By Tom
I know a guy who hunts. I have never hunted, but I have a basic understanding of how it works: you shoot an animal, you take it home and you eat it. This guy wanted to use dogs to hunt. Apparently, they bring the dead animals to you, making the task of hunting even easier. My friend got two dogs and tried to train them to help him hunt. He couldn't. So he brought them to a dog trainer and offered a lot of money to have his dogs trained. After a few days, the trainer called my friend and told him to come and get one of the dogs. "I can't teach it," he said, "it's not smart enough."
Every pay-for-performance scheme I've ever explored (including the corpse of HB 1410) relies to some degree on student performance as an indication of teacher performance. That's why I will always oppose these schemes. Teaching is more than increasing test scores. Way, way more. Test scores are a great tool, when used correctly, but they are not the point.
Would I like to get paid more for being a good teacher? Absolutely. But I’m not even sure I am a good teacher, because I don't think we really know what that means.
In baseball it's fairly simple, because there's a universally accepted goal: winning the World Series. To do that, your team has to win games, and to do that they have to score runs while preventing their opponents from scoring runs. If you think long enough about it, you can analyze any action on the field in terms of how it helps or hinders the chances of your team reaching the ultimate goal, and then analyze every player in terms of their contribution.
We don’t really have that in education. The closest we have is “meeting the standards.” But that’s not the only thing we want from our schools. My wife and I have two children of our own, and we want them to nail the standards, but we also want them to know how to make ethical and safe choices, write legibly, wait patiently for their turn, use resources more generously, and for crying out loud, use the bathroom in a hygienic manner.
These are outcomes which, for better or for worse, we have foisted upon our public schools. It might be possible to take every single outcome that we expect from public education and measure the extent to which every person working in those schools has or hasn’t contributed to those outcomes. And then pay them based on that contribution. The problem, of course, is that not every child has the same needs. And even if they did, we probably wouldn’t agree on what those needs are. And of course, even if we solved all of those puzzles, we still don’t have enough money to do anything about it.
Right now the state differentiates teacher salaries on the basis of experience and education. I’m not sure how that was originally conceived, but my guess is that they decided that an older, wiser teacher has a higher potential to be a good teacher than someone armed with only a brand new teaching certificate. How accurate is that premise? Not very, at least according to the authors of the recently rejected HB 1410/SB 5444, who decided against rewarding teachers who earn a master's degree. But, as I see it, earning a master’s degree is still valuable and worth rewarding. Although it doesn’t prove that a teacher is actually more effective, it does prove that a teacher knows how to be more effective. Obviously, that shouldn’t be the end of the road in terms of teacher education. Teachers should continue to improve their craft and districts should make sure they offer valuable, job-embedded classes and workshops to that end. Then these “masters” could learn how to apply what they learned in their formal education.
The state has recently refined the pay scheme to add a bonus for NBCTs. In my mind, that’s a huge improvement, because these are teachers who not only understand what good teachers know and are able to do, they’ve actually demonstrated it in their classrooms.
Maybe sometime, somewhere, someone might invent a pay-for-performance plan that’s fair. A plan that takes into account everything we expect from teachers. A plan that works just as well for a high-needs preschool teacher in White Center as it does for an AP Calculus teacher on Mercer Island. A plan that doesn’t encourage teachers to narrow their focus to “that which will be tested.”
So far, that hasn’t happened. In the meantime I will continue to oppose pay-for-performance plans that are based on student test scores.
I’m a teacher, not a dog trainer.
Sure, play the Einstein card. How do you respond to that? “Einstein was overrated. He just had a good PR guy.”
I have made this point before, but I’ll summarize one last time and then let you have the last word if you want it.
The goal of an education system is to facilitate student learning to improve a student’s chances at success in the post school world. We can identify skills needed for college entrance, trades, etc. We can measure student learning to achieve those needed skills. We can measure it pretty accurately. We can measure this learning over the course of any time period we choose. If you want to measure inputs that correlate with student learning, we can measure those, too.
Would these measure correct identify a more accomplished educator every time? Of course not. Neither do baseball stats and Lord knows Wall Street is no bastion of perfect correlation between data and results. And would I advocate any one measure, like the WASL/WCAP/MSP/HSPE/STOPPLEASE, determining compensation? Of course not. Would I want my kid in the class of a teacher who has demonstrated, using multiple measures, a higher correlation to learning than the teacher down the hall who’s put in his years and earned his credits? No brainer.
This notion that education is somehow different, that there are all of these nebulous unmeasurable unknowns, so we should be content that the current compensation system is the best we can do, well, I’m just not buyin’ it.
As for your statement that baseball isn’t important, I can only say….HAVE YOU LOST IT, MAN?
Three things:
1. Jay Greene states that “we have nowhere to go but up, in regards to changing the current system.” The problem there is, millions of teachers, none of whom make in a year what NBA bench-warmers make per game, signed on to the much-maligned salary scale. Most of those teachers will tell you that they do indeed improve with experience and education. I certainly will. The metrics we use may tell a different story, but I content that the problem is in the quality (and quantity) of the metrics. Right now, my students get measured once a year; in math and reading. When we get accurate, fair and reliable metrics that take into account everything we’re expected to do as teachers, come see me. Right now, the best tool we have is National Board Certification. It allows us to measure the extent to which a teacher is doing those things that research tells us are effective ways to teach.
2. Green looks like an idiot when he makes the comparison between NBCTs and Hall-of-Famer Larry Bird. Basketball, like most sports, is a physical endeavor, played best by the relatively young. Most basketball players peak in their twenties or early thirties. Teaching, while somewhat physical, is far more mental and emotional. Teachers probably peak in their late fifties; some never do.
3. I love sports, but sports are a lousy metaphor for what happens, or should be happening, in schools. So is business, by the way. In sports and business, there’s a clearly-defined and easily-measurable goal: winning or profit. Everybody in the organization understands that and buys into it. It isn’t negotiable. That isn’t really true in school. We have the standards, but there’s a lot more that goes on during the school day that takes on far greater importance than the standards. And the finished product (a graduating senior) is not just a collection of the skills taught by her teachers for the past thirteen years. That person made a lot of personal choices that affected how well those skills were acquired. The best metaphor for teaching, as far as I’m concerned, is parenting. You pour your heart and soul into your children. You tend to their intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual needs. Sometimes they pay attention and sometimes they don’t; there’s no clear way to measure your success as a parent, except to be able to say you made the best decisions you could all along the way. But that doesn’t really lead to any clear “metrics.” I’m trying to be a good dad right now, but I have no idea what my score is. The family across the street from us when we were growing up had great parents. They raised five great citizens and one criminal. So what are they? Five and one?
Sorry John. I’m a sabermetrician from April through October because it makes sense. But not at school and not at home. As Einstein so perfectly said, “not everything that is important can be measured, and not everything that can be measured is important.” School and family are important. Baseball and business really aren’t.
Since Tom and I both reference sports in our discussion on teacher compensation, I thought this article might be of interest as it looks at teacher comp through the lens of NBA stud but non-superstar Shane Battier. Both sides (current system is best until I see better/any change is better than the current system) get nods.
http://jaypgreene.com/2009/02/19/the-no-stats-all-star/
Perhaps, Mark, I was not as clear as I intended. For that, I apologize.
Let me step back a moment from your latest specific questions. Use the following principles to address your specific Qs. You likely already know and use them.
The people with whom I have worked on such plans have a comprehensive familiarity with experimental empirical research and theory literature about learning and how it occurs. We know the studies, explanations, and options someone proposes as a part of a plan.
We make judgments, yes, but stating opinions does not occur about how to plan or how to obtain inceased student learning. We’ve all obtained those results.
Therefore, discussion occurs about whether study X (not personal experience) yields more results we plan over other studies. Empirical data resolve these brief discussions.
We agreed that the purpose of education planning is to yield the most learning with the least use of resources, however defined, including least teacher effort, etc.
In general, we give priority to behavioral steps grounded in experimental research over theories of development, cognition, etc. which we also know.
After all, observations of behavior are the only way we have to describe learning. So, we start and end with behavioral sciences.
With these assumptions, we define the purpose of the plan and use backward chaining to describe how to obtain that result with an estimated degree of confidence.
Previously, I offered several steps at the end of that backward chain. Speaking only for myself, I work to shorten the distance between the start and the finish on that chain.
In these ways, ed planning provides a structure to account for how to increase measured student learning efficiently.
Thus, planners describe how to obtain measurable learning at a given level, and how to describe that path so others may use it with measured confidence.
This is technical, not political, planning.
Best wishes.
Bob:
Questions: how do you eliminate opinion from the “how to”? (Is there some transcendental pedagogy ineffable to us mere mortals? Even the theorists you mention differ to varying degrees on what they conclude about cognition and learning.) If there is no universal truth, then to whose opinions are we subscribing?
More detail on #2, please: what exactly do you mean by learning rates and how are these quantified in a wholly objective way in let’s say, writer’s voice and rhetorical organization as described in the state standards for composition/communication?
Also, for #4, what data did you find to support the dramatic gains in student learning based on use of a tablet PC? What if this technology is applied by a practitioner who is a master of the technology but has no skills in motivating his/her students to have the drive to achieve–or even communicating content to his/her students? And, if this data is to be used to determine merit pay (as was a topic in Tom’s original post), who establishes the measures and what measured growth represents meritorious teaching?
Mark,
It took me with others over 100 work hours to draft a state ed plan less than 50 pages in length once all relevant data were collected. Given that, here’s a sample of initial steps:
1: Assume it’s doable. Now, you have a “how to” vs. “If…, then” problem to unravel. Limit all discussion to describing “how to.” Avoid opinion and personal experience talk like the plague. This exercise is about student learning, not teaching!
2: Describe learning rates (i.e., operationalize them as the difference in time, $$ cost, learning loss, etc. to meet criterion on each specific state standard using regular instruction and direct instruction, Tablet PC software, etc.).
3. Use only behavioral descriptions, as available in over 100 years of databased scientific descriptions of how people learn (i.e., by Skinner, Lindsley, Bereiter, Zeaman & House, Terman & Merrill, …) You know such descriptions from ed psych classes. They work; set aside objections during this task.
4. Buy and learn to use a Tablet PC for your own PD and for classroom instruction. You will see how much time you can save with it and how much faster your students reach learning criteria.
And yes, some of us have started operationalizing learning rates, so that Tablet PCs can calculate and report them automatically for each student.
These steps point in a familiar direction?
Travis, go for it! A GoogleDoc Sounds like a good idea.
Gotta go for now.
Bob et.al: I am not even finished with my first decade in this industry and have a lot to learn. You say it is “doable to create a workable way to verifiably increase student learning rates”…it sounds like you have specific answers to questions I have not yet thunk to pose. Apart from abstractions, what do you suggest? Concrete, mind you, step-one step-two style. I’m genuinely curious…this is a problem that needs solved, and you seem to have plans which are doable and workable in our current economic climate. More…
Let’s create a GoogleDoc and put a plan on “paper”, spend countless hours hashing it out until the best idea is there, and then go to the state with it. What? By then it will be out-dated. Darn. But let’s do it anyway. A good idea is still good.
I agree with your comments, Mark, and share some of the observations you offer. Yes, plans can appear complicated; probably you as have I drafted some of those, including for states.
It would be fun to lay out such a plan again, addressing the issues you describe and still end up with a workable way verifiably to increase student learning rates. It’s doable and timely.
Call the meeting You seem to have a handle on the ideas.
While granting your points about private ed enterprises, I do not dismiss private efforts to offer learning venues. They do not need to carry the same expectations as current public schools. Witness the University of Phoenix. Yes? 🙂
Nope. Bob, I don’t see a plan in your post. So we cut administration…who will do the work that is presently being done in those positions? (student discipline, leading professional development, facilitating parent contact and work with community stakeholders, not to mention the required supervision at extracurriculars…to name the tip of the iceberg). What is your proposed plan for funding not only the hardware, but also the software, support and training which would accompany moving to electronic communications in schools? What is your proposal to fund and implement the measures by which student academic progress can be monitored in order to determine teacher pay (and with fewer administrators in the building, how will that be accomplished?) Also, where is this money that you say is waiting for us, sans the political volition to get it moving?
The problem I do see with private enterprises doing it anyway is that they discover just how expensive, and not at all profitable, the business of education is. To fund the infrastructure and materials demands such high tuition that potential customer, unless of means, balk at the cost. Otherwise there would be far more options for private enterprise education in the market…which there isn’t considering the number of potential customers (students) out there. The place where private enterprises tend to cut costs is in personnel: I have worked in the private education sector, the pay was low enough that turnover was ridiculous, and so low that the teachers who were retained were (a) able to settle for lower income because of other family income, i.e. rich spouse, (b) dedicated to the principles of the school and willing to be an ascetic, i.e. religious-based instruction, or (c) sorry to say it, incapable of getting a job elsewhere because no public school would hire them (the smallest segment, of course).
Plans are good, yes. But plans are complicated.
Thanks, Mark.
First, these are good, robust days for teachers to demonstrate increased students’ measured academic performance with fewer resources. I think of this as increasing learning efficiency.
Entrepreneurs know this is the time to start new projects that do more for less resource use.
All of us know, as teachers, how to use advancing electronic and other resources to increase learning and public school policy makers know we know. We’re lucky that way.
In short, I like and have benefited from performance pay in addition to the current 2D pay schedule.
Ideally, I’d work toward fewer public school administrators, more advancing electronic communications in schools, no teacher tenure and paying teachers for learners’ measured academic performance increases. Money exists, but apparently not the political will, for these to happen.
For reasons Tom and others have outlined, I don’t think those will likely survive current legislative debates.
So, I expect some private enterprises likely to do it anyway without as many teachers.
Yes?
Ahhh, come on Tom. You mean you don’t have time to teach and do the job of another person? What is wrong with you. No, I hear you. I have grabbed my rain coat and a floatation device; it is going to be a big storm.
I honestly don’t have a plan. That’s not my job. In regards to this blog, my job is to examine educational policy in terms of how I think it will impact my real job, which is teaching third grade. If I had the expertise, experience, resources and time I could probably come up with something. But I have none of those, and quite frankly, even if I did, I wouldn’t pretend that we could improve any state program in the current fiscal environment. The best we can hope for right now is to preserve the programs we love and try to ride out the storm. I have a feeling it’s gonna get a lot worse before it gets any better.
I’d like to hear your plan, Bob.
Welcome back. What plan, then, do you propose?