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wade52, that does bring up a good point, though; what about the non-teaching staff? Even after you factor out all outside influences (which we can never realistically do, of course) and look only at the school environment, what about all the support staff? What about the education assistants that help in the classrooms? They're the ones often dealing most one-on-one with the kids with the greatest needs, after all. What about the school librarians? Other staff that either directly or indirectly contribute to a school's larger community? (the cafeteria workers could have launched a more nutritious lunch program that leads to happier, more energetic kids who also have less discipline issues and can concentrate more on learning, for example, or the librarian introduced the some of the kids in a classroom to books that changed the way that changed the way they thought about school; how do you track that, and why is their contribution not as valuable?)
There's simply too many factors at work, both in and out of the schools.
I think it's true that everyone working at a campus contributes to the learning environment at that school. But just dividing the pittance they call "incentive pay" equally among everyone (except administrators , who get MUCH more) isn't much of an incentive for those who are actually providing the education to the students.
Holding out the carrot and then just providing a few root hairs doesn't fool anyone.
I work in an industry that works heavily on incentive based pay - the annual bonus of top performers could be 2x-100x+ their salary. The higher up you go, the higher the percentage of compensation is based on the bonus. And it does work, the prospect of a huge bonus causes people to care about producing.
Why not use a similar system to teacher pay?
(I posted the below proposed system in a different thread)
Change the system to school vouchers, (no more zoning bs) and it doesn't depend if you're in a school with parents who value or don't value education. If you are a good teacher and can perform, then the parents who value education will send the children to your school. There are people would do anything to get an MBA at NYU, just to study under Aswath Damodaran. Could you be the Aswath Damodaran of the HS public school system?
By "perform", I don't mean absolute scores, I mean relative to the previous year.
If your current class scored an average of 73% on last years state exam, and you pull a Ron Clark and can get them to average 87% on this year's state exam (+14%), that's better than a teacher that brings a class from an 84% to an 88% (+4%).
I also encourage keeping salaries low, but giving high bonuses to large improvement rates. So the teacher that improved 14% would get a higher bonus than one who improved his class 4%. His class did 1% better, but your bonus is much bigger than his is. This would also encourage the best teachers to teach in the worst schools - more room for improvement and a bigger bonus. Obviously if your class kept doing significantly worse than the year before, you get no bonus and after a certain point, fired!
Obviously, after a certain point (class average > 95%), I would do away with the bonuses and raise salaries significantly. Those positions would only be given to teachers with excellent track records. (Many consecutive years of class improvement).
The problem is, although I am definitely not in favor of the current system, there are too many factors beyond a teacher's control. For example, just to take my situation, our school radically revised its entrance criteria. Teachers across the board are experiencing the difference (and it has not been a good one). Compared to last year, many teachers look as if -- just to judge from the numbers -- they forgot to teach over the summer. I guarantee you, they haven't changed. The students have.
I'm in favor of some kind of restructuring of teacher employment, particularly WRT eliminating poor-performing teachers and getting them the heck out of the classroom as soon as possible, but I have yet to see the proposal which I thought would be truly fair.
The Blueberry Story: The teacher gives the businessman a lesson
“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!”
I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of inservice. http://www.jamievollmer.com/blue_story.html (broken link)
Last edited by toobusytoday; 11-26-2009 at 07:24 AM..
Reason: edit - copyright
The Blueberry Story: The teacher gives the businessman a lesson
“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!”
I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of inservice.http://www.jamievollmer.com/blue_story.html (broken link).
Look at the lack of success with Charter schools and you will see why this concept will never work. The charter schools in our area have dismal results. Just today there was another story in our paper about a charter school closing. Schools are NOT a business and even in the business world, one business model doesn't work for every business.
Last edited by toobusytoday; 11-26-2009 at 07:25 AM..
Reason: edited to reflect previous copyright issue
Look at the lack of success with Charter schools and you will see why this concept will never work. The charter schools in our area have dismal results. Just today there was another story in our paper about a charter school closing. Schools are NOT a business and even in the business world, one business model doesn't work for every business.
Running a school like a business can work. I know of one in my area. They have things like a grant writing office that does nothing but look for funding for special projects like smart boards in rooms (which they have), upgrading computer labs (they have 4 computer labs for the high school), upgrading labs (they have a state of the art lab), etc, etc, etc.... If you go on great schools the only complaints are from the kids and they complain that there's no gymnasium and they don't have dances. This, particular, school has chosen to push academics and technology over sports. They also pay the best of all of the charter's I looked at so they keep their teachers long term.
Now as to whether or not the education is superior, one mistake people make is to compare to the city in which the school resides and, often, that's not where the students come from. For example, many of the charters in my city (there are several) get their students from Detroit. Compared to our district, they perform dismally but compared to Detroit, where many of their students would go if they closed, they compare favorably.
My complaint about charters is that teacher salaries are so low many of us are driven out of the profession. I ASSumed I'd get raises as I gained experience. That doesn't happen in charters here. They just assume you'll leave in 3-5 years and take a better paying job and they'll replace you with another first year teacher who will stay until they can find something else. Charters are a place to get experience here while you wait to find a real job.
Theoretically, if you put your efforts toward delivering a superior product, you'll attract students which increases the money you have to work with. So it can work.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 11-26-2009 at 06:03 AM..
Pay is only one (though important) factor in any industry
Efficient market means market values worker pay most accurately (less imprecisely than other means)....i.e., if one feels a company is underpaying vs one's talent/work, can move to a competitor or start own business
Teaching is obviously a regulated, unionized, politicized, incredibly inefficient industry w/a small % of dedicated, creative, high-value teachers and 95+% who are just unionized workers hiding behind "noble" value of education, healthcare and nonprofits....where most consumers and payors are afraid to try to quantify ROI (return on investment) or introduce competition or efficiency
Smart, education-focused parents in major urban regions (incl affluent suburbs) have largely abandoned public schools for private schools (happened about 20-25yrs ago).....to avoid violence risk for their kids in dts where kids have many classmates from socio-economic gps that generally don't value education or upward mobility....e.g., PaloAlto public schools are perhaps academically strongest public schools in US by many metrics, but most affluent parents in PA and neighboring suburbs (many of whom are alums of Stanford or Berkeley or Harvard) opt for private schools not public
In healthcare, nearly any semi-competent cardiologist (or oncologist or any other surgical subspecialist) earns ~$1MM/yr, even in Podunk....top 1% (by talent) of cardiologists prob don't earn much more than that (use much time for quasi-academic work/teaching, etc); but most talented cardiologists entered field for intellectual/professional satisfaction, not to necessarily maximize earnings (which are dwarfed by any high-powered 25yo hedge fund exec or tech co. engineer/entrepreneur)....and smart patients "get this" and choose their doctors understanding that pay doesn't correlate well with talent or outcomes.....in fact, most of top cardiologists (or internists or specialists) in PA area are in private practice and don't accept low-rent insurance pmts....immense (and sophisticated, well-educated) local wealth means most patients are fine w/writing a check for any costs incurred and taking whatever insurance will pay (and eating difference).....healthcare and education are both places to not question costs/pay, but rather to question value and return on investment.....and vote by spending money wherever one feels one is rewarding (and gaining benefit of) best talent and greatest value
I work in an industry that works heavily on incentive based pay - the annual bonus of top performers could be 2x-100x+ their salary. The higher up you go, the higher the percentage of compensation is based on the bonus. And it does work, the prospect of a huge bonus causes people to care about producing.
Why not use a similar system to teacher pay?
(I posted the below proposed system in a different thread)
Change the system to school vouchers, (no more zoning bs) and it doesn't depend if you're in a school with parents who value or don't value education. If you are a good teacher and can perform, then the parents who value education will send the children to your school. There are people would do anything to get an MBA at NYU, just to study under Aswath Damodaran. Could you be the Aswath Damodaran of the HS public school system?
By "perform", I don't mean absolute scores, I mean relative to the previous year.
If your current class scored an average of 73% on last years state exam, and you pull a Ron Clark and can get them to average 87% on this year's state exam (+14%), that's better than a teacher that brings a class from an 84% to an 88% (+4%).
I also encourage keeping salaries low, but giving high bonuses to large improvement rates. So the teacher that improved 14% would get a higher bonus than one who improved his class 4%. His class did 1% better, but your bonus is much bigger than his is. This would also encourage the best teachers to teach in the worst schools - more room for improvement and a bigger bonus. Obviously if your class kept doing significantly worse than the year before, you get no bonus and after a certain point, fired!
Obviously, after a certain point (class average > 95%), I would do away with the bonuses and raise salaries significantly. Those positions would only be given to teachers with excellent track records. (Many consecutive years of class improvement).
And how would my students with <70 FSIQ be evaluated?
What about students who sit there and smile during the test just because they do not care?
There are a lot of events beyond the influence of teachers in the classroom.
Be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Value-added education is the only education that matters. I have been a big proponent of this for 10+ years, when I was in a position of influence in this area. The problem is, however, that metrics of such things are so blunt and imprecise, i.e. the controls are so poor.
Example) A father of a child becomes unemployed. He is a drink and abusive bum. Kid's score goes from 80 to 65, despite 120% effort from the teacher. The value added contingent upon all controlling factors may be tremendous. Without the teacher, perhaps the kid would be at 50 or would have dropped out/ran away. Yet naive measures would never pick that up.
Example) a new school opens up. Ambitious parents line up to send their kids to that school. Ambitious teachers tired of the older district schools also queue for the new school and its new resources. Most district kids will see a noticeable bump in testing from the new facilities, new attitudes, and the better selection of human capital around them (kids, teachers, admin). Teacher value added may actually be mediocre, but most quantitatively naive metrics will speak glowingly of their "contribution."
Teachers against the idea of merit pay come of looking defensive of mediocrity. Admin and others advocating merit pay have no clue what they are actually asking for and have no interest in establishing proper controls. End result? crappy schools and a thoroughly depressing debate by both sides who seem ignorant of what value-added actually means.
In my case at university, "value added" was the idea of unlocking minds or making minds fertile for growth. Some of the value added showed up in real time and some I hope showed up in the courses and years to follow. To ignore the rigorous treatments I gave would be the equivalent of ignoring the impact of a coach's tough love or the impact of the discipline imposed by a drill sergeant.
Finally some advice to teachers: admin and most parents are too stupid to understand what control variables are. They want flash and bling. They care not about the means but the ends. So give them what they want and where your job survival and lifestyle permits, give students the real education they need and deserve. Plan how to get the extra bonuses, regardless of educational merit but keep students in the loop and try to keep their minds and hearts alive. End result will be high salaries and perhaps higher influence. And where possible, you can start to shift the focus toward true value added.
Vouchers seem like a good idea, but there are lots of negative externalities that arise from such a system. The families that pull their children from low-performing schools tend to be high socio-economic status families. They have the resources to access and understand the data on school performance, research other schools, and find transportation to schools that may be futher from their familiy home. Families that "choose" to leave their children in lower-performing school are often blamed for it. The children who need the help most areleft behind under such systems.
Incentive pay for teachers is being tested in a few districts. Montgomery County, MD claims success with it. I'm not sure of the details, but this is one school system to look into if such methodologies pique your interest.
I think teachers are leery about performance-based pay because we see the statistically flawed measures our students are measured by. If similarly ridiculous testing is used to determine my pay, I'll be quite upset.
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