Washington Post misses bigger picture
While taking the Washington Teachers Union to task today, the Post is mostly spot on. They are right to point out that the union is largely acting against the interests of its members, especially in terms of how much money is being offered to all teachers, green and red track alike. They run into some trouble near the end, however, when they address the issue of seniority. Professing they find the opposition by older experienced teachers “perplexing”, the Post editors ask: “Isn’t the argument for the seniority pay scale based on the notion that experienced teachers do a better job?”
At first glance, this seems nothing more than a stock rhetorical question getting at the heart of a contradiction—experienced teachers should be “better” and therefore benefit from and support merit pay. If experience is correlated with performance, we should be seeing the younger teachers up in arms. They’re not, of course, and that’s the point, argues the Post. But there’s a bigger issue here, and one that reveals why the unions and senior teachers have much to lose by Rhee’s plan. The Post points out the problem without even realizing it: “Isn’t the argument for the seniority pay scale based on the notion that experienced teachers do a better job?” These senior teachers wouldn’t just be putting their own jobs at risk; they would be confirming the illogicality of the seniority pay scale and in large part, the seniority based structure of teachers’ unions (and unions in general) all together. The senior teachers lose their non-monetary perks, the unions’ power structures are undercut. Their opposition doesn’t seem so “perplexing” after all.
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August 26th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Isn’t it possible that the veteran teachers (like me) will be fired, precisely because we will be making more money? In a system where teaching experience and skill are devalued, and where teachers formerly protected by the union contract can be fired without due process, it seems pretty obvious that the efficiency-minded Rhee will go after the highest paid teachers?
August 26th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
So what happens to teachers who work with special needs children or children who struggle to learn? Will they be labeled a bad teacher and forced into lower pay because their children are having difficulties?
What happens to collaboration between teachers (essential for a quality education because no child learns everything in one year) when the monetary system is designed to encourage keeping successful teaching techniques hidden from other teachers?
How are teachers supposed to improve their teaching if all the other teachers are “hoarding” their secrets to improve their own pay?
How likely is it that a senior teacher will mentor a junior teacher if it means that the senior’s pay will not increase if the junior teacher uses all the same teaching techniques.
How do we know that the tests that are given to the students capture the intent/essence of a quality education? What if the tests are bad? How does this system fix that?
What if the teacher is a fabulous art teacher or music teacher? These subjects are difficult to evaluated by the tests. Should we fire them because their students do poorly on reading and math tests?
Education is not a marketplace (it is more akin to the commons than the free-market.) And tests are not the invisible hand of free-market capitalism.
August 26th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Having these two comments back to back is illuminating. Apparently veteran teachers oppose merit pay because:
a) they will be making more money than younger teachers and therefore would be subject to budgetary dismissals; and
b) they will be making less money than younger teachers who will steal their teaching “secrets.”
The only solution is for all teachers to make the same amount of money — except for veteran teachers, of course, who should make more because they are, uh, veteran.
That about it?
August 26th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Mike,
Can’t see how your plan to pay all teachers the same would improve schools either.
Merit pay tied to standardized tests in reading and math will not improve our children’s education and there are enormous unintended consequences in the teaching profession associated with linking monetary compensation to test scores.
Certainly, there could be better compensation plans that might assist and encourage teachers to better their skills and craft and allow schools to do a better job
But this system is ripe for gaming. What if a principal doesn’t like a particular teacher? What is to prevent him/her from giving that teacher all the struggling students so that his/her students score poorly at the end of the year no matter how hard he/she tried?
The DC plan (and all merit pay plans tying teacher performance directly to test scores) is not among that group.
Education is not a business and there is no invisible hand guiding quality learning.
Internationally, those school systems that perform substantially better than our schools have support for improving teaching, develop and evaluate quality curricula and administer tests that are tied with what students are learning in class. Some even have merit pay, but that merit pay is tempered (school wide bonuses, etc...).
Why isn’t Michelle Rhee learning from successful school systems and implementing quality reforms that might actually improve DC schools?
August 26th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
As a young professional, I have noticed that seniority systems are in effect, explicitly or implicitly, in almost all professions. Most (if not all) government workers (including teachers) are paid more each year they remain at their jobs. That’s how salary scales operate.
In most companies, workers earn more benefits as they stay longer at the company, including annual vacation days and annual sick leave allotments. Pension plans can deny benefits to any employees who have not worked with the company at least five years. Senior workers often get nicer offices, higher annual bonuses - again, whether or not they are more productive than new workers.
Looking at it from the perspective of a younger employee, I have to say that I’ve always found it frustrating that people are compensated simply for remaining at a job for multiple years.
However, it is a mistake to heap our ire upon the schools, as if they are the only organization with a seniority policy. They are certainly not unique in this regard. In fact, I’ve yet to see an organization or government branch that operates in any other way.
August 26th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Attorney DC:
Are you kidding? Sure, some people are quite clever at moving up the corporate ladder by politicking (and thereby getting some perks), but for the most part, meritocracy is alive and well in American corporations. With the competition in industry, how in the world could companies survive if they just rewarded long stayers who were not also producers?
Again, not a perfect system, but on the balance, high performance still trumps. Public ed, (and most government agencies) however, on this front, are woefully in the dark ages. And the reason is because education systems don’t have to compete. No matter how aweful they do, the tax money keeps on coming. How much of an incentive is that to improve?
August 26th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Greg,
There is no “invisible hand” in education like there is in the marketplace. We can’t invent/manufacture a competitive business environment for schools. Business live and die by the marketplace. There is no marketplace for schools. Even giving parents choice doesn’t guarantee that there will be any improvements in student learning as there is a high delay factor in any schooling. When parents choose, they do so with what knowledge? Test scores by themselves can often fail to capture the extensive family support, extra tutoring etc... present in some of our higher scoring schools. This does not mean that the school itself is providing a superior education.
Certainly, choice could make school officials more responsive to parental concerns. But how would that improve student learning? Parents are not clairvoyant regarding the best teaching practice, the best curricula to use nor do they have any influence on the tests that are given to our students. So what “choice” would parents really have?
Choice could certainly make people feel better. If someone chooses something, they are more likely to be positive towards it. But choice by itself will do nothing to improve the 3 critical elements of school that enable quality learning: teaching, curricula and tests.
You are correct in saying that our schools have no incentive to improve. But in the absence of a marketplace, creating a quality system of incentives is quite difficult.
The need to balance collaboration and communication between teachers for the benefit of student continuity in learning is essential. Merit pay can severely undermine that communication. This type of incentive plan would truely foster a failure of the commons, in that the monetary incentive plan is designed to maximize individual gain (pay) at the expense of the common one (their student’s long term education).
Simply tying teachers’ salaries to test scores is not the viable incentive plan to enable our schools to improve student learning.
August 26th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Erin-
Thanks for those thoughts and I agree with many of your points - yes, it is difficult to create “market-like” conditions in the education sphere; and test scores do not tell the whole story - so let me expand on my comments.
One of the reasons that much angst is created over merit pay systems is that no one really discusses the mechanics of them (there are various plans out there and they are not all the same). Some of the well-thought out plans do not just link pay to test scores, there are a variety of other factors that can be/are considered (i.e. observations, formal reviews, etc. that take into account more qualitative factors). I would also point out that we are talking about growth in scores, not absolute benchmarks (to capture how far a teacher moves a student relative to where the student was when entering a particular grade). We have developed fairly sophisticated tools for doing that (not perfect, but pretty good).
Because I’m not a beltway dweller, I am not as familiar with Chancellor Rhee’s plan; but I have been involved in helping think through/implement other plans. So, we can’t just dismiss the pay for performance idea on the grounds of “test scores are’nt everything.”
Moreover pay systems are not zero sum games (though budgets do have break points). The purpose is to reward teachers who achieve results, and theoretically, all teachers in the building could be rewarded if they hit the mark. So, there is not a disincentive for collaboration and communication.
On school choice - parents are not as naive as you’re portraying them. See video from Jay Greene’s blog for a quick chuckle.
http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2008/08/great_video_clip_on_government.html#comments
While not all parents will make the right choice (for a variety of reasons), many can discern a good school from a bad school on broader grounds than test scores. The private school market operates quite well because parents will make fairly wise choices based on academic standards (and I suspect they also are not pedagogical experts). Why can’t we trust the parents with kids in public schools to do the same?
School choice hasn’t really been given a fair shake. As someone involved with charter schools, I can tell you that it’s death by a thousand cuts - courtesy of the unions, by the way. Most parents are not even aware of choice because they have never had it. And the reason is most in the education ranks are spewing gobbedlygook about “quality teaching” more need for teacher support and collaboration - But god forbid we measure if Johnny can read or do math.
If unions were not taking the low road and protecting everybody, despite how absymal some teachers are, then there would be a more productive conversation. But when only a couple of lame duck teachers are fired each year (of many many thousands), it’s difficult to have a persuasive position.
I’ve hung around KIPP and schools of that ilk long enough to know that some in the education sector make excuses and speak rubbish, and some get in there, work hard, and get results (and are rewarded as a result).
August 26th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Let’s get back to “Rational Expectations,” to borrow a bipartisan concept. Would you, a talented young professional with numerous options, even consider teaching iwhen pseudo-scientific accountability provisions are imposed in regard to employment? Would you buy a house, have kids, and commit to long range financial decisions when your career could be destroyed by the whim of paniced administrators?
It’s tempting to say, “I have a good principal so merit pay would help me.” But what about teachers who have arbitrary and/or grossly incompetent principals. What if your district is like New York City and is committed to fabricating/manipulating data? Under merit pay, unless you manipulate data, in high poverty nieigborhood schools, those that take every student the magnets didn’t accept, it would be virutally impossible to earn additional pay. And young teachers SHOULD ask, “What is the value of my conscience? What is the value of my peace of mind?”
I could never teach in an environment where I was not free to voice my honest opinion and resist policies that my professional judgement tells me are destructive to kids. I might get lucky and go a few years without demands that I engage in approaches that practical experience has shown to be damaging. Over the long haul, though, education reform and data driven accountability both require integrity. Who will gamble that their all-powerful boss will always be trustworthy? In the shortrun, quite a few will go with immediate gratification. It will take a few years before the historical pattern of human nature asserts itself.
August 26th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Sorry about the second post. Erin, I 1/2 way agree when you say:
“If unions were not taking the low road and protecting everybody, despite how absymal some teachers are, then there would be a more productive conversation. But when only a couple of lame duck teachers are fired each year (of many many thousands), it’s difficult to have a persuasive position.”
The AFT is taking the lead with the Toledo Plan which would efficiently remove the 10% most ineffective teachers every year. Afterwoards, maybe we could remove more, but let’s start there.
Also, the AFT supports Performance Pay plans such a TAP.
But overall you are right. We AFT members need to work even harder to clean up our profession. Its harder to sell that case, however, given the deceitful environment of NCLB-type accountability.
August 26th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
John, That was Greg’s comment, not mine.
Greg, If charter schools by themselves were able to improve education to that comparable to that seen in quality school systems around the world, I would whole-heartedly support them. But they can’t.
The reason they can’t is that teaching is a cultural activity. How our teachers teach is very American. And our traditions toward teaching are not very strong and mostly do not enable quality learning. Changing a culture is not simplistic nor fast. Those quality schools systems around the world that enable real improvements in teaching do so with a continual improvement process, where the teacher can examine his/her own teaching along with his/her peers. (e.g. Japanese Lesson Study).
Just allowing parents to choose may make parents feel better, but it does nothing to enable our teachers to improve their teaching.
I realize that there are extensive gobbly-gook, fuzzy initatives that purport to improve teaching but rarely do so. The fact that there are a lot of phony “teacher development” programs does not negate in the least the absolute necessity for quality teaching in enabling students to learn well.
Also, teaching improvements alone are not “the solution” as quality education is completely dependant upon 3 critical aspects: teaching, curricula and assessments. Without quality sustainable improvements in all three, any one initiative will fail alone. And probably most importantly we need checks and balances so that the tail (tests) is not wagging the dog (a quality education). NCLB unfortunately assumed that the tail (tests) was the most important aspect of schooling. It is not.
Our best schools in our country are mediocre when compared to the *average* school in the top school systems around the world. Even our best students are learning substantially less than the average student in the top countries.
So if our “best” schools compare very poorly with top school systems around the world, how would vouchers or choice ever enable our children to learn anything close to what, internationally, would be considered a quality education?
Merit pay and choice may feel quite nice, but neither will enable our students to learn better because they do not address the very real deficiencies our schools have in teaching, quality curricula and tests aligned well with classroom instruction.
And isn’t that what educational reform should be about: Enabling our students to learn better, not just promoting a feel good inititive that will get us nowhere.
August 26th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Erin-
Absolutely, charter schools are merely one arrow in the quiver. I assume you read the McKinsey study that compared the top school systems in the world. Those top systems like Finland, Hong Kong and the like (boy did they rack up some medals in the Ed Olympics) place high value on teachers - how they are selected, trained, supported, etc. We don’t do such a hot job of that over here - which is a shame.
Lots of work remains to be done in revamping how we select, train, and support teachers. But I hope you may concede the point that the teaching profession needs to have some more things in common with other professions (merit pay for one), which will, I suspect, attract many more to teaching, particularly those who now choose high flying industries like i-banking, technology, consulting.
Until the profession is willing to accept more risk, I’m afraid teaching is not going to be an attractive place for many talented people. (By the way, I’m not insinuating that there are not some talented people in the teaching ranks - we just need a heckuva lot more). And that goes for school leaders and administrators as well (need more good ones to say the least).
John - to your point - every young professional faces risk of a bad boss, crappy evaluation system (no evaluation system is completely objective, so some pseudo-science measures are, unfortunately, going to linger around).
But here’s the catch (and the beauty of the American system) - you can change jobs or schools in your case! No one’s career has been ruined by merely one bad boss.
I’m pooped now.
August 26th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Greg, I greatly appreciate your stamina. Thanks for persevering.
Unfortunately, I don’t even think that charter schools are an arrow. They are usually the least bad of poor options.
There are only a few school systems around the world that have been able to set up schools for success. While much has been made about the recuitment of teachers in the top system, very little has been mentioned regarding how their experience in teaching allows them to become better teachers.
No one, no matter how bright, suddenly knows how to teach well without actually teaching. The feedback that students give is essential for refining each and every teaching technique that one might possess. It is all theory until you actually teach.
It is not the teacher preparation that enables these outstanding school systems to do well, but a school system designed to improve teaching, improve curricula and give quality feedback regarding the tests and exams that are adminstered to students. (One caveat; the teacher preparation in these countries is still better than what is typical in the US.)
I realize that this is rather foreign to most Americans. We tend to see the rest of the world with our own distorted glasses.
But if we want to improve our schools and enable our children to learn well, we need to look past some of prejudices and misperceptions regarding other countries and other school systems.
The international evidence is stunningly clear: School system support for improvements in teaching, curricula and assessments are essential for enabling children to learn well. Without all three, any and all reforms will come to naught.