February 6, 2008

Pay for Teachers' Performance Plans Gain Steam

Posted by Aaron Tang at 4:34PM

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Three separate events--one research paper, one op-ed in a prominent daily, and one clever pop culture reference--all discussed different sides of a compelling systemic school reform idea within the past week. The multi-faceted appearance of these three pieces seems to show a growing momentum behind the idea of paying important school stakeholders--students and teachers--for success.

The first item that was released this week was a research piece commissioned by the National Governors Association on the prominence of pay-for-performance system in virtually every other profession. The report finds from cross-sector analysis (i.e. looking at how people are paid in the business sector, other public sector fields, and so on) that there is hardly any evidence of a pay system failing to improve employee productivity when the pay system rewards those who are adding greater value to the company's end goal. In other words, when you reward the best people in your company, it brings the whole company up because: 1.) the people already within the company all strive to be the best, and 2.) people outside the company see the direct benefits of working hard at this company and want to work there too.

The researchers, Emily and Bryan Hassel, suggest that the conclusion policy makers should arrive upon is that there should no longer be debates over whether to pay teachers based on how much they are able to increase their students' learning. Instead, the debate should be over how to switch to this pay system. On this front, they suggest a couple lessons learned from other careers, namely that paying teachers with performance bonuses is more effective than bumping up their salaries and that pay bonuses must be significant enough to actually change employee incentives and behavior.

The second article is an op-ed from the Washington Post that talks about a Baltimore City Schools plan to spend over $1 million on paying students for performance. Although a much less refined idea than teacher performance pay in that few districts have implemented substantial pay plans for student success, this is an outside-the-box idea that has great potential for success, particularly in low-income rural and urban schools where junior and high school students face greater pressures to leave school. It will be fascinating to see how Baltimore's plan works in the coming years and whether the end result is higher graduation rates, college going rates, etc.

Lastly, a New York Daily News column from a respected education expert Kevin Carey draws a clever parallel between the current teacher pay debate and a debate that happened within professional baseball a decade ago. Fans of the book Moneyball will recall the book's protagonist, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, and his at-the-time heretical idea of eschewing scouting reports in favor of hard data on young prospects. Beane's premise is that subjective and qualitative evaluations of baseball players was only a very rough predictor of future performance and that statistical data was a much stronger indicator. This is the same idea that pay-for-performance fans are suggesting: let's stop basing teacher pay on superficial and input-oriented measures, and start paying those who are getting on base and show good plate discipline (i.e. increasing reading and math scores the most)!!