised student test scores.
Rhee’s new organization, StudentsFirst, has pledged to raise $1 billion in order to overturn teacher tenure, create tax credits for private school vouchers, institute parent trigger laws, and increase merit pay, expensive testing and profitable charter schools. With a wealthy cadre of hedge fund managers, nonprofit foundations, right-wing conservatives and fundamentalist religious groups, she managed to raise $4.6 million in 2010-2011. In return, she spent over $2 million in early 2012 to support candidates, reform groups and state legislation that supports the privatization of public schools.
It’s time to end this teacher-bashing, public school trashing trend. Rhee and her anti-public school cohorts demonize public education, teachers unions and educators. Their simplistic messaging — charters are good and teachers unions are bad — thwarts thoughtful discussions about improving public schools. We need to keep the discussion focused where it should be: on the students and those who know best how to transform public education.
By Susan Ridgeway, Wooster Education Association
CNN Story on Teacher Pay and Test Scores Misleads Readers
Yesterday CNN’s blog, Schools of Thought, posted a story on teacher evaluations entitled, “Ohio links teacher pay to test scores.“ While not categorically untrue, this blog seriously misleads by simplification.
The writer suggests that teacher evaluation legislation is sudden and the result of Governor Kasich’s efforts, when in fact, the development of a framework and model have been in process for several years under the guidance of the Educator Standards Board (comprised of educators, the majority of whom are public school teachers) and the support of the Ohio Department of Education.
The writer further suggests that teacher compensation will be driven solely by test scores. The truth is that schools are experimenting with systems to compensate teachers differently based on different roles and evaluation results. Such evaluations include observations of teacher performance relative to state teaching standards and evidence of student growth, not simply a raw score.
He also suggests that decisions about promotion, salaries, etc. will be based on test scores. They will instead be determined by policies and agreements designed and collectively bargained to address the local school community’s aspirations and needs.
Finally, while there is a Race to the Top (RttT) influence on policies and agreements in those school districts that chose participation in the federal initiative, RttT itself is not the driving force for change. It is simply a contributing factor. A more significant factor in shaping change is how districts actually decided to participate in RttT. That decision was made jointly by local school boards of education and teacher unions as a mutual commitment to labor-management collaboration to improve teaching and learning. It is also important to note that these commitments were made under the leadership of a different governor, state board of education, and legislature, not the current ones.
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Alternatives to merit pay
Better alternatives to merit pay
A newly released report published by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice highlights incentives that can be much more effective in keeping good teachers in the classroom than traditional merit pay programs that reward teachers based on their students’ standardized test scores, which do little to improve student achievement or help to attract and retain good teachers in high-need areas.
“What most teachers desire is the know-how to teach their subjects as well as the autonomy and supports to best meet the needs of their students,” according to the report by Barnett Berry, founder and president of the Center for Teaching Quality, and Jonathan Eckert, an education professor at Wheaton College in Illinois and former Teaching Ambassador at the U.S. Department of Education.
Berry and Eckert’s report notes several examples of merit pay’s failure to improve education or retain good teachers, including programs in Nashville and New York City. A voluntary merit pay program in Nashville that provided up to $15,000 in bonuses for teachers had little-to-no impact on student performance. The program didn’t help retain teachers, either: About half of the teachers who volunteered for the program left within three years. Pay incentives also failed to improve student performance, despite a $56 million merit pay program in New York City. Teachers there reported that the bonuses were “a reward for their usual efforts, not as an incentive for changing their behavior.”
Effectively addressing the conditions that the best teachers want and need will go a long way toward supporting their professional activities and retaining them — particularly in high-need schools, according to the report.
Berry and Eckert say policymakers should focus on the conditions that improve effective teaching, including:
- Principals who cultivate and embrace teacher leadership
- Time and tools for teachers to learn from one another, instead of competing with their colleagues
- Specialized resources for high-need schools, students and subjects
- The elimination of out-of-field teaching assignments
- Teaching loads that take the diversity of students into account
- Leeway to take risks
- Integration of academic, social and health services for students
- Safe, well-maintained school buildings
Instead of continuing to implement simplistic and ineffective reforms, policymakers should embrace real solutions to attract and retain talented teachers so our children can succeed in college and the workplace. Our children deserve nothing less than proposals that actually do good.
To read Berry and Eckert’s full report and recommendations, go to www.greatlakescenter.org.
State tests could be one of the criteria for both “merit pay” and any salary increases
I have never wanted to be anything but a teacher. My childhood stuffed animals were regularly lined up, waiting to hear a story or learn about words or numbers. Teaching dance and music lessons in high school helped to pay for college where my dream would come true and I would become a music teacher.
The urge to help and serve is deeply ingrained within my family. During our family history, we have proudly claimed police officers, firefighters, nurses (including my mother and grandmother) and other public employees. I am married to a teacher (who is the grandson of a teacher), and our older child has now finished his education degree. I couldn’t be prouder of this heritage and legacy, but at the same time, the prospects for my immediate family are nearly terrifying.
If we don’t defeat Issue 2, teachers like my husband and I are in immediate jeopardy of no longer being able to serve the children. We are both music specialists, devoted to educating the whole child and making all our students valuable citizens of the world. Studying music during the school day helps children to synthesize their world, and offers a unique platform for learning skills that are essential for twenty-first century success.
Many of my arts teaching colleagues are seeing their positions eliminated and programs cut for the sake of other curricular areas, which “enjoy” the benefit of being state tested. With Issue 2, those state tests could be one of the criteria for both “merit pay” and any salary increases throughout a teacher’s career. Music teachers, art teachers, physical education teachers, global language teachers, and others will never have the opportunity for pay increases with this method, no matter how many accolades they receive.
Issue 2 forces local school districts to base at least 50 percent of a teachers’ compensation on student test scores, a method that is rejected by education experts and parents alike, because it’s inaccurate, invalid, and doesn’t work. That’s bad policy for students and public education. It’s also the reason I’m voting NO on Issue 2.
—Deborah Graham-Gibson, elementary music specialist, Dublin
Chicago’s teacher performance-based pay didn’t work
A study released Tuesday by Mathematica Policy Research Inc. about a Chicago program that contains performance-based compensation for teachers, shows no evidence that the program boosted student achievement on math and reading tests, compared with a group of similar schools that did not use the performance-based compensation system, Education Week reported.
The study also found that the Chicago Teacher Advancement Program (TAP), a local version of the national TAP program, did not improve the rates of teacher retention in participating schools or in the district. The Chicago Program is a Teacher Incentive Fund grantee.
The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), a $600 million federal grant program supports the creation of pay-for-performance systems. Created by Congress in 2006, TIF was expanded and supported with ARRA funding in 2009. TIF’s stated goals include reforming teacher and principal compensation to support rewards based on improved student performance; and increasing the number of effective teachers teaching poor, minority, and disadvantaged students; and creating sustainability.
According to Mathematica’s site, the five-year, $7.9 million study for the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences involves a rigorous national evaluation of TIF. The study was mandated by the legislation authorizing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
Their study is evaluating these performance-based compensation systems to measure issues like student achievement and teacher mobility. Download the report.
OEA is opposed to any form of merit pay or pay for performance as:
Pay that is conditioned or tied to student outcomes (such as test scores) or employee evaluations subject to the employer’s discretion. (This is in alignment with OEA Resolution F-25 merit pay.)
OEA takes this position because research has consistently shown that there is no correlation between merit pay and improved student performance.
However, OEA understands that some local OEA affiliates may be interested in exploring a system of alternative compensation. OEA understands that this is a critical move that could, if entered into lightly, greatly impact OEA members.
OEA defines Alternative Compensation as:
A pay system that supplements a single salary schedule and is accessible to everyone on a voluntary basis. Examples include, but are not limited to, National Board certification, master teacher designation, hard to staff schools, hard to staff subjects, recruitment pay, retention pay, career ladder, and/or licensure status.
An acceptable system of alternative compensation will follow all of the principles listed below.
Alternative compensation MUST:
- Be negotiated with the full participation of the local OEA affiliates and be in accordance with Ohio’s collective bargaining laws.
- Include a strategic process for implementation that includes professional development and continuous improvement strategies.
- Be understandable to all stakeholders, including the public.
- Promote collaboration and not competition.
- Be accessible to all members of the bargaining unit.
- Be voluntary.
- Be adequately funded and sustainable.
- Provide sufficient resources and time, on-going professional development, and opportunities for collaboration.
- Support best practices that improve instruction at both the individual and the collective levels.
- Allow current salary schedules to continue to grow.
Alternative compensation MUST NOT:
- Be tied to student outcomes, such as test scores.
- Reduce or compromise current salary schedules.
- Be limited by quotas.
- Be tied to subjective evaluations.