Support for Idiotic Fads is Highest Among New Teachers

although, I may have misread that statistic. Education News has this article stating "Support for Education Reform Highest Among New Teachers".

A new survey shows that teachers entering the workforce are more open to accepting changes pushed for by education reform advocates, such as linking pay and promotions to performance, than their longer-serving peers. 

Merit pay works.

Okay, I'm being slightly facetious but my sarcasm hides a valid point.

I have been teaching for nearly thirty years. I have seen, or developed, or participated in, many reforms over those years. Many of those reforms stunk, were stupid, wrongheaded, but they were all promising fundamental change that would help our students.  That's why we tried them.

Some reforms succeeded beyond our wildest dreams ... special ed foremost among them.  I can remember times when students were pushed into a closet and ignored because they were troublesome. I can remember when students were ignored if they had a learning disability.  IDEA helped change that culture and changed many lives.  We have to reach a balance between the two extremes but overall, that change is good.

If, on the other hand, a reform failed before, and the new reform looks very much like the old reform, should I ignore the similarity and forge onward?  Should I forget that I am being paid more than those new teachers ... mostly because of experience teaching ... should I forget that experience and forge onward with the "new" idea? Should I forget the mistakes I have made and make them again?

No, no, a thousand times, NO.

I truly feel that some of the loudest voices are those who are most wrongheaded.  Merit pay is a bad idea.  I have seen it fail and I have no desire to see it fail again. 

I would be happy to see reforms "such as linking pay and promotions to performance" if only someone could explain how to measure that and who would measure that.  It would be nice if anyone had the least bit of research that said this type of scheme actually worked.  (See Dan Pink, below)

In the past decade or so, my principals have embraced "Verbatim Observations" - writing down every word said in the room instead of simply watching and listening. This happens once a year. If you think I'm going to accept letting $5000 rest on that flimsy an evaluation, you are sadly mistaken.

If you insist $5000 of my income be based on my students' performance on a single test, try again. I will do everything in my power to stack the deck - against the test, against my colleagues, against the scheduler. That kid who's not working very hard - move him out. That kid in the other teacher's class - "sorry, too busy". Letting the department in on a great project? Not a chance. Cooperation in department meetings and curriculum development? Not if it means I am at a disadvantage when bonuses come out. If another teacher needs help with technology ... "I haven't tried that yet. I don't know."

You need to watch this.

Hey, let's be real.  When you talk a significant amount of money, then you have changed the focus. As Daniel Pink says in Drive, you need to pay people enough to get the question of money off the table.  Then get out of the way. Money sours the deal and makes performance worse.

Yet merit pay is high on the reformers list and high on the New Teachers' list.

 Specifically, while veteran teachers broadly reject the idea that student achievement metrics should be a part of teacher evaluation, newer teachers were much more open to the idea. The younger teachers went even further, broadly supporting the idea that student growth should play not just a role, but should be a substantial factor in judging instructor effectiveness. While veteran teachers rejected the idea outright, those with ten years of experience or less thought that it should make up at least 20% of the final assessment score.

If you are a new teacher and you disagree with me because you think I'm wrong and here's why ...fine. I'll listen and then offer my experience because you might not realize, with your fresh newly printed certification, that you don't have all the answers.

You might not realize how wrong you are.

Finally, we asked teachers if they would be willing to replace the current compensation and tenure systems with a performance-based system with much higher starting and top salaries. Here, New Majority teachers are far more supportive of a change to the status quo; specifically, 42 percent of New Majority teachers and just 15 percent of veteran teachers support such a change.

Before you reject my resistance as silly, ask WHY.

It's a Rosy Picture, Rotten at the Core.

I shouldn't need to add much to this:

New York City’s top-ranked school is under investigation for cooking the books, reports the New York Times. Theater Arts Production Company School, a middle and high school located in a low-income Bronx neighborhood,  graduated 94 percent of seniors, more than 30 points above the citywide average. The school earned a near-perfect score in “student progress,” based partly on course credits earned by students.  The school’s no-failure policy requires teachers to pass all students who attend class, regardless of their performance; no more than 5 percent of students can get D’s.

In practice, some teachers said, even students who missed most of the school days earned credits. They also said students were promoted with over 100 absences a year; the principal, rather than a teacher, granted class credits needed for graduation; and credit was awarded for classes the school does not even offer.

When you tie teacher and admin pay to "performance", tie school survival to "attendance" and "graduation rates," it's not a stretch to imagine why people would lie. Should we blame Klein, Black, Bloomberg, Duncan, Obama, GWBII?  Some combination of all of them? Or just go firing school officials?

Incentives and my Degree.

Joanne Jacobs has this article on Lower pay for math, science teachers.

Math and science teachers earn less than their colleagues in 19 of 30 large districts in Washington state, reports the Center on Reinventing Public Education. That’s because salary schedules reward only longevity and graduate credits. "The analysis finds that in twenty-five of the thirty largest districts, math and science teachers had fewer years of teaching experience due to higher turnover — an indication that labor market forces do indeed vary with subject matter expertise.

She comments that "Differential pay for high-demand skills would keep more math and science teachers in the classroom."

I strongly disagree. What I see as far more likely is that those math and science teachers would get paid more,and since they don't have a clue as to the particulars of teaching, they'd leave just as quickly. Five or ten thousand bucks can't overcome that. Teaching is TOUGH -- TFAs and other dilettantes aren't going to stay no matter what.  Shoveling money into the pockets of a few teachers solely based on the course they teach is not conducive to cooperation, teacher satisfaction, morale, or the work environment as a whole. 

The fact that those with a STEM degree can and do move on to other options is unfortunate but also a good motivator. "Hey, kids! Look what applying yourself in these subjects can do for you. Mr. Smith just got a job paying  ... "

Importantly, you can never pay those folks enough to keep them in the classroom, if they are chasing the dollar. TFAs are only thinking of a two year commitment and then it's off to the "Real World" of 6-figure salaries.  No school can compete with that. $100k or more -- is this what you want to pay a teacher in their first couple of years before you even know if they can teach? (What is this, some freakin' NBA rookie deal?)

Also, remember that they were not trained to be a teacher. Teaching math and doing math are different. They were trained to build machines, or solve complex systems, or write enormous amounts of code. There's nothing there about dealing with math-phobic 15-year-olds and material you learned easily twelve years ago. My biggest difficulty in the beginning was that, by and large, few of my students was as capable as I -- I had to figure out how to reach all the kids.

I'm a math teacher with an engineering degree, but I'm okay with the salary schedule paying all teachers similarly regardless of course. English is necessary, too, you know. As is art and music and history and science and computers and languages and woodshop and tech program and forestry and, and, and. Only a few students are going to specialize in math -- one could make the argument that the other teachers are more valuable to more students. How can anyone justify paying one teacher more than another based on the job offer that someone else might have gotten?

On the other hand, refusing pay increases doesn't make for a good environment either. My principal can't even visit my classroom more than once in four years and can't understand anything I teach - how is he going to fairly set my salary? I don't work for him; I work for a vague entity called the "District." It's not his money and he has no incentive to save it. This is not the classic "Boss" everyone thinks about.

The pay needs to be enough to keep money out of the conversation. The best way to do that is with the salary schedule. Then, there's no administrative BS, favoritism, stupidity, etc. You don't get worthless teachers (albeit with shiny degree) getting 5-figure signing bonuses and still skipping out after a year or two. Fairness is an issue and the evaluation process is too unclear for people to bet thousands of dollars based on it. You also don't get people comparing notes or holding out for raises in the middle of the year.

For more on motivation, go here: Dan Pink's talk on motivation.

Of course, if you want to pay me more, I won't turn it down. It's not why I teach, though. I had many choices that paid more -- industry, entrepreneur -- but I chose teaching. I'm paid well enough, I get my vacation all at once instead of having every night and weekend free and a couple weeks in August, and I enjoy what I do when I'm teaching. For me, it's a good choice.

Incentives .. I'll make the teacher merit pay connection.

Merit Pay and Testing

Campbell's Law: “the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
h/t: Jim Horn

The Merit Pay Joyride

I have been teaching for more than 25 years. I have taught students from at least 30 different countries (and every continent save Antarctica), every socio-economic level (and some from levels so high that Mike Bloomberg would get a stiff neck looking up at) and nearly 40 different religious backgrounds. Their abilities have ranged from the dyslexic boy lucky to finish consumer math to the kid who got 5s on every AP test he took and is now working on his PhD. in mathematics.

I spend all year teaching and assessing.

• Grades are based on agreed upon points.
• Tests are meticulously broken down to assure myself and the students that partial credits are done fairly, that everything they do that is correct and given an appropriate number of points.
• Progress reports ensure that every student can keep track of his own work and make up missing assignments, and know fairly accurately what his grade is and how he’s doing. If anything is amiss, the kids are instructed to bring it to my attention first. “I not infallible. Let's get it right” Students know that finding my error gets them points.
• Every mark or measurement has a paper trail and a justification.

That's how grades work. Everyone understands that they are not given but earned.  They know what they got and why and agree that its fair because they'd give themselves the same thing. Though maybe not happy, they'll still says things like "I'm not very good at math but I sure learned a lot." "I enjoy your class, but I hate math." (Then later, the same kid says "My college statistics course was an easy A.") Depending on the course, there are scores of grades of varying weight.

Consider Merit Pay, on the other hand, and its basis.

• At the end of the year, students are given a survey on the last, hottest day of school when absolutely NONE of them want to be there.
• In a few minutes, they rush through questions that ask them to judge on a scale of 1 to 10, my use of classroom time, and 12 other vague metrics. (using their vast experience with 10th grade math teaching methods and pedagogy)
• Add in the results from the 11th grade NECAP test which this grade hasn’t taken yet and doesn't have any incentive to do well on.  Mix in the 8th grade exam from two years ago - somehow this is my responsibility?
  
• Add an administrative evaluation from three years ago (because we're doing the fad of the moment: peer coaching)

What you got? Nothing. Nada. Bupkus. Zero. Zilch.
You don't have a clue as to my value as a teacher.


You want to base my merit pay on that?

Merit Pay dropped

from The Dallas Morning News; May 18, 2009

AUSTIN – Texas' longest running merit pay plan for teachers is being quietly retired this year after getting lackluster returns on its $100-million-a-year investment.

Within a school finance bill recently approved by the House – and now before the Senate – is a provision that terminates the Texas Educator Excellence Grant program after four years and shifts some of its funds to a second plan launched this school year.

When you can't measure the product directly, you "wing it." If you've got the money and are pretty free with your definitions, I'm all for it. If you actually profess to be able to tell the best teachers from the others then you owe it to the country to trumpet the details of that ability from the highest point. I'd be happy to be shown that merit pay can be distributed fairly but I'm not holding my breath.

Measure me, not my students.

Merit Pay can't work

Dan Willingham does it again. This time he discusses why Merit Pay for Teachers won't work.

He ends with the following: "Merit pay can't work until there's a way to measure teacher performance that's fair."

I feel that the problem is not about fairness. Merit pay can't work until we have a way to measure the performance of the teachers directly instead of using indirect measures, like children's test scores or community income levels.