In the wake of the RTTT announcement, reaction from the blogosphere, and states lament, bemoan, and celebrate the news.  Everyone’s atwitter. And for all of you who felt this way about the announcement, we’ve got links for you: New Jersey’s teacher of the year won’t support merit pay (alert Rick Hess- she’s in it for the children), a parent reacts to the D.C. school lottery, and the New York Times considers school photographers.

–Marisa Goldstein, Fordham research intern

“It’s changing the concept of school from ‘here’s what you have to know, you get it or you don’t get it and we’re moving on anyway.”
-Susanne Daggett, education specialist with the Oregon Department of Education

“Students in charge of own education,” Statesman Journal

$7.8 million
The cost of providing bonuses to Houston teachers with master’s or doctoral degrees.

“Houston-Area Districts May Slash Teacher Salary Perk,” The Chicago Tribune

Quotable:

“Charter schools are public schools, and they must be public schools in every sense of the word…Effectively, there will be absolutely no distinction between charter schools and district schools.”
-Tom Boasberg, Superintendant of Denver Public Schools

“DPS unveils plans for changes in schools,” Denver Post

Notable:

71:
Percent of teachers 32 years of age or younger who said they “somewhat” or “strongly” favor merit pay for teachers who “consistently work harder, putting in more time and effort than other teachers” in a recent survey.  The percentage among older teachers was 63.

“Survey Finds ‘Gen Y’ Teachers Open to Merit Pay,” Education Week (Subscription Required)

There’s a lot to chew over in yesterday’s New York Times article by Sam Dillon, “Schools Aided by Stimulus Money Still Facing Cuts,” (including the implications for our home state of Ohio). Any reader would feel empathy for the L.A. high school students now facing average class sizes of 42.5 students; the many teachers who have been laid off; the schools that have cut back on sports, arts, and more. I certainly do.

But of course there’s another story between the lines here, which is that districts have often been either unable or unwilling to cut costs sensibly. Tim Daly of The New Teacher Project is quoted describing a common problem, that “Districts tend to make their problems worse by laying off good teachers and keeping bad ones,” firing based on seniority (as often required by collective bargaining agreements). Yet it’s even deeper than that, for education is an industry that has rarely been forced to grapple with spending cuts; nearly every year this century, education spending per-pupil has grown, in good economic times or bad. It has rarely faced much pressure to really reinvent itself in order to contain costs. For example, Marguerite Roza explains that schools have long suffered from something called “Baumal’s disease,” in which costs rise for lack of innovation. (Whereas firms in other industries become more efficient by replacing labor with technology, for example.)

Dillon’s article implies a day of reckoning is at hand. He writes:

Driving the layoffs was a precipitous decline in tax revenues that left states with a cumulative budget shortfall of $165 billion for this fiscal year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research institute.

But this may be only the tip of the iceberg. When the stimulus funds dry up (presumably); when the full impact of the real estate crash hits state budgets; when baby boomers start retiring in droves, draining state pension coffers; and when our growing welfare state consumes more and more tax revenues, then schools and districts may wish they had seized the opportunity today to re-imagine how they are run, to re-invent themselves as lean, cost-effective organizations. Who was it who said you should never let a good crisis go to waste?

The fifth video in our Fun Fact Friday! series looks at how information affects peoples’ support for teacher pay increases. Don’t miss our first , second , third and fourth videos.

Fun Fact Friday! – Not as hot from Education Gadfly on Vimeo .

Video fact source:
"Educating the Public ," William G. Howell and Martin R. West, Education Next , Summer 2009

Secretary Duncan delivered the last of his four policy speeches today at the annual conference of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union. Overall, it was a good talk. He probably was a bit too effusive in his praise in parts, but it was certainly balanced by a number of points that surely caused consternation among those gathered (I hear he was booed more than once!). Here are the highlights.

At the beginning, after reminding the audience that he had gotten tough with the charter school crowd, he gave the NEA some of the same medicine:

It’s not enough to focus only on issues like job security, tenure, compensation, and evaluation. You must become full partners and leaders in education reform. You must be willing to change.

Regarding the administration’s position on new forms of compensation, he used the phraseology that unnerves reformers and soothes labor leaders:

The President and I have both said repeatedly that we are not going to impose reform but rather work with teachers, principals, and unions to find what works.

We’re asking Congress for more money to develop compensation programs “with” you – and “for” you — not “to” you.

He then turned tougher. In talking about fixing failing schools, after saying that everyone needs to work together, he continued:

But if we agree that the adults in these schools are failing these children then we have to find the right people and we can’t let our rules and regulations get in the way. Children have only one chance to get an education. This is not about adult jobs. This is about children’s education.

He then did an interesting verbal pirouette on seniority and tenure, praising then mildly criticizing each in turn, then ending with a firm stand:

We created seniority rules that protect teachers from arbitrary and capricious management, and that’s a good goal. But sometimes those rules place teachers in schools and communities where they won’t succeed, and that’s wrong.

We created tenure rules to make sure that a struggling teacher gets a fair opportunity to improve, and that’s a good goal. But when an ineffective teacher gets a chance to improve and doesn’t — and when the tenure system keeps that teacher in the classroom anyway — then the system is protecting jobs rather than children. That’s not a good thing. We need to work together to change that.

…When inflexible seniority and rigid tenure rules that we designed put adults ahead of children then we are not only putting kids at risk — we’re putting the entire education system at risk…These policies were created over the past century to protect the rights of teachers but they have produced an industrial factory model of education that treats all teachers like interchangeable widgets.

Toward the end, Duncan had two of his most potent lines:

A recent report from the New Teacher Project found that almost all teachers are rated the same. Who in their right mind really believes that?

Test scores alone should never drive evaluation, compensation or tenure decisions. That would never make sense. But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible.

There isn’t much hope at the moment for meaningful, statewide education reform in the Buckeye State, but there are promising things happening at the local level. Last night, the Columbus City Schools’ teacher union approved a two-year contract that includes a new program to pay effective teachers more money to teach in low-performing schools and ties existing merit pay efforts to value-added data. Reports the Columbus Dispatch:

The agreement creates an annual $4,000 bonus for teachers selected to work in certain schools.

Superintendent Gene Harris would hand-pick teachers for classes identified as academically struggling based on testing data.

Teachers with at least five years of experience, two years of improving students’ academic achievement, and their principal’s recommendation would be eligible to apply for the new program, according to the tentative contract. The deadline is Dec. 1 for the 2010-11 school year.

The program would allow Harris to match teachers’ talents to schools’ needs, she said.

“I think it’s very exciting because individuals would have the opportunity to go into this and say, ‘I want to be a change agent,’  ” Harris said. “I would not be arbitrary on this. I want to make good decisions.”

The contract also ties an existing merit-pay program for teachers to “value-added” data. A class of students would have to show more academic progress than expected in a year’s time for their teacher to earn the merit bonus under the Performance Advancement System program.

It’s rare that an Ohio school district rewards teachers for performance or assigns its best teachers in its most struggling schools (though top charter schools have been doing this for years), so it’s quite encouraging to see the state’s largest district — and top-performing urban one — head in this direction.

If you read your hometown’s newspaper regularly, you’re bound to see an op-ed or editorial every so often on an educational topic. Today, your odds were much higher–many dailies featured guest opinion pieces on teachers from superintendents, mayors, and wonks, and a few regular columnists chimed in as well. Let’s dig in for this first installment of the Ed-Op Round-Up. (We’ve termed it “Ed-Op” for “Education Opinion”–and because it’s kinda neat that it’s the inverse of “Op-Ed.”) 

Editor’s Note: The views of these authors and publications do not necessarily reflect those of the trustees, officers or staff of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

The Tennessean: This Tennessean editorial looks back to President Obama’s March 10 speech on education in which he “caught Democratic loyalists off-guard with a strong call” for merit-based pay. It continues: 

This is truly a matter in which teachers and their union should take the lead. Teachers know best the challenges facing education, and they know it would be wrong to base merit pay solely on test scores. But if government officials are offering more money for salaries, professional organizations could set the standard. It requires the courage to take a few risks. … The key is for educators to agree to be part of positive change, rather than cling to a system that is well-intentioned but is no longer good enough. 

The Tennessean: In the first of two follow-up guest columns, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean agrees with the paper’s editorial.

We need to reward teachers who are committed to their craft and who are willing to be evaluated by their performance and the academic performance of their students. Compensation needs to be based on more than just years of service or advanced degrees. We need to pay teachers for taking tough assignments and for the degree to which they help close student achievement gaps. … And if we’re going to ask more of our teachers, we need to give them the proper support. We need to have strong professional development tracks for our teachers, and we need to better identify, train and support our principals and others who hold leadership positions in our schools.

The Tennessean: In a guest op-ed that serves as the counter to Mayor Dean’s support of merit-based pay, Erick E. Huth, president of the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association, points out the problems he sees with that type of compensatory construct.

In 2009, educational researchers have become very adept at developing complicated methodologies for measuring what has become known as “teacher effect.” Some of those same researchers will acknowledge teacher acceptance of any performance pay plan is imperative to its success. As a consequence, the methodology must be simple enough to be understood by the average teacher, yet rigorous enough to measure something meaningful.

The Indianapolis Star: Andrea Neal, former editor of The Star’s editorial pages and current Indianapolis teacher, compares and contrasts the two payment systems and cites a pilot study done in five schools in Little Rock, Ark.:

After two years, the schools achieved average gains of seven percentile points in math and reading scores. At the same time, scores of students in comparison public schools without merit pay fell. Keys to success, the researchers said, were a straightforward formula for determining merit and incentives for collaboration, in this case a reward component based on schoolwide achievement. Also, “Education officials cannot expect teachers to shift their behavior toward excellence for the proverbial peanut bonus.” The Arkansas bonuses ranged from $1,800 to $8,600. … The Arkansas study found enough immediate impact to justify merit pay.  

The Philadelphia Daily News: Stepping away from the merit-based pay debate, we see Arlene C. Ackerman, superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia, talking about the simple importance of good teachers for minorities:

Regardless of how we measure teacher quality, poor minority children tend to get MORE than their fair share of teachers with less experience, less preparation less skill and too many “out-of-field” certifications. … As the school administration works to overhaul hiring practices and timelines, recruitment and retention strategies, along with planning for talent development, we are also talking with the union about innovative ways that will help us improve teaching and learning for all Philadelphia school children.

The Seattle Times: Danny Westneat, a staff columnist, writes about Seattle parents’ reaction to a recent firing of 165 young teachers under a “last hired, first fired” strategy.

[The organizers of the petition] are fed up with calcified bureaucracy. They see how schools in Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., are being shaken up by market-oriented approaches. Such as charter schools. But in Seattle, no politician seems willing to question the system. So it is left to parents. … The latest issue–the last-hired, first-fired seniority policy–has become a hot button because many schools are set to lose two or three of their youngest, most energetic teachers.

The Boston Herald: Today’s final entry in the first-ever Ed-Op Round-Up comes from Charles Chieppo, the principal of Chieppo Strategies, a public policy writing and advocacy firm. He criticizes the Massachusetts Teachers Association and lauds KIPP:

Compare the MTA’s professional development courses to those offered by Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), a national network of mostly charter middle schools. “Analytical Writing,” “Using Data to Verify Causes before Implementing Solutions” and “Writing Science Curriculum” represent its options. Is it any wonder that a recent Boston Foundation study found that the city’s charter public schools dramatically outperform their traditional counterparts? 

It’s well-documented that school funding, generally speaking, is too opaque. District budgets mask differences in teacher pay from school to school, just as they often fail to show differences in how other centrally-controlled resources are deployed in schools. These accounting shortcuts (or cover-ups) mask deep inequities in funding between schools, often at the expense of those with poor and at-risk students.

Greater transparency and clarity in district- and school-level budgets would help, so I whole-heartedly agree with the New York Times editorial board that Secretary Duncan should push for this in return for the $13 billion in Title I stimulus funding:

Arne Duncan, the education secretary, will need to make sure that states and localities clearly understand what he means when he asks them to report per-pupil expenditures school by school.

To the extent possible, the new reporting standard should take into account extra programs that are sometimes parceled out to affluent schools but not to poor ones — from administrative budgets that are billed to, say, the school district’s headquarters.

Most important, the local districts should not be allowed to persist with sloppy bookkeeping that masks teacher salary differences in high poverty versus low poverty schools. Those differences are often indicative of the fact that poor children are being taught by less-qualified, less-experienced teachers.

I wouldn’t go so far as to equate a teacher’s salary with his or her effectiveness, but I do think funding should be rebalanced among schools to the benefit of those whose teacher-salary budgets are shortchanged. If those schools could use the additional dollars flexibly, they might hire more teachers to reduce class sizes; use teacher aides to help in larger classes; or invest in their curricula, facilities, and anything else that would make the school more attractive for better teachers.

Perhaps most importantly, if Duncan succeeds in making plain the real funding gaps between schools, the outcry could lead to worthwhile reforms to fund schools and students equitably – reforms like weighted student funding . It would be terrific if the stimulus could be a federal nudge in that direction.

I’ve finally had a chance to read the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future’s latest report. It’s garnered some media attention but in case you haven’t read it, here is the apocalyptic gist (and nothing sells newspapers better, right?):

The traditional teaching career is collapsing at both ends. Beginners are being driven away by antiquated preparation practices, outdated school staffing policies, and inadequate career rewards. At the end of their careers, accomplished veterans who still have much to contribute are being separated from their schools by obsolete retirement systems. In five years, two-thirds of the teachers we entrust our children to in America’s classrooms could be gone.

NCTAF’s solution is rather straightforward: “cross-generational teaching teams.” These teams would provide space for veteran teachers at the ends of their careers to stay in the classroom part-time as mentors while providing the support and advice needed by beginner teachers that would hopefully inspire them to stay in the classroom longer. This, they argue, solves the problem of losing the expertise and experience of older teachers, takes the immediate stress off pension systems, puts less pressure (human resource and financial) on schools to constantly be recruiting and training new teachers (an expensive endeavor), and would lower beginner teacher attrition rates by giving them better support. Sounds like we can all go home, right? Not so fast.

Their attention to teacher quality over quantity is notable and welcome. For too long, we’ve emphasized the latter over the former to disastrous results. And as NCTAF is right to point out, some of the highest performing schools use team teaching effectively (although the positive effects might not be as strong as NCTAF would like us to believe). But I’m not sure that team teaching can or should work the way NCTAF envisions it. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that NCTAF is trying to fit a square hole with a round peg–i.e. trying to find a place for retiring teachers when they’re really not the problem and keeping them around might make things worse.

Here’s the thing: mentor teachers don’t have to be 20-30 year veterans. A mountain of research shows that the correlation between teacher effectiveness and experience levels off after about five years in the classroom. (See here for an overview of this conversation.) At the same time, newbie teachers are leaving the classroom right around that time–just when they’re becoming their most effective. So why not kill two birds with one stone? Create these teaching teams out of newbie teachers (i.e., first and second year teachers) and 5-6 year “veterans.” Not only will these younger veterans have sharper memories of what it was like to be a new teacher, but you might even get them to stay in the classroom longer with the new challenge of a leadership role. Add a monetary incentive to becoming a mentor, like many systems already do for hard to staff schools or subjects, and you’ll get lots of volunteers.

And that gets me to the money part of this scenario. NCTAF rightly points out the impending stress on teacher pension systems if all the baby boomer teachers retire at the same time. But their solution–to keep those teachers in the classroom part time as mentors–doesn’t solve it, since those teachers are still going to have to retire someday. Putting that day off for a few years doesn’t fix the Ponzi scheme that is government “defined benefits.” (Mike and Rick talked about this on last week’s podcast.) The fact is that the pension system needs some serious reform and somebody is going to get socked by the solution. Either we punish current retirees by cutting their benefits or we take more money out of the pockets of current teachers to fulfill pension obligations. In either case, we’ll have to cut benefits of future retirees. It’s unlikely that any of these options will go anywhere since they’re so politically unpopular but the problem still remains. We can only hope the solution includes turning “defined benefit” systems into 401(k)s. They might be subject to market forces but they’re also mobile, which means that teachers who feel pressured to stick around waiting for their big payout can change careers and take their partial pensions with them. Not only does this spread out the pain of having a huge number of teachers retire all at the same time, but it also eases up the problem if older teacher burn out. Sounds like a win-win situation.  

But pensions are only part of the problem. NCTAF claims that “pay is not the deciding factor on why so many new teachers are leaving.” I wish they’d give us some data on this one because I’m simply not convinced. Sure, a starting salary of $47,000 and change (the rates in DC) for an entry level job is great (although you can ask any first year DC teacher how hard they worked for every penny!). The problem is that the system a) rewards the wrong things (like graduate degrees, which have virtually no relationship to teacher effectiveness and are an expensive 2 years out of the workforce) and b) plateaus off at the 10 year mark. I can’t speak as a teacher but I can speak as a “young person.” The 20-somethings are not enticed by promises of big payouts in 30 years (the exact promise that got so many baby boomers into the classroom in the 50s and 60s, explain NCTAF) and we’re not enticed by pay scales that plateau just as we’re starting families and buying houses.

I don’t know what to tell states straining to pay current teacher retiree benefits but maybe you shouldn’t have made promises you can’t keep. I can tell you that there is some mobilization around this issue and there’s already been some consideration of how changing pay structures might improve teacher quality. NCTAF does get one thing right: there is a huge opportunity for reform here…so what are we waiting for?

Image from Flickr user pic fix.

The Washington Post reports that Loudoun County, Virginia, is using the federal stimulus funds intended for schools to prop up its county budget:

After hearing that an initial batch of $11.8 million in federal funds would soon arrive in Loudoun County, supervisors slashed $7.3 million from the schools budget. They also made clear that if more federal recovery money flows to schools, schools might be asked to give back an equal amount of county dollars.

In the same article, we’re reminded that Secretary Duncan has warned against this kind of “shell game”:

“Where we see a state or district operating in bad faith or doing something counter to the president’s intent, we’re going to come down like a ton of bricks,” Duncan said in a March conference call with reporters.

He didn’t say “county”, of course–this situation is surely complicated by Duncan’s lack of direct power over Loudoun County and its purse strings. But he’d better do something before a thousand other counties follow suit.

Update (4:00 pm): Michele McNeil’s terrific Ed Week article a few weeks back highlights this problem, primarily at the state level – she found potential shell games brewing in California, Rhode Island, Ohio, Kansas, Hawaii, and Idaho. And I won’t be surprised if there are 44 more examples of this out there.

The Post writes up Chancellor Rhee’s attempt to overhaul the District’s teacher evaluation system.  This is tougher work than it may seem.  In addition to the obvious political hurdles, there are more mundane and trickier issues–not all teachers teach courses with standardized tests, the statistical reliability of value-added measures, the objectivity of evaluations by principals or master teachers, etc.

Rhee has a former national teacher of the year leading this up internally and has hired some reputable outside experts to help out.  She’s also set up focus groups so teachers can weigh in.  Not a bad process.

Look for other districts to begin work on similar projects soon: to get stabilization dollars under the stimulus legislation, districts must report how many teachers receive each rating under the state’s evaluation system.  This is going to cause some embarrassment when it’s revealed that lots of urban districts have all above average educators.

The Cincinnati Enquirer has been running a powerful series of articles about the troubles facing that city’s generous public pension systems. The newspaper’s editorial board says enough is enough:

Long-term change is needed. Pension benefits for current retirees and those near retirement cannot and should not be changed. But new work rules can and should be established for younger workers and new hires. That means higher deductions and contributions on health plans, longer service for pension eligibility and a moving away from guaranteed payment plans and toward investment contribution systems such as those found in the private sector.

The Enquirer further wonders whether the city of Cincinnati could find itself laying off police and firefighters to cover the pension tabs of their retired colleagues. Could the same thing happen to teachers?  It’s not out of the question. The Buckeye State’s teacher retirement system faces an $18 billion unfunded liability (a whopping $15.5 billion more than that of the larger Ohio Public Employees Retirement System). Fordham alerted Ohioans to problems with the teacher pension system in 2007 and made suggestions for shoring up the system.  Lawmakers didn’t take heed at that time. Will they start to listen now?

During last night’s prime-time press conference, President Obama was asked about shared sacrifices during these tough times. The president noted that these are indeed difficult times for many Americans. Unemployment in the United States is approaching 10 percent and many of us are looking at 401(k) values that have shrunk by half in the past year. But, one group that is certainly not being asked to sacrifice is the Buckeye State’s public school teachers.

First, they’ve gotten language into the current state budget proposal that would make it illegal for a school district to lay off teachers for “financial reasons.” As personnel costs, particularly teacher salaries, make up about 70 percent or more of district expenses, this provision basically removes the ability of a local board and superintendent to manage a district’s finances. If a local levy fails or state funding to schools is reduced, this provision would protect teacher jobs above all else. So, in a city like Dayton where unemployment is 12.3 percent, the taxpayers would be on the hook for paying all teachers in the district whether they can afford them or not.

Second, under Ohio’s constitution the taxpayers are on the hook for guaranteeing in full all retirement benefits for teachers and other public sector employees.  According to the most recent State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio annual report (which covers July 2007 through June 2008-before the latest stock market tumble), the financial health of the system is worsening. As the economy has melted down, STRS’s unfunded liability has topped $18 billion (up $3.7 billion from the previous year). As this liability has increased, so has its amortization period, up from 26.1 years in 2007 to 41.2 years in 2008 (despite state law requiring an amortization period of no more than 30 years).

Many individuals and families have seen the values of their 401(k)s plummet over the last year, and many of us have had to adjust our expectations accordingly. Teachers and other public sector employees in Ohio are immune to these worries because their retirement benefits are guaranteed by the state. No matter how bad the public pension investments tank, the only ones who will take any of the hit will be taxpayers.

So, in Ohio anyway, it pays to be a teacher in tough economic times. They have protections that the rest of us can only dream about.

That’s the title of a longish piece on merit pay in the latest Christian Science Monitor. This article, part 1 of 2, takes a look at Denver’s ProComp and the difficulty of figuring out two things: how to use merit pay systems to get rid of bad teachers and how to tie bonuses to the results of individual teachers. It also makes the case that younger teachers are not enticed to the profession by the promise of a cushy retirement. They want to see their rewards now, not later. Since the (large) size of teacher pensions (in a sour economy) have turned into a hot potato issue recently, this might prove fodder for arguing to readjust the pay scale. It’s a good read for anyone unfamiliar with the debate.

Imagine, you have been laid off and you can’t find another job earning anywhere close to what you were making. Your savings have been decimated by the disaster on Wall Street. You may be renting now that you lost your home. Maybe your pension is a lot less, too.

That’s an all-too-familiar scenario already. Then you tune into the nightly news and there is your state’s governor very patiently explaining why taxes are going to have to go up–a lot–so that taxpayers can guarantee the pensions for tens of thousands of teachers in your state. That’s right, teacher pension plans are losing tens of billions (for all state pensions, it’s even more). If the public teacher funds go broke, taxpayers are on the hook to make up the difference to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. 

That prospect looks increasingly likely in the coming years and it was the focus of a recent conference at Vanderbilt University. That conference, in turn, was sparked by a 2007 Fordham Institute report outlining the dangers faced by the state teacher pension fund in Ohio. The unfunded liability of the Ohio pension fund was nearly $20 billion. The Fordham Ohio report raised the stark possibility of the need for a future taxpayer bailout, not only because investments couldn’t keep up with liabilities but because teachers are retiring many years before private-sector workers. They also are living longer, increasing the future payouts. In other words, assets are falling and demands are increasing.

In 2007, well before the financial meltdown, roughly 40 percent of the major teacher pension plans, nationally, were short of cash. Public pension funds are generally considered in OK shape when their assets are roughly 80 percent of liabilities. But Jay Greene, of the University of Arkansas, who attended the Vanderbilt meeting, points out that those supposedly solid pensions assume eight percent returns.

No responsible financial manager ought to be banking on that. After all, it was only a few years ago brokers were trumpeting that the long-term return from Wall Street was 11 percent!

Greene agrees. He says it makes more sense to gauge growth, and presumably future pension payments, on the risk-free rate of long-term U.S. Treasury bonds. They are currently earning a little less than four percent. Assuming a four percent, a teacher pension that would have been 70-percent funded at eight percent would drop to 44 percent funded.

To get a significantly higher return requires a lot more risk. Of course, what teacher pension funds have been doing is gambling that they’ll make well over 4 percent. Ultimately, they’re gambling with the taxpayer’s money. No wonder those managers are grinning like Alfred E. Neuman.

“What, me worry?”

Perhaps the only thing related to K-12 education that Ohio’s governor and lawmakers aren’t talking about “fixing” is the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS). Odd, as few things are more outdated and in need of reform than the pension system.

We pointed out two years ago that the system is opaque, unsustainable, encourages early retirement, hinders mobility, and discourages many from entering the teaching profession. None of that has changed, and according to the system’s latest annual report (which covers July 2007 through June 2008), things are only getting worse. As the economy has melted down STRS’s unfunded liability has topped $18 billion (up $3.7 billion from the previous year and equal to roughly two-and-a-half times what the governor wants the state to spend on K-12 education next year). As this liability has increased, so has its amortization period, up from 26.1 years in 2007 to 41.2 years in 2008 (despite state law requiring an amortization period of no more than 30 years).

STRS attributes the dire situation to “investment returns being less than expected, retirees living longer and payroll growth being less than expected.” The pension system isn’t likely to see its investments rebound in the near-term. In fact, next year’s report (which will take into account the late-summer/early-fall stock market tumble) should be even worse. It’s also not likely that retirees will start dying younger or that teachers will retire later of their own accord when the incentives favor them retiring in their mid-50s. The only way STRS can shore up its financial situation is to ask the Buckeye State’s teachers and school districts to pony up more (Ohio teachers currently contribute 12 percent of their salaries to the system and districts put in another 14 percent).

With the infusion of money Governor Strickland is promising Ohio’s schools (an additional $925 million over the next two years and billions more over the following six), the teacher pension system is sure to want a piece of the pie. When the inevitable proposals surface for increasing pension contributions and making other changes to the system, the governor and legislature should reject them and instead work together to build a retirement system that is fair, transparent, portable, and sustainable.

We’ve pointed out some of the provisions of Ohio Governor Ted Strickland’s education plan that we aren’t too fond of.  But that’s not to say the entire plan is without merit. There is much we actually like in the plan and his recommendations around teacher tenure and retention are especially promising.

Currently, Buckeye State teachers can be awarded tenure after their third year of teaching, which is the standard in most states. Under the governor’s proposal, teachers won’t be eligible for tenure until their ninth year in the classroom. According to the National Council on Teacher Quality’s TR3 database, just eight states grant tenure later than the third year: Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, and South Dakota at four years and Indiana, Kentucky, and Missouri at five years. The governor’s tenure proposal would be a big deal in any state, but it’s shocking, and impressive, coming from a Democrat in a strong union state like Ohio.

Strickland’s plan would also raise the bar for dismissing teachers to bring it in-line with that of other public employees. Under current law, tenured teachers can only be dismissed for “gross immorality or inefficiency,” a hard thing to prove that results in either costly, drawn-out litigation or teachers remaining in the classroom who just shouldn’t be there. Under Strickland’s plan, teachers could be fired for “just cause,” the same as their fellow unionized public employees.

These changes alone aren’t going to rid Ohio’s classrooms of bad teachers. District and school leaders will have to do their part by conducting regular and meaningful evaluations of teachers so that they are well-prepared to make their case if and when a teacher should be dismissed or denied tenure.

In his State of the State address, Governor Strickland said: “Let me say that not everyone is cut out to be a teacher…. But even for teachers already in the field, we must have the ability to remove them from the classroom if their students are not learning.”  His tenure and retention proposals are smart and fair.  Let’s hope that he can see these provisions through to the final version of the budget that goes into effect July 1.

Education Week reports this week on efforts by reform-minded district leaders to recruit and retain better teachers by “front-loading” teacher compensation to pay new teachers significantly more than they’d make under a traditional salary schedule:

Economists who study teacher compensation say most salary schedules, combined with defined-benefit pension plans, tilt compensation strongly toward veteran teachers regardless of those teachers’ effectiveness at raising student achievement.

Low starting pay, they argue, discourages talented individuals who might otherwise consider teaching from giving it a try. And lock-step salary increases can drive away young teachers who feel they aren’t earning what they are worth.

The driving idea behind front-loaded pay systems is to bring the teacher-development and -compensation trajectories together, thus giving beginning teachers the opportunity to win high salaries sooner, and by extension, improving districts’ ability to recruit and retain teachers.

District leaders may be able to change the paychecks their teachers receive, but their hands are tied when it comes to teacher retirement benefits, a big piece of the teacher-compensation pie. In Ohio, Governor Ted Strickland announced in his State of the State speech this week that he wants to make teaching more inviting to mid-careerists and top college graduates. His plan to promote the state’s alternative licensure option is smart, but he’ll still be hard-pressed to recruit people to teaching unless their compensation is competitive with what they’d earn in other professions.

Though the governor has presented an audacious plan “to build our education system anew,” there is no indication that he’s willing to tackle the Buckeye State’s obsolete and costly teacher pension system. (Despite teachers paying 12 percent of their salaries into the pension system and districts contributing another 14 percent, the system’s unfunded liabilities top $20 billion-some $4,000 per Ohio household.)  In a 2007 Fordham report, Michael Podgursky and Robert Costrell–economists at the University of Missouri and the University of Arkansas, respectively–concluded that Ohio’s “system is out of step with the state’s current teacher needs, labor markets and career patterns. While Ohio’s teacher retirement system provides impressive benefits to teachers who make it through a 30-year career, these benefits come at a serious cost to younger system members, to taxpayers, and to the state.”

Ohio’s teacher retirement system and others like it across America are a serious impediment to front-loading remuneration to new teachers, and it is one states need to figure out how to overcome.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sat down for a series of one-on-ones with the national education press yesterday, and their stories are starting to paint a picture of the man, his policy leanings, and his priorities. What do we know about him?

1.       First, he’s definitely a liberal. That’s not meant to be pejorative; I LIKE liberals! (Which is a good thing, considering where I live.) He’s giddy about the federal largesse in the stimulus package (“It’s a historic chance to make things dramatically better,” he told the AP, and “We have a chance to make education in America dramatically better – and, for a whole host of reasons, it has never been more important that we do that,” he told USA Today). And he has no problem with the government taking responsibility for the needs of poor children. “If they’re hungry we need to feed them, if they don’t have clothes you need to give them clothes,” he told Education Week. And he’s also willing to live his values; he and his wife are looking for a  “great public school that’s diverse.”

2.       He’s fired up about charter schools, education data systems, and merit pay programs, and is making it clear that he and his boss want these initiatives included in the final stimulus bill. (They’re in the House version but were stripped out in the Senate.) “That stuff’s hugely important to me,” he told Ed Week.

3.       Finally, he expects to have control over a $15 billion kitty that he can  use to push states and districts to embrace far-reaching reforms, including more rigorous–and maybe even more “common”–standards. “With this fund, we really have a chance to drive dramatic changes, to take to scale what works, invest in what works,” he told Education Week. Yes, maybe, but as I wrote several months ago, I’m skeptical that the Department of Education can spend big discretionary bucks like that without inviting charges of cronyism or worse. (And that’s when we used to talk in terms of millions, not billions!)

And, of course, everyone agrees that he’s a really nice, decent, smart guy, which is a breath of fresh air for the corner office at 400 Maryland Avenue.

12:18 pm Amy Fagan adds that in other Arne news, he tells the Washington Post’s Maria Glod that his young daughter will be attending public school in Arlington County.

Photograph from Department of Education website