Obama Secretary of Education Arne Duncan speaking on the big influx of federal funding for K-12 education:
Mr. Duncan said he intended to reward school districts, charter schools and nonprofit organizations that had demonstrated success at raising student achievement -- "islands of excellence," he called them. Programs that tie teacher pay to classroom performance will most likely receive money, as will other approaches intended to raise teacher quality, including training efforts that pair novice instructors with veteran mentors, and after-school and weekend tutoring programs. [emphasis added]
Set aside for a moment the increasing indicators that Duncan seems on a path to entrench the core principles of No Child Left Behind, which is - ahem - perhaps President Bush's most significant legacy in domestic policy. Note for now Duncan's return to the topic of merit or performance-based pay, which he praised during his confirmation hearing as well.
Republican candidates and elected officials have often struggled to speak effectively to the general public on education, especially at the state level where K-12 education is such a huge budgetary and policy issue. Too often they have been found themselves either in the quagmire of policies that are beyond politically dead in Washington state - charters & vouchers - or stuck picking partisan fights with the WEA, thus creating a rarely productive teachers v. Republicans motif in the public's eye.
While some victorious legislative candidates in 2008 reversed that trend, largely by learning how to have a realistic, forward-looking agenda for improving public education, more work remains to be done. Accordingly, the issue of performance-based pay should be an essential component for Republicans in years to come.
First and foremost, it's good policy and a serious potential step forward in education reform. Second, the voting public embraces the idea of paying good teachers more, especially those serving traditionally at-risk student populations. Third, when Obama his on record supporting the idea, his Secretary of Education is pushing it (on the heels of the Bush Administration doing likewise), and Bill Gates is increasingly beating the same drum, is that not a golden opportunity for Evergreen State Republicans?
Do it, please.
Posted by Eric Earling at February 17, 2009 06:48 PM | Email ThisRather than trying to make the government dominated industry behave like a private industry, we should be trying to make the industry private.
We should be attacking ANY federal government program related to education. We should be attacking No child Left Behind. We should attacking the very idea of a federal department of education (something that did not even exist when I was born).
Not one dime of money from the federal government should be spent on education because it is a state and local issue. At the state and local level we should be pushing to amend the state constitution and make education a privately run industry.
All of this is hard for many republicans to do however because they have spent the past 8 years praising a huge expansion of the federal government since it was done by GW Bush.
Posted by: Lysander on February 17, 2009 08:20 PMI should note that it is not just that I think privatization is a better solution than Erics. I think that Erics idea of Republicans pushing for a more 'efficient' government run school makes the situation worse. It legitimizes an idea that I fundamental believe to be false, that government run industry is acceptable.
It is now considered a given that not just the government but the federal government should have a say in our childrens education. It is not even debated in most media. Instead we are left with the choice of bad or bad and supposed to feel grateful that one idea came from our team. Education is far too important to be left to government. Eric suggestion that the GOP embrace merit based pay just legitimizes that as our only option.
If we as a party are to succeed we have to return to being the party of free market ideas. We are not going to win by being the more efficient big government party.
Posted by: Lysander on February 17, 2009 08:57 PMWhile you are dreaming, can you dream me up a world without war, where I'm rich and powerful, I'm married to a supermodel, and I can instantly transport myself to any corner of the earth?
Posted by: cliff on February 17, 2009 09:06 PMThe Federal Government does need to get out of education. Now more than ever!
Posted by: Michelle on February 17, 2009 10:10 PMGood night, remnants of the Monarchy.
BTW, even England has public ed these days.
Posted by: King George on February 18, 2009 12:47 AMCliff:
I know I am asking alot for the republicans to return to being the party that supports the free market. As Michelle points out however, it was not long ago that my position of ending the federal dept of education was standard in the GOP.
Jim - I agree with you. To be competitive in the world today, the US needs a top notch education system. Every other top notch education system in the world is public, spends more than us per pupil and rewards teachers better.
As to the great "free market" system that brought us the unfettered capitalism of the banking industry - that was a great success! Countrywide is you model for unrestrained capitalism - I notice that it went down in flames and has dragged down the rest of the economy.
Wow, the idiots don't learn. They want more of the same bad ideas, instead of looking at what works.
Posted by: correctnotright on February 18, 2009 07:16 AMI too find it amusing to see the total devotion to failed concepts and to liars by the likes of;
correctnotright
King George
Acid Brain
All Facts Support My Positions
and a few more of our liberal friends
To see this on display really does make my day!
Thanks
Now, if only they could just improve reading comprehension skills (since this isn't Jim's thread).
Posted by: Rick D. on February 18, 2009 08:17 AMLast year the 4th grader loved her teacher and her teacher was the darling of the school. We liked her.
Punch line: when we got WASL scores our now fifth grader has retroed one year and was now barely passing math and reading and lower than average on writing.
So, being a 'perky' teacher, she would have gotten a performance raise (after all, all the kids, teachers and parents liked her, so she had to be good) in September. Yet, the WASL scores came out at the end of September.
I personally liked the 'grouch' bag who required homework to be done and to be done neatly. She was disciplined in class and the kids learned. Obviously, she would not get the 'performance' raise because there would be no standard.
For this reason, I don't like the performance raise idea even though on principle it is a good one.
An old swatterism, "the devil is in the details".
Posted by: swatter on February 18, 2009 08:41 AMOn high-school graduation rates:
They're far too low, and have been for decades, he said: "I don't understand why we accept it, year after year." This is a top issue for NEA, he said, and solving it will require a shift in thinking. Rather than viewing high-school graduation as the end goal for students, educators need to focus on preparing teens to become citizens of the world and productive members of society.
Hmmm. Citizens of the world? Where have I heard that before? Got Socialism?
LOL!! Welcome to the 21st Century little Ricky, the world is smaller than ever. In fact we are in a global economy where each nation relies on other nations to provide goods and services in the form of trade. Clearly you must be one of those moronic Pat Buchanan isolationist types who want America to stop trading and isolate themselves from progress.
Maybe you should check out Wealth of Nations from the library, it's apparently clear that you've never read it.
In the 1980's Calif teachers put foward a test that they all agreed on. It tested their skills to show all people of Calif how smart they were and would help increasing their pay.
Well what a shock when many either came in with low test grades or failed the test all together.
So what California Teachers Assn do?
They claimed the test was racist and threw it out.
So I agree with you on how were should grade them for pay.
Well, that would explain the exploding world population growth then, right stupes? Maybe you should check your passport (if you have one) and see if it says "Citizen of the world". Report back to us your findings.
Posted by: Rick D. on February 18, 2009 09:22 AMYes, any serious merit or performance pay system has to rely on a heavy dose of quantitative measurement. The fairest is usually measuring the improvement of students over the course of their year in that teacher's classroom. Not perfect, but better than all the rest. Subjective systems of measurement are not worth it. That's why teacher's unions tend to get so worked up about such proposals.
Posted by: Eric Earling on February 18, 2009 09:46 AMAnd we need to look to the messiah. He lead underperforming schools in Chicago through the Annenberg Project, and it was an abject failure. This should be the model for Seattle. As Seattle has already fallen at the knees of the messiah and succumbed to his every whim. Failure is success. Some pigs are more equal than others.
Posted by: Jeff B. on February 18, 2009 11:19 AMSo, you will give a teacher a yearly raise when the students advance from say 4th grade level to 5th grade at the end of the student's fourth year? Isn't that what they are supposed to do?
And in my school they may have 3 or 4 grade teachers. At the beginning of the year, they have what in essence is a draft. In other words, they pick and choose who goes into whose class. How do you test that?
In conclusion, as an ideal, performance raises sound good but as the old swatter says, "the devil is in the details".
Posted by: swatter on February 18, 2009 11:22 AMActually, that would be a problem with Bush's abstinence only education policy which did wonders for Bristol Palin, he just had to share it with the rest of the world.
Maybe you should check your passport (if you have one) and see if it says "Citizen of the world".
I actually have two passports, neither says "Citizen of the world". Last I checked there were very few people who live above the planet therefore we could all be "citizens of the world". Since we are a world of nation states it's good to learn to think beyond the borders of ones own nation state. Too bad you can't think beyond your small mind.
A very apt and true statement. :)
Posted by: Duffman on February 18, 2009 11:34 AMNo, you don't necessarily reward a year's worth of growth. You reward teachers that get more than a year's worth of growth, especially from traditionally under-performing students.
School systems with modern data systems and appropriate tests are able to measure such things already. Spokane School District is a great example of that here in WA.
Yes, the devil is in the details, but there are some promising pilot programs - including those funded by the Bush Administration and supported now by an Obama Administration - that have some potential. Concurrently, since it's in the pilot phase (thus administered via discretionary grants rather than formula-based funding), lame attempts at such systems, like that to which you allude, can be appropriately denied.
Such a system will, however, remain less than comprehensive until it is proven. Only the worst of the worst (DC) have hopes of implementing such performance-based pay writ large, as THE system of compensation. It's baby steps forward elsewhere.
Bigger picture, soundly and fairly constructed systems of merit/performance based pay have much more long-term potential to improve student achievement than our current tenure-based system.
Posted by: Eric Earling on February 18, 2009 11:46 AMSpeaking of sharing it with the rest of the world, Obama is now exporting abortion (Mexico city policy and assistance for volunary family planning). Apparently, you celebrate Obama's eugenics policy while you decry abstinence education. How very undemocratic of you.
Posted by: Rick D. on February 18, 2009 12:03 PMGive their test scores, their costs per pupil, teacher to student ratios, administrative overhead, etc. etc.
The model everyone's talking about must be out there.
Or is it just talk.
Posted by: BA on February 18, 2009 12:49 PMEric, your solution sounds like a government solution. And another old swatterism, "if it ain't broke, bring in the government so they can break it."
And you talk of poor students in underperforming schools becoming magically great students. In this ideal, you would have the teachers get a raise. Well okay. But what about next year, when those same underperforming but now performing student becomes underperforming again.
Eric, I just think you are asking for trouble with this idea.
Posted by: swatter on February 18, 2009 12:58 PMYou're smarter than this. The current system of teacher compensation we have isn't compensating effort where we need it the most. And as you yourself have learned, school districts, left to their own devices, relying on the current compensation system, very often aren't getting the job done with any reliable consistency.
I saw in on the ground in my last job at the Dept of Ed. It's an idea favored by conservatives, implemented at the behest of W, now supported by an Obama Administration.
To follow out your analogy, government already pays for public education. Public education isn't working for too many of our students...as you yourself note that you discovered. It's already "broke" in a number of respects. It's also a huge piece of the state budget and a perennial concern to state voters.
Why shouldn't the GOP be seizing on a policy idea of conservative principles (meritocracy) that is already being triangulated at a national level by notable prominent and/or left-of-center leaders? It redefines the term "win-win."
Posted by: Eric Earling on February 18, 2009 01:08 PMThe reason we should not be promoting it is because it legitimizes the idea that government is effective in running our education system (which is inherently not).
Posted by: Lysander on February 18, 2009 04:43 PMThe meltdown has everything to do with REGULATIONS. But this is a far bigger discussion then I feel like having. If you do not agree that the free market is better than the government at running industries... Then by all means oppose it. My beef is with republicans and democrats that claim to support the free market and then go on to undermine in countless ways.
Posted by: Lysander on February 18, 2009 05:17 PMInstead, more talk.
You make a better lover than historian.
My point is there are thousands and thousands of private schools throughout the country that collectively takes all children that arrive at their doors and their success is measured by how happy their customers are. Their customers are far more happy than parents of children in government schools. That you can not find some magic school that fits every child's needs and measures it to some test that meets your needs proves nothing.
Posted by: Lysander on February 18, 2009 05:53 PMI'll happily and joyfully admit to being a union-loving SOB, but when it comes to merit pay I'm willing to have the conversation *as long as the set-up is fair to my members.* There are value-added tests that we can use to see how a child changed from September to May, but I've yet to hear a reasonable proposal for how merit pay under that sort of schema could touch the PE teachers, the librarians, etc, or how you evaluate the consulting special ed teacher who works with the classroom teacher on a handful of kids.
Similarly, while there are tests like the MAP that we can use in math, reading, and science for the upper grades, how do we honor the work of the foreign language teacher, or the shop teacher, or anyone else who falls outside of those subjects that are tested?
Eric nails it, too, bringing up DC. Michelle Rhee has an opportunity that may never come up again; it's similar to what Vallas has in New Orleans. In a state like Washington any change would have to be far more planned out and far more incremental.
Posted by: Ryan on February 18, 2009 08:27 PM"My point is there are thousands and thousands of private schools throughout the country that collectively takes all children that arrive at their doors and their success is measured by how happy their customers are. Their customers are far more happy than parents of children in government schools."
Care to cite a source?
My kid's went to both private and public schools before college. The schools were all excellent, both public and private, and prepared them well for later studies.
Common thread to each school were highly involved parents (not just us), and arguably the higher incomes of our town contributed resources not available everywhere.
So my opinion, being equal to yours and based on all of one experience but then, a fact - tells me you're blowing smoke.
You need to do better than that.
Posted by: BA on February 19, 2009 08:13 AMYour description of proposed (and already utilized) performance-based pay plans isn't correct. The measurement is often based on the growth of individual students over the course of the year under the teacher's instruction. The starting point is how the students performs on a diagnostic test near the beginning of the school year (or at the end of the previous year) vs. how those students perform on similar tests at the end of their year with that teacher. If the tests are properly aligned and constructed, one can use the data to assess the growth of the students as individuals and in the aggregate, under the teacher's instruction.
There isn't the variation you suppose in such tests. They're already in place in a number of school systems around the country and already utilized to measure student growth (and thus the performance of individual teachers if administrators use the data well). Adding all that as a factor in teacher compensation is where the debate becomes vigorous and controversial.
Posted by: Eric Earling on February 19, 2009 05:59 PMAs I mentioned earlier, It is stupid to look for a private school with 100% open enrollment, just as it is stupid to try and find one grocery store that is best for all people, or one shoe store or one restaurant, etc... In all other industries we accept that it is best to allow each business to decide its own model and decide what customers to cater to yet for some reason you are suggesting that for education we should have a one size fits all private school. That is part of the problem with government schools, why would we want to carry that trait to private? Unless maybe you really don't but think it is a clever way to 'win' this particular debate?
Posted by: Lysander on February 19, 2009 09:40 PM