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[guest of Japan]

The city of Denver, Colorado is putting a performance based pay system in place for public school teachers.

Under this plan the teachers' pay will be based on factors such as continued education, location of school (higher pay for low performance schools), field of specialty (higher pay for maths and sciences) and most importantly student achievement as seen in teacher selected goals and standardized tests.

Proponents of the the program say that it enables teachers salaries to go from a max of $60,000 a year to $100,000. Higher quality teachers will be drawn to education. And student performance will improve.

Some teachers fear that Principals who evaluate the teachers will play favorites or mark teachers poorly based on personality issues.

On the whole the teachers, the teacher's union, administrators and the BOE are all in favor of the program. While similar efforts in Cinncinati, Ohio and NYC have faltered through lack of funding or never gotten off the ground due to one side trying to control too much of the development.

As educators, I'm curious how you all feel about performance based pay in education whether it be EFL or puplic school education.

Personally I'm all for it. I've always resented working with teachers who were payed the same as me or more yet provided an inferior product.

[Aramas]

It sounds good in principle and I hope it works out. However, call me cynical but it looks like it will be a regulatory nightmare that will encourage the best teachers to head for the snooty WASP schools leaving the time-servers to the socio-economically depressed areas, thus widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots. There would probably also be a knock-on effect into higher education with more places being taken by the spoiled middle-class kids.

Sounds like it's all good from the Republican point of view They can probably even squeeze in a new government department and create thousands of jobs for the WASP kids that can afford decent schooling. Hmm...the 'Department of Patriotic Re-education' has a suitably ominous ring to it

[gugelhupf]

In principle I'm very keen on the idea of an element of performance related pay. Like previous posters have warned, it is important that in the public sector teachers' performance is judged separately from school performance otherwise you'd never get good teachers into poor performing schools to help turn them around.

The idea seems slow to catch on in the TEFL world, however, at least from my own very limited experience. One school I have been in touch with (and hope to work for!) use this as a part of teacher development in that salary increments are awarded for teaching performance, and bonuses are paid across the teaching staff based on student recruitment and retention. Sadly, I fear this is the exception rather than the rule - unless you people know different?

[johnslat]

Coincidentally enough, today's NY Times has an article on this topic:

"May 9, 2004
When Students' Gains Help Teachers' Bottom Line
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

DENVER � As a teacher of emotionally disturbed children, Jeremy Abshire sets goals for each of his students. Geronimo, 14, an American Indian who knew only the letters for "Jerry," will read and write, and sign his true name. Shaneesa, a meek 12-year-old reading at a first-grade level, will catch up to her middle-school peers and attend regular classes in the fall.
Under a proposal approved by teachers here and to be considered by voters next year, if Mr. Abshire's students reach the goals he sets, his salary will grow. But if his classroom becomes a mere holding tank, his salary, too, will stagnate.
"The bottom line is, do you reward teachers for just sitting here and sticking it out, or for doing something?" said Mr. Abshire, who has been teaching for four years. "The free market doesn't handle things that way, so why should it be any different here?"
In March, Denver's teachers became the first in a major city to approve, by a 59 percent majority, a full-scale overhaul of the salary structure to allow "pay for performance," a controversial approach that rewards teachers for the progress of their students.
At a time when more and more superintendents are supporting moves away from the traditional salary structure for teachers, and finding their efforts stymied in an atmosphere of suspicion and financial austerity, Denver teachers' vote is a major breakthrough.
Under the city's plan, teachers and other school employees would earn raises if students meet academic targets. The system would also reward teachers for getting advanced certification, working in high-poverty schools or teaching subjects like math and science, where qualified instructors are in short supply. The plan would raise the maximum pay for most teachers to $100,000, from $60,000.
"Teachers should be paid more, but we should have accountability," said Jerry F. Wartgow, the superintendent of schools.
[Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, is echoing the same themes in his own plan for improving teacher quality, unveiled on May 6: setting aside $9 billion to raise base salaries, with raises and bonuses for teachers who succeed in raising student test scores, or who teach subjects or areas suffering from teacher shortages.]
Though other large cities have adopted limited measures linking extra pay and the performance of teachers, none have advanced as far as Denver, or undertaken changes as comprehensive. Minneapolis began a modest experiment two years ago that pays teachers up to $2,000 a year more for taking district-sponsored training courses, if they result in improved instruction as judged by supervisors, and Houston gives everyone in a school, from the guidance counselor to the principal, a bonus based largely on students' test scores.
In Florida, all school districts are under orders to create salary systems tied in part to student progress. And with the federal No Child Left Behind law focusing attention on schools in poor neighborhoods, many more districts are offering incentives to teachers to work in those schools, the very ones that teachers with seniority tend to avoid.
"It's an idea that's moving forward," said Allan Odden, director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noting, however, "It's a bumpy train."
Two years ago, teachers in Cincinnati overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to link their pay to their skills, and in Iowa, a 2001 law tying salary to teacher evaluations and student test scores has been undone by a lack of financing.
In New York, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Joel I. Klein, the schools chancellor, also want to tie raises to teacher and student performance, as did Mayor Bloomberg's predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani. But without the track record of cooperation that marked the Denver initiative, New York City officials have been blocked by the teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers.
"We're in a place where management thinks they can mimic Wall Street," said Randi Weingarten, the union's president. She said she had no objection to the Denver plan, which was negotiated between school officials and the teachers union. But in New York, she said, "What they would like to do is move us back to the 1800's, before collective bargaining."
The Denver system is expected to cost the city $25 million a year, to be financed through a levy that voters will consider in November 2005. The levy would add $61 to the $1,277 property tax bill on a house assessed at $250,000, the Denver average. A panel of school and union officials would control the money through a trust fund reserved for teacher salaries.
If approved, the new salary structure would take effect in January 2006. Teachers hired after that date would automatically fall under it, but previous hires would have seven years to decide whether to opt in.
The National Education Association, the parent union of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, has generally viewed performance-based pay plans with suspicion. The national union tends to see these pay structures as eroding collective bargaining, splintering the rank and file by forcing teachers to compete for a limited pool of money.
"If the question is, What do people think would help to attract good people to the classroom?, the answer's got to be salaries," said Michael Pons, a spokesman for the N.E.A. "The people who say, `We aren't going to pay more for teacher salaries unless it's performance-based' are politicians who don't want to face the voters and say, `We don't have the revenues to finance the education system that parents want.' "
In Denver, however, school and union officials smoothed the transition through a four-year pilot project that built support among teachers. For the pilot, teachers wrote their own objectives for their classes and were paid more if they succeeded. Eventually, some 637 teachers at 16 schools took part, and nearly 600 of them collected bonuses of about $1,500 a year.
The pilot project found that the students whose teachers set higher, more explicit goals did better than those of teachers whose goals were more modest and less defined. The academic significance, however, was unclear, because the objectives varied widely.
The results of standardized exams were also mixed, without clear reasons. Wayne Eckerling, assistant superintendent of schools, said that the logic of using pay increases as an incentive was persuasive. "Would you really want to give" a 5 percent raise, Dr. Eckerling asked, "simply on the basis of seniority, or would you want to direct that money to rewarding teachers who meet objectives, to target that money toward beneficial ends?"
Brad Jupp, a teachers union official who led the group that designed the project, said trust between teachers and school officials grew during the trial run. At each stage, they negotiated the experiment's features, adapting it to each side's concerns.
"Throughout the pilot, whatever teachers said mattered," said Valeri Kershaw, a language arts teacher at Morey Middle School, who voted for the new compensation system. "It was very responsive to teacher input."
Dr. Wartgow also credited the pilot program, which was run by the Community Assistance and Training Center, a nonprofit organization based in Boston, with raising teachers' interest in improving instruction.
For the plan to work, a committee of school and union officials still must agree on flexible and yet fair standards for setting classroom goals � a detail that was essentially sidestepped during the pilot. One of the greatest fears teachers express is the potential for favoritism or retribution by principals, who will evaluate teachers' success in formulating and reaching their goals.
The agreement that the teachers approved bars use of Colorado's standardized assessment test for measuring individual or classroom progress, although the scores will be used to parcel out bonuses for schoolwide gains.
Dr. Wartgow is optimistic. In the past, he said, teachers complained that standardized tests given during the school year were intrusive and distracting. But in schools where compensation was tied to student performance, teachers became eager for the interim results, he said.
"There couldn't be more music to a superintendent's ears than to hear teachers saying, `You have to give me timely information right now, so that if what I'm doing isn't working, I know it right away,' " Dr. Wartgow said. "That's exactly where we want them to be."
The district also created a Web site that lets teachers compare their salaries under the existing salary schedule and the proposed one.
That comparison won over Ms. Kershaw. Under the existing structure, she earns $33,000 � the starting salary for a public-school teacher. Under the proposed system her salary could eventually reach $100,000, she said.
"More importantly, I felt this is such a fair way to pay teachers," Ms. Kershaw said after wrapping up a poetry class. "It's so appealing because it makes me work harder."

Regards,
John

[Stephen Jones]

[Ben Round de Bloc]

In my opinion, it's one of those things that looks good on paper but doesn't fly.

First, there are very few if any school systems in the States that don't already have continuing education as a component of their teachers' pay scale, so that's nothing new.

Second, higher pay for low performance schools won't cut it, because it contradicts the part about teachers' pay being based on student achievement. In spite of what proponents of performance based pay say, teachers do not choose the goals. The main underlying goal, no matter how it is stated, is high scores on standardized tests. Standardized tests measure achievement, and low performance schools can't become high performance schools simply by paying teachers more to teach in them. There are too many other factors involved.

There's no fair or accurate way to credit teachers regarding students' achievement. Hypothetical example: I teach a course to 20 very bright high school students, and you teach the same course in the same school to 20 not-so-bright students. My students blow the top off of their stardardized test in the subject, while your students hit near the bottom. Therefore, I get more money than you do, even though my students improved very little while I taught them, and your students learned a whole lot but not enough to score high on the standardized test. Now that I think about it, let's not just pay you less, let's fire you.

Why should math and science teachers get paid more than other teachers? Another hypothetical example: I'm a high school English teacher. I've been teaching for 15 years, do a great job, and consider my area very important. If students don't learn English skills well, they won't succeed in their future profession of choice. You've been teaching math for 10 years, do a great job, and consider your field very important, too. All other things being equal -- we both have MA degrees, we've both consistently received excellent teacher evaluations, we both teach the same number of students/classes, our students do well on standardized tests in both areas, etc. -- you get paid more than I do simply because you teach math and I teach English. Okay, use the supply-&-demand justification for paying math teachers more, if you want. Then lots of qualified people flood the math teaching market, because the pay is so good. When that happens, be prepared to take a big pay cut. (Don't count on my support, because I'm still ticked off that you made more money than I did, even though I'd been at it 5 years longer than you.)

I think the principles of performance based pay may work in something like a factory setting where the product isn't human, for lack of a better term. A factory worker who turns out 20 pieces that pass inspection per hour should earn more than the guy next to him that turns out only 15 pieces. However, teaching/learning can't be measured like that.

Standardized testing, which is an essential part of performance based pay, is driving more good teachers out of the profession than anything else. Just my opinion for what it's worth, based on 20 years of teaching in public schools in the USA.

[Stephen Jones]

More to the point is the fact that if you make some teachers salaries even lower you won't attract anybody at all to the job.

But these schemes have only been around for about 150 years and they always get junked before they completely foul things up, so let everybody fall through the same pothole twice.

[SueH]

If you want to know more about such schemes you could search the British educational press and teaching trade union web sites since a sort of performance related pay is being introduced over here in the state compulsory schooling sector (to age 16).

One problem would appear to be that the amount of paperwork required is already bad enough, and if you apply for the enhancements available that situation doesn't get any better.

I must just make the point to Tim though, that testing and pay doesn't necessarily have to be based on standardised tests but can use the difference made from a particular starting point. Figures for standards in UK schools are adjusted based on the nature of the intake.

How effective the scheme will be in the long run remains to be seen. I'm not involved in that educational area but the very thought of all the hoops to be jumped through and the paperwork necessary fill me with a great sense of weariness.

[guest of Japan]

Johnslat, it was no coincidence. I made the post after reading that article.

Stephen Jones,
Quote:
I've always resented working with teachers who were payed the same as me or more yet provided an inferior product.



What makes you think that is going to change?

Of course I can't be certain of change, but it would seem that a model which resembles a business would be more likely to reward quality than current methods.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[Guest]

I WOULD PROBABLY STARVE TO DEATH!

[Clancy]

In China every FE would starve to death!

[guest of Japan]

Ben Round de Bloc,

Thank you for taking the time to write so much. You remind me so much of a teacher I did my student teaching with. He was a very diligent teacher and every morning he carefully filed every new memo under the sun into the rubbish bin. He was hysterical when he'd do. He'd mutter about trying this or that on about 5 year intervals, which seemed to coincide with new superintendents and principals.

He was a gruff powerful man who took his job very seriously, but had long ago stopped taking the education establishment seriously.

And another valuable bit of wisdom I picked up from another long timer, "Nobody makes a change or decision slower than teachers."

Thanks all.

[Stephen Jones]

[guest of Japan]

Obviously your point is spot on Mr. Jones.

However, those schools tend to look at teachers as the pitchmen and distributers of a product, and not as teachers. Law firms and hospitals are also businesses and they are smart enough to recognize that the quality of the service is the most important aspect and reward appropriately. Most certainly I'm not in favor of treating public education like a McDonalds.