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Bonuses for exceptional teachers stir debate
Lawmakers eye grants; teacher unions object
BY MICHAEL ALISON CHANDLER The Washington Post

   WASHINGTON — A movement gaining momentum in Congress and some school systems across the nation would boost pay for exceptional teachers in high-poverty schools, a departure from salary schedules based on seniority and professional degrees that have kept pay in lockstep for decades.
   Lawmakers are debating this month whether to authorize federal grants through a revision of the No Child Left Behind law for bonuses of as much as $12,500 a year for outstanding teachers in schools that serve low-income areas.
   National teachers unions denounce the proposal for “performance pay,” saying it would undermine their ability to negotiate contracts and would be based in part on what they consider an unfair and unreliable measure: student test scores.
SURPRISING DIVISIONS
   Debate over the proposal has exposed unusual fissures between the influential unions and longtime Democratic allies. Some education experts say the unions are out of step with parents and voters who support the business-oriented idea of providing financial incentives for excellent work.
   Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said that the teaching workforce is leaking talent and that his proposal would help rejuvenate it. Young teachers watch their friends “go off and get paid for their time and ingenuity” in other fields, Miller said. “In teaching, you go as fast as the slowest person.”
   Miller’s proposal, building on recent federal steps to encourage incentive pay, would provide grants to school systems that choose to pay bonuses to teachers who excel in high-poverty schools, worth up to $10,000 in most cases and $12,500 for specialists in math, science and other hard-to-staff subjects.
   Decisions on who gets extra pay would be based on student test gains and professional evaluations. Miller’s aides said they had no cost estimate for the measure.
   Advocates of performance pay have seen similar initiatives fail, and many take pains to avoid the term “merit pay” and its association with past mistakes. But with fresh support from foundations and new tools that enable student achievement data to be linked to individual teachers, many experts said the idea is gaining favor. Performance pay efforts are under way in school systems in Denver and Minnesota, and some local administrators are planning to establish fast tracks for financial rewards for top teachers.
   In the District of Columbia, a five-year, $14 million federal grant is fueling a pilot program to reward teachers and principals in a dozen high-poverty public schools each year that achieve the strongest gains in test scores and share successful strategies with others. Details are being worked out by the city school system, the local teachers union and a partner organization, New Leaders for New Schools.
   The approach is also being tried in a dozen charter schools with help from a private grant. Charter schools are publicly funded but independently operated.
   The D.C. Preparatory Academy charter school adopted another performance pay plan designed by the national foundation-funded Teacher Advancement Program. Its model pairs teacher evaluations with professional development and training.
OBSERVING OTHERS
   One day this month, math teacher and mentor MaryKate Hughes observed how another math teacher set goals and expectations for his students. In another classroom, Hughes made notes on a science teacher’s pacing and preparation. Newer teachers can receive bonuses of as much as $2,000 based on test score improvements and evaluations by master teachers and principals.
   “Our goal is to find good teachers who can become great teachers,” Hughes said.
   In Arlington County, Va., the school system is starting an initiative that offers teachers three opportunities to skip a step on the pay scale, an increase worth as much as 5 percent in salary each time.
   This school year, teachers can qualify for the pay increase through national board certification. In coming years, they will be able to apply by submitting a portfolio of work demonstrating professional development in such areas as leadership and parent outreach.
   Arlington officials stressed that evaluations would not hinge on test scores, although teachers could submit them as evidence of success. Officials with the school system and the county teachers association, who designed the program together, said relying on test scores would fail to capture the complexity of teaching and discourage teachers from working with challenging students.
   “If I’m only going to be evaluated on the test scores of my kids, I’ll take the gifted kids,” said Lee Dorman, president of the Arlington Education Association.
   There is controversy over using standardized tests to rate schools. Tying test results to teacher pay would raise the stakes. But performance-pay advocates say it’s only fair to evaluate teachers the same way schools and children are measured.
   The idea of merit pay gained popularity in the 1980s. But some attempts then to implement the concept failed amid teacher complaints that evaluations were too subjective. Critics said principals were given leeway to give bonuses to favorite employees. Fairfax County, Va., began a program in 1986 that paid teachers as much as $4,000 in annual bonuses. But by the early 1990s, the program fell out of favor with many teachers. It was abandoned in 1992 as the Fairfax School Board grappled with budget cuts.
FEW STUDIES
   The new performance pay movement is rife with experiments that have yielded few definitive national studies showing gains in student achievement. Union leaders are urging lawmakers to hold off on Miller’s proposal. National Education Association President Reg Weaver called the proposal an “unprecedented attack” on collective bargaining rights.
   Antonia Cortese, executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, rejected the argument that performance pay would lure teachers into hard-to-staff schools. “I would think it would be a disincentive to take on something when you don’t know how it will work,” she said.
   Still, schools in many places are plunging ahead. Systems across Minnesota have adopted performance pay measures, prompted by an $86 million initiative. After a long study, the Denver public school system began a districtwide incentive pay program in recent years.
   As debate over performance pay unfolds, Miller said he is sure about one thing: “The demand is there.”

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The school board and tax payers had better figure out a way to get rid of the bad teachers because the union protects them no matter how bad they are.

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Concept of merit pay for teachers too complex for Strock

   Carl Strock’s streak of truly commendable journalism came to an abrupt halt with his Oct. 21 column, “Reward for a good job? Not quite.”
   His demons have returned — he uses false assumptions, personal bias and totally inadequate research to reach his simplistic, sophomoric conclusions about teachers’ views on merit pay.
   Carl believes that teachers want “no reward for good work, no penalty for bad work, which I would love to hear them explain.” Well, Carl, you are dead wrong, and I will enlighten you as to why.
   Merit pay for teachers is a very complex issue, involving many difficult questions: What exactly are the criteria for determining superior teachers, beyond simple test scores? Are physical education, music, special education and art teachers eligible for merit consideration, even though their performance cannot be measured by test scores? Who will observe each teacher, and gather the relevant information — e.g. administrators, teachers, parents — and where will they find the time to do this? Will students have any input, since they have the most firsthand knowledge of each teacher? Finally, who exactly will determine who gets “merit pay?” Administrators, who have minimal knowledge of what occurs in teachers’ classrooms, or other teachers, who clearly could not be considered for merit pay, whose qualification for such judgments would have to be questioned?
   But, alas, there is a far more important dimension to this issue of identifying “merit.” A teacher’s real value is infinitely more profound, and meaningful, than simply raising test scores. How does one measure the value of a reading teacher who inspires a reluctant reader to develop a life-transforming love of literature, or an art teacher who unlocks an entire new world of creativity buried within a student’s soul, or a music teacher whose enthusiasm instills a lifelong love of music within her students, or a special-education teacher, whose love and encouragement enables her students to experience success for the first time and develop self-esteem? Are these gifted teachers less deserving of “merit” recognition than a colleague whose students scored two points higher on a standardized test? The fact is, these teachers aren’t seeking “merit pay”; they already have received something far more valuable — a gift of the heart.
   Teaching offers the opportunity to impact students’ lives in a profound, sometimes life-changing way. This is why teachers enter the profession, and what keeps them there — not the lure of a few more dollars for raising test scores. Carl Strock’s biased, negative view of teachers, as revealed by his description of non-productive teachers as, “a piece of deadwood suitable for a landfill” is truly shameful. Do the research, Carl, answer the questions outlined above, and write a follow-up to your column. While you’re at it, exorcise your demons and learn to express a longoverdue respect for teachers.
   VINCE DACQUISTO
   Niskayuna The writer is a retired teacher.

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But, alas, there is a far more important dimension to this issue of identifying “merit.” A teacher’s real value is infinitely more profound, and meaningful, than simply raising test scores. How does one measure the value of a reading teacher who inspires a reluctant reader to develop a life-transforming love of literature, or an art teacher who unlocks an entire new world of creativity buried within a student’s soul, or a music teacher whose enthusiasm instills a lifelong love of music within her students, or a special-education teacher, whose love and encouragement enables her students to experience success for the first time and develop self-esteem? Are these gifted teachers less deserving of “merit” recognition than a colleague whose students scored two points higher on a standardized test? The fact is, these teachers aren’t seeking “merit pay”; they already have received something far more valuable — a gift of the heart.

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New approaches make merit pay for teachers worth a look
Charles Cummins, Ed.D., is a retired school administrator. Send questions to him at: cacummins818@gmail.com

    A November article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer caught my eye with the headline: “Clinton raps teacher merit pay.” I suspected that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was playing to her union base, but I read the article anyway to learn what her position was.
    Teacher unions have long resisted any attempts to institute merit pay for teachers, so I was not surprised to learn in the article that Clinton thought performancebased merit pay was a bad idea. She was quoted as claiming that it was demeaning and discouraging.
    A search of my records revealed that I had not visited this volatile topic since 1998. An Internet search exposed several new wrinkles in the discussion, so I decided it was time to bring the subject up again for readers to think about.
    Many teachers, more than unions or some teachers themselves will admit, actually like the idea of merit pay. Under most teacher-negotiated pay schedules, everyone on the same step (i.e., years of service) is paid the same regardless of ability, performance or need for their services. Some teachers question the fairness of this arrangement.
TEACHERS OBJECT
    Teachers opposed to any form of merit pay counter with several objections. Among them:
    Teacher evaluations are not uniform across subjects or grade levels.
    Some administrators (because they lack knowledge of the subject) wouldn’t know a good science teacher or art teacher from a poor one.
    It’s impossible to attach a dollar amount to the contribution of teachers in various levels or various subjects.
    Teachers’ long-standing resistance to any form of merit pay attests to the strength of their feeling. Their resistance, however, has resulted in few attempts to try other performance rating schemes that might have resulted in better teacher evaluation or compensation.
    Just the same, I noticed in my Internet search that The Associated Press posted an article in November by Julia Silverman that voters in Oregon will get to vote on a ballot measure in 2008 that will tie teachers’ salaries to their classroom performance.
    “Oregonians voted down a related proposal to link educator salaries directly to student test results in 2000,” Silverman says. This new plan, she says, will “make all teacher raises dependent upon the loosely defined criterion of ‘classroom performance,’ instead of on experience or seniority levels.”
    Stating the obvious, Silverman adds, “Years spent in the classroom, in other words, would no longer matter.” Such emphasis was not needed as far as teachers are concerned. The teachers’ unions in Oregon schools and unions elsewhere across will strenuously resist any attempt to dissociate teacher pay from years of service. Teachers are not willing to risk the security of their contractually guaranteed annual pay increments for the possibility of higher pay for higher performance. Few teachers have ever worked where next year’s salary increase was not guaranteed — unlike in the non-education world.
    An article in The New York Times in June opened with the this sentence: “For years, the unionized teaching profession opposed few ideas more vehemently than merit pay, but those objections appear to be eroding as school districts in dozens of states experiment with plans that compensate teachers partly based on classroom performance.” I had to read that article. I was curious about just how many states they were talking about, and I was deeply interested in what was meant by the word, “partly.” Just how much of teacher pay would be based on classroom performance, I wondered.
    The article did not contain enough specifics for me to get my answer to that “partly” question. I did learn that the “rewards” for outstanding performance could range from “a few hundred dollars to $10,000 or more in a few districts.” Dangling a “few hundred dollars” carrot may not interest most teachers; a $10,000 carrot, however, is another matter.
DIFFERENT POSITIONS
    The Times article identified different positions among the two national teachers’ unions. The National Education Association, the larger of the two, adamantly opposes any pay system based on evaluation of teachers’ performance. The American Federation of Teachers opposes any plan that allows “administrators alone to decide which teachers get extra money or that pay individual teachers based solely on how students perform on standardized test scores.”
    The AFT, however, “encourages efforts to raise teaching quality and has endorsed arrangements that reward teams of teachers whose students show outstanding achievement growth.”
    That suggests to me that the AFT is at least willing to recognize that not all teachers with the same years of service are equal. It’s a step in the right direction.
    Maybe these baby steps will lead to bolder, more adult, steps in the near future.

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CAPITOL
Union under fire on tenure issue
BY MICHAEL GORMLEY The Associated Press

    School boards and administrators statewide said Wednesday they are fighting a “nefarious” effort by a powerful teachers union to take student test scores out of the equation in determining whether to grant tenure to a teacher.
    The state School Boards Association says standardized test scores are one of several essential measures to determine if a teacher is good enough to be granted tenure, which amounts to a lifetime appointment.
    David Little of the New York State School Boards Association claimed teachers unions have mounted “a nefarious attempt to slide this by.”
    The measure is part of a massive school aid funding bill in the Legislature and would set parameters for what could be considered when a teacher is granted tenure, usually after three or four years. The criteria is now set by individual school districts as part of collective bargaining with union locals.
    Little said standardized test scores can be an important measure of teacher performance because it can track whether a class is making adequate and steady growth each year.
    “We’ve found instances where kids were actually moving backward,” said Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City school system. He called the measure “anti-student and anti-parent.”
    NYSUT President Richard C. Iannuzzi said the measure now in the Senate and Assembly will simply clarify an understanding struck last year with the Legislature and former Gov. Eliot Spitzer. All agreed tenure should be based on peer involvement, data analysis and evaluation by administrators, he said. He called the opposition “much ado about nothing.”
    Iannuzzi said tests are designed to track student performance and identify their weakness, not evaluate teachers.
    “What I’m reading between the lines here,” Iannuzzi said, “is that the chancellor and perhaps the school boards would like is a cheap, quick method for making tenure determinations rather than a strenuous, comprehensive method. That’s what applying an inappropriate test does — it’s cheap, quick and dirty.”
    The union has 585,000 members and is one of Albany’s biggest campaign contributors and lobbyists. So far, the union has made more than $183,000 in campaign contributions between 2006 legislative elections and this election year, according to state records.
    The measure is now part of the state budget negotiations. The budget is due April 1.
    “We are aware of the concerns that have been raised and the matter continues to be open for discussion,” said Sisa Moyo, spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.     

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“What I’m reading between the lines here,” Iannuzzi said, “is that the chancellor and perhaps the school boards would like is a cheap, quick method for making tenure determinations rather than a strenuous, comprehensive method. That’s what applying an inappropriate test does — it’s cheap, quick and dirty.”

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Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE
Scores for pupils, not for teachers
Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.

    As a longtime observer of teachers’ unions, I of course took note of their recent maneuver in the state Legislature to prevent local school districts from using student test scores in deciding whether to grant tenure to new teachers.
    To evaluate teachers in such a manner would be a “down-anddirty process,” in the fanciful language of Richard Iannuzzi, president of New York State United Teachers.
    A down-and-dirty process — judging teachers in part by whether or not their students make progress on standardized tests. Not as the only criterion, but as just one.
    Isn’t that interesting? Having in mind that what’s at stake is basically a lifetime job guarantee, which is what tenure amounts to.
    And there’s more. The unions want not only to bar the use of test scores, which Iannuzzi says “were never meant as a blunt instrument to evaluate teachers,” they want to take away from local school districts the ability to set their own standards for job tenure entirely and give that power to the state Board of Regents, the members of which, conveniently enough, are appointed by the Assembly.
    And if you guess that the Assembly is a faithful handmaiden to NYSUT, you guess correctly.
    What happened here was that last year then-Gov. Spitzer and the Legislature agreed on making test scores a required element in evaluating teachers for purposes of tenure. And please keep in mind that we are only talking about beginning teachers, in their starting probationary period, which is usually three years, to see if they should be given a lifetime guarantee of employment.
    We are not talking about the great majority of teachers, who already have tenure and don’t have to worry about test scores or anything else.
    That was done last year and was made law, perhaps without NYSUT noticing; I’m not sure. This year, lo and behold, what gets slipped into 2,000 pages of budget bills but a couple of little paragraphs canceling out that requirement and going farther yet, stripping local school boards of their previous authority to set their own standards.
    If a local district wanted to have stricter tenure requirements than some other district, it couldn’t do it.
    I believe this was aimed primarily at New York City, where Mayor Bloomberg has warred with the teacher unions for control of the schools, but it would apply statewide.
    If Niskayuna, say, decides it wants to set a higher standard than Mechanicville for its beginning teachers, these slippery two paragraphs wouldn’t allow it.
    I don’t know who wrote those two paragraphs, but if it was anyone but a lawyer for the unions I would be greatly surprised.
    Also, in some clever language, the evaluation of teachers contending for tenure would be the responsibility of an undefined “appropriate supervisory or administrative school district employee,” as opposed to necessarily a school principal, who makes the recommendation now and passes it up through the superintendent to the school board.
    Who might such an appropriate employee be? Nobody knows, which means you can bet it would become a subject of labor negotiations, so the unions would gain some control over the process and not be entirely subject to the school administration.
    At this point I am sure there are readers who will ask why I am so down on teachers, but I am not down on teachers. I just report the facts, and the facts speak for themselves.
    The teachers unions want their up-and-coming members to be considered for lifetime job security without regard to how well their students do on standardized tests. And they want local school districts not to be able to set their own standards.
    I don’t make this up, any more than I make up the resistance of teachers unions to what’s called merit pay, that is, getting paid according to how good a job you do, which is the great bugaboo for already-tenured teachers.
    Some of my best friends are teachers, but what should I do, ignore these facts?
    And should I overlook the fact that year after year New York State United Teachers is the biggest or one of the biggest contributors to our legislators’ campaign coffers?
    And should I pretend there is no connection between their generosity and the Legislature’s pliability?
    I can’t do that.
    Besides, my analyses of teachers unions were never intended as a blunt instrument to evaluate my character or my entire body of work. To employ them that way would be a down-and-dirty process to which I would strenuously object.
    Now, once again, if you would like to have your say on this subject, you may do so on my blog, at http://www. dailygazette.com.
    I have an entry there on this subject, and at the bottom of it you are welcome to contribute your two cents’ worth.

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Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE
Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
Why teachers resist job
measurements

   How fair is it to judge teachers on the basis of their students’ test scores?
   I am not the expert in this area, ladies and gentlemen, but I did provoke a little reaction by observing the other day that the teachers’ unions are opposed to such measuring and have even insinuated a prohibition against it into the state budget bills so that local school districts would be barred from considering students’ test scores when evaluating a new probationary teacher for tenure.
   This was in response to a law passed last year that would require the scores to be taken into account.
   “When the state of New York gives me a machine that can alter DNA then they can base my evaluation on the scores of my students,” one reader, presumably a teacher, posted on my blog, the implication being that the ability or inability to learn is genetic.
   “You may not believe this, but some students cannot pass tests no matter what you do,” a retired teacher wrote to me. “Many students would rather walk the halls than attend class. How do you teach when they don’t care? Magic?”
   Well, I sympathize. I don’t know if the ability to learn is genetic or not, though I wouldn’t be surprised if a large part of it is. Certainly there are smart kids and dumb kids and in-between kids. And certainly there are kids who come from educated supportive homes and kids who come from the opposite. And no, I wouldn’t want to teach those who show no gift or enthusiasm for learning. I’ll leave that to the professionals and wish them the best.
   Still I can’t help but note that we’re talking about relative rather than absolute achievement. We’re talking about whether kids improve from one year to the next, no matter how low their level, and we’re talking about whether kids do better under one teacher than another, which is the really crucial thing.
   And we’re also talking about whether local school districts ought to be able to set their own standards, which is what the teachers’ unions are trying to get rid of, along with the use of test scores. They want the state Board of Regents to set the standards for tenure, that board being beholden to the state Assembly, and the Assembly, in turn, being beholden to the unions.
   Tenure, of course, amounts to a lifetime job guarantee, since it makes it extremely difficult to fire a teacher unless that teacher commits a felony in front of two eyewitnesses, so the granting of it is no small matter.
   So in the end I continue to wonder why teachers are so resistant to objective measures of job performance and to being paid according to their performance.
   Do they explain to their young charges that it’s wrong to measure achievement and wrong to reward people or penalize them accordingly? That would be an interesting lesson to listen to, in civics class, perhaps.
   I suspect, of course, that all of this is simply job protection, which is what the unions exist for. It has nothing to do with education or any other higher purpose.
   Teachers like to have a job that is safe, secure, and well paid the same as anyone else. The difference is they’re in a position to muscle it through the state government at public expense whereas the rest of us are not. The rest of us have to take our chances in the big, bad world.
   Now, once again, this being the new democratic era of the Internet, you are invited to post your own thoughts on this matter on my blog at http://www.dailygazette.com, where I promise to read all submissions with reverent attention.