I wanted to pass along a fantastic online information source that is really worth checking out. In 2010 NBC News put together the "Education Nation Summit" to address education reform as a national issue. The media outlet believes that it is the duty of quality journalists to inform the country about pressing national issues, and NBC believes that education is perhaps the most important problem facing our country today.
The most direct use for anyone interested in learning about the quality of their child's (or their own) school, is the Education Nation Scorecard for Schools. The application allows anyone to view specific data regarding test scores, graduation rates, and numerous other categories about individual public schools in their area. In addition, the application allows users to compare school ratings to other schools in the area, as well as compare their region to others in the state, and their state to other states in the country. The scorecard can be found at the following link: http://nbcscorecard.greatschools.org/
The 2011 Education Nation will begin the week of September 25th.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Learning from the Experts
Students here at Dartmouth have a few exciting opportunities to learn about education reform over the next few days, and I wanted to give all of you a chance to do the same. Tomorrow night, there will be a film screening of the award-winning documentary, Waiting for Superman, and Monday afternoon, students will have a chance to speak with Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Fund. We will bring you coverage of both events here on the blog, but both sources provide a wealth of information about education reform generally, as well as merit pay for public school teachers in the United States.
I would encourage all of you to take the time to watch Waiting for Superman. Not only is the film extremely entertaining, but it is also one of the more informative education documentaries produced. It is also clear that the filmmakers didn’t write their thesis first and do the research second. The film is not politically biased, and the amount of research that went into the production was immense. Improving public education in the United States was the primary goal in the film, not ending teacher tenure, or promoting a Democratic or Republican education platform. You can learn more about the film here:
Finally, for those serious about education reform, it is impossible to ignore Geoffrey Canada’s work or the Harlem Children Zone. Canada’s began his vision to give all American children a quality education in 1997. Today, the project has a budget of $75 million and serves tens of thousands of children in one of this country’s most difficult neighborhoods. Canada even guarantees that any child who attends an HCZ school will have the opportunity to go to college. For those of you who are suspicious of the charter school approach, or for people who distrust many of the proposed education reforms (including increased merit pay), please review Mr. Canada’s success with HCZ and other American charter school programs.
Stay tuned for more coverage.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Professional Development
A recent article posted on StudentsFirst, the organization founded by former Chancellor of D.C. public schools and education guru Michelle Rhee, included a comment that caught my attention:
"Bonus pay by itself is not the answer, however. The reality is most teachers need additional training and support to increase student achievement. As such, we need to create a system that not only provides higher salaries for our top performers to incentivize improvement, but also offers high-quality professional development aligned to teachers' needs. New compensation systems will work only if they are coupled with meaningful feedback and support teachers need to grow professionally."
(The full article, written by Theodore Hershberg, professor of public policy at the University of Pensylvannia and Claire Robertson-Kraft, a PhD candidate at Penn's Graduate School of Education, can be found here).
This insight really speaks to the broader purpose of merit pay. While merit pay schemes are partially designed to reward good teachers and fire bad ones for the sake of government efficiency and fairness to tax payers, that is not their ultimate purpose. Their ultimate purpose is to ensure that all students receive a quality education. The article quoted above estimates that two-thirds of all teachers are effective. This means that one in every three children are an educational disadvantage.
One of the problems with this debate, however, is that we assume that there are immovable categories like "good" and "bad" when it comes to a highly complex profession like teaching, a profession whose success is greatly impacted by outside factors like a student's upbringing and a school's resources, just to name a few. Acknowledging these challenges is essential to creating a merit pay program that works for both teachers and students.
One way to acknowledge these challenges is to provide "high quality professional development" for public school teachers. It is important to treat teaching as a profession. Practicing a profession is a process of continuous learning and growing. Part of tying pay to performance means valuing performance. This involves allowing teachers to work within their professional community to help each other improve their methods and share ideas. Because ultimately, merit pay is just a way to hold teachers to a higher standard so that America's students are prepared for the future.
"Bonus pay by itself is not the answer, however. The reality is most teachers need additional training and support to increase student achievement. As such, we need to create a system that not only provides higher salaries for our top performers to incentivize improvement, but also offers high-quality professional development aligned to teachers' needs. New compensation systems will work only if they are coupled with meaningful feedback and support teachers need to grow professionally."
(The full article, written by Theodore Hershberg, professor of public policy at the University of Pensylvannia and Claire Robertson-Kraft, a PhD candidate at Penn's Graduate School of Education, can be found here).
This insight really speaks to the broader purpose of merit pay. While merit pay schemes are partially designed to reward good teachers and fire bad ones for the sake of government efficiency and fairness to tax payers, that is not their ultimate purpose. Their ultimate purpose is to ensure that all students receive a quality education. The article quoted above estimates that two-thirds of all teachers are effective. This means that one in every three children are an educational disadvantage.
One of the problems with this debate, however, is that we assume that there are immovable categories like "good" and "bad" when it comes to a highly complex profession like teaching, a profession whose success is greatly impacted by outside factors like a student's upbringing and a school's resources, just to name a few. Acknowledging these challenges is essential to creating a merit pay program that works for both teachers and students.
One way to acknowledge these challenges is to provide "high quality professional development" for public school teachers. It is important to treat teaching as a profession. Practicing a profession is a process of continuous learning and growing. Part of tying pay to performance means valuing performance. This involves allowing teachers to work within their professional community to help each other improve their methods and share ideas. Because ultimately, merit pay is just a way to hold teachers to a higher standard so that America's students are prepared for the future.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
But...does it work?
Before charging forward with this idea about merit pay, it's important to step back and ask: does merit pay actually work? From an economic perspective, it seems like the obvious answer is yes. Tying pay to performance should incentivize better performance from teachers, which should then translate into better performance from students. But many people question this logic. After all, students are influenced by so many factors outside of the classroom- how can teachers be held so responsible for a student's performance? Also, is rewarding better teachers really the best way to increase students' performance?
Well, according to a new study that compared educational outcomes in countries with and without merit pay programs, the evidence in favor of merit pay is pretty overwhelming. To quote an article in Education Next,
"A little-used survey conducted by the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] in 2005 makes it possible to identify the developed countries participating in PISA [Program for International Student Assessment] that appear to have some kind of performance pay plan. Linking that information to a country’s test performance, one finds that students in countries with performance pay perform at higher levels in math, science, and reading. Specifically, students in countries that permit teacher salaries to be adjusted for outstanding performance score approximately one-quarter of a standard deviation higher on the international math and reading tests, and about 15 percent higher on the science test, than students in countries without performance pay. These findings are obtained after adjustments for levels of economic development across countries, student background characteristics, and features of national school systems."
The full article with deeper analyses and helpful graphs can be found here.
The next step is conducting long-term research within the United States. There has been one study that claims that merit pay doesn't work because offering bonuses to less than 300 math teachers in one school district for three years did not dramatically increase student performance. There are a few problems with the study. The first is that the benefits of merit pay must be enjoyed by students throughout their entire education. A year or two (many students did not have teachers who participated in the merit pay program for more than one year) with a competent teacher is simply not enough to boost student performance in any significant way. Secondly, the bonuses were tied exclusively to better performance on standardized tests-- a metric that most teachers and policy makers agree does not form a comprehensive assessment of teacher performance. Lastly, the study acknowledges that the sample size (less than 300 teachers for the same age group in the same school district) is not large enough to provide many fair answers.
As districts and states implement real merit pay programs that span across grades, it will be easier to measure their effectiveness. The Merit Pay International Study is compelling because its examines countries that have adopted merit pay systems as their norm, which allows researchers to measure long term effects on individual students' performance. More research must be conducted, but the results of merit pay on a global scale are promising.
Well, according to a new study that compared educational outcomes in countries with and without merit pay programs, the evidence in favor of merit pay is pretty overwhelming. To quote an article in Education Next,
"A little-used survey conducted by the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] in 2005 makes it possible to identify the developed countries participating in PISA [Program for International Student Assessment] that appear to have some kind of performance pay plan. Linking that information to a country’s test performance, one finds that students in countries with performance pay perform at higher levels in math, science, and reading. Specifically, students in countries that permit teacher salaries to be adjusted for outstanding performance score approximately one-quarter of a standard deviation higher on the international math and reading tests, and about 15 percent higher on the science test, than students in countries without performance pay. These findings are obtained after adjustments for levels of economic development across countries, student background characteristics, and features of national school systems."
The full article with deeper analyses and helpful graphs can be found here.
The next step is conducting long-term research within the United States. There has been one study that claims that merit pay doesn't work because offering bonuses to less than 300 math teachers in one school district for three years did not dramatically increase student performance. There are a few problems with the study. The first is that the benefits of merit pay must be enjoyed by students throughout their entire education. A year or two (many students did not have teachers who participated in the merit pay program for more than one year) with a competent teacher is simply not enough to boost student performance in any significant way. Secondly, the bonuses were tied exclusively to better performance on standardized tests-- a metric that most teachers and policy makers agree does not form a comprehensive assessment of teacher performance. Lastly, the study acknowledges that the sample size (less than 300 teachers for the same age group in the same school district) is not large enough to provide many fair answers.
As districts and states implement real merit pay programs that span across grades, it will be easier to measure their effectiveness. The Merit Pay International Study is compelling because its examines countries that have adopted merit pay systems as their norm, which allows researchers to measure long term effects on individual students' performance. More research must be conducted, but the results of merit pay on a global scale are promising.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Chicago Is Next
I have become increasingly optimistic as our group continues its research into the benefits and feasibility of a merit-based pay structure for public school teachers. We’ve discussed systems recently implemented at the state level in Florida, and at the national level with President Obama’s Race To The Top plan. Recently, that progress towards sweeping education reforms again saw promise, but this time at the local level. Today, Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel named Jean-Claude Brizard the new Chicago Public Schools CEO. Brizard is the former superintendent of schools for Rochester, NY and during his reign supported both an increase in charter schools and the introduction of merit-based pay for teachers. Emmanuel conducted a nation-wide search for his new Chicago Schools CEO and settled on the man that has drawn the scorn of New York teachers unions for his stance on the merit pay system. According to Janet Knupp, CEO of the education reform group the Chicago Public Education Fund, “The difficult choices that he’s making there [Rochester], he’ll have to make here.”
The merit-based system has shown its diversity in each of the first three content related posts on this blog. Efforts to institute the system are occurring or have already been implemented at all three levels of government. What’s more, is that both Republicans (Governor Rick Scott in Florida) and Democrats (President Obama, and more recently his former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) who have endorsed the need to move the teaching profession away from a tenure system to one more dedicated to performance. With each political party beginning to understand the benefits of such a system, it now seems possible to implement a bipartisan education reform package that includes merit-based pay for teachers.
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