By Tom
There's an economic principle known as zero-sum. It's when two parties compete and one party's gains are exactly equal to the opponent's losses. Tug-of-war is a zero-sum game. So is a teeter-totter. Business works the same way. There's only so much market, say, for vacuum cleaners. If I sell vacuums to 30 households, the other salesman has effectively lost out on those thirty sales. My gains, minus his losses, equals zero. Thus, zero sum.
But while zero-sum theory might explain sports, business and everything else grounded in competition, it does little to describe what happens in schools.
Or what should happen.
Consider SB 5399, a ridiculous piece of legislation that the Washington State Senate is currently debating. It's an attempt to use future teacher layoffs as an opportunity to get rid of bad teachers, regardless of seniority.
The idea is to base layoffs on "evaluation scores." Never mind the fact that most districts, including mine, don't have numerical, four-tier evaluation systems in place, and won't be required to for another three years. And never mind the fact that even when they do, a four-tier scale uses ordinal variables, not interval variables. SB 5399 bases its layoff system on a scheme by which a teacher's evaluations are averaged and compared with that of other teachers. I'm no statistician, but I do know that you can't average ordinal integers.
But never mind all that. My real gripe with SB 5399 is that it will end up pitting teacher against teacher. It will turn teaching into a zero-sum game. Why would I have any interest in helping the new teacher down the hall when two years from now only one of us will have a job? Why would I want to collaborate with the very "colleagues" with whom I'm competing? If my gains are my teaching partner's losses, why would I want her to teach well? Why would I want her students to learn?
I wouldn't. I've got a kid in my house who'll be ready for college in four years. He has a younger brother who needs braces. Under SB 5399 I would have no reason to help anyone else become a better teacher; and every reason not to. I love teaching, and I think I'm pretty good at it, but I also need teaching. Frankly, I have no other skill-set. My family depends on my job. Pit me against my colleagues and I'll fight like hell to win. Which also means that I'll fight like hell to make sure my colleagues lose. Along with their students.
I'm all for getting rid of bad teachers. The fact that they make the rest of us look bad is immaterial compared to the crime they commit day in and day out in their ill-deserved classrooms.
But getting rid of bad teachers by making the rest of us compete with one another will ultimately do far more harm to more students than every bad teacher we'll ever have.
Teaching is not a business. It's not a game. It's a collaborative endeavor in which the whole school is far more valuable than the sum of all the classrooms. Good schools are places where teachers work effectively in their classrooms. Great schools are places where good teachers spend countless hours planning, analyzing and reflecting together, and where they work effectively throughout the whole school.
Good teachers have an impact on their own students. But great teachers have an impact on the whole school.
SB 5399 might get rid of the bad teachers.
But it will also get rid of the great teachers.
Kristin:
Touche! I got carried away. Which is to say you probably have me on the competition issue.
However, I still firmly believe that if there are teachers teaching poorly, then there are principals not doing their jobs. And they don’t need this bill to do them.
Also, since layoffs would be done district-wide, the success of this scheme hinges on the inter-rater reliability of the teacher evaluation system. Something in which I have little confidence.
Tom, it’s not ranking and riffing by building. I believe it’s still by content area and endorsement.
So, you could have 14 scores of 4 and 1 score of 3.8, and still be the highest 15 scores in the district – no one one your staff would be rif’d.
On the other hand, if you have a bad principal, and even the bad teachers have 4’s, then we’re right back to riffing based on seniority.
“I think the key point here is that when layoffs are necessary, someone is going to lose, and there’s no reason it should be kids.”
This line is beginning to make me ill. It sets up a false choice: if you’re not in favor of this bill it must be that you prefer teacher tenure over student learning. Oversimplified nonsense. There already exists a way by which school districts can eliminate poorly performing teaching. If principles don’t have the spines to use it, then they shouldn’t be principals. If there’s a bad teacher in a building right now, students are already losing!
“I read the bill in full, and I don’t see anything funny about its math. It simply describes a way to determine who had the worst evaluation. If your district has a 4-tier evaluation system, determining who is the lowest will require some math, and it’s good that the bill is clear on how to do that math. (While technically you are right that you can’t average ordinal numbers, you can certainly order and compare them, which is all the bill’s math is doing).”
The bill proposes that evaluations will be averaged and then compared. You simply can’t average that kind of data. Period. End of story.
“I think you’re overstating the competitive effects of this bill. It’s true that it would create real incentives for obtaining higher performance ratings, but…is there really a valid argument that this is a bad thing? It’s important to note that this isn’t a forced-ranking bill: You and your colleagues can all get top marks if you’re really all equally good. It’s not zero-sum at all. If layoffs are necessary, and the worst people get laid off, everyone wins (except the worst people, who after all most deserve to be laid off).”
Consider this scenario: Fifteen teachers all work in a great school. They’re all wonderful. They all get top scores. Then one teacher has a tough year. Perhaps her husband has cancer. Maybe her dad dies. Who knows? but her score slips from a four down to a three. Then it goes back to a four the following year. That summer, however, her school loses thirty kids and she’s gone. Is that fair? Do the kids really win?
“I would hope professionalism and your principal’s awareness of what’s going on would preclude anyone from throwing a colleague under the bus.”
We would all hope that. But some of us would rather not hang our careers on hope alone.
“The alternative is the status quo, which is that better, newer teachers get laid off while people with unsats in their file get retained. I have yet to see a compelling argument that there is anything fair about that.”
Ah, the myth of the better, younger teacher vs. the older, crappy teacher. Of course, we can all think of that one example that proves the myth, can’t we? On the other hand, we all know full well that WE improved each year. Again, if there’s a bad teacher in your building, fire him, for crying out loud! Don’t sit there waiting for the legislature to do it for you.
“I agree that principals need the power to do their jobs well, which currently they don’t have when it comes to layoffs.”
But they already have the power to get rid of under-performing teachers. Unfortunately, they seldom use it.
Hi Tom,
Thanks for raising this issue for debate. I think the key point here is that when layoffs are necessary, someone is going to lose, and there’s no reason it should be kids. Layoffs are bad news, and the intent of this bill is to ensure that the least effective, rather than least senior, teachers are laid off whenever layoffs are necessary.
I read the bill in full, and I don’t see anything funny about its math. It simply describes a way to determine who had the worst evaluation. If your district has a 4-tier evaluation system, determining who is the lowest will require some math, and it’s good that the bill is clear on how to do that math. (While technically you are right that you can’t average ordinal numbers, you can certainly order and compare them, which is all the bill’s math is doing). If your district has a satisfactory/unsatisfactory system, it’s clear that if you’re unsatisfactory, you’ll be the one to go unless there’s another unsat person in your category with less seniority. If no one is unsat (under a two-tier system), seniority still rules.
I think you’re overstating the competitive effects of this bill. It’s true that it would create real incentives for obtaining higher performance ratings, but…is there really a valid argument that this is a bad thing? It’s important to note that this isn’t a forced-ranking bill: You and your colleagues can all get top marks if you’re really all equally good. It’s not zero-sum at all. If layoffs are necessary, and the worst people get laid off, everyone wins (except the worst people, who after all most deserve to be laid off). In fact, I don’t really see a way for you to influence the outcome other than to do the best job you can, which presumably you’re already doing. I would hope professionalism and your principal’s awareness of what’s going on would preclude anyone from throwing a colleague under the bus.
The alternative is the status quo, which is that better, newer teachers get laid off while people with unsats in their file get retained. I have yet to see a compelling argument that there is anything fair about that.
Kristin,
I agree with your comments, especially the part about the problematic situation of any teacher who was not evaluated on time – it’s not their fault, and it has dire consequences. Administrators will need to be held more closely accountable for completing their evaluations accurately and on time.
I agree that principals need the power to do their jobs well, which currently they don’t have when it comes to layoffs. If there are stupid/bully principals, there’s someone in the district whose job it is to fire them. It makes no sense to say that principals should not have a given power just because some will not exercise it well (heck, why allow administrators to suspend kids when some will abuse the power? Why let them spend school money when some will misspend it?). The solution is to hold them accountable for how they exercise the power, not take it away from everyone.
At any rate, thanks for the stimulating discussion!
I will say this: the bill comes from good intentions. People are clearly frustrated about the current process of teacher layoffs, and they’re frustrated that bad teachers aren’t being removed.
Districts like Seattle, with contracting student enrollment, feel the frustration more acutely. Those of us in the suburbs, where the enrollment tends to expand, don’t experience the problems and frustrations to the degree that Kristin expresses.
That said, I still think this bill is a complete non-starter. the math is bad and the unintended consequences are even worse.
Back to the drawing board.
I read the bill before I went to Olympia last Monday. I talked to 5 Legislators, including my own Senator, Jim Hargrove (who has signed on as a sponsor), about my concerns. The math is voodoo. The transfer language is frightening. The loss of due process is complete.
Kristin, putting a number to a thing does not mean you have measured it. Rounding to the nearest hundredth, and letting a teacher with a 2.21 go before a 2.22 is unsupportable. Where did the numbers come from? Do you believe in principal infallibility?
We need an evaluation system that creates better teachers, and gets rid of ineffective ones, continually, not just during a budget crisis.
Rob D. said everything else I would except:
Tom, thank you.
Kristen, the way I see this as pitting me against other teachers is my job is no longer dependent on me being a good educator. My job is dependent on me being good compared to my colleagues. In that sense my “performance” is matched (i.e. pitted) against theirs. And when jobs are on the line I’ll need to make sure my score is better than theirs. Her loss is my gain is the kid’s loss.
This whole thing angers me. This bill is trying to cure the symptoms while allowing the root problem to fester. The frustration Kristin is expressing is one shared with all of us. It is evidenced by RIFs when those who remain are ineffective while those who are let go were better. In that sense we have a zero-sum situation: the job the ineffective teacher has is one the novice (but effective) teacher cannot. But to me the solution is simple: as I said before, evaluate out those who don’t perform.
Instead of solving anything this bill gives cover for districts to use financial distress, real or imagined, to RIF and “clean house”. (What Rhee did in D.C.) It relies on an evaluation system which, most agree, is currently broken and no evidence exists that the next one will be an improvement.
Also, the school culture I’ve experienced gives me little hope that this system will be equitable. I’ve seen an alarming correlation between my more negative evaluations and my disagreements with a principal’s given policy (my favorite was language about being a team player). While evaluators claim to be objective, they are not. I would feel much more comfortable with a cohort of teachers to conduct evaluations as they have no reason to be vindictive.
I am positive the evaluation system in the works was not designed to compare teachers. How do you compare an average 10th year teacher with an average 2nd year teacher? New teachers are quite different than experienced teachers and they should be evaluated as such. Also, will the teachers who work under Principal Hardace be dismissed at a higher rate than those under Principal Fluffywiffle because one has a more stringent interpretation of the evaluation criteria and their teachers receive lower scores on average?
Evaluation should be used for evaluative purposes. And if used correctly, and there are incidences where it is, that is the tool for establishing teacher competence. If a teacher is deemed competent then experience is a good proxy for ability. If I’m faced with 2 competent teachers, I’ll take the teacher more experienced at removing barriers to learning in the class, the one more experienced at communicating with parents, the one more experienced at working efficiently. That is fair and objective.
Can someone find me the evidence that this will pit teachers against each other? Where in the bill does it say anything that indicates that?
Dr Pezz, I agree – experienced teachers are rewarded for their longevity, but should incompetent teachers be rewarded with job security? I don’t think so.
This bill is simply about the riffing procedure being changed from first in first out, to worst goes first.
With our current riffing protocol, ineffective teachers are shuffled around – from the central office back to the classroom, from an eliminated program to another school, from a closed school to an already-fragile school – and even if the receiving principal is totally on the ball, he’s going to spend a lot of time forcing a nonrenewal of contract. In Seattle at least, you can be the best principal in the world and, if there are rifs, you’re still going to end up getting a few teachers who may or may not be very good. All you know is that they’ve taught for longer than the teachers you’ve lost.
The Seattle principals union has just agreed to a pretty strenuous new contract, one that holds them accountable for results, rewards them for taking leadership positions in struggling schools, and bases their pay on student achievement. I think principals are going to have to start doing their job better, evaluations will be based on teacher effectiveness, and riffing based on effectiveness will work.
How can we continue to support riffing based on seniority? It boggles my mind to think we want to continue to do this. Everyone has the opportunity to teach well and work hard. It’s not like you’ll be denied the chance to be a good teacher.
We cannot continue to allow excellent teachers to be laid off simply because they lack seniority, and keep incompetent teachers in the classroom simply because they have it.
This bill only tries to cure a symptom of the real disease: administrators who hire poor performers, who do not get rid of inadequate teachers before due process is required, and who do not terminate bad teachers.
This bill obviously creates competition, and–worst of all–it uses an evaluation system not designed to compare instructors to do just that.
Plus, people often forget the history that has led many districts and states to use a seniority-based system.
First, Administrators in cash-tight areas would fire more experienced teachers to hire cheaper, younger teachers to save money. This wasn’t based on effectiveness; it was based on age and money. (Many charter schools do this now.)
Second, since teaching does not offer a lucrative career, teachers of experience are rewarded for their longevity with privileges like transfer priority and security (for the sake of their families too).
Sadly, private and public sector workers are now pitted against one another. Pushing teachers into a competitive system would further harm the basic premise of education as well as the public perception of it. This bill fuels this short-sightedness.
Tom, you’re probably right about the bad/evil/bully principal situation, but I’d like to think that the $750 I spend on union dues each year would help protect a teacher from a hostile work environment. why would a principal, in this educational climate, want to lose a good teacher? I find it hard to believe anyone would do that – give a teacher an unsavory assignment, yes, but get her fired?
My support of 5399 is based totally on my complete disgust with our current riffing protocol. I saw one of the best teachers in my building, a woman who took on every extra duty, a superb teacher, someone who chose to teach standard 9th history when other teachers refused, get riffed with seven years of experience and a man who had been a math coach took her place.
He can’t even begin to fill the void left by her absence. And who has her? Lake Wasington. Their gain is Seattle’s great loss, and Seattle has had a lot of losses lately.
Kristin says: “We have to give principals more power to move incompetent teachers out of the classroom. We have to make it easier to move bad teachers out of the profession.”
Yes, but…
There are three types of teachers in this country: those who have already worked with an incompetent, insecure, manipulative bully for a principal, those who are doing so now, and those who will eventually be doing so.
Besides the fact that this asinine bill would kill cooperation and breed competition within schools (and it would) and besides the fact that it relies on faulty math (which it does) this bill would give way too much power to principals. Most principals are great. In fact, of the six principals with whom I’ve worked over the past 27 years, four (including my current principal) have been wonderful, supportive and professional.
Four is most of six.
But then there were the other two. One was pure evil and the other was just plain stupid. Giving more power to either of these people would be ridiculous.
If administrators were doing their jobs effectively already (or had the time to do so), would we even need this bill? I have only read a summary.
People tend to think that “tenure” means “job for life.” It doesn’t. There is always due process for removal of a teacher whether in year three or year thirty. There is no magic line I cross where I can do no wrong. Whether my supervisor has the time/wherewithal to actually go through the due process to fire me is another issue.
What in this bill guarantees that administrators will be freed from the myriad other hoops, er…responsibilities… foisted upon them by unfunded and misguided mandates or district policies and initiatives that end up monopolizing an administrator’s time? My supervising administrator is someone I view as a very qualified and effective teacher as well as an administrator (he taught in my building before becoming admin in the building). If he had TIME to be in teachers’ classrooms to observe, I am confident there’d be more of my colleagues on plans of improvement than already are. He’d be a great instructional coach, and would certainly give teachers the chance to remediate themselves and become more effective.
And, if RIFs mean that there also fewer administrators in the building, those who are left have even less time to do the critical job of actually overseeing teaching, helping teachers improve, or showing the duds the door.
Rob, I think ineffective teachers are one part of what’s holding public education back. Ineffective administrators and bad fiscal management are bigger problems.
There’s nothing in SB 5399 that pits teacher against teacher – we don’t evaluate each other. As well, our evaluations are stand-alone, based on the observations of our evaluating administrator. There’s nothing in the evaluation that compares us to what the teacher across the hall is doing. In fact, most evaluations include a leadership component that requires a teacher to step up and mentor, collaborate, and contribute. I read the whole bill during my lunch break and it’s pretty fair.
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documents/billdocs/2011-12/Pdf/Bills/Senate%20Bills/5399.pdf
My only concern with this bill is the line, “any
certificated classroom teacher for whom no evaluation data is available must have his or her employment contract nonrenewed before any other certificated classroom teacher within his or her certification or endorsement area.”
That would be me, so far this year, because my administrator has lost my file. I do have evaluations from previous years, but since the bill proposes that the current year’s evaluations are worth 60% of the average and the previous year’s worth 40%, I’m without a paddle, so to speak, unless the bill’s language is clarified a bit.
The bill’s language should make clear that the teacher has some recourse if the administrator’s evaluation is incomplete, inaccurate, or unfair.
SB 5399 is excellent, but it depends entirely upon administrators doing their job effectively.
Hmmmmmmm.
If the issue plaguing education is ineffective teachers then remove ineffective teachers. It can be done. I know of no district that has bargained away its right to evaluate out teachers. True it isn’t easy. It shouldn’t be easy. If I’m labeled as ineffective and fired, I’m done. My career is over and my skills are not very transferrable to other professions. But we all know it is possible to walk the halls of a school, watch lessons, probe teachers for their rationale behind instructional choices and get a pretty good indication of their ability to teach.
People counter this with “the unions make it nearly impossible to remove them.” I don’t buy it. At my school one continuing contract teaching is on their way to being removed this year. One was last year. That is nearly 5% of the work force per year. This is not counting the non-continuing contract teachers who didn’t return (four). All told over 20% of the teachers who wanted to teach here were not brought back. Add to that teachers transferring or on leave and 7 out of 24 are new. Any other profession with that attrition wouldn’t need to downsize. I’ve bargained a contract and I’ve compared our contract language with other districts, including Seattle, and it’s no easier to remove teachers here than elsewhere.
I also hate the idea of districts padding their reserve funds to claim an operating budget shortfall and RIFing out of convenience. Having my job security tied to the ebb and flow of an unstable funding source is no more appealing.
It disgusts me to say this because I know the impact this will have on my school and our effectiveness as a system. But if I am pitted against my colleagues then I will hunker down, I’ll play the game, and I’ll do all I can do to outperform my partner teacher and I expect she’ll do the same against me. And I promise if I hit the pedagogical gold mine then I’m not sharing. But that isn’t who we are as people; I’m not in this profession to race to the top or to outcompete.
Well, as you might have guessed, I respectfully disagree with you on SB 5399 – for a few reasons.
As Excellent Schools Now points out, this is the time to get this legislation passed. Why? Because things grind slowly in education.
With the recent lashings of RIFs, my district has taken a terrible hit. Teachers with less seniority have been laid off regardless of their skills, and teachers with more seniority have been kept. Even worse, as the central office eliminates positions, those people return to the classroom even though many of them don’t want to be there and have no business being there.
The result is that we’re looking at a teaching force that is losing its critical mass of skill, energy and passion. The damage is lasting – it echoes – and we’re going to see things get worse before they get better because we’ll have unprepared kindergarteners moving up the ranks, encountering a higher percentage of unskilled and unhappy teachers until, by their senior year, they could have had 12 years of bad teaching.
So, we have to take action now. We have to give principals more power to move incompetent teachers out of the classroom. We have to make it easier to move bad teachers out of the profession.
Also, this bill requires that both the teacher and principal agree to the hire. That’s important. In Seattle’s last round of RIFs I spoke with an elementary principal who lost two excellent second year teachers and was forced to take two displaced teachers who were on plans of improvement.
That’s not okay, and while this principal could have spent much of the year jumping through the necessary hoops to remove these teachers, his school suffers and so do his students.
Seattle does have an evaluation system in place. It’s not perfect. It relies on administrators who may or may not be qualified to evaluate, or organized enough to maintain records (as I know from personal experience), but it’s better than last in first out.
And I disagree that it’s going to pit teacher against teacher. Teachers will still work together, collaborate, and mentor, because it’s what’s best for kids and the community.
I’m totally in favor of SB 5399, because I can no longer do this job if I have to battle the damage caused by incompetent teachers. They’re killing us, and many of them have seniority and are protected when it comes time to reduce the teaching force.
In almost every other profession, when it’s time to downsize you keep the quality and eliminate the waste. How can we say that what we do is so important, and then say that it’s not as important as our own job security?