No Excuses -- Step One: Pay the Best Teachers More
To better focus the discussion, I'm going to post separate entries for each of the 5 steps I have identified to improve public education in Utah. I greatly welcome ideas and input on each element and how it might best be implemented (or whether it should be implemented).
STEP 1: Pay the best teachers more. Great teachers are invaluable and, currently, are underpaid. Bad teachers burden the system and should be paid less than the good teachers. Such pay differentials should encourage great teachers to enter and remain in the profession and encourage bad teachers to improve or leave. By identifying and rewarding excellence, we promote it.
STEP 1: Pay the best teachers more. Great teachers are invaluable and, currently, are underpaid. Bad teachers burden the system and should be paid less than the good teachers. Such pay differentials should encourage great teachers to enter and remain in the profession and encourage bad teachers to improve or leave. By identifying and rewarding excellence, we promote it.
posted by steve u. at 10/27/2005
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16 Comments:
Growing up in a house where both of my parents were educators, I know that it is not a secret who the best and the worst teachers are. The administration knows who they are, the parents and kids know who they are and the other teachers know who they are. The only people who can't seem to identify them is the UEA.
I think the UEA is afraid to lost the support of some of the teachers which is why they insist on turning a blind eye to those teachers who are not performing.
I'm wondering how it will be determined who the "best" teachers are? How exactly do we quantify just how good a teacher is? Do you look at their students' performance on standardized tests? Do you test the teachers themselves to see what they know about their subject?
How can you evaluate a high school Chemistry teacher and say he or she is better than a particular Biology or English teacher?
My sister teaches kids with special needs in the Jordan district. How is she going to be evaluated, and how will her performace be compared to that of an AP Calculus instructor or a 3rd Grade teacher?
Nobody is going to argue against paying good teachers more money. That's not exactly a brave stance on a controversial issue. I would like to hear some details on how it might be implemented fairly and objectively. That's where it's going to take some real leadership.
Justin,
I'd predict you're inaccurate in stating that nobody will fight differential pay. Despite the pledge of "no excuses," I think this will be a big fight. But I hope you are correct that no one will fight the common sense concept. People who agree with the concept can come to the table and figure out the details.
It's not rocket science to evaluate employee performance. In most sectors of the economy, it is done every day. Criteria simply need to be developed and implemented. Parents, school boards, superintendents, principals, community counsels, PTA leaders, Union leaders and others are very capable to determine standards, and I hope you are correct that they will be willing to come to the table and do so. My suggestion would be that the Principal take charge and make the decisions, subject to appeal to the Superintendent, and that they be held accoutable for their decisions.
If we decide that teachers will be rewarded by student scores, the fight will be to teach only the brightest students. If we "know" who the best teachers are then we will reward the teachers who we "like" best (much like industry does in areas that are not output specific). The reality of higher rewards for better performance is that we do not have good criterian for better performance.
Teachers do not have control of their class selection, and thus output is a poor measure of teacher performance. Those whom we like best often are better with adults than students. Teachers that reach benchmarks with students and demand that students reach to new heights are often disliked at the time by students and parents, but students gain valuable new skills. Good teaching that motivates one student may also be teaching that fails to reach another.
It takes much more education to teach some fields including students who struggle most, and make the least progress. Some students with emotional problems should probably include hazard pay.
Unfortunately, I can see no effective way to impliment a program that makes sense, and takes into account the complexity of teaching and the complexity of the student population.
Evaluating teachers might not be rocket science but it is definitely a daunting task. Teaching is so much more than just knowing subject material. There are many points to teaching that are often overlooked or not even seen as valuable. If you leave the evaluation to only to administrators, who is going to guarantee that they are using legitimate criteria to evaluate. Specific standards and procedure will have to be set. Some districts have already gone to quality evaluating systems such as Jordan Performance Appraisal System (JPAS). JPAS evaluates teachers on 61 different criteria. JPAS isn’t perfect but it is a step in the right direction. It at least gives administrators an objective measurement.
It would be interesting to know how much a difference JPAS has made in the districts where it has been implemented. For what I have observed it has helped teachers think more objectively about their teaching and in some rare cases has weeded teachers out of the system. But for the most part it hasn’t changed education as a whole and neither will simply paying some teachers more. It may help in some cases but it won’t turn education into a fix all. No matter how good of teachers there are, we will still have students that don’t succeed. It is my supposition that the majority of teachers are already quality teachers
While I can’t argue against teachers needing to be paid more and that paying them more will make some improvements, don’t assume that evaluation will be easy nor that administrators can evaluate fairly without the proper training and tools. If you hope to pay teachers more simply based on an administrator’s opinion you will never win the fight. You will have to have a more detail and viable plan.
As far as school choice is concerned, I seriously doubt it will improve education at all except for a select few students. The students that struggle are still going to arrive at school (no matter if is public or private) loaded with problems that education alone can’t over come.
Also, don’t assume that paying teachers more and school choice alone are going to turn education into the fix-all of society. There are way too many factors that affect a students learning before they even step inside the school. Other considerations will have to be included in any plan that is going to have a significant effect on our society.
At the risk of being unpopular and sounding like a right-wing wack job, I'd have to ask the state to support home schooling a school choice option? I have many folks that I come in contact with who seem to have great success with home schooling, yet the state and local school districts are very antagonistic towards this choice of education.
I believe that if vouchers are ever adopted, and if homeschooling families have a sound curriculum and a competent parent administering that curriculum, homeschooler families should have some help from the state. (e.g. tax credits, etc.)
My husband and I dropped membership in the UEA/NEA for just this reason. We feel that bad teachers are often rewarded by easier class loads and schedules. Many bad teachers earn the highest salaries in districts because they have gone to college to earn their masters degree. When one is a good teacher with individual class sizes of 30 - 50 students and committment to effective lesson planning and student performance, this becomes discouraging. Though one may put in 3 - 5 hours extra a night to create the best learning environment for students, they are not rewarded for their efforts. As teachers, we claim to be professionals; however, we are unwilling to be treated as professionals. To pay teachers by performance is a much needed change to the system; and until the Union is ready to acknowledge that I cannot support their "no excuses" campaign.
First Anon, to say that it is impossible to develop criteria to determine which teachers cut it and which teachers don't contradicts the experience of involved parents. Involved parents have figured out some system of determining who the best teachers are, so that they get their kids in those classes.
Anon had some good comments and they were right on for the most part. Teachers do not control who gets put in their classes.
ALSO, parents have different criteria as to what "good" teachers are. I know of a teacher who was well-respected at my local neighborhood school. Many students did very well in her class. BUT ONE parent had a child that didn't do as well as the parent thought he should have so she went around, branding this teacher as incompetent and other such comments. In gossip-prone Utah, that can have an effect.
Whot's to say that the "merit" pay will be much more or even more than teachers get now? With the disrespect towards teachers perpetuated by some government officials and liberal special interest groups, is there a climate favorable for such (not to mention the constraints of educational funding--another issue entirely)?
Maybe there could be some incentives from the private sector. Better yet, CREATE a climate where the good teachers are valued and appreciated rather than lumped with ALL teachers as so many education liberals are wont to do in their assault on education.
paramphil demonstrates another thing inherent to welfare payments. When money is dangled before one thing, then it seems more and more people hold out their hands to receive it. Why would a homeschooling family want government money intruding on their private education? Holding our hands out for more government welfare payments for our PERSONAL CHOICE only invites more big government. Keep the private and public sectors separate.
Some have developed a "sense of entitlement" for their extra efforts. Extra efforts could apply to teachers, doctors, and all sorts of other jobs too. It is part of the job.
While someone does receive the welfare payment, someone else pays. It doesn't come for free.
Concernedcitizen, you wrote, "CREATE a climate where the good teachers are valued and appreciated rather than lumped with ALL teachers as so many education liberals are wont to do in their assault on education."
Do you have specific suggestions?
Conservative in Utah -- You are misunderstanding me. I'm simply stating that if school vouchers happen, why can't a home schooling family use their own tax dollars, their vouchers for their own children?
Fair is fair, if people are going to be allowed to use their tax money to send their kids to whatever school they want; why can't a competent home schooler family be allowed to do the same.
That wasn't by any means a call for outright welfare to these families, but it is a call that their be some acceptance of this choice regarding education.
Of course we can develop objective criteria for rating teachers. I don't appreciate the it's-hard-so-let's-do-nothing approach suggested by some posters here. We won't end up with something perfect, but we can at least develop a tool that is a starting point. It may not revolutionize education, but it certainly can help.
On the welfare thing -- the problem stems from the whole public education system we have developed and accepted as a society. Recognizing that education benefits all of society, we use money from many taxpayers to fund the education of all children. If it were only a matter of allowing home schoolers to keep the taxes they pay for education it would be easy, but we're talking about using other people's money as well. What we do with education money is something all of society has a right to have a voice in. The same is true of vouchers.
Those that argue that vouchers will not cause a general improvement in education ignore the results achieved in areas where vouchers have been used. Competition fosters improvement across the board. So while I may not send my children to private schools, having a voucher program in place can help them get a better education in our public schools.
A couple of thoughts for you:
A commentor above (Justin) expressed concern that performance incentives would lead to focusing entirely on advanced students. I suggest this would not be the case, if implemented properly. When evaluating teachers for performance incentives, bonuses should not be derived simply from test scores, but from growth, a comparision of where the student was at the start of the semester and where the student ended up. The current buzzword in the education community is "value added." Thus a teacher is theoretically more likely to add increased "value" when working with low performing students.
Statistician William Sanders has suggested that value-added assessment is an effective way of measuring educator performance, the greatest variability is a result of the teacher (Sixty percent, compared with 5% of the variability attributable to districts and 35% attributable to schools.) However, value-added determinations can statistically only identify the upper and lower 10% of teachers reliably.
In addition to "value-added" bonuses, incentives can be added for teaching subjects with a teacher shortage (math and special ed in particular). The legislature has done a good thing with the Public Education Job Enhancement Program, which provides signing bonuses and advanced degree tuition for these positions. However, some districts choose not to use all of their allocated money (for a variety of reasons), but primarily to maintain wage equity.
Switching gears, I was surprised last year when the UEA came out opposing a bill to give bonuses to top teachers. It floored me that they wouldn't choose to support that kind of recognition for exceptional teachers.
(I have blogged further comments on the recent Educator Quality Report delivered to the State Board of Education.)
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