Bloomberg's damaging education proposals to cost $350 million per year

There's horrific news in today's Daily News: that NY State Education Commissioner King is likely to approve the mayor's proposal to fire half of all of  teachers at 33 struggling schools:"That's a pretty aggressive teacher evaluation system,” the state insider said. “We believe the switch meets all the federal requirements.”

Firing a fixed and arbitrary quota of  at least half of all teachers, regardless of their ability, is not a real teacher evaluation system; it's a meat cleaver approach. This proposal reveals Bloomberg's phony hypocrisy and any supporter who  claims to care about the importance of "teacher quality."

Moreover, the city is supposedly intent on pushing through this plan so they can get $60M in federal School Improvement Grants, but as more than 1700 teachers are involved, this will likely double the Absent Teacher Reserve pool and cost the city more than $100M, according to the Daily News.

And the mayor's pointless proposal for merit pay  -- to give $20,000 raises to those teachers rated "highly effective" -- which  has not worked anywhere it has been tried , including NYC, to improve student outcomes?  The Daily News estimates this would cost about $250M per year, for a total of $350M.

In contrast, DOE estimated in 2009 that it would cost about the same amount ($358 million) to reduce average class sizes across the system to the state-mandated goals of 20 students per class in K-3; 23 in 4-8 grade and 25 in HS.  Instead, class sizes have increased every year for the last four.

If they do manage to fund these new proposals, with a static overall education budget, this would probably require even more cuts in staffing, which will mean even larger classes in the future. In contrast, class size reduction is a program that has been proven to work through rigorous evidence, according to the federal government, and is the highest priority of NYC parents every year in the DOE's own surveys, but no; Bloomberg and his cronies would rather scapegoat teachers, fire as many as possible, and waste taxpayer money on policies that have been proven to fail. 

Meanwhile, the NY Times runs an editorial approving the mayor's  proposals, the link to which Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson tweeted to Diane Ravitch, Randi Weingarten, Patrick Sullivan and me last night.  (Way to go, Howard! Glad you're thinking of us  at 11:26 PM on a Friday night!)

The Times opines that the UFT "should meet Mr. Bloomberg’s challenge to help create a fair system for evaluating teachers to be used in providing extra pay as well as to claim more than $60 million in federal education funds that depend on having an evaluation plan in place."

I agree that would be a good goal. Only the mayor doesn't want a fair teacher evaluation system, he wants one that is based solely upon the views of principals  -- with no possible appeal to a more objective party, despite the fact that many NYC principals have been found to base their teacher ratings upon personal grudges and worse, and yet been kept on the job by DOE.

Moreover, built into the NYC school funding system is a poison pill called "fair student funding," which means that principals have to pay the full salaries of their teachers out of their individual school budgets,  which acts as a built-in incentive for them to fire experienced teachers to save money, especially as  budgets have been cut back harshly -- by about 14% -- over the last several years.

Our only hope is that these blustering and wasteful ideas will bite the dust, which has occurred to many of  Bloomberg's proposals in previous State of the City addresses  As the scorecard of New York Times reporter Fernanda Santos' reveals, very few of his promises have come to pass.

For example, in 2005, while running for re-election, Bloomberg promised to reduce class size in grades K-3 (which are now the largest in 11 years), and to "eliminate all pockets of overcrowding" in schools (last year there were waiting lists in one fourth of all elementary schools.) Other proposals, like increasing parent involvement while wreaking scorn upon them and disempowering them in every way imaginable, have died a similar, lonely death.  Let's hope a similar fate meets his latest, most reckless and wasteful education ideas ever.

Bloomberg's State of the City address: an administration that has run out of education ideas -- even bad ones

The education proposals in Bloomberg’s State of the City address are being described as “ambitious” in the New York Times and GothamSchools. I see it differently.  

First he claimed that “By almost any measure, students are doing better and our school system is heading in the right direction.”  Of course that is not the case at all.  By most reliable measures, achievement has stagnated and our students are falling further behind their peers in the other large cities.

Not surprisingly, Bloomberg focused in his speech on the controversial factor of teacher “quality.” The first education proposal he mentioned in the speech is to recruit better new teachers by repaying the college loans for those who graduated in the top quartile of their class, giving them an extra $5000 per year for up to five years of teaching.  I’m not sure if this means even higher subsidies for TFA’ers without proper training or certification, including those who don’t intend to stay for more than a couple of years anyway.  In any case, since the city intends to allow the teaching force to continue to contract over the next few years and will not be hiring many new teachers, I’m not sure what the likely effect of this proposal would be, if any.

His second proposal  was ridiculous.  The mayor said he wants to improve teacher retention by re-introducing teacher merit pay -- giving a $20,000 raise to teachers rated “highly effective” for two years in a row.  Teacher merit pay has been tried all over the country and has failed according to nearly every study, to increase either student achievement or teacher retention.  NYC tried starting merit pay  in 2007, wasted $75 M on it and dropped it in 2010, because it had null results, according to studies by Roland Fryer and RAND.  Both analyses also concluded there was no evidence it worked to increase teacher retention. 

In response to horrified tweets from Randi Weingarten and me, Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson tweeted that the “evidence” for merit pay could be found in a recent NY Times article about the bonus pay program that is part of DC’s IMPACT teacher evaluation system .  When Lisa Fleisher of the WSJ pointed out in a tweet that the evidence in that article was purely anecdotal, Wolfson responded "Good enough for me."

When the article was first published, I called it a “puff piece” and an example of the worst kind of journalism, because it glossed over the numerous studies that have shown merit pay doesn’t  work to improve retention, while quoting a couple of DC teachers who said their bonuses  might  keep them teaching in DC schools longer. A good summary of some of the other research on this subject is posted in today’s Shanker Blog, which points out that there has been no published study of the effect of the DC IMPACT teacher evaluation system, and that the majority of studies suggest that financial incentives have negligible positive effects on the teaching force.

(Apparently, the leadership of the DC Public Schools canceled a proposed study of the IMPACT system because they would not accept the methodology proposed by Roland Fryer, the researcher that had been selected.  New doubts have been raised about whether the IMPACT system even correctly identifies the best teachers, as most of those who have been found to be “highly effective” work in neighborhoods with the most advantaged students. As teachers rated ineffective can be fired, the system seems to have provided a powerful disincentive against working with the highest needs students.)

Clearly the Mayor and his staff read the NY Times, since he also quoted an unfortunate oped in today’s Times by Nicholas Kristof, in which Kristof described the recent study on the long-term value of a good teacher and  mistakenly concluded  that the findings showed that five percent  of teachers should be fired based on their student test scores.  Kristof ignored the cautionary tone of the study, which warned that placing high-stakes on tests could lead to even more test prep and cheating – the sort of negative effects that have undermined schools here in NYC and elsewhere in recent years.

The mayor also announced (ho hum) that the DOE  would create one hundred new schools over the next two years, including fifty more charter schools.  He said that he had asked KIPP and Success Academy to “expedite” their expansion  and that he had invited Rocketship charter schools – a much-hyped chain of charters that started in California and offers online instruction with huge class sizes – to come to NYC.

Finally, he said DOE would seek to obtain the $58 million in School Improvement grants that the state is withholding because of the deadlock between the DOE and the UFT, by setting up “school-based evaluation committees” that could fire up to half of teachers.  How this would work I have no idea, but the DOE released a letter dated tomorrow, from Chancellor Walcott  to Commissioner King that has a lot about switching schools from “transformation” and “restart” to “turnaround,” (while letting those private managers like New Visions keep their big bucks for “restart” schools) but doesn’t mention these committees except to say that DOE will “measure and screen existing staff using rigorous, school-based competencies…” 

Anyway, not an inspiring speech and not one based on any change in direction or real vision for education, but more of the same damaging free-market  policies of expanding privatization and high stakes accountability that he has pursued for the last nine years, without any evidence that they work, except for misleading and flimsy newspaper articles.   It is very sad that in the second half of the mayor’s third term, Bloomberg has so run out of new ideas that he is impelled to re-introduce an expensive and useless experiment that was tried and abandoned only two years ago -- because it had utterly failed.

My email from Klein: instead of reducing class size, he'd rather end seat time

Check out my email to Joel Klein below and his canned reply.

The message was sent through the NYC "take action" page" of the "Waiting for Superman" website, but I considerably tailored it to include the real issues involved in supporting great (or even good) teachers, involving reducing class size, rather than spending money on merit pay and the other bogus ways in which the corporate reformers want to waste our taxpayer funds. In national surveys, teachers overwhelmingly support lowering class size as the most effective way to improve the quality of education, over increasing their salary, merit pay or more professional development -- at rates over 95%. Of course, Klein doesn't respond to that suggestion at all.

Instead, he responds again pushing merit pay, and says that the mayor is eliminating "the current practice of awarding tenure to teachers based on seniority" which makes no sense, since tenure was never awarded based on seniority. Instead, he writes, tenure will be granted "only to teachers who have demonstrated two consecutive years of significant gains in student achievement" meaning value-added test scores -- which experts say is a highly unreliable way to evaluate their performance. See this recent study, for one.

Also, check out Klein's comments about how he's pushing to end "seat time" (meaning requiring that students actually attend school) and expanding online instruction -- as though either one of these proposals has anything to do with supporting "great teachers" Instead, both are likely to further degrade the quality of education in this city.

From: leonie@att.net [mailto:leonie@att.net]

Sent: Friday, October 08, 2010 12:13 AM

Subject: What are you doing to support great teachers?

Dear The Honorable Klein:

As a member of our community, I am concerned about the future of our children and their education. I know that fixing our schools is a complex problem. But I also know that the most critical solution to this problem is making sure that we have effective teachers which will require reducing class size.

Every student deserves a great teacher. Likewise, teachers deserve the encouragement, support and training that they need to be more effective. And the best way to attract and retrain teachers in our schools is to reduce class size.

I urge you to make teacher effectiveness a top priority by taking the following actions:

1. Invest in the classroom, rather than spending even more money on testing, data analysis and out of classroom positions.

2. Support teachers by respecting their views about how to make them more effective -- reduce class size.

3. Evaluate teachers using several factors - such as classroom observations and parent input, but merit pay is a waste of money and does not benefit our kids.

I look forward to hearing what you are doing to support great teachers.

Sincerely,

Leonie Haimson, 212-674-7320

-----Original Message-----

From: Klein Joel I. [mailto:JKlein@schools.nyc.gov]
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 10:36 AM
To: leonie@att.net
Subject: RE: What are you doing to support great teachers?

Dear Ms. Haimson:

Thank you for your recent e-mail concerning the recruitment, retention, support, and evaluation of great teachers.

We agree that every student deserves a great teacher, and really, teachers are the heroes every day in our school system. If we are going to meet our goal to ensure that every child who graduates high school is ready to start college or their careers, we need to work together to step up to this challenge . We feel that by rewarding and supporting teachers who make a real difference and helping developing teachers get better, we will build upon the improvements we have made over the last eight years and give New York City students the future they deserve.

To that end, Mayor Bloomberg recently announced that he would eliminate the current practice of awarding tenure to teachers based on seniority, and instead, provide tenure only to teachers who have demonstrated two consecutive years of significant gains in student achievement. Teachers who do not earn tenure will be provided additional support and training, and those who are ineffective will be removed from the classroom.

Additionally, New York City recently received a $36 million grant from the United States Department of Education as part of the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), which we will use to provide additional pay for "master teachers" and "turnaround teachers" who agree to be placed in low-performing schools.

In addition, we are working to incorporate technology into our classrooms in order to empower our teachers with the tools they need to teach our students in the 21st Century. Instead of lecturing at a class, teachers can use technology to work with small groups of students in their classes and tailor instruction to their individual needs. The Department of Education is also looking to end State-required "seat time," which mandates that all students spend a certain number of hours in their seats for every subject they take - if one student is progressing faster, why hold them back? If another one is not ready to move on, why force them? By ending seat time and incorporating individualized instruction, students will be able to advance academically while others are still mastering a particular subject.

We appreciate your input. Thank you again for writing to us, and for your advocacy on behalf of New York City's public school students.

Sincerely,

Joel I. Klein, Chancellor

Weingarten Endorses Teacher Pay Based on High Stakes Testing

Randi Weingarten’s recent speech, where she was introduced by Mike Bloomberg, includes a strong endorsement for teacher merit pay based on high-stakes standardized testing.

From an AP article entitled “Union Prez: Performance Pay Works”:

Weingarten described the teacher pay system in New York City , where school-wide bonuses are based on overall test scores in high-poverty schools. Weingarten, as head of the New York teachers union, negotiated the system last year with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The new system is working, she said: Teachers already are getting bonuses for improving student achievement in 128 of 200 eligible schools.

But it wasn’t so long ago we were hearing a different story from the Weingarten-led United Federation of Teachers. Last year, a more detailed analysis in the UFT newsletter was entitled: “Pay for performance not performing well: Places using such models have run into snags”. The UFT article starts out this way:

“Guess what? New teacher pay-for-performance plans in Florida and Texas have run into big problems. Not surprised? Aha. You may be a teacher”.

It's not just teachers who should be concerned. The program here in NYC makes standardized testing even more high stakes which will lead to more cheating, test prep, teaching to the test and the narrowing of the curriculum. It's our kids who will suffer.

Weingarten’s new position is certainly disappointing. Is it a result of politics and ideology trumping research and actual experience?

Full AP article here.

Full UFT newsletter article here.

Daily News Editorial Demonstrates Equine Osculation Skills

An editorial entitled “Heads of the class” in today’s NY Daily News is as much jaw-droppingly astonishing for its unabashed toadying to Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein as for its blatant belittling of teachers at 33 NYC public schools. Better perhaps that it be titled, “Kisses of the ass.”

Better suited to The Onion, the NY Post, or Fox News, this editorial once again demonstrates the stubborn media tendency to conflate student learning and good teaching with performance on standardized exams. The piece begins by congratulating teachers at 205 schools for their determination “to raise achievement among their students” by voting to accept the Chancellor’s privately funded pay-for-performance plan. The editors then demonstrate their weak vocabulary and overly colloquial style by adding that, “Teachers will get extra dough if their students improve by specified amounts on standardized tests.” "Dough?" Is this how a major metropolitan newspaper models English to its younger readers?

Having declared their position without the slightest sense of concern over turning public schools into mini-Kaplan and Princeton Review test preparation machines, the editors turn their sights at the close of this shameless piece on the 33 schools who rejected the Chancellor’s pay-for-performance plan. No attempt is made to explain those teachers’ decisions, no mention is made of their position that bonuses linked almost exclusively to standardized test results will weaken children’s education by encouraging excessive teaching to the test. The Daily News not only refuses to laud these teachers for their principled positions and their obvious belief in education as something more than two standardized tests per year, they refuse even to acknowledge the possibility of an alternative view, one not driven by simple human greed.

Worse, the Daily News editors take the opposite tack, the one followed by the Limbaugh’s and O’Reilly’s of the red meat, Red State world. It’s called ad hominem, literally “against the man,” and it means attack the opponent’s person, not his/her argument. They first observe that, “…the staffs of 33 schools declined to compete for bonuses.” Note the choice of words – not “chose not to accept” or simply “voted against,” but “declined to compete.” Oh, the cowardice of those weak-kneed, so-called educators! The horror! The horror! [Memo to Daily News: the last is a reference to Conrad's Heart of Darkness -- probably not found in a standardized exam question.]

Apparently feeling their critique still lacked adequate punch, the editors directed their final ad hominem flourish at those weak-kneed, sissy educators. With all the intellectual power they could muster, they administered their most devastating coup de grace. "How dumb can you get?” they asked. My ad hominem answer to those editors' question? Look in the mirror.

Jane Hirschmann: the problem with high-stakes tests

Parents are meeting in every borough to talk about the excessive and high stakes tests which drastically affect our children's education. Tests are being used to determine virtually every aspect of school: promotion, graduation, entrance into middle school and high school, teacher's merit pay, principals' jobs and school report card grades.

What has happened to public school education in New York City? Tests are driving curriculum and instruction and our children's education is suffering.

The conversation is no longer about how we can offer our children a quality education, how we can instill a love of learning, help them remain curious and read and write with enthusiasm. Instead of these goals we now have an unending diet of testing--test scores, test prep, test materials, and improving test scores. Tests have become synonymous with schooling.

The private schools in New York State told the State Education Department that they would never introduce high stakes tests because it dumbs down curriculum and results in poor quality education.

So what can public school parents do? Believe it or not, parents have the power to change things. I'll give you one example from my own experience. Many years ago when my 27 year old was in 2nd grade, the Board of Education had the idea that they would give 2nd graders a high stakes reading test.

We PROTESTED, we organized and we did not allow this policy to go into effect. That is why today, there is no 2nd grade high stakes reading test, yet. I say "yet", because the DOE is now planning to give K-2 standardized tests. We must say NO!

TIME OUT FROM TESTING HAS THE FOLLOWING DEMANDS:

1. No high stakes for students or schools. Scores from tests given by the city or state MUST NOT be used to determine promotion or graduation.
2. Eliminate all commercial standardized tests for interim or periodic assessment use.
3. No testing for grades K-2.
4. Eliminate the use of the School Report Card and promote accountability through the use of multiple assessments.

We are willing to meet with parent groups anywhere in the city. If you can organize a group of 30 or more parents, get in touch with us and we will come. If you are an individual parent and want to know how to organize other parents, email or call us.

MANY PARENTS HAVE IDEAS ABOUT HOW TO STOP THE DOE's TESTING FRENZY. WE MUST JOIN TOGETHER TO RETURN PUBLIC EDUCATION TO THE PUBLIC.

Jane Hirschmann
http://www.timeoutfromtesting.org/
917 679 8343

Merit pay contagion strikes Tweed

Merit pay based on test scores, an even faster growing contagion in our school system than the drug resistant staph infection called MRSA, has now struck the Tweed building itself.

After offering more money to students, principals and teachers for good test results, according to NY Sun, the Chancellor has now asked

"a group of about 100 of his closest aides to draft performance goals they aim to meet by the end of the year. The goals will be monitored quarterly throughout this school year, in some cases by Mr. Klein himself. The conversations are preliminary thus far, but positive results could mean bonuses come June, the city official running the new program, Laura Smith, said yesterday.”

For some of these top executives, their goals are supposed to be based on more holistic measures – like principal satisfaction --but for some like Eric Nadelstern, head of the empowerment zone, they will be based on test scores and graduation rates alone.

So let me get this straight: if test scores improve enough in our schools, even if this leads to a ridiculous amount of test prep and/or cheating, and if graduation rates improve, even if this causes increasing numbers of students to be suspended, transferred or discharged from our schools, then the already overpaid officials at Tweed will get even more of our taxpayer money for being able to further degrade the conditions for authentic learning at our schools.

Now that’s accountability!

Klein May Resign Over Merit Pay

October 25, 2007 (GBN News): NY City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is threatening to resign in a dispute with Mayor Bloomberg over merit pay, GBN News has learned. A clearly disgruntled Mr. Klein termed the Mayor’s insistence that performance incentives be added to his contract “insulting”, and said that, “at this stage of the game, does he really think I’ll work any harder for a few Bloomberg LP stock options and a new Blackberry?” The Chancellor was also said to have bristled at the prospect of sharing the incentive with others in the DOE such as Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf. However, the Mayor was adamant. “Who was he before I made him Chancellor?” the Mayor asked rhetorically. “A two bit federal prosecutor with no PR staff.”

If the Chancellor does opt out of his contract, the Mayor is expected to begin interviewing for Mr. Klein’s replacement. Candidates include Mr. Cerf, several members of the consulting firm Alvarez and Marsal, and former Bush advisor Karl Rove. Joe Torre has already indicated that he is not interested in the job.

Wrap-up of commentary on the teacher incentive pay proposal

Today, lots of incisive commentary about DOE’s plan to pay teachers at schools with low-performing schools that improve on test scores. In the Daily News, Diane Ravitch questions the wisdom of this proposal, writing:

But will merit pay fix our schools? The quick answer is no. There is no evidence that students learn more because their teachers get differential pay tied to their students' test scores.

The assumption behind merit pay is that teachers are not working hard enough. Pay them more if their students get higher scores, say corporate-style school reformers, and they'll work harder. Politicians in Washington and many state capitols in both parties are attracted to the idea.

Diane goes on to argue that this particular proposal is not really merit pay, since schoolwide improvement will be rewarded, rather than the achievement of individual teachers, and then points out:

Most teachers understand that the tests now in use are imperfect measures of children's learning, which may be influenced by all sorts of external events in their lives - such as illness, disruption in their home life, emotional distress, financial worries and overcrowded classes. In effect, in its purest form, merit pay rewards individual teachers based on a single test score without regard to issues that are entirely beyond their control.

But if within every school, conditions for teachers may vary, they differ far more between schools, especially as regards class size and overcrowding.

One example: In District 1 schools on the Lower East Side, the average class size in grades K-3 is 17.6; in District 6 in Washington Heights, there is an average of 22.3 students per class. The difference is just as glaring in 4-8th grades, where class sizes in D1 average 20.4 compared to 25.8 in D6.

Even within District 6, class sizes range widely – and in some individual schools classes rise to 30 or more. Both districts have large numbers of poor and ELL students, but as a result of these far more difficult conditions, District 6 has loads of schools on the failing lists – when District 1 has very few.

So how can any reward system be fair that does not take into account the easier time teachers on the Lower East Side have reaching struggling students in classes of 18 or less – especially as compared to those in Upper Manhattan, working with the same high-needs children but teaching classes of 26, 28 or more students at a time?

Some proponents of this reward system may argue that the measures to determine which schools will receive cash rewards will be determined not only by test scores, but by survey results and attendance as well, but these factors are surely as negatively affected by overcrowding; moreover, like the school grades, in which these other factors account for only 15% of a school’s grade, I predict this will be nothing more than a fig leaf.

See also Eduwonkette, who addresses Klein’s argument that pay for performance is a routine practice in other professions and the business world. Instead, in most other fields, performance there are “holistic” evaluations – not based on numerical outputs alone (which in this case would be test scores.) This is true even in medicine:

Physicians I talked to in preparing this post laughed at me when I asked if their performance bonuses were based on patient outcomes. The most common response was that those outcomes were largely out of their control, so their hospitals rewarded them based on their inputs - i.e. hours, procedures, and revenues.

Of course, test scores are even more out of the control of teachers, unless they devote all their time to test prep or resort to cheating – neither of which would be considered desirable. Eduwonkette discusses other reasons that this proposal fails to pass the smell test:

...they do not control for differences in structures over which the school has little control - i.e. class size and large intradistrict differences in per-pupil expenditures - which are relevant for plans that plan to compare performance across schools, not only within a given school.

The administration argues at great length that their reforms have worked to improve student achievement – as in, for example, the small schools initiative. Let’s take this claim as true, for argument’s sake – though I would argue that the possible gains achieved are due more to the smaller classes at these schools rather than their smaller enrollments.

But whatever the reason, if one believes that small schools have inherent value, as Tweed does, how can one then also claim that a reward system that withholds bonuses to teachers who work at large schools could be evenhanded?

Last but not least, see Barry Schwartz' excellent oped in the NY Times. Schwartz is a psychology professor at Swarthmore who wrote an earlier, equally convincing oped in July about Roland Fryer’s experiment to pay kids for good test scores.

This new oped takes off from Joe Torre’s decision to leave the Yankees, and his rejection of the hefty bonus Steinbrenner offered if the team won the World Series next year. Clearly, Torre was insulted by the suggestion that he wasn’t already working as hard as he could to go the distance. Schwartz goes on to write:

If teachers are thwarted by their working conditions, then we need to fix the conditions, and not try to paper over them with bonuses. There are settings in which bonuses may make sense — if the work offers no opportunity to find satisfaction, for instance, or if it really is all about the money. And yes, there should be public acknowledgment of extraordinary performance. But that acknowledgment needn’t be financial, and it certainly shouldn’t be contractual.

The more society embraces the idea that nobody will do anything right unless it pays, the more true it will become that nobody does anything right unless it pays. And this is no way to run a ballclub, a school system, or a country.

What teacher surveys say about merit pay vs. class size

An editorial in Saturday's NY Times argues, as others have, that the new merit pay proposal to be implemented in 200 low-performing schools “represents a good first step toward the goal of attracting teachers to the most challenging schools — and keeping them there.”

The argument that the chance of a $3,000 bonus will draw teachers to low-performing schools is dubious. There is at least an equal chance that through no fault of their own, such a school will get a failing grade on the new progress report, be further stigmatized – and eventually closed. Why wouldn’t teachers be responsible for a school’s low grade?

First of all, the new reward system as well as each school's grade will be based largely on one year's test scores alone -- highly unreliable, statistically speaking. Moreover, many factors out of any individual teacher's control, such as class size and overcrowding, will not be considered in the assessment of his or her performance -- or a school's grade, for that matter.

In North Carolina, educators were polled from throughout the state to find out what would be the most effective measure to attract teachers to work in low-performing schools. The number one response was lowering class size, with 83.7% of teachers and 83.1% of administrators replying that this way, far outstripping any other proposal, including providing salary enhancements --which came out at number five.

A just-released Public Agenda survey found that 76% of teachers say that reducing class size would be a "very effective" method to improve teacher quality, compared to fewer than one in six who believed that tying salary increases to their students' performance would be. (You can click on the chart to enlarge it.)

If the administration were really serious about enticing teachers to work in our most challenging schools, and keeping them there longer, it would immediately cap class sizes at reasonable levels. As the Times editorial points out, this would be a better way to improve student achievement in these schools as well:

"At the same time, school officials would need to make bigger changes — like cutting class sizes and improving support services — if they want to make real headway in improving student performance."

R.I.P., NYC Public School System, 10/17/07

Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have announced two new arrangements with the teachers’ union (UFT) that, combined with their policy initiatives in recent years, will be recalled in future years as the last nail in the coffin of the NYC public school system. In the end, it appears that Randi Weingarten, President of the UFT, has finally succumbed to the Dark Side rather than preserve any sense of the City schools as a truly educational enterprise.

The first of these new programs is the City’s agreement with the UFT to pay merit bonuses to teachers in low-performing schools that make the greatest gains in student test scores. Now not only can principals and students receive cash rewards for high scores, but teachers will share the wealth as well, beginning next year at the $20 million mark.

Anyone who is able to recall the criminal consequences of Sears Auto Shops paying their mechanics incentive bonuses in the early 1990s based on the charges they generated from customers can foresee what’s coming. Those Sears mechanics did only what was natural – they “discovered” thousands of unneeded repairs and generated tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent repairs. Incentives drive behavior, and badly designed incentives often drive single-minded bad behavior that creates unintended consequences.

In this instance with the DOE and the UFT, only the naïve can fail to see the consequences – more test prep, more test prep, and more test prep – and an institutionalized encouragement to cheat. Not to mention that this system of rewards will be unfair to those teachers who are left working in overcrowded schools with class sizes of thirty or more compared to their colleagues lucky enough to teach in smaller classes. Nor that one year’s test scores are statistically unreliable indicators of student learning.

Within a decade, our public school teachers will be mostly test prep functionaries, our schools subsidiaries of Kaplan or Princeton Review, and the kids won’t be any better off. Our school system is looking more and more like that of mainland China every day, where success in standardized testing determines a school’s reputation and ranking, a principal’s standing, a teacher’s rating, and a student’s future at every stage of education. Of course, as anyone who has taught in China or worked with Chinese college graduates knows, these students are robbed early in life of their creativity, insight, inquisitiveness, or interest in learning. And no wonder: their entire knowledge base has been developed for one purpose and one purpose only – success on standardized tests.

The second announcement, another handout from the Mayor to the UFT, will allow teachers to retire five years earlier with full pension benefits. Combined with the increased emphasis on standardized testing and a new budgetary system (ironically called “fair student funding”) that dissuades principals from retaining higher-paid, more experienced teachers, the handwriting on the wall is clear. Ten years from now, the NYC public school teaching population will consist even more of young and inexperienced teachers.

Even more important, as a former teacher, I recognize the implications for the classroom. Anyone who sees teaching as fun, challenging, and an opportunity to motivate and experiment, anyone who teaches as a vocation to inspire students with understanding and enthusiasm, anyone who teaches to see kids’ eyes light up with new knowledge and appreciation for the world around them – what would you do except give up and look elsewhere for the kind of teaching you want to do? Our schools’ best teachers will leave the profession or migrate elsewhere, to private schools or the suburbs, where originality and joy in their professional calling will still have a chance to thrive.

Any notion that NYC public schools can be a haven for creative learning experiences has been shattered by these announcements. Sadly, the only parents who will keep their children in this system are likely to be those who lack the financial means to escape. Randi Weingarten’s agreement to these initiatives is a stunning betrayal of public school children and their parents for the sake of more money in her members’ pockets. Future generations will survey NYC’s gutted public school system and recall October 17, 2007 as a day of infamy in the history of the UFT – and this city.


UPDATE: Check out this excellent September 2005 Boston Globe article on merit pay for teachers uncovered by Leonie Haimson. Curious how the Boston Globe can understand the problem while the Daily News and the New York Post are busy fawning over the Emperor's new clothes and the NY Times considers it beneath themselves to comment.

Merit Pay Controversy

I posted these wire service articles on the NY Education News listserv, but thought a wider audience might be interested. It seems there was a bit of controversy yesterday around the DOE (yes, I know, it's hard to believe there'd be controversy surrounding the DOE, but life is full of surprises).

DOE TO PARTNER WITH McDONALD'S

March 5, 2007 (GBN News): Further details emerged today regarding the Department of Education's controversial plan to seek private funding for a merit pay plan for teachers. A source at the DOE informed GBN News that an agreement has been reached in principle between the DOE and the fast food company McDonald's to partner in providing supplemental pay.

While the plan has not been entirely finalized, it would apparently involve the company providing extra pay to teachers based entirely on their students' achievement. Achievement would be measured by a daily series of what will be termed "McQuizzes". Each day, teachers whose class averaged in the top 10% on these "McQuizzes" would receive an unspecified bonus.

The plan,conceived by corporate consulting guru Jack Welch, originally called for disincentives as well. However, it became apparent that the UFT contract would prohibit "firing the ass", as Welch put it, of all teachers whose class scored in the bottom 10%. Instead, students in those classes will be allowed to transfer to classes with "higher performing" teachers.

In a related story, the DOE is exploring the possibility of partnering with the quick oil change company Jiffy Lube to develop timed performance standards for teachers. The corporate "turnaround" firm of Alvarez and Marsal has estimated that trimming the time for lessons by up to 80% would yield tremendous cost savings that could immediately be pumped back into increased consulting fees. According to Ken Barber, Manager of Learning and Training for Jiffy Lube International, "If we can train our technicians to change your oil in 10 minutes, we can train your teachers to do a lesson in the same period of time".

Naturally, as with all good ideas, there were objections. For example, one public school parent posted the following on the listserv:

"And what does changing oil have to do with teachers planning a lesson????? This is one of the most absurd comments that I have ever heard in my life. If that is the case, how about Indy race car drivers, who can change 4 tires and gas up a car in about a minute, do the same thing. ARGH!!!"

Well, the DOE is nothing if not responsive (we know this because they told us so). The very same afternoon, I found the following article:

DOE HITS SPEED BUMP

March 5, 2007 (GBN News): Stung by criticism on the Yahoo NY Education News Listserv of the pending Jiffy Lube/DOE partnership to provide timed performance standards for teachers, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced late today that this plan would be dropped in favor of one now being negotiated with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Chancellor acknowledged the criticism that the Speedway pit crews could provide much faster, more comprehensive teacher training than Jiffy Lube, and that this could thus save even more education dollars. New "Chief Family Engagement Officer" Martine Guerrier issued a statement taking credit for the timely change in plans, noting that this is the first time since Mayor Bloomberg took office that the DOE has actually responded to parent suggestions.


-Gary Babad