The Tempered Radical

An Open Letter to North Carolina Legislators. . .

Like many states, North Carolina’s legislature is wrapped in one of the toughest budget sessions of the past 50 years. 

Along with raising taxes and cutting services in almost every department, the men and women who represent us have been pushed into the position where even education----something that North Carolina has a long history of protecting---is going to suffer.

While I firmly believe that our government---like the families that it represents---should live within its means and understand that difficult decisions are par for the course in this legislative session, I’m heartbroken because our decision-makers are seriously considering capping the number of teachers who can pursue certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in North Carolina in an attempt to cut future costs in a state where teachers earn a 12% salary stipend for every year that they are certified.

Here’s my attempt to lend perspective to their decision:

July 21, 2009

Dear Legislators,

I'm writing to you today to encourage you to advocate against the current conversations in the legislature around capping the number of teachers that can pursue certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in our state. 

As both a teacher and a taxpayer, I'm passionate about this topic primarily because almost 12 full years ago, I can remember sitting in the office of my  principal breaking bad news to him.  I'd decided to leave teaching to pursue a career that paid a competitive wage compared to the professions chosen by my peers. 

During our conversation, my principal told me about a new program that was being funded and supported by the state of North Carolina called National Board Certification.  "With a bit of hard work," he said, "You can raise your salary by 12%." 

Given that teaching is all that I ever really wanted to do, I decided to give certification a whirl---and while the process was challenging, it was also incredibly rewarding because it offered a real opportunity to reflect on my practice and to be measured against the most rigorous standards of excellence in our profession.

After certifying as one of the first 20 teachers in Wake County, one of the first 100 teachers in North Carolina and one of the first 1,000 teachers in the nation, I found that my salary was incredibly competitive for ten months of work----and I've stayed in the classroom ever since, renewing my certificate in 2007. 

That makes me a North Carolina education policy success story, doesn’t it? 

As a teacher, I hope that you'll continue to support National Board Certification---without capping the number of candidates that can apply for the process in our state---as a teacher retention tool.  There is no doubt that I would not continue to serve in North Carolina's classrooms had the fee support and salary stipend for Board Certification not been available to me. 

As a taxpayer, I hope that you'll continue to support National Board Certification because it is a responsible way to increase salaries in a state where the average teacher makes almost $5,000 less than the national average.  Unlike across the board increases for every teacher, National Board Certification ensures that our state's investments in increasing teacher salaries are targeted and earned.   

This is, in my opinion, the best of both worlds---and it mirrors your commitment to fiscal responsibility.

Please contact me directly if you have any questions,

Bill Ferriter
Sixth Grade Science and Social Studies
Salem Middle School
6150 Old Jenks Road
Apex, North Carolina 27513
Middle Childhood Generalist since 1997

Evaluating "White-Space" Educators. . .

I was poking around the blog of my favorite arch-enemy Jay Greene---whose book Education Myths is one of the most offensive and inaccurate portrayals of life in the classroom ever to stumble out of a right-wing chop shop---the other day and came across this interesting bit by guest blogger Matthew Ladner.

In it, Ladner takes a sharp turn away from Greene's unwavering support of using student test scores as an indicator of teacher performance and as a criteria for performance pay programs by exploring the career contributions of professional basketball player Shane Battier---a guy who doesn't tear it up in the statistics column but who plays for champions year after year.

Ladner argues that Battier is a "white-space" employee----one of those people who get important things done, but goes overlooked because their contributions are difficult to measure.  When comparing Battier to teachers, he writes:

Is there an education angle here? Yes indeed. Battier is what business guys call a “white space” employee. The term refers to the space between boxes on an organizational chart. A white space employee is someone who does whatever it takes to achieve organizational goals and makes the organization work much better as a whole.

As we move into the era of value-added analysis for teacher merit pay, this article provides much food for thought. School leaders must consider carefully what they will reward, and give some consideration to how white space behavior is rewarded.

Rewards should not just be based on individual learning gains- reaching school wide goals should also be strongly rewarded. Otherwise my incentive as a math teacher will be to assign six hours of math homework a night- and to hell with everyone else (see Iverson, Allen).

These ideas are intriguing to me simply because they ring true.  The contributions that I make---both to the students in my classroom and to the faculty members in my building----stretch far beyond the results of the end of grade exams that I give each spring. 

More on Performance Pay. . .

A digital colleague that I admire and respect greatly is Clay Burell, who blogs over at Beyond School.  In response to my recent post about Bill Gates and Merit Pay, Clay wrote:

I had a conversation last week about merit pay, and why I didn't believe in it. I said it pissed me off to no end that I _knew_ from all sorts of objective observations that I worked harder and more successfully than many of my colleagues, yet earned nothing more for it - BUT, until a system was implemented that could determine what we mean by 'merit,' and avoid causing all of us to teach to tests and thus damage student learning, I was still against it.

What's the best solution to this dilemma that you've thought or read?

This is good stuff, Clay.  The thought that a teacher should embrace performance pay only when the system designed supports responsible teaching really resonates with me.  I've written more than once about how my teaching has changed in response to today's accountability culture and it ain't pretty.  Supporting alternative compensation models in any system that didn't consider the consequences that new performance measures have on teaching and learning would be unethical, wouldn't it.

As far as the best solutions go, I think that Denver's got it right.  Working with district leaders, Denver's teacher union developed a system of compensation that is far more complex than most of the solutions that are proposed today.  Called ProComp, Denver's plan rewards teachers differently for earning professional development units that support the district's mission and vision, for working in hard to serve schools or hard to staff assignments, for producing results on standardized tests, and for earning satisfactory ratings on evaluations. 

What I like the most about Denver's plan, though, is that teachers have the opportunity to earn additional compensation for meeting two "student growth objectives."  These are measurable learning targets that teachers write on their own in conjunction with their building leaders.  Then, during the course of the school year, teachers collect evidence demonstrating whether or not students have achieved the goals that teachers set out to reach. 

Simple yet powerful, huh?  Reward teachers for systematically reflecting on their practice.  Those are the kinds of behaviors we want to see from every teacher, so let's incentivize them.

What I also like about Denver's plan is that teachers have clear avenues for increasing their salaries.  If I'm a young educator who has a passion for earning more, I can decide to go and work in a hard to serve school and add to my compensation.  Likewise, if I'm a new father who is swamped with day to day life as it is, I can cycle out and work in a less demanding school for a few years. 

Think about the flexibility that the district builds for itself with Procomp.  Today's hard to staff subject or hard to serve school is unlikely to be tomorrow's, right?  With Procomp, Denver can choose what it wants to incentivize and make changes over time.  Doing that with professional development units and credits makes even more sense.  The kinds of knowledge and skills that teachers need to be successful today are going to be far different from the kinds of knowledge and skills that teachers are going to need to be successful tomorrow----so why not take a shorter term view of how we differentiate salaries and stipends for continuing education?

Does any of this make sense?

I guess what I'm saying is a successful compensation plan has to be flexible for both teachers and taxpayers.  Teachers should be able to make concious choices that can increase their salary---working in incentivized buildings, taking incentivized professional development, collecting data in a systematic way that documents their impact----and districts should be able to conciously decide the kinds of things that they most want to incentivize in their district.

Today's compensation systems---based on years of experience and master's degrees---just plain lack the ability to respond to changing realities. 

Where Gates Gets it Right on Education. . .

First, many apologies for slogging this week.  I usually only slack off over here on the Radical when school is a complete zoo---and the weeks leading up to the holiday break definitely qualify as high-pressure times for any teacher.  I just couldn't find any free minutes to write!

I did find time, though, to read this interesting Newsweek interview between Jonathan Alter and Bill Gates on the best ways to reform education.  What surprised (impressed?) me the most was that ol' rich Billy is using some of his considerable clout to push for changes that I think I can believe in.  Most interesting is Gates' insistence on reforming how teachers are rewarded for their work.

As Alter describes it:   

Betraying his own professional background, Gates shakes his head in dismay at the idea of secondary schools and colleges trying to function at all without simple software that offers them basic statistical information about how students and teachers are performing over time (for-profit colleges are an exception). Everyone in education knows why: unions have simply prevented teachers from being judged, even in part, on whether their students improve during the course of the year. It's no surprise that Gates is a believer in merit pay and incentive pay and has little use for teachers colleges as presently constituted because there's no evidence that having a master's degree improves teacher performance. You never hear Gates or his people talk about highly qualified teachers, only highly effective ones.

I couldn't agree with Gates more.  Our commitment as a profession to master's degrees as a form of identifying--and then differentiating pay for---accomplished teachers has simply outlived its usefulness.  While there may have been a time when elevating the academic accomplishments of classroom teachers served to elevate the profession in the eyes of critics and to elevate the qualifications of those who'd chosen to spend their careers in the classrooms, differentiating pay for master's degrees at this point is an inefficient and under-informed practice.

Let me give you an example (which I've mentioned on the Radical before):  My master's degree is in "advanced teaching techniques."  I earned it in 1997.  Do you think that the strategies I learned from college professors who hadn't been in classrooms since the early '80s in 1997 would still qualify as "advanced teaching today?"

I sure don't. 

Yet I'll continue to collect a 10% salary supplement from my state---one of the only ways teachers can differentiate their pay here in North Carolina---for the remaining 14 years in my career.  As a classroom teacher scraping nickels together to adopt a child, I'm thankful.  As a fiscally conservative taxpayer, though, I'm miffed!

The Wrongheaded Quest for Cheap and Easy. . .

If you haven't had the chance to check out the comment section of my recent post on Barack Obama's thoughts regarding education and technology, then you're missing out on a pretty interesting conversation about accountability in education between two regular radical readers---Mike and K. Borden.

K.'s pushing the idea that educators should take ownership over their profession and design alternative methods for evaluating performance that can be used to supplement standardized tests.  She (he?) wrote: 

We agree that the standardized tests alone (without other measures) are inadequate to fully measure teacher or student performance.

The rub is, what other measures? This is where I as a parent look to you the teaching community to offer answers. I want to learn and hopefully be able to advocate with you for acceptable, reliable accountability. I want to know that you as a community of teachers recognize some in your profession are failing and some are blazing trails we all may be wise to follow.

I'll jump in this conversation, K, and I'll lay out a vision for holding teachers accountable that might blow your mind----but before I do, I want to give you three non-negotiables that are required from the general public before holding teachers "accountable for results" is even possible:

1.  You've got to delineate and prioritize your expected outcomes:  This is probably the source of greatest frustration---and resistance---for teachers involved in conversations about accountability because it is impossible to deny that communities are asking schools to tackle more tasks than it is possible to achieve. 

Once a community can clearly define exactly what it is that they most want their children to learn in schools, we can start to have meaningful conversations about how to measure mastery of those skills and delineate between successful and unsuccessful educators. 

2.  You've got to make a commitment to providing necessary resources to meet expected outcomes:  One of my favorite quotes about accountability comes from Richard Elmore, who is responsible for the term reciprocal accountability.  Elmore writes:

Accountability must be a reciprocal process. For every increment of performance I demand from you, I have an equal responsibility to provide you with the capacity to meet that expectation. Likewise, for every investment you make in my skill and knowledge, I have a reciprocal responsibility to demonstrate some new increment in performance. This is the principle of "reciprocity of accountability for capacity." It is the glue that, in the final analysis, will hold accountability systems together (Elmore, 2000).

I'm not certain that most communities can honestly say that they are providing enough capacity to meet the litany of expectations that they have set for schools.  New demands and expectations are placed on schools---and teachers, in particular----without any additional time or training to meet those expectations. 

Here's a simple example from my classroom:  In our data driven world, I'm expected to collect and manipulate numbers about student performance in order to make informed decisions.  This is a completely reasonable expectation---and one that can help to document the "bang for the buck" that taxpayers get from my services.

But my school and system struggle to find the funds to provide me with the kinds of ongoing, job embedded professional development that it takes to develop the skills necessary to manage data effectively.  What's more, they struggle to find the funds to provide me with the tools that data managers in other industries take for granted. 

So I collect "data" on post-it notes, move those results to my paper and pencil grade book and then try to identify trends in my 85-student class load with a yellow highlighter.  The entire process is frustratingly inefficient---taking away time that I should be spending on planning and providing students with meaningful feedback----and would simply not be tolerated in the business world.   

"For every increment of performance I demand from you, I have an equal responsibility to provide you with the capacity to meet that expectation," is a powerful idea that communities need to embrace before most teachers will embrace accountability.

3.  You've got to differentiate compensation for teachers in high needs schools no matter what:  The biggest failure that our society currently makes is rewarding teachers equally regardless of the kinds of schools they choose to work in.  As a result, students in high needs communities are consistently exposed to higher numbers of inexperienced or ineffective teachers----and we do nothing to make work in high needs buildings more attractive.

That should be a source of great shame for everyone---from policy makers to taxpayers.  We're knowingly putting students who need the most help in buildings where that help is unlikely to ever arrive. 

Crazy. 

Once communities narrow and prioritize their expectations for schools and commit themselves to providing the capacity to meet new expectations, I'd propose that all teachers be held accountable for working through yearly cycles of action research conducted at the classroom level, documenting the impact of their instructional decisions on the learning gains of their students. 

Here's how it could look:  At the beginning of each school year, teachers---with the guidance of school leaders---should set specific areas of instructional focus for the upcoming year based on learning data available at the school level.

Over the course of the school year, teachers should be expected to research instructional practices that have been effective at addressing identified weaknesses, implement those strategies in their classrooms, and document the results of their instruction.  Next, they should be expected to revise their instructional practices and work through a second cycle of implementation and documentation.

At the end of each year, teachers should be expected to present their findings to a school/community based committee.  While the findings may not always show that a teacher has identified instructional practices that are worth continued exploration---remember that failures are an accepted result of attempts at innovation in other professions----he/she must be able to show that they've made responsible decisions based on an awareness of the impact that their actions were having on the students of their classrooms. 

And here's the good part, K:  After collectively reviewing the work of an individual teacher, the school/community based committee of parents, policymakers and education professionals can make recommendations about a teacher's continued employment and compensation.

Yup---I said it:  Let's get rid of tenure and put teachers on terminating contracts that are open to review by members of the communities that they serve every few years. 

That's gotta make teachers cringe, huh?! 

But when I think about my own efforts at reflection, I'm pretty confident that I could convince a review committee that I was worth keeping on board.  While my instructional practices don't always hit pay dirt, I'm at least constantly looking for ways to improve----and I think that kind of persistence is valued and respected by most families in the neighborhood that I serve. 

I'm also certain that tenure is a permanent scar on our profession.  No one takes us seriously because EVERYONE has a story about some miserable old bat that had been teaching for too long yet was making serious cabbage.  Worse yet, the kind of job security teachers have is non-existent in other professions. 

Mike's going to hate this, but what makes us any different from any other "profession" where people have to prove their worth to keep their gig? 

For you, K., this system gives community members control over teacher quality---and an inside look into the kind of work that the teachers in your schools are doing.  Transparency would be absolute---and the standards of judgment would be completely in the hands of the people footing the bill. 

Here's why my ideas will never fly, though:  This whole process is going to cost a helluva lot more than running a bunch of bubble sheets through a scantron machine.  School boards and state elected officials---the folks that would be responsible for driving this kind of change---are constantly counting every nickel and dime in an effort to keep tax bills down. 

It's about re-election, right?

It's also going to take a whole ton of time!  I seriously doubt that most schools could find enough interested community members to be involved in the evaluation and review process.  While people like to complain about not having input in public schools, who's got the time to sit in on dozens of teacher review meetings each year? 

So trying to sell a program of evaluation that carries inherent rewards for the community----the ability to have direct input in the kind of teachers who remain employed in their schools---and for teachers---the ability to be evaluated based on their own professional actions and decisions---will probably never happen because it ain't cheap and easy!

Does anyone see anything in my pipe-dreams that is worth embracing, though? 

Are there starting points that we might be able to agree on?

(Image credit:  IMGP2933ac43x.jpg by Bosela, licensed Creative Commons Attribution)

Scrapping the Sacrosanct Salary Schedule. . .

That's the title of a relatively interesting article written by Jacob Vigdor, an associate professor of policy studies and economics at Duke University that was recently run in Education Next---the journal of the Hoover Institution. 

Arguing that the current salary schedule in education is flawed because it rewards teachers for credentials that are not tied to increased performance and because it drives new teachers---who struggle for years to reach peak earning potential---away from the profession, Vigdor makes a few points that I think are legitimate. 

First and foremost, Vigdor's assertion that additional degrees don't necessarily translate into increased performance is one that I wholeheartedly embrace.  When blanket rewards are given for life to teachers who work through master's or doctoral studies, taxpayer dollars are wasted---and that's coming from a guy who earns a 10% stipend on his salary each year for a master's degree! 

How could I argue against rewarding teachers for advanced degrees?

Easy---the information that I learned in my "Advanced Teaching" program from 1992-1997 is hardly advanced today!  Not only have children changed, requiring me to constantly tailor my instructional practices, the tools for teaching have changed (I didn't have Internet access in my first three classrooms, people---and I'm not that old!), and the outcomes of education have changed.  In the early '90s, there were still industry jobs and assembly lines for struggling students to fall back on.

That translates into a rather astonishing admission:  My master's degree means little to me today, and yet I'll be rewarded for it for the next fifteen years that I spend in a classroom. 

As a teacher, I'm thankful---I couldn't remain in the classroom without that 10% supplement to my already low compared to my peers in other professions salary.  As a professional, I'm ashamed because I know that I'm being rewarded for something that has little impact on my teaching today.

As a taxpayer, I'm just plain peeved!

I also like Vigdor's desire to front-load teacher salaries and completely agree that teachers reach their peak performance within the first 5-10 years of their careers.  To rapidly increase salaries early in a career will definitely help with recruiting and retaining teachers, simply because their compensation will finally reflect their growth in performance and put them on equal footing with peers---both in the schoolhouse and beyond.

I can't tell you how discouraging the last 10 years have been for me professionally because I've invested my whole self into improving as a practitioner, and yet I've watched my salary creep up by two or three hundred dollars a year----while teachers that who had been working in classrooms since I was born were racking in several thousand dollars more than me each year simply because they were older than I was. 

Maddening.  Made me want to quit more than once.  (Still makes me want to quit, actually!)

But Vigdor's plans---like nearly every other proposal that I've ever read to change teacher compensation---have a handful of very obvious flaws.  First and foremost, Vigdor bases all increases in compensation on increased scores on standardized tests.  Consider this quote:

So now we have some basic principles on which to build a better model: Reward characteristics associated with greater effectiveness; do not reward those that have no evidence linking them to effectiveness. To launch the system, all we need to do is pin down the increment of compensation for a given increase in effectiveness. There are several ways to do this, but let’s consider just one. Suppose that we reward a characteristic associated with an improvement in test scores of 1 percent of a standard deviation with a 1 percent increase in salary.

Wow, Jacob---you make it sound so easy!

There are dozens of problems with tying teacher compensation to standardized test results.  I've written about them time and again.  On a philosophical level, they include a narrowing of the curriculum that produces misleading results and a constant drift away from the kinds of teaching that students most need in order to succeed in an increasingly complex world driven by knowledge creation.

On a practical level, what are we going to do about the 60-80% of teachers in any school who don't teach a tested subject?----or to school professionals beyond the classroom like guidance counselors and media specialists?  The way I facetiously see it, there are two options: 

1. Develop more tests for more subjects to be given to more kids over the course of more years in their school careers----which will wipe out any savings that states and districts might find in your proposal, as well as the joy out of life for 5 year olds who will be drilled and killed from day one.
2. Only give pay raises to teachers of tested subjects.  Heck, let's get rid of any subject in a school that we can't test.

(It's kind of frightening to consider where thinking like Jake's can land us, isn't it?  Gotta love economists.  The only thing that matters are numbers to those guys.)

My second beef with Vigdor's plans is the swipe that he takes at National Board Certification as a semi-useless tool for identifying accomplished teachers and a waste of cash.  He writes:

To a large extent, the jury is still out on the importance of NBPTS certification. Studies have shown that teachers nominated for this certification have a legacy of superior classroom performance, but there is less evidence that the process of certification actually improves their performance.

I guess it is only natural for me to support National Board certification---after all, I earned certification in 1997 (my third year of teaching) and have been collecting a 12% salary stipend from the state of North Carolina ever since.

But I also support National Board certification as a taxpayer, too. 

You see, teachers who work through the certification process are forced to spend a year reflecting on their practice.  They document the impact of their instruction on students, videotape their lessons, and articulate the connections between the choices that they make and the children that they teach.

Oh yeah, they also take a big ol' exam to gauge their mastery of the content that they teach AND their certificate expires after 10 years, at which time they must document the impact of their work on student achievement in their schools, districts and states over the course of their entire license cycle in order to earn recertification. 

I call that a fail-safe system, protecting the investment that a state is willing to make into a teacher who works through certification. 

Not only is the process rigorous (my initial portfolio was nearly 400 pages long and took me about 300 hours to create), it is ongoing.  Unlike my master's degree---which I set aside as soon as I was finished with my last blue book, I'm constantly looking for ways to improve as a teacher because I know that I need to in order to recertify!

Like many critics of the current pay scale, Jake seems to suggest that revising teacher compensation is something that is completely opposed by educators and their unions. 

In some ways, I agree with him:  Unions fought hard to get our profession to the point where teachers can make a living wage.  For the first 70 years of the century, taxpayers were only too happy to short-change those who chose to work in a profession dominated by women---and letting go of what was once a major success is never easy to do.

But our profession is changing with the times.  As more young professionals enter our unions, they push for change to a system of compensation built for long-term stability in a time when long-term stability is somewhat foreign to most workers.  Conversations are being had at all levels of every teacher organization about "scrapping the salary schedule."

What we'll never go for, though, are proposals that fail to take into account consequences for the curriculum when standardized testing is placed at the center of efforts to evaluate teachers---and it's important to know that our opposition doesn't stem from a fear of being held accountable for results.

Instead, it stems an intimate understanding of what such systems will do to the children who sit in our classrooms. 

Whew----glad I got that off my chest!

(Image Credit:  Quiet Please by Taliesin, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

More on Teacher Salaries. . .

My recent post on The Teacher Salary Project drew lots of attention and a bunch of interesting questions from readers that have challenged my thinking.  I figured I'd take a few minutes to respond.

The conversation started when Nate asked:

I have one question/concern:Where will the documentation for impact come from? If it is standardized testing, then I take issue. I have no problem being accountable for what I do in my classroom space. However, if I am to be represented by one series of tests on one given day that may cover a huge range of material, then I am not for it.

For me, Nate, documentation of the impact that teachers have on student achievement must absolutely move beyond our current over-emphasis on standardized tests as measures of accomplishment---and I think the good news is that the majority of parents and community leaders realize that standardized tests are limited in usefulness at best. 

Over time, I think we'll see more sophisticated measures of teacher performance developed that include surveys from parents and students, action research projects where teachers document the impact of their own performance and some form of peer review. 

One thing to remember, though, is that standardized testing will likely always be a part of every evaluation program. 

Tests are one of the few objective measures of performance---for schools, teachers and students---and while they should never be used in isolation, we would be narrow-minded to believe that they can be thrown away.  Instead of arguing against testing completely, we should be helping to outline more comprehensive measures of performance that begin with testing but include additional indicators that are not currently considered. 

Then, Matt asked:

While I think your three general goals are worthy and appropriate, I wonder whether throwing things out and starting from scratch might not be a better approach. I will admit that a "brand new, never been tried approach" is unlikely to result from your group's efforts, to be honest nothing in your proposed goals is all that radical. In essence I don't think any of these ideas is new nor really that far from adoption.

I think the time is here to be absolutely radical in our approach to teacher compensation. What truly fresh ideas are out there? What about individual contracts (a pain to administer to be sure, but what are the benefits). Teacher A contracts with School Z for a three year contract worth $140,000 over three years.

These are brilliant ideas, Matt---and ones that I could definitely get on board with.  I think that individual contracts for teachers are the kinds of progressive ideas that can give both teachers and taxpayers more confidence in alternative compensation plans for educators.  As a teacher, what I like the best is having the opportunity to control my salary based on my performance. 

It burns me to read about the 35 year veteran who makes twice as much as I do, yet works half as hard. 

The only hitch is that I don't think such a progressive and complete change will be possible within the current public school system.  As Clayton Christensen and company argue in Disrupting Class, significant innovations in large industries are difficult at best to pull off because they fight against hierarchies that are threatened by new changes.

Which is why charter schools can---and should---begin making these kinds of progressive changes.  With flexibility that the public schools just don't have, new compensation models can be polished and perfected in buildings that work beyond the current system and then adopted and embraced on a larger scale over time. 

I've often worried about charter schools, thinking that they were the enemy of public schooling.  My thinking is changing, however.  Instead of seeing charter schools as threats, public school systems should see them as hot-houses for change that can be used to experiment with new instructional approaches, school structures, and visions for the profession. 

My girl Carly wrote:

A competitive salary is the FIRST place to start to make teaching more attractive.  THEN work on performance pay.

This is the central argument that has surrounded teaching salaries for decades, isn't it.  The problem is that our profession has made no efforts to differentiate when talking about "competitive salaries," have we?  Teachers who work in challenging high needs districts in working conditions that make me cringe get paid the same amount of money as teachers working in suburban schools like mine. 

Teachers who do little to nothing to reflect on their craft get paid the same amount of money as those of us who read, write and reflect all the time.  "Competitive" is subjective in every profession except for ours because we assume that years of experience translates into effective performance.

And that just ain't true!

Now don't get me wrong:  The reason that we struggle to get starting salaries that resemble the starting salaries of other professions with similar entry requirements is because the general public has almost no clue how hard our work is.  There is a false transparency to teaching that makes what we do look easy to outsiders---and therefore decreases the value of what we do. 

But it is time that we start to rethink the consequences of our own willingness to overlook the inherent differences in our work situations and abilities.  Until we're willing to admit that all teachers and school communities are not created equally---and therefore don't deserve the same compensation for similar positions---we'll lose credibility in the eyes of the general public.

Devlin wrote:

Special attention should be paid to the pay scale plight of Alternate Route teachers. Many of us bring years (even decades) of meaningful work experience into our classrooms, yet we are required to start at the same "fresh out of college" level on the salary guide as recent graduates entering their first full time jobs

Our nation's need for Alternate Route teachers has always been interesting to me when thinking about new models for teacher compensation.  After all, Richard Ingersoll's research has shown that there are actually more certified teachers in America than there are teaching positions. 

Translated:  If we could keep certified teachers in the classroom, we really shouldn't need Alternate Route teachers at all.

Which makes it even more important to redefine "compensation."  What if we began to consider additional opportunities for job-embedded professional development on the clock as a form of compensation?  How about additional housing benefits or retirement benefits?  What if state universities offered free tuition to teachers or to the children of teachers?

What if we created a menu of compensation options that teachers could choose from when designing individual contracts?  The kinds of "benefits" that I might find attractive as a mid-career teacher about to have his first child are not necessarily the kinds of benefits that new teachers or teachers close to retirement might find attractive. 

Introducing flexibility in compensation models might just help us to retain some of the certified teachers that flood out of classrooms every year. 

Bob wrote:

And, your suggestion helps to overcome the self-serving aspect of teacher proposed pay schedules.

Gotta love Bob's reference to the "self-serving aspect of teacher proposed pay schedules!"  Exactly how self-serving is a salary schedule that starts thousands of dollars below the salary schedules for other professionals with similar levels of education, grows by a few hundred dollars a year for decades, and then ends tens of thousands of dollars below the top salaries in other professions requiring similar levels of education?

I think what you're missing, Bob, is that the majority of young teachers are not attracted to the single salary schedule that continues to define our profession.  We don't see it as self-serving at all and we're working to drive changes that have been resisted for decades---both because the existing salary schedules are inadequate for retaining accomplished teachers and because we want to have the kinds of opportunities to control our compensation that are offered to our peers in other professions. 

Your self-serving argument may apply to the 30-year union rep who has fought long and hard in district negotiations over decades. 

It doesn't apply to the new graduate entering education today.

And Adam wrote:

I am happy to hear that you are on this committee because I am part of the 50% that leave before five years because I had to work four jobs to support my family. As you approach this task we also need to think about what we can do to encourage great teachers to stay as close to the classroom as possible.

This is definitely an area of interest for me, Adam.  As most Radical readers know, I'm almost always contemplating a move beyond the classroom.  My wife and I are on the edge of adopting our first child, and while my current salary is enough to allow us to live a comfortable middle class lifestyle without children, we really don't have the wiggle room necessary to continue to live a middle class lifestyle once we adopt.

I'm actually truly panicked about how we're going to swing daycare, diapers and health care for our child!  The money is just not there---and I already work 4 different part time jobs!  What I always remind myself, though, is that I only work 10 months a year in the classroom.  If I were a 12-month employee, the two additional months of my salary would make that middle class lifestyle possible. 

That's why I think hybrid roles for teachers are so important.  While not every educator would be interested in picking up two additional months worth of work in order to make ends meet, many would jump at the opportunity---and remain in the classroom as a result. 

We've got to break the mindset that "teaching" means 10 months and begin to rethink how we use positions beyond the classroom.  Why can't we divide long-standing district or state professional developer positions into 2 or 3 month "chunks" and give those months to a team of 2 or 3 full-time practitioners who are interested in earning extra cash?

I feel like I'm rambling right now....Do any of my ideas make sense to y'all?

(Image credit:  The Teacher by Kevin Dooley, licensed Creative Commons: Attribution)

The Teacher Salary Project. . .

Over the past several years, one of the central issues that has driven my work has been helping to redefine how teachers are paid.  Watching colleagues walk away from our profession dissatisfied with compensation models built on single salary schedules and growing tired of constantly searching for extra dollars to pad my income, I can't think of a more urgent issue for educators to wrestle with. 

That's why I was so excited to be invited to serve as an adviser to a new effort known as The Teacher Salary Project designed to raise awareness about the challenges that lagging salaries pose for our schools.  Led by Academy Award–winning filmmaker Vanessa Roth, co-founder of 826 National Nínive Calegari, and writer Dave Eggers, The Teacher Salary Project plans to use digital tools to create a shared documentary bringing transparency to the work of classroom teachers.

As momentum builds behind The Teacher Salary Project, our hope is to bring interested stakeholders together around a shared table to discuss practical ways to pay teachers differently.

Most exciting to me is that I believe we've reached a tipping point where changes to the ways that we reward teachers are truly possible. Parents and policymakers alike both recognize the importance of quality educators and seem willing to pay more for accomplishment.  What's more, today's young professional has no expectation of a long-term career that provides job security instead of competitive opportunities to earn more money.

Both of these trends place pressure on the antiquated compensation system that many established educational decision-makers continue to advocate for.  Once we can identify legitimate methods of measuring accomplishment, we're bound to see movement towards progressive and rewarding compensation for educators.

Having worked with the Teacher Leaders Network and the Center for Teaching Quality to develop an alternative model for teacher compensation a few years back, I'll be advocating for:

1. Additional compensation for teachers willing to accept positions in hard to staff schools or subjects.
2. Additional compensation for teachers who are able to document the impact that their instruction has on student achievement---and who are willing to amplify the results of their learning beyond their classrooms. 
3. Additional compensation for teachers who pursue professional growth opportunities that are targeted towards district goals or identified community interests.

While I believe that there is a central need to raise salaries for all educators---consider that the average starting salaries for educators currently stands at $31,753 while the average starting salary for college graduates in non-education majors stands at $42,229---I also believe that blanket increases for all educators regardless of performance cheapens our profession.

And with the power of a national organization built with the social tools of the web behind us, The Teacher Salary Project just might be the lever needed to push conversations about compensation in the right direction. 

(Image credit:  Cash Register in Museum by liewcf, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

Pay Me My Monies. . .

Scott McLeod over at Dangerously Irrelevant started an interesting strand of conversation today when he shared a collection of facts showing that the smartest teachers often leave the classroom first, leaving schools with collections of "low ability educators" who have little impact on student achievement. 

Scott's central question:

Let’s assume that, generally speaking, these studies are correct: 1) smart people are less likely to stay in teaching (thus resulting in a concentration of teachers with lower academic ability), and 2) the academic ability of teachers impacts student learning outcomes. Now what?

The conversation in the comment section of McLeod's post has been lively to say the least, drawing out some of the edusphere's most active thinkers.  For me, the Eduwonkette's comments had particular resonance.  Among other things, she wrote:

Re what to do: Teachers with high scores have better salary options out of teaching, so we will need to change compensation practices if we want to keep these folks in education.

Do you think this is the key issue in the whole conversation? Are we woefully unprepared to keep top performers in education because we have a stagnant compensation system---and our professional organizations fight to protect that system at every turn?

Think about the benefits that teaching offers: affective rewards, job security, pensions (in most places). Pretty attractive to a candidate in 1973, right? After all, that was an era when pretty much everyone got one job and held onto it for life.

Today's professional has no expectation of the 30 year career at all. What's the statistic? Most people have 8 different jobs by the time they're 30?  The top performers in education today don't find inherent value in the kinds of perks offered by our profession----and they don't have any qualms about walking away from job security and a pension.

The kicker, then, seems to be redesigning the compensation (which includes more than simply salary) system in education to more accurately reflect today's vision of a "career."

Does this resonate with anyone else? Is it a pipe dream that we'll never be able to bring to reality?

What's the first step towards seeing compensation redesigned---and who's got to take it?

(Image credit:  Mo Money Mo Problems by greggoconnell, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

It's All About the Benjamins. . .

One of my favorite conservative bloggers is Matt Johnston, who writes over at Going to the Mat.  Matt tracked down my recent post on the impact that testing has had on teaching and learning in my classroom and asked the following question in the comment section:

Bill, I think your rant (well grounded as it is) raises a couple of very difficult questions. I will have to assume that all teachers of subjects on standardized tests have experienced the same frustration as you. That leads to the question, should teachers who teach in subjects tested on standardized tests (i.e. math, science, English, etc) be evaluated in terms of professional development and annual reviews differently than those who teach non-standadized tested subjects, art, music, social studies, etc. If so, how would that be done so that it is equitable? Could tested subject teachers be rewarded more for success? Should they be disadvantaged for lack of success (as defined by your students' peformance)? What impacts would you see for the recruitment/retention of teachers in both tracks?

Interesting questions, Matt---especially because they operate from the basic assumption that we've made the right decision by using standardized tests as an effective indicator of "success" and "failure" in schools.  While I think that you're right to assume that standardized tests are the "indicator du jour" for the forseeable future, I'm personally holding out hope that we'll become more sophisticated in our assessments of children in the upcoming decade. 

That being said, I think that teacher evaluation is completely ineffective as it currently exists for all teachers!  Administrators---who are often completely overworked and under prepared---are asked to provide "instructional leadership" to teachers who span incredibly diverse curricula and ability levels.  It's an impossible task, to say the least. 

The results:  No one is evaluated particularly well.

And that's actually quite shocking to me as an "insider."  Let me give you an example:  I'm a pretty reflective guy who has a solid understanding of what I do well and where I struggle.  My personal weakness as a classroom teacher is providing differentiation for students of different ability levels.  Considering how academically diverse our classrooms are becoming, that's a HUGE weakness.

But I'm not sure that any of my principals or supervisors have ever noticed that weakness.  Why?  Because they simply can't effectively judge my entire skill set in the two 20-minute observations that they do "on me" each year.  Instead, they typically come in my room, look to see if objectives are posted on the board, decide whether my instructional plans are appropriate for the grade level I'm teaching and then move on to another room. 

It has always been a surface-level evaluation of my performance at best---and in 15 years, no one has ever mentioned the lack of differentiation in my room.

Now, when it comes to evaluating tested v. untested teachers equitably, I'd argue that it'll never happen.  Tested teachers have numbers attached to their names---and right or wrong, we seem to put a lot of weight in those numbers.  In fact, I'd argue that most administrators tend to trust those numbers more than their own observations when determining who is an "effective teacher" and who is an "ineffective teacher." 

The numbers just seem so darn reliable, don't they?  After all, we live in a "data-driven world." 

But non-tested subjects will never have numbers attached to them.  Instead, their performance is always going to be judged by performances---How does the teacher look in action?  How do the students perform in the upcoming band concert?  How does the artwork look in the hallway?  How does the dance performance go off?

Don't get me wrong:  I truly believe that those kinds of assessments are more reliable---and more reflective of effective assessment.  When you can actually see a child applying skills from the standard course of study in performance based situations, you can truly begin to understand what they're capable of.  It's a more sophisticated measure of ability, don't you think? 

But those kinds of performance measures are never extended to teachers of tested subjects.  No one comes in my room and watches my students interact in meaningful conversations with one another.  No one ever sits down and challenges their thinking about a particular novel or piece of text to see if they can analyze an author's purpose or notice elements of bias. 

Instead, they count on the test to do those things---which I'd argue is simplistic at best. 

In many ways, this dichotomy between the ways we're willing to evaluate teachers of tested and untested subjects is almost ridiculous!  If a test is an effective method for judging English and math teachers, why haven't we developed standardized tests for dance and drama teachers too?  Why don't we have tests for the band teacher or the media specialist? 

And if we're willing to admit that testing in those areas is ineffective practice, then why aren't we willing to embrace the idea that testing in ALL areas is ineffective? 

As far as compensation goes, I am a firm believer that it is time for us to begin to reward teachers differently based on "performance."  Honestly, as a young-ish teacher who works 90 hours a week, I'm completely burned by the fact that I get paid based on years of experience only.  To know that there are teachers sprinting to the parking lot at 3:30 every day while I'll be plugging away until 7:30 or 8:30 is probably the biggest "hurt" there is in teaching. 

This recurrent pain is easily one of the biggest barriers to teacher recruitment and retention.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to encourage young teachers to stay in the classroom when they are making barely $30,000 a year---and when they know they'll get a 2% raise every year until they die regardless of how hard they work?  Worse yet, imgaine trying to stay positive when you know there are people in your building making twice as much as you are even though they make no meaningful contributions to teaching and learning.      

Where's the motivation to improve?!

Somewhere I read a statistic that the average young adult today will have held 13 jobs by the time they are 32.  That willingness to move flexibly between positions is a part of the professional fabric of today's worker---and it means that teaching has to change dramatically in order to compete for the best employees. 

New teachers aren't going to be as satisified with the "perks" that earlier generations embraced.  Tenure and job security mean nothing to today's employee.  Guaranteed raises over time and a "retirement" account don't either. 

What new teachers want is the chance to be rewarded for accomplished practice in the same ways that their peers will be rewarded in other professions.  The vision of the altruistic teacher who embraces the "I don't do it for the money" mantra is a thing of the past.  Today's teacher loves kids as much as their predecessor----but they expect to be paid for performance as well.

The never-ending barrier to this entire conversation, however, is that we have yet to effectively define what "accomplished performance" means.  Complicating matters is the fact that our nation is constantly changing the outcomes that they expect schools to produce.  Some people want higher test scores.  Others want improved graduation rates.  Still others want "kids of character" or "twenty-first century learners." 

Perhaps the first step in any attempt to establish alternative compensation packages for teachers should be a focused conversation about what exactly we want schools to produce.  Once we've got that vision established, we can start to "measure" the contributions of educational professionals and reward them appropriately.

My thinking in this post feels incomplete---but I'm due at the gym in 10 minutes for a workout.  I suppose I'll continue to polish this thinking in upcoming entries, but I'd be interested in hearing feedback from readers. 

Does anything I've written here make sense to anyone besides me!