Education: April 2009 Archives

According an article in today's  Kennebec Journal, the Maine Education Association's collective bargaining and research director, Joe Stupak, suggested to legislators yesterday that it "would be premature for the Legislature to adopt any public policy that encourages alternative pay systems," because "there is substantial disagreement as to whether any alternative approach to teachers' pay represents an improvement ... over the traditional education- and experience-based salary system."

Sandra MacArthur, Deputy Executive Director of the Maine School Management Association, which represents the superintendents and school boards, agreed that we do not want to be too hasty here.  She called for "further study."

Really?  More study is what we need?  Some  kind of blue ribbon panel to author a report that then sits on a shelf somewhere?

Despite the misgivings of the public school establishment, the fact is that the research that has been done on this issue has found that performance-pay plans improve student achievement.  We noted the flowing studies in a research paper we released last year:

·         A recent study of a pay-for-performance model in Arkansas found "students whose teachers were eligible for performance pay made substantially larger test score gains in math, reading, and language" than students of teachers who were ineligible for bonuses.

·         A 2007 study of teacher incentive programs using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey found that "test scores were higher in schools that offer individual financial incentives for good performance."

·         A 2004 study of a "teacher bonus" system in Israel, in which sizable salary bonuses were tied to student performance on a number of assessments, found "the performance of participating teachers increased, relative to a comparison group of teachers who did not participate in the incentive program."

·         A new study of a performance incentive system for teachers in India concluded "the incentives led to significant improvements in both math and language test scores.  The gains were spread out evenly across grades, districts, skills and competencies, and question difficulty." The study found the incentive system to be "highly cost-effective," compared to other reform strategies.

·         A 2000 study of teacher incentive systems in more than 500 public and private schools found that "high school seniors in schools with incentive pay programs scored slightly higher than those in schools without these programs.  Moreover, the effects were strongest in schools serving high-poverty students and those that rewarded teachers individually rather than in groups."

Additionally, the left-leaning Center for American Progress (CAP) has authored not one, but two research reports outlining the effectiveness of pay-for-performance systems.

In a November 2007 piece, CAP's Robin Chiat reviewed six performance-pay systems and concluded that "several recent studies and evaluations of compensation strategies that incorporate performance pay suggest that the strategy holds promise for improving teacher performance and student achievement."

 In a December 2006 piece for CAP, Dan Goldhaber concluded, after a review of research, that "actual studies of the impacts of merit pay on student achievement suggest that, if anything, it has positive benefits for student achievement.

As for further study by a blue ribbon panel, we've been down this road before.  The Maine Board of Education's "Learning State" report, authored in 2006, concluded that "a compensation structure that treats all teachers the same rather than rewarding teachers on the basis of performance as measured in part by student learning" is an impediment to high quality teaching.  The panel called for a pay system under which "high-performing teachers advance financially at a faster pace than is currently the case."

There are millions of federal dollars available to assist districts in developing teacher pay systems for the 21st century.  More study?  Lets get it done already.

Today's Bangor Daily News describes upcoming legislation that would, at long last, authorize charter schools for Maine.  Maine is one of only 10 states in the nation that does not allow the development of charter schools, which have been hugely successful in states across the nation, as we described in a 2007 paper.

LD 1438 allows for the development of up to 20 charter schools for a ten year pilot program.  This restriction on the number of charters  is needless, but at this point we'll take what we can get.

Of some concern is a provision of the bill that allows only the following groups to be charter authorizers:

1.  A local school board within the boundaries of a school administrative unit;

2.  A collaborative among local school boards and other eligible authorizing entities that form to set up a public charter school for their region; or

3.  A college or university located in the State that offers a baccalaureate degree in education.

In other states, community groups, non-profits, for-profits and a whole host of groups can form charter schools.  Under this bill, citizens interested in developing a charter school have to go on bended knee before the very people who are under-educating their children now, the local public school systems.   What public school system is going to allow the development of a charter school that will compete against it directly? 

Remember, the public school establishment, of which the universities are a part, is the problem.  If the public school establishment was effective, we wouldn't need charter schools.  Now we're going to give that same establishment the power to oversee the charter schools that are created, which will no doubt limit their freedom to innovate.

From the BDN:

Department of Education Communications Director David Connerty-Marin said any group that wants to form a charter school would have to gain the support of the existing education system before they could establish a program. He said the federal government was pushing for assurances that states allow flexibility on charter schools and the department now was willing to do that.

"In this bill the charter schools have to be controlled by the university or a public school system," Connerty-Marin said. "Private or nonprofits cannot do it on their own. They need an authentic public entity for oversight."

Ugh.  Don't we want charter schools because the "authentic public entities" are not getting the job done?

Despite this serious flaw, the bill does represent a big step forward for  a state that trails most of the nation in the level of innovation it has brought to K-12 education.  It will make us, finally, the 41^st state to allow the creation of charter schools.

The public hearing on the bill is scheduled for Thursday, May 7^th.

During yesterday afternoon's hearing on his bill to outlaw performance-based pay systems. Rep. Brian Bolduc (D-Auburn) suggested that such systems should be banned because "I think it's too complicated an issue to let local school departments figure out."

So here you have one legislator, the only person speaking in favor of his bill,  suggesting that he understands such pay systems well enough to know that they warrant being outlawed, but that they are too complicated for the thousands of teachers, administrators, and school board members across Maine to figure out.

His testimony, in which he suggests, despite evidence to the contrary from around the nation, that performance-based systems "won't improve teacher quality, but will hinder it," can be found on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ays0Dh0ZIBw. 

Watch for the part where he suggests that performance-based pay "dehumanizes" the "bond development" and emotional nourishment" he thinks are the keys to good teaching.

In response to a suggestion from the Committee that he was undermining collective bargaining by forbidding districts from even negotiating performance pay models, Rep Bolduc suggested that "any union that wants to pursue merit pay is not in the spirit of equitability for teachers.  It is a contradiction for a teachers union to want to pursue performance-based pay."  Why? Because, according to Bolduc, teacher quality is "impossible to quantify." Not hard to quantify, not challenging to quantify, but "impossible" to quantify.

By the way, Rep. Bolduc seems to think that collective bargaining is about all teachers being paid the same, not the right of teachers to collectively negotiate the terms of their pay and benefits.  The "tenure system is at the heart of collective bargaining - that's the goal," he says.  Huh?

In any event, his response to questions from the committee can be found on YouTube as well, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s04wh2qbeA

You can find my testimony online too, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmPPaqPlwts.  I took a question or two from the committee as well, which can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwUG-S59PO0.

Aside from Bolduc, nobody spoke in favor of the bill. In opposition, as the Sun Journal reported was "Maine's Department of Education, the Maine Heritage Policy Center and Maine's superintendents and school board associations."

Even the MEA couldn't bring itself to support an outright ban on performance-based pay.

Rep. Bolduc, reports the Sun Journal, is "looking for work as a teacher."

The work session on the bill is tomorrow afternoon.