Gotham Schools reports that New York City’s $75 million teacher merit pay experiment quietly bit the dust as the Bloomberg administration sheepishly backed away from the program last year after independent researchers deemed the experiment a failure.
The 2007 merit-pay deal, blessed by both Mayor Bloomberg and former UFT President Randi Weingarten, went public without much debate or kick-back from the union membership. The experiment affected only 200 low-performing schools and limited bonuses to a maximum of $3,000 per teacher if a school met its goals. Weingarten lauded the agreement since it allowed union members to decide how bonuses were distributed in their schools and the program also gave them an opportunity to make more money.
As noted by researcher Roland B. Fryer writing for the National Bureau of Economic Research, there was “no evidence that teacher incentives increase student performance, attendance, or graduation,” nor did he find “any evidence that the incentives change student or teacher behavior.”
“If anything,” Fryer said, “student achievement declined,” on state math and English tests and had little if any effect on student attendance, behavior or graduation rates.
In other words, Mr. Obama, if you are interested in school improvement, rethink your Teacher Incentive Fund initiative because unlike most professions in the private sector, financial incentives are not why individuals choose careers as teachers or public safety workers. No one became a cop to get rich or a teacher to earn Wall Street style bonuses.
Showing posts with label Weingarten. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Weingarten. Show all posts
Monday, March 14, 2011
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Another Bad Idea: Merit Pay for Teachers
"Teacher unions should not be such willing partners in the merit pay group-speak coming out of Washington."
Teacher unionists are abuzz with the new found attention their profession and their schools are getting from the Obama camp. However, there’s much to raise our concerns, especially the idea that merit pay will make a difference in the quality of teaching and the improved academic achievement in our students.
Over the last generation of teacher unionism, no issues have provoked union leaders more than threats to tenure or the idea of individual merit pay for teachers based on the performance of students. However, because the President said that he would include teachers and their unions in the policy decision-making process, union leadership is giving him a green light on the merit pay concept and AFT/UFT President Randi Weingarten eagerly portrays how her union has embraced a performance-based bonus system in 200 New York City schools.
But teacher unions should not be such willing partners in the merit pay group-speak coming out of Washington, because the concept of merit pay for teachers is fraught with more danger than benefit. If the concept became the norm in our schools, it could set the stage for a Ponzi scheme of supposed academic excellence, in which only a few would benefit, while the rest would find themselves bankrupt.
First of all, Obama is wrong about the research. There is no valid replicable scientific social research out there that proves that individual merit pay will make a positive dent in an objective measure of the overall quality of teaching in a school or school system. It’s mostly intuitive supposition that is based on the “carrot and stick” meme of Western culture. It’s not necessarily a given that the promise of monetary rewards when a goal is reached will improve the quality of the process used to get there.
Secondly, the concept of merit has inherent in it that only a few will benefit. The effect of the promise of financial reward may skew the Bell Curve slightly upward, but most will be in the average range and few will be at the top or the bottom. That’s automatic and it is antithetical to the idea that we must raise all the boats in the harbor. Merit pay is an elitist, anti-union concept that belongs in the tool box of CEO’s, but not in the hands of school systems and governments. Take a look at the stock market, or at our iconic corporate giants, and see where merit pay and bonuses have gotten us.
Embracing a business model for our schools is an idea that’s as defunct as many American businesses and as backward as the 19th Century factory model used to educate our youngsters. Stakeholders, corporate and social, should reconsider the processes used by businesses to achieve their goals and then rethink the ideas behind why we educate our children in the first place. Once we do that, the concept of merit raises for teachers will be a thing of the past.
Teacher unionists are abuzz with the new found attention their profession and their schools are getting from the Obama camp. However, there’s much to raise our concerns, especially the idea that merit pay will make a difference in the quality of teaching and the improved academic achievement in our students.
Over the last generation of teacher unionism, no issues have provoked union leaders more than threats to tenure or the idea of individual merit pay for teachers based on the performance of students. However, because the President said that he would include teachers and their unions in the policy decision-making process, union leadership is giving him a green light on the merit pay concept and AFT/UFT President Randi Weingarten eagerly portrays how her union has embraced a performance-based bonus system in 200 New York City schools.
But teacher unions should not be such willing partners in the merit pay group-speak coming out of Washington, because the concept of merit pay for teachers is fraught with more danger than benefit. If the concept became the norm in our schools, it could set the stage for a Ponzi scheme of supposed academic excellence, in which only a few would benefit, while the rest would find themselves bankrupt.
First of all, Obama is wrong about the research. There is no valid replicable scientific social research out there that proves that individual merit pay will make a positive dent in an objective measure of the overall quality of teaching in a school or school system. It’s mostly intuitive supposition that is based on the “carrot and stick” meme of Western culture. It’s not necessarily a given that the promise of monetary rewards when a goal is reached will improve the quality of the process used to get there.
Secondly, the concept of merit has inherent in it that only a few will benefit. The effect of the promise of financial reward may skew the Bell Curve slightly upward, but most will be in the average range and few will be at the top or the bottom. That’s automatic and it is antithetical to the idea that we must raise all the boats in the harbor. Merit pay is an elitist, anti-union concept that belongs in the tool box of CEO’s, but not in the hands of school systems and governments. Take a look at the stock market, or at our iconic corporate giants, and see where merit pay and bonuses have gotten us.
Embracing a business model for our schools is an idea that’s as defunct as many American businesses and as backward as the 19th Century factory model used to educate our youngsters. Stakeholders, corporate and social, should reconsider the processes used by businesses to achieve their goals and then rethink the ideas behind why we educate our children in the first place. Once we do that, the concept of merit raises for teachers will be a thing of the past.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
National Standards: A society gets the schools it deserves
AFT President Randi Weingarten arguing for national standards said in an opinion piece in the Washington Post, “I am not so naive as to think that it would be easy to reach consensus on national standards, but I believe that most people would agree that there is academic content that all students in America's public schools should be taught, and be taught to high standards.”
Do most people agree on the academic content for America’s public schools? What do we, as a nation, expect high school graduates to know and what skills would we like them to have? Despite, the various commissions that recognize the need for 21st Century workers to have good communications skills and the ability to analyze and resolve problems creatively, there is little if any consensus on how schools can produce that highly skilled workforce. There are so many conflicting interests and aspirations that we are forced to consider why we teach certain things, and not others. Can we reconcile the difference between the education of the individual from the education of the citizen?
In our haste to establish national standards, let’s not neglect those students who fail to complete high school. These are the youngsters who increasingly end up in our penal system. This is a national disgrace, but is it an accident of neglect and indifference or is it intentional? Could there be a hidden curriculum in our schools? Before we can establish national standards we have to honestly assess whether those standards will be for all children or will there always be a neglected class that will have to fend for itself?
Obviously, if there are national standards, unlike NCLB, there should be funds to support the mandates. But, would costs force legislators to limit the scope of what schools teach? Will schools only provide “essential” instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic and drop all the other “non-essential” subjects like music, art, social studies, science and health? In other words, will schools and teachers be forced to teach to the test?
I recall former New York State Governor George Pataki saying that he would not approve increased funding for public education because the state constitution only guaranteed a sound education until the 8th grade. So despite all the talk of improving NYS schools, the Governor fought against additional funding for NYC public schools. Where there’s a will there’s a wallet!
Since education has traditionally been a local issue, and a public school education in Massachusetts is generally much better than one in Mississippi, national standards should start to raise all the boats in the harbor. But, local control of schools is so closely guarded that any perceived imposition from Washington will be bitterly opposed. Local politicians wary of outside control, will scare the citizenry with threats of increased costs from higher taxes. Only the most enlightened communities will look at the increases as an investment in their children and the future of the country.
Do most people agree on the academic content for America’s public schools? What do we, as a nation, expect high school graduates to know and what skills would we like them to have? Despite, the various commissions that recognize the need for 21st Century workers to have good communications skills and the ability to analyze and resolve problems creatively, there is little if any consensus on how schools can produce that highly skilled workforce. There are so many conflicting interests and aspirations that we are forced to consider why we teach certain things, and not others. Can we reconcile the difference between the education of the individual from the education of the citizen?
In our haste to establish national standards, let’s not neglect those students who fail to complete high school. These are the youngsters who increasingly end up in our penal system. This is a national disgrace, but is it an accident of neglect and indifference or is it intentional? Could there be a hidden curriculum in our schools? Before we can establish national standards we have to honestly assess whether those standards will be for all children or will there always be a neglected class that will have to fend for itself?
Obviously, if there are national standards, unlike NCLB, there should be funds to support the mandates. But, would costs force legislators to limit the scope of what schools teach? Will schools only provide “essential” instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic and drop all the other “non-essential” subjects like music, art, social studies, science and health? In other words, will schools and teachers be forced to teach to the test?
I recall former New York State Governor George Pataki saying that he would not approve increased funding for public education because the state constitution only guaranteed a sound education until the 8th grade. So despite all the talk of improving NYS schools, the Governor fought against additional funding for NYC public schools. Where there’s a will there’s a wallet!
Since education has traditionally been a local issue, and a public school education in Massachusetts is generally much better than one in Mississippi, national standards should start to raise all the boats in the harbor. But, local control of schools is so closely guarded that any perceived imposition from Washington will be bitterly opposed. Local politicians wary of outside control, will scare the citizenry with threats of increased costs from higher taxes. Only the most enlightened communities will look at the increases as an investment in their children and the future of the country.
A society gets the schools it deserves.
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