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Merit pay is ‘blocked, diluted, co-opted’

February 27, 2011 By

Merit pay plans are blocked, diluated and co-opted, according to an Education Next study by Jay Greene and Stuart Buck of the University of Arkansas.  Even “symbolic” plans are rare. Only 3.5 percent of districts have some form of merit pay, including token plans.

To be truly effective, pay for performance must mean in education what it does in other industries—salary increases for the successful, and salary reductions, even dismissals, for poor performers. State laws governing teacher tenure in most states make implementation of such plans unlikely.

Many plans reward teachers “mostly or entirely for inputs (e.g., professional development, graduate degrees, national certification) rather than for outputs (test scores, graduation rates, or even supervisor assessments).”

Arizona’s Classroom Site Fund (CSF) required districts to allocate 40 percent of the money to “teacher compensation increases based on performance and employment related expenses.” Only 29 of 222 districts created “strong performance pay plans” that linked teacher pay to student achievement, according to a 2010 report from the Arizona Auditor General.  One example:

One district awarded performance pay to eligible employees if freshman students’ algebra test scores increased by at least 10 percent between a pre- and post-test. The actual increase in test scores was almost 90 percent. Since the pre-test is given to freshman students who have never been exposed to algebra and the post-test is given to them after receiving a full year of algebra instruction, it should be expected that scores would increase significantly more than 10 percent.

Denver’s much-hyped ProComp program rewards earning a degree more generously than improving student learning.

The largest monetary award is for earning a graduate degree: a $3,300 permanent salary increase plus a tuition or student loan subsidy of $1,000 per year for up to four years. By comparison, teachers receive a one-time award, not a bump up in base salary, of up to $2,403.26 if their students exceed “district expectations” for student growth.

Moreover, as Paul Teske, a principal evaluator of the ProComp program, noted in the Christian Science Monitor, bad teachers face no penalty under the ProComp or similar merit-pay programs: “I guess your salary stays low, and maybe that sends the message that you should look at another career. But ProComp doesn’t directly address that.”

Many districts turn merit pay into a small across-the-board pay boost, write Green and Buck. In Houston, 88 percent of teachers qualified for a small “merit” bonus. That’s nothing compared to Minnesota, where 22 school districts gave Q Comp bonuses to more than 99 percent of teachers.

Schools that don’t need to compete for students have no incentive to design pay schemes that attract the best teachers, Greene and Buck write.  In the 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey, only 6 percent of traditional public school administrators said they used salaries to reward “excellence.” By contrast, 36 percent of charter administrators and 22 percent of private school heads offer performance pay.

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Merit pay international

February 10, 2011 By

Achievement is higher in countries that pay teachers for outstanding performance, concludes an analysis of PISA data by Ludger Woessmann, a University of Munich economics professor.

(Students in performance-pay countries) 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.

. . . Since one-quarter of a standard deviation is roughly a year’s worth of learning, it might reasonably be concluded that by the age of 15, students taught under a policy regime that includes a performance pay plan will learn an additional year of math and reading and over half a year more in science. However, this conclusion depends on the many assumptions underlying an analysis based on observational data.

Twelve of 27 OECD countries with PISA data report incentive pay for outstanding teachers, but the pay schemes vary considerably.  For example, outstanding performance may be measured “based on the assessment of the head teacher (Portugal), assessments performed by education administrators (Turkey), or the measured learning achievements of students (Mexico,” Woessmann writes. Countries in Scandinavia (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) and Eastern Europe (Czech Republic and Hungary)  are the most likely to use performance pay.


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Attacks on tenure build union’s base

January 27, 2011 By

Unions fear lost membership more than lost teacher tenure, writes Doug Tuthill, a former teachers’ union president who now runs Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship program, on redefinED.

. . . when I was a union president, I knew that battles over tenure were great for business. That’s because teacher unions are in the business of selling protection, and anything that causes teachers to experience more job-related fear or insecurity increases union membership. I could never say so publicly, but the elimination of tenure would mean the union contract would be the only protection teachers had. That’s amounts to a full employment act for unions.

I had a similar attitude toward merit pay. Many teachers genuinely don’t think it’s possible to create a one-size-fits-all merit pay plan that is fair. Consequently merit pay proposals create fear and insecurity and also increase union membership.

Teacher unions fear vouchers, charters and virtual schools, because teachers aren’t likely to be unionized, he writes. Trying to organize teachers in a bunch of small, independent schools wouldn’t be worth the cost.

Therefore FEA (Florida Education Association) sees spending money to prevent teachers and parents from creating learning options outside the control of school boards and teachers unions as the smarter business move.

“With state legislatures pushing tenure and merit pay proposals this spring, teacher unions will be flush with cash over the next few years and highly resistant to change, Tuthill concludes.

Via Education Intelligence Agency’s Communique.

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Spend money like it matters

December 12, 2010 By

Spend Money Like It Matters, writes Rick Hess in Educational Leadership. Specifically, we need to spend money to “attract, retain and make full use of talented educators.”

Question: Do you think that employees who are good at their work ought to be rewarded, recognized, and have the chance to step up into new opportunities and responsibilities? I do. If you’re with me on this, you embrace the principle of merit pay — whether you know it or not.

. . . I don’t imagine that paying bonuses for bumps in test scores, as though we were compensating traveling encyclopedia salesmen in the 1950s, is going to improve teaching or learning. And I don’t think that value-added calculations are themselves a comprehensive or reliable measure of teacher quality, even in grades where we can calculate such numbers with a reasonable degree of statistical accuracy. But money and metrics are invaluable tools in shaping a 21st century teaching profession.

Many merit-pay proposals foolishly try to “slather some test-based bonuses atop existing pay scales,” Hess writes. We need to rethink teacher pay to “help make employees feel valued, make the teaching profession more attractive to potential entrants, and signal that professional norms are displacing those of the industrial model.”

Merit pay, done right, will improve productivity, which schools no longer can afford to ignore. (See Productivity or the poorhouse.)

One-size-fits-all compensation means that we’re either paying the most effective employees too little, paying their less effective colleagues too much, or, most times, a little of each. In a world of scarce talent and limited resources, this is a problem.

A quick fix won’t work for teacher pay, Hess writes. This is going to take time to figure out. And we’re not likely to end up with one right answer for all schools and all sorts of teachers.

We can improve teacher quality through school design, writes Ed Sector’s Elena Silva, who looks at the Generation Schools model. “Many schools are insufficiently attractive to talented professionals, and they squander the talent of those they manage to employ.”

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Study: Bonuses boost retention, scores

December 8, 2010 By

More teachers stayed on the job and students’ scores improved modestly at Texas schools that offered performance pay, reports a study by researchers at Vanderbilt University, the University of Missouri and Rand Corp. Bigger bonuses — $3,000 and up — produced better results, “although a majority of districts chose to spread the money around to more teachers and give smaller payments,” notes the Dallas News.

The study cautioned, though, that achievement gains shown by merit pay schools were small and could have resulted in part from other initiatives at those schools. Student test scores are a primary factor in determining bonuses, a criterion that many teachers oppose.

The merit-pay plan strongly affected teacher retention:  “The probability of turnover surged among teachers who did not receive a DATE award, while it fell sharply among teachers who did receive such an award,” the researchers said.

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Cities try merit pay for superintendents

October 7, 2010 By

If performance pay makes sense for teachers and principals, what about superintendents? Some urban school districts are offering merit pay for superintendents, notes the Hechinger Report.

Bernadeia Johnson, superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools, will earn a bonus of up to $30,000 on top of her $190,000 base salary, if she meets a serious of improvement goals. Her predecessor, Bill Green, refused a pay-for-performance deal.

One third of the 65 districts that belong to the Council of the Great City Schools are trying performance pay for superintendents.

In most districts, merit pay for superintendents is based on test scores and the district’s fiscal health. Graduation rates, a key indicator for school districts, are tougher for a superintendent to influence.

. . . Fifty percent of Johnson’s potential bonus hinges on higher test scores and progress toward closing Minneapolis’ racial achievement gap. Improved relationships – between the district and the public, as well as between administrators and staff – can bring another 10 percent. The rest of her potential bonus will be determined by how well she puts in place a new instructional system, a long-range financial plan and budget process, an accountability plan and a data-management system. Progress toward those goals can earn her a partial bonus.

“What gets measured gets done,” said Tom Madden, who chairs the Minneapolis school board. “Bernadeia knows that and the board knows that.”

Merit pay for superintendents ranges from $5,000 to $75,000. But the big bonuses lead to complaints.  In Philadelphia, Arlene Ackerman came under fire for accepting a $65,000 bonus on top of her $338,000 salary in 2008-09.

Former Minneapolis superintendent Carol Johnson now leads the Boston Public Schools. She is eligible for a yearly performance bonus of up to $20,000 but has said she won’t take any bonuses or raises through the 2011-12 school year above her current salary of $275,000.

“I don’t think in a period where schools are cutting resources for children, any of us can expect to take raises,” Johnson told the Boston Herald.

No research links superintendent merit pay to improved student outcomes. However, it sends a good signal that accountability starts at the top, says Mike Casserly of Council of the Great City Schools.  “I think it sets a good tone for the people at the top of the system to hold themselves accountable.”

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Merit pay fails a test

September 22, 2010 By

Is merit pay a flop? Project on Incentives in Teaching (POINT) offered big bonuses to Nashville math teachers in grades 5-8 for raising students’ test scores. Fifth graders improved in the second and third years, but there was no lasting improvement in student performance, concluded researchers at Vanderbilt’s National Center on Performance Incentives.

The study used a control group and calculated students’ progress using value-added measures. There was heavy attrition as teachers were reassigned or left the district.

In surveys of participants, 80 percent said they didn’t change their teaching in hopes of earning a bonus, according to the Hechinger Report. Teachers’ students had to hit the 95th percentile to earn a $15,000 bonus, the 90th percentile for $10,000 and the 80th for a $5,000 reward. Many teachers just missed the cut-off.

The fact that many fifth-grade teachers teach multiple subjects to the same students may have been a reason for the positive impact of merit pay found in fifth grade, according to the study’s authors. But “the effect did not last. By the end of 6th grade it did not matter whether a student’s 5th grade math teacher had been in the treatment or control group,” the study said.

While “bonus pay alone” didn’t improve student outcomes, “more nuanced” compensation ideas should be tested, said Matthew Springer, executive director of the National Center on Performance Incentives.

Merit pay opponents say the study proves merit pay is worthless. Others claim the real issue is not whether bonuses motivate teachers to work harder.

Under Arne Duncan, the Education Department is pushing performance pay, writes Stephen Sawchuk on Teacher Beat. New grantees will be announced this month “under a federal program designed to seed merit-pay programs for teachers and principals.”

“While this is a good study, it only looked at the narrow question of whether more pay motivates teachers to try harder,” a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Education said in an e-mail. “What we are trying to do is change the culture of teaching by giving all educators the feedback they need to get better while rewarding and incentivizing the best to teach in high need schools and hard-to-staff subjects.”

Before the results were out, Rick Hess wrote that it would tell us nothing because it looked only at whether teachers will work “harder” for money, like rats trying to earn extra food pellets. “Serious people” hope that “rethinking teacher pay can help us reshape the profession to make it more attractive to talented candidates, more adept at using specialization, more rewarding for accomplished professionals, and a better fit for the twenty-first century labor force.” The study asked the wrong question, he concludes.

Eduwonk agrees that merit pay is a way to improve the teaching force of the future, not a way to make teachers work harder or better.

It sends a signal that in this field, performance and excellence matters.  Right now the signal is that everyone gets treated alike, as widgets, regardless of how well or how poorly you do your job.

A “surprising number of people are saying this somehow settles the debate about performance pay,” Eduwonk also notes.  “And funny, they don’t say that about single studies that don’t confirm their views.”

However, performance pay should be judged on performance, argues Intercepts, who links to the response from the AFT, which sees a “a role” for performance pay,  and from the NEA, which calls it “only the latest blow” to the idea. Intercepts writes:

It’s funny to see NEA suddenly equating “student achievement” with the results of a “single standardized test” (page 13) – in this case, the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) math test.

The Tennessee results aren’t all rosy for the teachers’ unions . . . if your goal is to raise student math scores, and a $15,000 bonus to math teachers didn’t do it, why would giving all teachers more money have any effect?

“What happens next is just as much a political question as an education one,” concludes Intercepts. Very true.

Update: Rick Hess publishes a response to the study by Tom Kane, a Harvard professor who’s heading the Gates Foundation’s  research into teacher performance, evaluation, and pay. Kane writes:

It’s a well-done study of a not-very-interesting question. Merit pay for teachers could impact student achievement via three distinct routes: by encouraging teachers to work harder, by encouraging talented and skilled teachers to remain in teaching, by enticing talented and skilled people to enter teaching. The study was designed to answer a narrow question: can you make the average teacher work harder with monetary incentives? They did not report any results on the likelihood that more effective teachers would remain in teaching. Nor did they design the study to study entry into teaching.

We know there are huge differences in student achievement gains in different teachers’ classrooms. The authors confirmed that result. However, the impact of the specific incentive they tested depends on what underlies the differences in teacher effectiveness–effort vs. talent and accumulated skill. I’ve never believed that lack of teacher effort–as opposed to talent and skills–was the primary issue underlying poor student achievement gains. Rather, the primary hope for merit pay is that it will encourage talented teachers to remain in the classroom or to enter teaching.

Kane thinks “more meaningful tenure review” is “the most likely route of impact for teacher effectiveness policies.”

By the way, Corey Bunje Bower, a Vanderbilt PhD student, writes that a “reliable source” says Hess knew the results of the study before he wrote the pre-announcement column saying the results don’t matter. I’m reluctant to take the word of an anonymous source over the word of Rick Hess.

Hess says someone told him the results after he’d written the column.


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Meeting of the minds on education

August 25, 2010 By

Only 18 percent of Americans give the nation’s schools an A or a B in two new education polls, Education Next -Program on Education Policy and Governance and Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup.

Only 28 percent of teachers give the nation’s schools an A or B, while 55 percent awarded a C and 17 percent a D or F in the Ed Next-PEPG poll.

However, both surveys found strong support for local schools, even stronger for the schools their children attend. Seventy-seven percent gave an A or B to their oldest child’s school in the PDK/Gallup poll.

Except for school spending and teacher tenure,  differences on education policy are minor and don’t break on party lines, write researchers William G. Howell, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West in Education Next. Support is growing for merit pay and online education.

While 63 percent of the public favor an increase in “government funding for public schools in your district,” only 29 percent support an increase in local taxes to fund local schools.

Support for higher teacher pay has fallen to 59 percent from 69 percent in 2008. Telling respondents the average teacher salary in their state cuts support to 42 percent.

When it comes to school choice, charter schools and online education are “in,” while private school vouchers are “out.” The charter option is especially popular among minorities and parents in neighborhoods where charter schools are already present.

Public school teachers are split on charters with 39 percent supporting charters and 36 percent opposed.

Merit pay is gaining support: 49 percent back “basing a teacher’s salary, in part, on students’ academic progress on state tests,” while 25 percent are opposed.

The public continues to oppose teacher tenure: 47 percent say no, while 27 percent favor tenure.

Seventy-six percent of the public and 63 percent of teachers believe students should have to pass a graduation exam; 79 percent of respondents want students to pass a test before moving on to the next grade, as is now required for third graders in Florida and New York City.

While 57 percent of the public favor releasing a school’s average test scores, only 45 percent of teachers agree. Half of teachers want to keep current testing requirements compared to 62 percent of the general public.

Democrats are more supportive of vouchers and education tax credits than Republicans because of blacks’ strong support for school choice. However, Democrats are more supportive of raising teacher salaries and overall school spending and much more likely to say teachers unions have a positive effect on their community’s schools.

At the height of President Obama’s popularity in 2009, respondents were more likely to support his education policies when told his stand. By 2010, the Obama effect had waned. “Yet public opinion on merit pay, charter schools, and vouchers all shifted closer to the president’s position,” the researchers observe.

The PDK-Gallup Poll shows slipping support for President Obama’s education agenda, reports Ed Week. Just 34 percent give the president an A or B when grading his performance on education during his first 17 months in office.

Most rejected tough turnaround strategies: 54 percent opposed firing the principal or teachers at low-performing schools.

Improving teacher quality is the most important national education strategy, respondents said.

Seventy-one percent of those surveyed said teachers should be paid on the basis of their work, rather than on a standard salary schedule, and 54 percent said a teacher’s salary should be “somewhat closely” tied to the achievement of his or her students.

. . .  When asked what the primary purpose of evaluating teachers should be, 60 percent said to help teachers improve, compared with 26 percent who said it should be used to document ineffectiveness that could lead to dismissal, and 13 percent said evaluations should be used to establish teachers’ salaries based on their skills.

Compared to Ed Next-PEPG, the poll found stronger and growing support for charter schools is growing: 65 percent would back a new public charter schools in their community; 60 percent would support “a large increase” in charter schools nationwide.

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Is D.C. teachers' contract a model?

June 7, 2010 By

Washington, D.C. teachers have agreed to a contract that includes pay for performance, reduced seniority protections – and hefty pay increases.  Will this prove to be a model for the nation? National Journal’s Education Experts discuss the issue.

The new contract includes a pay raise of 21.6 percent over five years (retroactive to the expiration of the old contract) that will raise average annual salary from $67,000 to $81,000. Philanthropic support made the generous financial package possible. Under the new regime, principals will use job performance, as opposed to seniority, as the top criterion to make decisions about staff reductions when budget or program changes require it.

Will the new contract lead to improved performance at D.C. schools? Should other cities look for foundation support to supplement teacher pay? What are the national implications?

“Fundamentally, this agreement would allow DCPS to treat its teachers as individual professionals, with their own qualities, successes and failures,” writes Daniel Weisberg of The New Teacher Project.

Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence points to the very high costs:

The financial incentives to enroll in the voluntary performance pay program will have to be significant, since brand-new teachers who don’t enroll will receive a minimum salary of $51,539 in the 2011-12 school year – and those with 21+ years of experience will earn up to $106,540.

Will the new contract lead to improved performance of D.C. schools? Let’s hope so. But its extraordinary cost makes it an unlikely model for other U.S. school districts.

I think Antonucci is right about the money.

Rick Hess has more on the contract’s significance.

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Opportunity for the best teachers

June 5, 2010 By

Opportunity at the Top, a new Public Impact report, offers to show “how America’s best teachers could close the gaps, raise the bar and keep our nation great.” Co-author Bryan Hassel says:

Today, great teachers reach a mere fraction of the children whom they could help, are paid a fraction of their worth, and exit teaching in numbers too large.

. . . Our nation’s best teachers should be outraged at how we have denied them the pay and career opportunities that talented professionals in other jobs enjoy.

Public education attracts some top-notch talent — but then does a poor job of keeping the best teachers and leveraging their abilities to benefit more students, concludes the report, which is funded by the Joyce Foundation. It calls for an “opportunity culture” for America’s teachers:

Adopt policies designed to disproportionately retain high-performers;
Extend the reach — and compensation — of the best teachers;
Recruit more great teachers;
Dismiss low-performing teachers who do not get results for students.

Public Impact has also released 3X for All: Extending the Reach of Education’s Best, which is funded by the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation.

Prioritize effectiveness, not seniority, when deciding on teacher layoffs, says a new Education Trust West policy brief.

In the lowest performing 10 percent of schools in California, the average teacher has more than 11 years of experience, Ed Trust West found. “Our highest need schools and students need effective teachers, regardless of how many years those teachers have been in the classroom,” says Arun Ramanathan, executive director of the nonprofit.

At a conference at Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, Munich University economist Ludger Woessmann presented a paper on pay for teachers in 28 industrialized countries: Countries with merit-pay policies perform 0.25 standard deviations higher on an international math and science test than students in countries without such policies.  That represents a full year of learning, writes Paul Peterson.

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