With both presidential candidates supporting merit pay for teachers, it’s likely that the issue will affect teachers nationwide, USA Today’s Greg Toppo observes this morning in a piece that offers a round-up of pay-for-performance plans nationwide.
“At least eight states are moving away from a traditional pay model, which increases salaries based on seniority and advanced degrees,” Toppo writes. ”Many of the pay packages are funded by private foundations. In dozens of districts, test scores already have earned teachers more money.”
The most controversial plan is Washington, DC’s which could see high-performing teachers with limited experience earn over $100,000 if they give up tenure. George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers Union tells USA Today, “A lot of our younger teachers say, ‘Bring it on.’ ” Older teachers, he says, are more concerned with due process.
![[Slashdot]](http://slashdot.org/favicon.ico)
![[Digg]](http://digg.com/favicon.ico)
![[Reddit]](http://reddit.com/favicon.ico)
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif)
![[Facebook]](http://www.facebook.com/favicon.ico)
![[Technorati]](http://technorati.com/favicon.ico)
![[Google]](http://www.google.com/favicon.ico)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.stumbleupon.com/favicon.ico)
More than 90,000 of New York City’s elementary school students–20 percent–missed at least a month of classes during the last school year, according to a new report from the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.
In the early grades, attendance is a strong predictor of long-term success. National research suggests that chronic absenteeism in the early grades sets the stage for school failure later on. Children who miss a large number of school days in kindergarten or first grade tend to have lower levels of academic achievement throughout their school careers. Sadly, there are high levels of chronic absenteeism in New York City elementary schools, particularly in low-income neighborhoods.
It’s great to see this issue getting some attention, but forgive me if I’m utterly unsurprised, and a little disgusted. The New York Times calls chronic absenteeism an “invisible problem” but it’s anything but to teachers in New York’s most blighted inner city neighborhoods. Frankly, it’s also another unintended consequence of system in which The Test is the alpha and omega. In my South Bronx elementary school we regularly promoted students who missed dozens of school days, as long as they passed — or even came close to passing – a single standardized test. In a particularly acute case, I fought unsuccessfully to have one of my 5th graders held over who missed nearly 100 school days. He received a 1 (below grade level) on his state math test and a 2 (”approaching” grade level) on his ELA exam and was passed without even having to attend summer school. As long as he scored a 2 or better on either of the tests, I was told, he had to be promoted. God help that kid. Three years later, I still get angry thinking about it.
In theory, I asked an administrator, could a child come to school only on the day of the state test, pass, and still be promoted? It was a rhetorical question. The answer was sitting in my classroom. Occasionally.
In India, Diane Ravitch notes on Forbes.com, students compete for admission into “cram schools,” paying up to $1,500 to prepare for exams that might get them into India’s highly regarded technology colleges. This puts in sharp relief the increasingly common strategy trying to persuade students to care about school with everything from cash rewards to New York’s planned “Game High School.”
Interesting, isn’t it, that while students in other countries are paying $1,500 a year for the chance to learn more, many American students will be paid that same amount just to do what they ought to be doing in their own self-interest? Does the future belong to those who struggle to better themselves, make sacrifices to do so and work hard? Or to those who must be cajoled and bribed to learn anything at all?
To be fair, to use the most ambitious students and families in India and elsewhere as an exercise in contrast is probably a bit unfair. There are no shortage of strivers in the U.S., the give-me-Harvard-or-give-me-death parents, for example, who push their kids into competitive schools and line up hot and cold running tutors in a bid for achievement or prestige. And no doubt, there must be indifferent and unmotivated studentsin India. Still, Diane’s larger point about what we stand for–and what we won’t stand for–is compelling.
The child that needs extrinsic motivation to act in his or her own best interest is at a decided long-term disadvantage to the kid who sees education as a means to an end. I suspect when the final analysis is in, pay for play will be to education what aspirin is to health care–something to mask the symptom rather than treat the disease.
OK, class, let’s review…
1. Paying school kids to improve their standardized tests with everything from cell phone minutes to cold, hard cash is good.
2. Paying bonuses to teachers whose students do well on standardized tests is also good.
3. Paying college students to retake the SATs and improve the school’s rankings is very, very…bad?
Baylor University finds itself in the crosshairs over their decision to offer incoming freshmen a $300 credit at the campus bookstore to retake the SAT. Students who raised their scores by 50 points or more received $1,000 a year in merit scholarship aid. Faculty at the school are criticizing the policy as “academically dishonest.” Although no one is saying so directly, it’s widely assumed Baylor’s goal is to move up the annual U.S. News college rankings by having the frosh retake the test and report the higher scores.
I’m shocked, shocked! I’ve said many times in this space that I’m agnostic on the whole miasma of incentives. As a pragmatist, I’m willing to consider any legitimate means to improve student achievement, even I find the idea of bribing children to act in their own best interests a bit revolting. But let’s not delude ourselves that incentives, whether internal or external, do not subvert intrinsic motivation and invite widespread gaming of the system. Incentives are by definition gaming the system. What Baylor has done is at worst a few degrees lower down the inevitable slippery slope. I’ve seen plenty of elementary school students fail miserably on standardized tests, retake the test after a few desultory weeks in summer school and suddenly they’re on grade level. Now that’s shocking.
“I’m just astounded that rankings would drive policy to such an extent,” Philip A. Ballinger, the director of admissions at the University of Washington in Seattle tells the Times. “It’s just rotten all around. It’s just like all of a sudden people removed their brains and went to Mars.”
He was referring to the Baylor scandal.
For the first time in seven years, Seattle public high-school students who do poorly can receive a failing grade on their report cards. Since 2000, not one student in Seattle’s public high schools has technically failed a class. The policy has been to hand out a grade of ”N” for “no credit,” which didn’t affect a student’s grade-point average. A grade of “E,” however, counts as a zero when figuring a GPA, and effective immediately the failing grade of “E” is back.
“The change has been welcomed by many principals and teachers who believe that students should face more consequences for failure,” the Seattle Times reports.
The return of the E could cause difficulties for some athletes because the school district requires students to have a C average to play. It also might affect some students’ prospects as they apply to college, although area colleges are aware of what Seattle was doing. But it will stop what many say was an unintended consequence: Some students decided it was better for their GPAs if they just gave up and lost credit for a class rather than earn a D or even a low C.
“For a number of years now, people have been feeling that the N policy is problematic,” said Marni Campbell, principal at Nathan Hale High School.
A hat tip to Joanne Jacobs, who likes the plan. My 10th grade social studies teacher would agree. ”Failure is a part of life,” Mr. Wilson often counseled.
Starting in the Fall of 2009, children in Florida will be able to complete their entire K-12 public school education without ever setting foot inside a classroom. Indeed, under the terms of a new state law, they must be able to. Districts are now required to create their own full-time virtual schools, collaborate with other districts or contract with providers approved by the state, the Palm Beach Post reports.
The law is believed to be the most wide-ranging virtual mandate in the nation. “The rest of the country will be watching to see how it goes,” said Julie Young, president and chief executive officer of Florida Virtual School and a board member of the North American Council for Online Learning. By August, school superintendents must settle everything from how to provide the needed technology to how to engage squirmy kindergartners who lack the attention span to sit at a computer for hours.
The state already funds two online schools catering to students in kindergarten through eighth grade as well as the Florida Virtual School, which offers middle and high school courses, notes the Post.
In Louisiana, some school districts are giving credit for high test scores to schools the students don’t attend. It’s called “re-routing.” East Baton Rouge, Jefferson and Iberville Parishes, “re-route” the test scores of students from seven magnet schools to the public schools those kids would have otherwise been assigned to.
Jefferson School Board member Judy Colgan, defends the practice, arguing the magnet schools were draining neighborhood schools of their brightest students and lowering their test scores. “I’m not saying magnets shouldn’t have their own set of scores,” she tells the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “They do have their own scores, and they are always at the top of the list. But we felt that because the neighborhood schools were losing those higher achievers to the magnet schools, it was only fair that their scores go back to the home-based schools.”
Huh??!?
Barry Erwin, the head of Council for A Better Louisiana, a Louisiana think tank, blasts the practice, calling it “pure deception” and “a sham.”
“Re-routing” scores in this fashion has a number of bad consequences. First, it allows school districts to create a false and inaccurate impression that some schools are performing better than they are. That’s not transparent and it’s not right. It also hurts the magnet schools because it makes it impossible to track their performance and could prevent them from receiving rewards they might earn from the state’s accountability plan. Perhaps even worse, it artificially raises the scores of some schools that may be in danger of takeover by the state because they are low-performing – and in doing so bypasses the intent of our school accountability system.
It’s hard to view this as anything other than a way to evade accountability, and state education officials are said to be examining the practice. Woody Allen said it best: No matter how cynical you are, you can’t keep up.
Recent Comments