Teacher Accountability and Merit Pay

Tying teacher’s pay to Student Performance

All those opposed to teacher accountability, please raise your hand.

All those opposed to teacher accountability, please raise your hand.

PROSMerit Pay for Teachers

• The fact that a sloppy teacher and a dedicated teacher earn the same salary just doesn’t sit right with most people.

PROSMerit Pay for Teachers

• Incentivized teachers will work harder and produce better results.

• What motivation do teachers currently have to go above and beyond the job's basic requirements?

PROSMerit Pay for Teachers

• Merit pay raises the bar of professionalism in teaching.

• Teachers must be held more accountable and judged in relation to their peers.

• Evaluation is part of being a professional.

CONSMerit Pay for Teachers

• Designing and monitoring a Merit Pay program would be a bureaucratic nightmare.

• (NCLB) has already proven how the various unleveled playing fields in the American education system inherently set up a wide variety of standards and expectations.

CONSMerit Pay for Teachers

• Good will and cooperation between teachers will be compromised.

• Collaboration will turn into competition.

CONSMerit Pay for Teachers

• Merit Pay systems would inevitably encourage dishonesty and corruption.

• Educators would be financially motivated to lie about testing and results.

Role in educational policy at state, federal or local level

President Barack ObamaAddress to Joint Session of Congress, February 24, 2009

"In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity, it is a pre-requisite. That is why it will be the goal of this Administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education - from the day they are born to the day they begin a career."

Role in educational policy at state, federal or local level

• Teachers are the single most important resource to a child's learning.

• America must re-invest in the teaching profession by recruiting mid-career professionals and ensuring that teachers have the world's best training and preparation.

Role in educational policy at state, federal or local level

• With funding provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the U.S. Department of Education will work with states to upgrade data systems to track students progress and measure the effectiveness of teachers.

Role in educational policy at state, federal or local level

• He will push to end the use of ineffective "off-the-shelf" tests, and promote the development of new, state-of-the-art data and assessment systems that provide timely and useful information about the learning and progress of individual students.

NEA’s position

• Opposes federal requirements for a system that mandates teacher pay based in whole or in part on student performance or student test scores for many reasons, including:

NEA’s position

• Standardized tests are imperfect measures.

• Just as a standardized test is not an accurate reflection of what a student knows, it is not an accurate reflection of what a teacher has taught.

• Numerous scoring errors in the testing industry also make the use of standardized tests in teacher compensation plans wholly inappropriate.

NEA’s position

• NEA supports compensation systems that encourage the kinds of things that actually improve teaching and student learning—like skills, knowledge, and experience. Those systems might include:

NEA’s position

• Additional pay for National Board Certification or advanced degrees.

• Additional pay for taking on the role of mentor to newer colleagues, or for gaining new knowledge through professional development or experiences.

• Incentives to attract caring and qualified teachers to hard-to-staff schools.

Plans that ARE NOT workingFLORIDA

2002 STAR (Special Teachers Are Rewarded) • Funded with $147.5 million by the state Legislature • Provide 25 percent of the state’s teachers with 5 percent

bonuses. • Each district was supposed to negotiate its own plan but the

state required them to be based on test scores.

In 2007, STAR was replaced by MAP (Merit Award Program)• Allowed districts to look at improvement rates, but bonuses

must be based on very complicated actuarial tables developed by a state contractor.

Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) • It was forced on the teachers and replaced the salary

schedule.

• A tax increase helped pay for it.

• Raise depends on a combination of evaluations by principals AND on the school’s test scores.

• The score calculations use a secret formula devised by

researcher William Sanders.

Plans that ARE NOT workingEAGLE COUNTY, COLORADO

• Houston Independent School District allocated $14 million in merit pay.

• When respected “Teachers of the Year” didn’t get bonus checks last year, they inquired….

• It was based on test scores.

• Houston Chronicle published the names and amounts, there was an uproar.

Plans that ARE NOT workingHOUSTON, TEXAS

• The plan was bargained, not imposed, after a union-management pilot project.

• Voters had to pass a $25 million tax increase, enough for an average of $6,000 per teacher.

• Money goes to individuals, but there’s no limit on how many teachers can get raises at a school, so colleagues are not competing.

• Improvement on test scores can yield larger salaries, but they are negotiated, case-by-case, between teachers and principals.

Plans that ARE workingDENVER, COLORADO

• System that puts a premium on teacher-directed professional learning and experience:– conducting classroom research– handling a parent involvement program– developing curriculum– presenting at a conference– grant-writing

• Tailor your own professional development • “The best indicator of student learning is teacher learning.”

Plans that ARE workingPORTLAND, MAINE

• Does not replace the existing salary schedule - adds bonuses• Schools qualify for bonuses if students meet targets for raising

test scores.

• Bonus goes to the whole school. A committee—the principal, a principal’s designee, and two representatives elected by union members—decides how to divvy up the money among the staff.

• The program is voluntary in the sense that schools only take part if 55 percent of union members and the principal vote to opt in.

Plans that ARE workingNEW YORK CITY