Unacceptable

Today I'd like to introduce you to John Kuhn, superintendent of the Perrin-Whitt Consolidated Independent School District in North Texas. Kuhn is a life-long advocate of public education and public accountability. This weekend, at the National Save Our Schools Rally in Washington DC, he spoke passionately about the vital need for great public schools, the critical importance of a no-excuses public attitude toward educating America's kids, and what it will really take to create the equitable education system our great country deserves. For now, as we work toward those goals, Kuhn says, "I stand before you today bearing proudly the label of unacceptable because I educate the children [private schools] will not educate.... I am unacceptable and proud of it!"

Make no mistake: unacceptable as he is according to current educator grading methods, Kuhn is not an apologist for bad teaching; he is only asking for appropriate systems of evaluation. In April, Kuhn appealed to his state legislature for a two-year moratorium on high-stakes testing. When one representative asked Kuhn why he thought teachers shouldn't be graded, he wasn't prepared with his answer. However, he recognized that this is a question that keeps coming up for educators, and being unprepared to answer makes us look, in his words, "like [we] are just whiners who don't want to be held accountable at all." So he thought about it and developed an articulation, not of why teachers shouldn't be graded, but of how the state has become a bad teacher and, thus, an irresponsible grader.

His emphatic and empathetic response to this question provides a useful starting point for all of us who believe teachers should be graded, but fairly. It's only a starting point, as some folks pointed out in the comments. It is up to the rest of us to develop our own articulations of how to create better forms of teacher accountability, how to fairly evaluate teachers and push them toward achieving greatness. Until we put meaningful teacher evaluation, support, and development systems in place, we must join Kuhn in proudly bearing the label of unacceptable.

Motivation in the 21st Century

The testing debate is really heating up this week, with cheating investigations continuing in Atlanta and New Jersey, and teachers in Ogden, Utah, choosing whether to resign or sign a new merit-pay contract. Meanwhile, New York City's mayor Bloomberg has canceled the city's merit-pay pilot program, yet reinforced his support for performance pay in general.

The only good news, recently, on the issue of merit-pay comes from Ohio, where Republican Governor Kasich has made the entirely reasonable decision to hand teachers the task of creating a fair merit-pay process. To comply with Race to the Top requirements, the final plan must include teacher evaluations that weight student academic achievement for at least 50% of teacher ratings. However, if done right, the decision to let teachers design the details could result in a merit-pay system that has the support of teachers because it supports teachers in making the efforts they understand to be essential to their jobs, like collaborating with colleagues and developing relationships with students' families.

I'm encouraged by efforts of politicians to respect and defer to the knowledge and skills of teachers when designing education policy, but I'm having trouble getting truly excited about even a good merit-pay program. Focusing efforts on merit-pay program details begs the question of whether merit-pay is an effective incentive, and if so, what it actually incents. Early studies have shown that offering performance bonuses of 20% of salary might slightly motivate top-performing college students to enter teaching, but any motivational effect on current teachers to change their teaching is unproven at best. A McKinsey study revealed that bonus pay isn't even in the top five motivators for current teachers to consider teaching in a high-need school, and a RAND study revealed that many teachers in NYC's merit-pay pilot program "reported viewing the bonus as a reward for their usual efforts, not as an incentive for changing their behavior."

For another perspective on how to truly motivate creative and thoughtful teachers, check out Vicki Davis's excellent article on "The Freedom to Teach" in today's Washington Post. Davis's thinking is exactly what 21st century students need. As Levar Burton always said on Reading Rainbow, "You don't have to take my word for it!" because a few members of the 'Net Generation would like you to hear it from them:

More Links:

Biz Journal article on Atlanta educators resigning amid cheating scandal

CNN report on upcoming cheating investigations at 34 New Jersey Schools

Deseret News report on Ogden teacher contract

Wall Street Journal article on the new teacher rating system in NYC

Columbus Dispatcher article on decision to ask teachers to design merit-pay process

McKinsey's "Closing the Talent Gap" study

Edweek reports on RAND study of NYC merit-pay

FOUR, FOUR, FOUR improvements in ONE

The big news out of the Big Apple this week is that the city is ending its merit pay pilot program after a study showed that the merit pay had no effect on student achievement. Analysts at RAND, the independent research company that designed the study of the program, suggest that the small bonuses were not motivating enough to change teacher behavior in the current context of one-test-fits-all carrot-and-stick "accountability."

The NYC merit pay program focused on motivating existing teachers to work hard to boost student scores, but what if we shift the focus to motivating existing hard workers to lend their efforts to same goal? This would more closely resemble the national strategies of top-performing Finland, Singapore, and South Korea. McKinsey&Company, another research company, recently released the report of their comprehensive study of what factors might motivate current teachers and top college grads to teach in high-needs schools.

Much has been made of this study, and the reports and commentaries I had read focused heavily on radically increasing (essentially doubling) teacher pay in order to draw top students into teaching, especially in high-needs schools. However, the study itself does not suggest that increasing teacher salary is the only, or even necessarily the most effective strategy to provide the highest-need students with top-tier teachers. In fact, the results of the study imply that the most effective progress could be made by combining a few different strategies targeted to different populations.

Salary increases were especially motivating for top grads in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) who expect to take their pick from a range of well-paid career options. Salary also motivated top college grads, but the study found that simply marketing teaching careers to college students and providing drastically better training for entering teachers would go a long way toward motivating top grads to pursue teaching careers.

The one group not very motivated by salary increases was current teachers. These folks, who had already spent a few years working in the system, placed more value on good working conditions, professional development, and excellent school leadership. The fabulous news here is that all three of these indicators also independently raise student performance, and all three can be achieved by simply attracting excellent school leadership to work in the highest need schools. The McKinsey report proposed several different "scenarios" to attract top-tier teachers, but by focusing on independent variables instead of combined effects they missed this simplest one.

Links:

Edweek article on the end of the NYC merit-pay pilot program

McKinsey's Closing the Talent Gap