I recently attended an Alliance for Excellent Education event about recruiting highly effective teachers and giving them the right supports. In North Carolina’s Guilford County Schools, there is a program called “Mission Possible.” The goals of the program are: to improve school performance, raise student achievement, and decrease teacher turnover. The means: a comprehensive teacher incentive program that includes recruitment and retention incentives based on school level and subject matter taught, profession development, and performance bonuses.

A subsequent initiative is the Cumulative Effect (CE) program, which focuses on attracting and retaining highly effective math teachers.  Participating schools include 10 low-performing high schools. CE focuses on developing the content knowledge and pedagogical skills of high school math teachers through professional development, intensive mentoring, and incentive pay. The professional development piece was what impressed me most. Both new and veteran teachers are required to attend a 2-week math content training in algebra and geometry. In addition, throughout the school year, they attend an evening math seminar series.

What do teachers get in return? Performance-based and recruitment incentives are determined by whether teachers have a subject-area degree and their value-added data each year. They can earn up to $18,000 more than they would at a non-CE school. The CE program has seen success in increasing student achievement in math, closing the gap between CE and non-CE schools, and reducing teacher attrition rates.

Lately there’s been a lot of buzz about student incentives – specifically cash. Programs in New York and Washington, DC are attempting to improve performance by paying students for better attendance, behavior, and achievement.

The Fordham Institute’s reaction to the concept is an interesting lens for institutional perspectives and attitudes. On Flypaper, their blog, Fordhamites have come out strongly against cash incentives for students. Checker Finn calls it “fundamentally amoral”.

What’s less clear is what makes Fordham’s attitude towards cash incentives for student performance so different from its attitude towards cash incentives for teachers. Fordham is for “merit pay” tied to student performance, and cheers cash bonuses for teachers and schools with good scores.

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Education Sector is not, strictly speaking, an advocacy group. They pride themselves on dialogues that involve different points of view. As they say, “we do not impose a rigid creed or doctrine on members of the Education Sector team, outside contributors, or the work we publish.” However one of the fundamental principles at Education Sector is that “our education system is not nearly as effective as it could and must be” and that the failure of schools is not due solely to lack of funding or resources, but to “systematic flaws.” This claim, that school reform is necessary and would improve education, leads to several key issues. One of them is that increasing the efficacy of teachers would increase school effectiveness. As they put it, “public education needs to recruit, prepare, promote, and compensate teachers based on their effectiveness in promoting student learning.”

Education Sector gathers evidence through a number of reports, many of which involve outside contributors. To advance their point of view, Education Sector developed a proposal for a “New Deal” for teachers. Using the term “New Deal” helps give the issue broad appeal, and grounds the discourse in a relatable analogy. Education Sector included this solution in a package of education policy issues for the next administration, called “8 for ‘08” in a deliberate attempt to move the issue onto the governmental agenda. They frame the solution in a story of stagnation, that our system for recruiting and rewarding teachers has not changed in decades and that it perpetuates inequity and ineffective teaching. To combat that, they suggest federal funding for state and district based initiatives that encourage alternate teacher certification, incentives (and punitive actions) linked to efficacy and programs to encourage equitable distribution of effective teachers.

The EPE Influence document provided a great overview of the most groundbreaking studies, organizations, information sources and individuals involved in educational policy over the past decade, which could be deemed the era of NCLB.  The interplay between these significant individuals, their respective organizations and the studies they commission seems logical in producing the most prominent waves in the educational reform community.

There were some surprising trends I noticed such as naming George W. Bush as the second most influential individual for his signing of the NCLB act (perhaps this is my reticence in recognizing him in any capacity beyond that of a figurehead).  I think due credit is awarded to those such as Senator Edward Kennedy and Representative George Miller who created bipartisan support for the act.

The other surprise is that “one-fifth of all influential studies are quite short, 25 pages or less.”  Great news for those who want “blockbusters” in Readers’ Digest format.