Teacher Pay

‘This is, in principle, a great idea, and in practice an incredibly bad idea. If a student takes more than one class in the course of the year it is going to be impossible to know whether the improvements he makes are attributable to one class rather than another.’

That is why you combine it with some form of human qualitative review. You combine one and two. It could be a principal or it could be a separate position. And if the principal’s pay depends on the school’s overall performance as compared to similar schools they will get the expertise and desire quick enough.

‘On top of that, teachers typically do not have enough students over the course of the year to get statistically significant results: and nor should they.’

Sorry, what? 5 or 6 classes with as few as 12 students would be 72 students. We are probably talking in excess of a 100 students a year.

I will freely admit that I know nothing about teaching beyond having spent many years of my life being taught. However, in a normal business the better employees are paid better, as they should be. If they’re not paid better, they go to a company that will pay them better, and the company they left suffers the consequences. I suspect schools are the same, except to the extent they rely on (exploit?) the altruism of teachers who are in it for more than the money.

In addition, one of my favorite explanations is, “sure, sure, economic theory may work fine in theory, but my business is different; you just don’t understand; it’s complicated you see.” Usually this phrase is used to justify subsidies or protectionism. Here, it’s used to justify inefficient personnel compensation schemes.

And do we know what good teaching is? The testing mania currently underway in the U.S. assumes that a good teacher produces students who on average score well on standardized tests. Between student mastery of a body of facts, ability to apply necessary skills, independence and creativity of thought — there’s enough complexity there. Add to it the fact that students are very different and what works with some will leave obstacles in place for others.

Discussions of teacher merit outside consensus on the purpose and results of education are at best close to useless.

This is why I’m happy to work for a non profit educational organization that’s working to strengthen the principal’s role as an instructional leader. Only by ensuring that principals are well versed in the best practices of teaching can your third system work well. But it does require a fundamental change in how we train and think of school principals.

I don’t want to sound like a blatant advertisement, but for those interested, check out The National Institute for School Leadership program to see how we’re working to ensure principals have the tools they need to become effective instructional leaders. Disclaimer: I work for NISL’s parent organization.

I hope people understand that Education Next is the educational equivalent of The National Review or The Weekly Standard – only not so august. It’s a conservative rag. They are always looking for ways to weaken teachers’ unions or public education.

That being said, I’d be very much in favor of teachers in city schools getting more than teachers in suburban schools. Right now the opposite is true. I have known lots of teachers in NYC who could not say no to suburban districts offering them $20,000 more in salary. To reverse that would take lots of money, would require the end of local property-tax-based funding of schools, and would therefore require some mitigation of the US tradition of “local control.” With No Child Left Behind, local control is almost a joke now anyway. But the federal govt is only paying about 5% of the cost of education. So approaching the idea from the starting place of what teachers should get paid is not to get very close to the Rubik’s cube solution to the whole problem.

As for differential pay by subject. It may end up being necessary. Schools are nowhere near being able to get the expertise they need in technology or even math and science. The example you use of English teachers doesn’t exactly work though. I’m an English teacher, and unfortunately for us, English is never a high need area. It’s important, sure. But there aren’t that many jobs for English majors, so there’s usually not a shortage of English teachers. That means, if you differentiate pay, you’ll have math teachers making lots more than English teachers. In most school buildings, that’s not going to seem very fair.

National Board Certification is a great, non-biased way to evaluate high-performing teachers for the purpose of a pay raise.

What if the gym teacher is the best teacher in the school? He incorporates math and science into his lessons by having students measure their sprint time and distance and calculate rates. He teaches editing techniques as students rewrite drafts of their “Healthy Lifestyles” reports…Gym teachers should not necessarily be paid less because they are gym teachers. And guidance counselors – they’re some of the most important people in the school! (This from a former science teacher.)

Paying inner city teachers more would go a long way toward improving those schools. But many of the problems of teacher retention everywhere will not be addressed until Americans are serious about education funding and reform. Passing legislation requiring testing to make sure schools are up to par is stupid unless you provide the tools necessary to make real change…innovative leaders, more behavioral support staff (like guidance counselors), more pay for ALL teachers, alternatives to academic courses for the non-college bound.

“There are three ways of deciding who the better teachers are.”

Nope, there’s at least four: have the teachers rank each other, and then total ’em up. That’s the way they do it at Semco, the worker’s paradise that also happens to be highly profitable.

> That doesn’t work as well in jobs
> with high levels of public control.

It also takes a really good teacher 3-5 years to get in tune with the rythyms if the school and community. So although the /could/ pick up and move, they would prefer not to, as it would be damaging to the community.

Cranky

I did answer those objections. You just aren’t listening.

There should be enough students, say about a 100, for a statistically valid sample.

Combine options one and two.

Human qualitative performance appraisal would help eliminate cross variable problems. In Harry’s example the performing English teachers high qualitative assessment would help boost her pay even higher. While the poor Social Studies and Math teachers would have their pay decreased to average or maybe slightly below average by their poor qualitative assessment. More importantly it also works in reverse. The poor teacher dragging down the good teacher. The poor teacher is doubly punished while the good teacher would still receive at least average or maybe better than average, depending on the weighting, pay. The poor teachers will quickly be gone.

Basing the principals pay on the schools success versus similar schools would provide incentive to acquire the needed expertise. Assuming the principal was the one evaluating performances.

The objective measurements would prevent cronyism from occurring except at the edges. Glaring and consistent discrepancies over time would stand out like a sore thumb. Basing the principal’s pay on the schools success versus similar schools would be an even stronger incentive. The principals would have a string financial incentive to refrain from cronyism.

No, not perfect. But a very workable approach and one that answers Harry’s objections.

But of course as any teacher will tell you their performance is immeasurable by any combination of qualitative and objective analysis and their contributions are severely undervalued at any price.

But would these pay for performance schemes be worth the effort? Would the differences in salary be enough of an incentive for bad or mediocre teachers to work harder? Couldn’t the time spent compiling portfolios or gaming the system be better spent in other ways? Is it worth the acrimony (public salaries are easily available to anyone who wants to see them)? Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to simply make it easier to get rid of underperforming teachers? You could put this reform in place by coupling it with big across the board pay increases.

How about evaluating *principals* based on the value-added for all the grades in their school, and then giving principals more authority over hiring and paying teachers? This addresses the problems you cited about sample sizes and spillover effects, while simultaneously lowering incentives for cronyism (because the principal suffers the effects when they put an incompetent pal into a teaching position).

Several cities are moving toward this already.

I recognize the complexity of the many factors that influence student performance that are beyond the control of a teacher. I also recognize that a common theme seems to be that teachers shouldn’t be rated and compenstaed on subjective factors, that wouldn’t be “fair”.

What is wrong with you people? We have to achieve utopia before we can distinguish between better and worse? Outside of academia and the civil service, most people are rated, compensated, promoted or fired based on subjective judgements (however they may be quantified). Same same for principals.

I bet that teachers know who the good teachers are, who the good administrators are and vice versa. Why don’t you take the responsibility for what you can control?

I’ve always voted for bond issues over the past 20 years. Results? SAT scores dumbed down, international ranking down. At least some of that must be due towhat is happening in the schools. And what do I read? Don’t hold teachers and adnimistrators accountable.

What am I missing, please?

Kimmit’s example of the one or three-year contract teachers who never unionized kinda scares me: how old were these teachers, and did long most of them expect to stay on in the job?

One of the questions that should be asked here is for how long do we want people in stay in the teaching profession? A lot of the seniority protections are now up in the air. Some of the restrictions against people entering into teaching are being lowered, understandably, as there’s a huge need for teachers particularly in poorer areas.

But we seem to be moving in the direction of enabling a temporary teaching workforce. I’m not really sure that’s in the public interest, as it simply takes a little while for even the best qualified people to settle into teachers. Career-teachers are finding themselves up against continually changing standards and programs. Without job protection of some sort, how can we expect anyone to take teaching on as a career?

And to answer your question oldtom, I suspect that one of the reasons schools are getting worse is that the teacher has become a political target and that parents are no longer supporting teachers as authority figures. The teacher is now the ideological enemy to be undermined, the unsympathetic obstacle to little Johnny’s Ivy League admission, the service-provided to be tipped with expensive gifts. And on the other hand, the teacher is now the psychologist, medicine-distributer, and bouncer.

I’m just praying I can get into a tenure-track position. Of course, the parents have started gunning for the teachers there, too.

100 students is a paltry size, given the pretty small variation in improvement that we can expect to see. Studies of school effectiveness in the UK, using much more sophisticated techniques than have been developed for the US, and much richer data (and much bigger samples — we’re talking 800 or so kids a year) cannot distinguish within the middle 80% of schools — the top 10% and bottom 10% perform differently than the others, but within the vast majority we can’t get good comparisons. Too bad, but there it is. US SCHOOLS, being much bigger, would give us better results, but not individual teachers. SO Marcus’s point has some validity. I warn, though, that constructing good value added measures is much harder than people seem to think. The Brits have worked hard on this, and I’m astonished to see these debates which have been thrashed out for years in the UK proceeding as if it is all brand new. If I were more technically competent I’d point you to Harvey Goldstein’s website at the Institute of Education — In fact I’ll do a post telling people to read his stuff in a couple of days.

I’m not opposed to holding teachers and administrators accountable at all. I think the ‘objective standards’ is a fake for technical reasons but is an inevitable response to Union power. Its also true that Laura’s bomb-throwing attitude would, I suspect, yeild good results EVENTUALLY; but eventually we’re all dead and there are many costs to be borne. Predictably by the least advantaged kids.

I’m not being quiestistic — just trying to provoke thought!

Jared,
Teachers at least from middle school on in my experience get to deal with kids on an in/formal basis from the set of all the teachers the kids have in their schedule.

The kids provide a big part of the diffusion of knowledge of competency; the watercooler does the rest. This is arguably better than in commercial ventures. You have the benefit of adult vs. child viewpoints.

Henry, have you spent any time at all looking at Semco?

Jared –

Peer review for purposes of determining tenured status is something that is being done. Its done well in Toledo and COlumbus Ohio. Not necessarily done so well in California, but its there too. The stats from Toledo imply that teachers are much harder on eachother than administrators were.

Glenn/Bigmac I’m with you at least in theory on the 10/80/10 but I don’t know how you get the bottom ten up to the middle so easily. That’s like saying that the Mets could improve if they could just get their worst 3 hitters to hit as well as their best three. I think they are trying to accomplish this by getting Manny Ramirez. When I was teaching in NYC we pretty much has ten percent of the slots always open and were always rotating in people who were not destined to be successful teachers and trying to rotate them out when that became apparent. Not enough Manny Ramirezes. Not enough positive karma/good working conditions/money to convince people to try to become Manny Ramirezes.

There are people who blame this on the certification rules and talk about how Bill Gates couldn’t get certified in NYC etc. Actually that may be true now under the NCLBA. But when I was there, I routinely was in a staffroom filled with uncertified teachers. In fact I was one of them. Bill Gates would have fit right in if he’d felt like it. Somehow he thought being a philanthropist was a better move than coming to Hollis everyday.

In the interest of accuracy — SAT scores are not down, and many, many, many more students are taking the SAT test. That’s not a failure. International comparison rankings are not down. There haven’t been many, and the US has never been especially high. Given what we spend per pupil on education, we’re above where we should be. Check out The Manufactured Crisis by Berliner and Biddle.

Russell, no I haven’t, but now I will — you’ve piqued my interest. Thanks. Don’t worry about mistaking me for henry — everyone else does.

bigmacattack — I didn’t understand a word of your response. Sorry. I must be dull at the moment. Still, I shall talk to some experts about this and figure out what the problems actually are (as opposed to what they seem to me, a non-expert, to be).

If the variance in salaries predicted is 1-2% then it is almost certainly not worth bothering with merit pay. Remember there are going to be new administrative costs, and the whole point is to make teaching more attractive to talented people so they are more likely to enter and less likely to leave the profession.

And I’m very surprised by the comments people make about the reward structures in the private sector. Even in the non-unionised private sector seniority is a major predictor of wage rates, and not of productivity. Also, as several people have said, it would be bad economics to erode the sense of public service that leads soem people into teaching at a lower wage rate than they could command in other jobs. Excactly what measures erode and what measures support that sense of public service is soemthing we might want to talk about

Let’s add another variable to this list for incentive pay … teachers with very large classes should get extra money. First, it’s a lot more work for them and second, it’ll keep impoverished school districts from cutting teachers when they should be cutting things that have less impact on the student’s education. (They really shouldn’t have to cut anything in an ideal world, but …)

Jennyd,

why do you think I am opposed to it. I am precisely trying to provoke thinking about how to do it.
Getting rid of tenure is precisely the kind of thing that would raise costs. Government run organisations are able to pay people less than private companies because they can provide tenure, a non-pecuniary benefit which makes the job more attractive to some talented people. If you abolish tenure you’ll pay for it by having to raise the financial reards in orde rto attract the same people. I’m not opposed to doing that in pricniple, and agree that tenure is very problematic, but if you are going to propose it you are going to have to say how you’ll pay for it. The proposal has the added problem that you’d need administrators who would make better choices than the current tenure/attrition system does. I’m not convinced we have them, and getting them will take time.

Thanks for the Florida article btw. Since no-one is probably reading any more I can safely say that Americans trying to get a grip on what is going on post-NCLB would do well to read some history of UK education; I think you’ll be able to predict the next ten years of debates here if you look at the last 20 years of debates there.

I’m suprprised that nobody’s compared college-level instruction with K-12. Instructors at colleges and universities are, for the most part, not unionized. They do not have standard pay rates–some disciplines pay more than others and the ‘stars’ may be paid considerably more. Colleges and universities also compete for students and are almost universally considered to be the best in the world. Our K-12 schools are merely average among industrialized countries even though our level of spending is very high.

One obvious approach would be to try to make K-12 schools work more like our colleges and universities. How would instructors be evaluated? That would be up to the individual institution — no doubt different institutions would choose different methods and priorities.

Completely apart from that, I am quite surprised that nobody seems to have mentioned evaluating teacher quality according to how well they served their customers — the students taking their classes and their parents. Universities use course-evaluations routinely, but K-12 schools seem to use them not at all.