Bloomberg, Klein to school House panel

Posted by helen at 9:45 AM

Quiet week in NYC? Head down to D.C.: Tomorrow morning, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein will address a House panel on progress in urban education, along with D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Klein protegee D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and public school leaders from Chicago and Atlanta.

We bet we'll hear about test score gains and closing the achievement gap -- but we doubt the conversation will include troubling nuances, like the fact that race-based gaps between brighter kids widen over time, even as they narrow for kids with lower skills. And we bet we won't hear the nitty-gritty on why level 4 test scores have dropped for middle schoolers this year: Will anyone ask about the price bright students pay in a system so focused on raising low-level student skills?

We'll likely hear about charter schools and merit pay, about leadership pipelines and increasing accountability. We'll hear about rising grad rates -- but bet the numbers they cite will be based on old data, as the newly calibrated scores are yet to be made public.

Will we learn anything new? We doubt it, but we'd love to be wrong. As it stands now, though, our bet is on celebration over substance, and photo-ops over hard questions.

Performance pay, incentive programs moving into phase two

Posted by Philissa at 3:59 PM

The DOE proudly announced earlier this week that 86 percent of the schools given the option of accepting performance pay this year chose to. Thirty-four eligible schools chose not to participate. (The percentage would have been slightly lower had the DOE not included the additional schools it apparently solicited once it became clear that a chunk of schools would abstain from the program.)

By the end of the day tomorrow, each of the schools will have to decide, by committee, whether their merit pay will be shared equally among all teachers or given in varying amounts to teachers who especially deserve it. I'm curious whether any schools will choose this latter option, and if they do, whether their choice will reflect an honest attempt to see the effect of merit pay or cronyism, as Norm Scott at EdNotes Online speculates will happen.

Interestingly, a slightly higher percentage of "A" and "D" schools than "B" and "C" schools given the option to participate chose not to. But of the 19 schools with F's on their progress reports, not a single one opted out of the performance pay pilot. I'm not sure what, if anything, to make of this -- I'm open to suggestions.

In other incentives news, we also learned this week that the city has distributed $740,000 so far through the Opportunity NYC program, although we don't know how much money was distributed because of kids' achievements in school.

Bonuses for top-performing DOE officials?

Posted by Philissa at 12:46 PM

Wow. The Sun today reports that top DOE officials and aides will be eligible for bonuses based on the test scores of the students their responsibilities affect. According to the article, Chancellor Klein has asked about 100 top administrators to draft their own performance goals, which he and others will monitor. If they meet those goals, improve student test scores, and get good reviews from principals, the administrators could get performance bonuses as early as June.

I can't even begin to figure out what I think about this new development. The incentives are coming fast and furious out of the Chancellor's Office and at this point we have no way of telling how they will affect schools and students. But no one can say that the mayor and the chancellor aren't doing a darn good job of replicating the features of the business world that they have long said they admire.

At NYC Public School Parents, Leonie Haimson is incredulous about the new plan. She writes:

So let me get this straight: if test scores improve enough in our schools, even if this leads to a ridiculous amount of test prep and/or cheating, and if graduation rates improve, even if this causes increasing numbers of students to be suspended, transferred or discharged from our schools, then the already overpaid officials at Tweed will get even more of our taxpayer money for being able to further degrade the conditions for authentic learning at our schools.

I'm not quite so cynical, but it's valuable to remember that with higher stakes comes increased potential for corruption. For that reason, the DOE needs independent oversight of all of its data -- before they're used to make decisions, not audited after the fact. If we could trust the DOE when it says things are on the right track, I would feel a lot better about its leaders getting performance bonuses.

Roundup of "merit pay" opinion

Posted by Philissa at 7:06 AM

As the Times notes today, reaction so far on the city's new "merit pay" program has been mixed. The Times article talks to a cast of reformers, teachers, and former teachers who think the plan is interesting but may not be effective in the way the DOE hopes. For now, I'm going to turn now to what parents and teachers are saying online.

One parent leader told us he sees the agreement as a victory for the UFT because it reduces the retirement age, unheard of in any field. And the UFT's own blog, Edwize, is predictably thrilled about the agreement, saying, "The agreements create positive, pro-active programs that address two major issues which face our schools: attracting and retaining quality educators in our schools, and creating collaborative learning environments where teachers have real voice."

But other teachers are more skeptical about both of those claims. I've seen many comments expressing skepticism that teachers will actually influence the way the money is distributed given that the the principal and his or her appointee make up half of the four-member school-based committees. In the comments on Edwize, a teacher writes, "I sit on a few different 'committees in my school.' The meetings all follow the same formula. My principal tells us what she/he plans on doing and we get to nod approval."

NYC Educator, who opposes the current UFT leadership in general, writes that teachers have paid twice for the change in pension structure, which the UFT indicated was on the horizon when the union's contract was signed in 2005, but only gotten it once. Some, such as Jim Horn on School Matters, have picked up on the line in the original Times article that said the plan would "allow [UFT head Randi] Weingarten, a potential candidate to lead the national American Federation of Teachers, to cast herself as a reform-minded union leader" to support their claims that the new deal is not necessarily good for teachers, even though it was negotiated by the woman charged with advocating for them.

And some teachers are simply speechless.

What do parents think? Again on Edwize, the head of ACORN's education committee, a parent, writes, "The plan isn’t merit pay. It’s $20 million for 200 of New York’s lowest performing schools." She also writes that the program is a "savvy investment" that will pay off big in terms of teacher retention for good teachers.

But NYC Public School Parents criticizes the plan's dependence on test scores as practically the only determinant of bonus eligibility, saying it will lead to corruption at the school level. The parents' blog also weighs in on the pension issue, noting that the agreement will give an incentive for the most experienced teachers to retire.

From the policy angle, it's a question whether the plan is actually a form of merit pay at all. Judging from the language in today's article, the Times appears to have concluded that it is not, drawing on merit pay proponent Eric Hanushek's quote in the Post, where he said, "This is just group rewards." (The Post and the Daily News, however, enthusiastically continue to call it a merit pay plan, leading NYC Educator to write sarcastically, "If the Post and the News both like it, it must be great for teachers.")

On the internet, big questions seem to be getting lost a little in the pitched discussion over contract details and philosophies of education. Will the plan make a difference in spreading good teachers across the city? Will it entice good teachers to move to low-performing schools? Will it make bad teachers leave the field? The folks quoted in the Times article think it's too soon to tell, but that the amount of money probably is not large enough to encourage teachers to change their place of work and quality of life. One reformer told the Times the biggest benefit is that the bonus plan "sends a signal that your performance, your effort, your talent, is recognized and rewarded in this industry."

Merit pay for teachers: the state of the debate

Posted by Unknown at 1:30 PM

Today the New York Times published an article by Sam Dillon on the growing trend toward merit-based pay for teachers. Although Chancellor Joel Klein's plan for incentive-based teacher pay in New York City has stalled, the Times article reports that the movement is gaining steam at the national level. Dillon cites University of Wisconsin's Allan Odden, a professor of educational administration who studies teacher pay. According to Odden, the merit pay trend has now reached "critical mass," and teachers unions (whose members have historically opposed merit-based compensation) have begun to cooperate with the movement in some regions.

In New York City, Klein has wanted to implement an incentive-based compensation program since he became chancellor, but the issue has stalled over conflicts with the city's teachers union.

Despite the standoff over Klein's incentive pay proposal, merit pay did see a recent boost in New York City when a group of NYC charter schools received a federal grant for $10.5 million from the Teacher Incentive Fund. Check out the New York Sun's article for more.

For more on the state of the merit pay debate, check out the Economist's May 10 article.