How’s the impact us locally? Shelby County Schools would lose $114 million over a six year period, or $19 million each year.

Also of note, Metro Nashville Public Schools would lose just over $38 million over a six year period, or $6.3 million each year. You can check out the spreadsheet here for the breakdown of the top 100 districts and how much each stands to lose.

This would happen through a number of mechanisms, including:

• Making the sequestration cuts ($800 million) permanent
• Allowing states to redirect federal funds to districts with lower concentrations of poverty
• Eliminate regulations on where federal funding goes that ensure it reaches the classroom

I try to keep things as neutral as possible when doing analyses, but this gets me riled up as it seems like a pretty obvious instance of congress playing politics with the federal budget. Under this bill, money would likely flow toward wealthier districts (read: republican represented) and away from poorer districts (read: democrat represented). There’s no other way to interpret it.

Unfortunately we don’t have much pull with this republican congress seeing as how we have a democratic representative, but if you live outside Memphis and care about quality public education for all students, I urge you to call your congressmen and women and tell them to vote against this bill.

Follow Bluff City Education on Twitter @bluffcityed and look for the hashtag #iteachiam and #TNedu to find more of our stories.  Please also like our page on facebook. 

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Here’s a conversation I had with my father over winter break:

Me: Dad, do you think we should pay teachers more?
Dad: Well son, why do you think you should be paid more?

In that moment, I realized that before pushing specific reforms, we need to convince those closest to us not about the how of compensation reform, but the why. So Dad, quite simply, I think that if you want your nieces, nephews and grandkids taught by excellent professionals, you need to start paying teachers more. Here’s why:

In the next several years, over one million American teachers are projected to leave their classrooms. The estimated cost of this attrition ranges from five billion dollars to over seven billion per year, much of which goes to training new and inexperienced teachers.

Instead, we should use these billions to keep and improve the teachers we have. The latest Primary Sources survey found that almost three in every four teachers believe that higher salaries are very important for retaining teachers. Because teachers tend to take several years in the classroom to get into their groove as educators, experience is one predictor of student achievement. The more experience we keep, the more quality we will have in our classrooms.

Second, reforming our compensation structure is not only crucial to retaining teachers in general, but also to retaining our top teaching talent. TNTP estimates that over 10,000 of our highest performing teachers leave the classroom every year, in part because of subpar compensation. Just like many professions pay more to keep their most talented professionals, we also need to pay educators more if we want to retain our best and brightest.

Third, the way we pay teachers sends a message to high-achieving young adults about the viability of teaching as a life-long profession. Students in high school and college need to perceive teaching as an ambitious career, just like medicine or law. Money isn’t the only or even the primary motivator for many teachers-to-be. But that doesn’t mean that raising teacher compensation wouldn’t elevate the status of the profession.Only one half of pre-med students identify financial incentives as their primary motivation for becoming doctors, but high salaries are certainly a component of what makes the medical profession highly respected. If we want our country’s best and brightest college graduates to see teaching as a desirable career, it’s essential to offer pay incentives high enough to attract the talent we seek–high-performers who might otherwise be drawn to higher paying and better respected professions.

Unfortunately, American teachers make between 67 and 72 percent of what we might expect someone holding a bachelors degree to make. Considering the rising costs of college, stagnant teaching wages will likely dissuade, rather than encourage, college grads from entering the teaching profession.

So, Dad, we need to pay teachers more because the future of your grandkids depends on it. When we continue to offer salaries that discourage rather than encourage our best and brightest from entering and remaining in the profession, the very future of our society is put in jeopardy.

Follow Bluff City Education on Twitter @bluffcityed and look for the hashtag #iteachiam and #TNedu to find more of our stories.  Please also like our page on facebook. 

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After examining the data closer, I realized that these students all had one thing in common – they had missed over 30 percent of their days in my class throughout the year. Curious, I went back over my data from the year before to see if this held true for other students, and I found a notable trend – the best predictor of achieving above average growth on your Algebra I end of course was your attendance to my class.

In summary, students who attended at least 70 percent of my class throughout the year almost all scored proficient on their end of course. Those who attended less by in large didn’t. And what was the key reason for these students absences? Suspensions

I relate this story because of a recent article published by Chalkbeat on the alarming rates of suspensions here in Shelby County. According to the article:

More than 40 percent of all black middle and high school students in Memphis were suspended at least once during the 2011-12 school year – an “alarmingly high” rate compared to other districts across the nation, according to a new statistical analysis released Monday by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies.

The analysis was based on federal data reviewed by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies, which advocates for children of historically disenfranchised groups. Comparing student suspension rates for every district in the nation, the center identified the former Memphis City Schools among individual districts with the most egregious records. Nationally, it found that American children are losing almost 18 million days of instruction due to suspensions.

You can see from my own experience the impact of these missed days, but don’t just take my word for it. The Federal Government makes the impact of these suspensions clear:

The rates have soared in recent years as district-wide “zero tolerance” policies were implemented and removed students from the classroom for infractions such as possession of marijuana or talking back to a teacher.

Studies show that suspensions have a disproportionately negative impact on a student’s academic prospects, since students who aren’t in the classroom are more likely to miss crucial lesson plans.

The zero tolerance policy makes sense on one level. If a kid commits the infraction, then they deserve the punishment . However, in my experience, this only has the impact of causing the student to fall further behind, which increases the likelihood that they will start to see themselves as “that kid” who acts out and gets suspended. Its a vicious cycle that often times won’t stop until the student is expelled.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not advocating a policy of leniency in the case of serious infractions. Infractions that endanger the safety of teachers and other students require stiff penalties and students should absolutely receive the punishment allotted for these offenses. But not all infractions deserve a suspension. The problem comes in when we issue suspensions for minor infractions such as uniforms, tardiness to class or other similarly minor infractions. When we issue suspensions for these problems, we send an unfortunate message to students – that we just don’t want you here. And even for those punishments that may deserve a suspension, our default should not be to suspend automatically. It should be to ask what we can do if at all possible to avoid a suspension and in doing so, help that student avoid falling further behind.

Suspensions exist for a reason, but they are certainly not appropriate for all situations. Not every infraction deserves a suspension; indeed, most do not. For those that do, we can also do more to work to find alternative solutions that keep students in school. I do want to close by noting that Shelby County has been working to do just that. Chalkbeat notes that in subsequent years, suspension rates in the district have gradually decreased, no doubt because of efforts to accomplish what I’ve advocated for here. However, there’s still a long way to go. Its time for urban schools like SCS to revamp their discipline policy to come up with alternatives to suspensions.

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I run a classroom store with my 9th graders using tickets, which they receive for exemplary performance in class. The criteria for earning tickets are clear, and they love getting “paid” for exemplary performance.

Just like my classroom ticket system, the idea of giving financial rewards for excellent performance serves as the foundation for an often promoted but at times controversial reform to our teacher compensation system, performance pay.

In a performance pay system, teachers or schools are graded based on the district’s evaluation tool and given bonuses if they reach a certain threshold to reward their effort. As my district, Memphis City Schools, merges with Shelby County in the coming school year, the unified district is considering a new performance-based compensation system. But to make this new system work and ensure teacher buy-in, the district needs to take teacher feedback into account. Discussions with teachers suggest two main criteria that must be met to encourage educators to accept performance pay:

First, the system needs to be understandable and transparent. Teachers need to know how they can meet the performance benchmarks and most importantly understand the system being used to evaluate them. The success of a performance pay system depends upon a highly functional evaluation system that incorporates multiple measures of effectiveness. In Memphis (and elsewhere), this system includes value-added data from student test scores, classroom observations and content knowledge measures to rate teacher quality.

When multiple measures and transparency are not in place, however, many teachers simply do not trust in the accuracy of these systems, and therefore do not trust performance pay. So before rushing into new compensation systems based on performance, districts must focus on ensuring that evaluation systems are carefully designed with teacher input. If teachers don’t understand the way the system functions, they won’t support it and performance pay will become just another failed reform attempt.

Second, performance pay is most likely to be effective in subject areas where student performance is quantifiable using student test data or other metrics. Many grades and subjects do not have standardized assessments, so thorough measures must be in place to assess student progress in those areas. Tennessee, for example, is piloting a portfolio-based arts assessment tool developed by a group of teachers. If student data is seen as reliable, the chances of educators accepting performance pay will likely increase.

Finally, performance pay must be considered within the broader context of reforms targeted at improving student and teacher performance. Because teachers are driven by so much more than money, compensation will never serve as the primary motivator to behavioral change within the profession. By embedding a performance pay system within a holistic set of programs that support teachers to improve their practice, districts can avoid the pitfall of potentially incentivizing teachers to game the system, whether by “teaching to the test” at the expense of meaningful learning or, at its worse, cheating to get bonuses. School leaders should also focus on creating school cultures that prioritize teacher collaboration, which is crucial to student learning. Teachers actively seek out schools with collaborative cultures, and evidence from numerous studies suggests that performance pay implemented poorly can actually push school culture in the opposite direction.

Is it possible to set up a successful performance pay system? In theory, yes. However, research suggests that any performance pay system needs to be designed similar to my classroom’s ticket system: it needs to be part of a multi-faceted system aimed at encouraging quality, easy to understand, and fair and equitable in how bonuses are distributed. Only when these criteria are met will performance pay find success in our education system.

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As introduced, abolishes the achievement school district at the close of the 2015–2016 school year.

So far no other sponsors have been reported other than the two elected officials from Nashville (Bo Mitchell and Thelma Harper). It will be interesting to see if any elected officials from Memphis sign on in the coming days. However, given the republican control of the legislature and the fact that the ASD operates mainly in Democratic controlled areas (Nashville/Memphis), I can’t honestly see any action coming of this even with Memphis sponsors.

Check back for more updates as this legislation develops in the coming weeks.

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I wrote a few days ago about my concerns with the likely school voucher systemproposal in Tennessee this legislative session.  Vouchers are meant to increase school choice for low-income students and give them an alternative to traditional neighborhood schools.  I truly believe that we should pursue evidence based policies that promote school choice and empower parents to select the best option available for their students.  But first we must make sure the evidence indicates the policy will truly achieve its desired aims.

When viewed in this light, vouchers simply to not provide the quality required to justify their expenditure.  The voucher program proposed for Tennessee would spend half of what individual districts spend on a per pupil basis, which would fall somewhere between $4,200 and $5,400 depending on the district.  But evidence from existing voucher programs across the country suggests that students would likely fair about the same in a voucher program as they do in traditional public schools, making it a poor use of public money.

I propose an alternative.  If our elected leaders truly want to grow the overall number of quality school choice options here in Tennessee, they should do so by encouraging the growth and the quality of our existing charter school network (full disclosure: I teach in a Tennessee charter school).

Charter schools are public schools operated by independent non-profit governing bodies.  In Tennessee, those schools are also held responsible for the same academic standards as traditional public schools.  Once approved, the charter must meet its goals during a predetermined time period or be shut down. Charters have the benefit of being able to operate with more freedoms than traditional schools.  They can try different intervention systems for struggling students, use unique strategies to build school culture and are given greater flexibility in personnel policies.

Charters in Tennessee also have a good track record of providing quality options to parents looking for an alternative to their neighborhood school.  According to theStandford CREDO study which examines charter quality across the country, Tennessee charters serve a population at a lower academic starting point than students in traditional schools, especially compared to charters in many states across the country.  And even though students in charters start further behind, charter schools in TN have demonstrated statistically positive results, providing their students with 86 extra days of reading learning and 72 days of math beyond the state average.

For those looking for a fiscal argument, charter schools also cost school districts less than traditional schools on a per pupil basis, especially here in Shelby County.  Per pupil spending for charters maxes out for the district at $7,518.  By contrast, pre-merger Shelby County Schools spent $9,318 per pupil and MCS $11,250 per pupil.  While this is more than the proposed voucher program, the quality we get out of charters is definitely worth the extra expenditure

Our legislators could pursue several policies to enhance the quality and size of our quality charter school network in Tennessee.  First, they can raise the bar for new charter applicants across the state and ensure only high quality charter operators open new schools in Tennessee.  Second, they should make it easier to close down charters that are underperforming to ensure that only the best stay open.  For these two policies,they might look to the ASD, which has a very rigorous charter recruitment, application and matching process.

One update, 2/19/15: the ASD has encountered additional opposition since I wrote this piece for other reasons, but their charter application and screening process does ensure that only the highest quality operators makes it through the process. The matching process has become murkier in the past year, but their screening methods are still something that could be studied and emulated.

I do want to add the caveat that I do not believe that charter schools represent THE solution to what ails American public schools.  We should continue to work to improve our traditional public school system as well as expand school choice options because this is where the vast majority of our students will go for the forseeable future.  We should also not devote resources to school choice at the expense of traditional public schools.  However, charters can serve as laboratories for testing different methods of educating students that can then be implemented in the wider school population.  And they also serve to provide parents of students stuck in failing schools with a quality alternative.  Both charters and traditional schools can continue to develop in partnership to ensure that all students can attend the right school for them.

So, if our state leaders are searching for a way to expand school choice, let’s work to grow and develop what’s already working here in Tennessee.  Let’s devote the resources otherwise to be used for ineffective voucher programs to enhancing the quality and capacity of our already strong charter network.

For more information on Tennessee charters, check out this report by SCORE,“Charters at a Glance.”

By Jon Alfuth

Follow Bluff City Education on Twitter @bluffcityed and look for the hashtag #iteachiam and #TNedu to find more of our stories.  Please also like our page on facebook. 

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I work in a charter school, and unlike a teacher in a traditional district school, the students I see every day are not sent to our school based on their street address.   Some live down the street and some drive 30 minutes both directions. We have students that come from both private and public school backgrounds.  Regardless of where they come from, our parents make the choice to send their students to our school because they believe we will provide them with a high quality education.

School choice is about giving parents the opportunity to select the best education for their children from a variety of options.  But choice itself isn’t enough.  To truly be worth of public investment, school choice programs should also improve academic outcomes for the target population.  When the evidence suggests that a particular approach doesn’t improve academic outcomes we need to think very carefully before adopting it.

With this goal in mind, Tennesseans need to critically examine the merits of another school choice approach, school vouchers.  Funded by the government, vouchers provide a fixed amount of money to families that can be applied towards tuition at a private school. Voucher programs typically target low income students and their families with the promise of an alternative to their traditional neighborhood school.  Currently nine states and the District of Columbia offer some type of voucher program, some of which have existed for over two decades.

A push for vouchers in Tennessee failed last year, but all evidence suggests that pro-voucher organizations are gearing up for another effort to enact a voucher program here in Tennessee.  The Walton Foundation recently donated $6 million to the Alliance for School Choice which operates in Tennessee and strongly advocates for voucher programs. School Choice NOW, a pro voucher group, continues to make its way around the state, stopping at locations such as Hendersonville and Hamilton County to promote its plan. All this suggests that a voucher program is all but certain to be proposed when the Tennessee General Assembly returns to work on January 14th.

But what does the evidence say about the impact of vouchers on student outcomes?  To date we’ve seen little to no positive demonstrated impact on student achievement from these programs.  In 2010, the Center on Education Policy reviewed 10 years of voucher research and action and found that vouchers had no strong effect on student achievement.  The most positive results come from Milwaukee County’s voucher program, but the effects were small and limited to only a few grades.

Voucher programs also struggle to achieve their mission of providing low-income students with a way out of failing schools.  For example a critical study of the Milwaukee program found that it overwhelmingly helped those already receiving education through private means.  Two thirds of Milwaukee students using the voucher program in the city already attended private schools.  Instead of increasing mobility for low-income students, the program primarily served to perpetuate status quo.

Voucher programs have also caused to students inadvertently attending failing schools, thereby maintaining the very problem they are meant to solve.  It’s often difficult to determine the quality of the schools serving voucher students because private schools are not required to make public the same amount of student data as public schools.  An example of this occurring can be found right next door in Louisiana where approximately 2250 students were recently found to be attending failing schools through the state’s voucher program.

I support much of the education reform movement’s goals because I believe they lead go improved student outcomes. Because of this I’m a proponent of expanding school choice, as long as it is effective at improving student achievement.  I’ve seen the positive impact these policies can have on students when they are effective through my work in a charter school.  But I question school choice policies that have not demonstrated positive impacts on student outcomes.  When a program hasn’t been able to achieve it’s goals of raising student achievement or giving low-income students a way out of failing schools after years of work and numerous studies, I personally believe we can should spend our resources elsewhere.  But don’t just take my word for it.  I encourage everyone with a vested interest in public education in Tennessee to take the time to read up on vouchers and let your legislators know where you stand!

By Jon Alfuth

Follow Bluff City Education on Twitter @bluffcityed and look for the hashtag #iteachiam and #TNedu to find more of our stories.  Please also like our page on facebook. 

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This is something that I think needs to change about education reform, both in Tennessee and across the nation. Anyone that favors adopting non-traditional (or traditional) routes to improving our schools is assumed to support any and all of those routes, when the reality is that the effectiveness of different reform initiatives varies from idea to idea and indeed, from implementation to implementation. For that reason, I think we need to look at both traditional school reform approaches with a much more critical eye than we do.

That said, in the case of State Senator Brian Kelsey’s school voucher bill, which passed the Senate Education Committee by a vote of 5-1 last week, I don’t think there’s much of a debate to be had. The impact on the district and on schools, districts and families would be decidedly negative. For that reason, I urge readers to write their state Senators and oppose this bill.

I wanted to take some time before the bill comes to the Senate floor to highlight what the bill will do, what it won’t do and its overall impact on educational quality for districts and for those using the hypothetical vouchers.

Bill Summary

First, some information about who the bill would impact:

Under Senate Bill 122, approximately $6,500 of the scholarships would be offered to low-income students to attend the school of their parents’ choice [bottom 5% in the state]. The scholarship program would be capped at 5,000 students in year one, 7,500 in year two, 10,000 in year three, and 20,000 in year four and thereafter. If those caps are not reached each year, scholarships would be offered to other low-income children in those counties in which a school in the bottom 5 percent of schools is located.

So in theory, we’re looking at a maximum of 20,000 students a year being taken out of Tennessee’s lowest performing schools.

Our next question should be – how will this impact the districts and the students left behind by those who take the vouchers?

Fiscal Impact

The answer to my previous question is simple – this bill would sap millions from local education agencies. There’s no other way to cut it. The estimated shift in state funding from local education agencies (LEAs) would be as follows:

• FY 15-16: $16.57 million
• FY 16-17: $25.47 million
• FY 17-18: $34.82 million
• FY 18-19: Over $69.63 million

That’s $146.49 million over a four year period shifted away from the highest need LEA’s in the state, with the potential for more in the long run. The LEA would be able to keep 10 percent of the per pupil spending, but would also be required to transfer 90 percent of per pupil funding to the non-public school being attended by the student.

Its not a stretch to assume that most of this cost would be absorbed by the big three urban districts in Tennessee – Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga.

Not to fear, the bill summary on Tennessee’s website says that

“LEAs with participating students will be relieved of the long-term educational cost burden of educating such students.”

If you want to see what it looks like to “relieve” a district from the long-term educational cost burden, look no further than Memphis where other efforts to accomplish the same thing has resulted in closing schools, shrinking budgets and frustrated communities as we saw last week when SCS announced plans to close another South Memphis school in a desperate attempt to try and keep kids in the district.

Interestingly, the bill summary even acknowledges this reality with the following statement:

Cost burden relief may also result in a higher per pupil expenditure for students that remain within an LEA school.

So really, in summary, there’s the possibility that the funding cuts implemented by vouchers will make it more difficult for LEAs to educate the students that remain behind.

Quality Impact

So the bill would considerably reduce local school funding. But, you ask, maybe that’s not a bad thing, if students are receiving a better education at their new private schools. Unfortunately, it’s hard to argue that the voucher bill would guarantee improved education in voucher schools primarily because the bill contains only reactive measures to ensure school quality, responding only after a school has demonstrated its inability to educate its voucher students. The bill just makes the assumption that private schools are inherently better than public schools, and foregoes a quality test before sinking taxpayer money into these schools.

Lets be clear – the only requirement for a private school to participate in the voucher program is to be an accredited school. The voucher schools would need to fall in one of three categories, I, II or III, which essentially governs who approves them. However, nothing in this accreditation guarantees that these schools represent higher quality options than what students would already have in their local neighborhood school. There is no quantitative test of student outcomes at that school to ensure that voucher students attend a quality private institution prior to accepting voucher students.

The bill does contain an accountability measure, but it would only go into effect after a school has had two years to fail students. These schools would have to administer state or national assessments to scholarship students. From the bill:

A school may continue to participate in the program as long as the school demonstrates achievement growth for scholarship students at a minimum level of “at expectations.” If a participating school demonstrates achievement growth for scholarship students at a level of “significantly below expectations” for two consecutive years or the department determines the school has failed to comply with this bill, then the commissioner of education may suspend or terminate a school’s participation in the program.

There you have it – the school could take the state’s money for two years without any prior public demonstration of quantitative effectiveness with kids.

Where Kids Could Go – Fantasy vs Reality

The draw of this bill is the vision of students from failing schools attending private schools like MUS and Hutchinson, two reputably quality private schools here in Memphis. However, there’s every reason to believe that voucher students would be priced out of these higher quality options and would instead have to opt for lower quality private schools. 

The bill specifies that private schools “Accept the scholarship amount as payment in full for the cost of tuition and fees that would otherwise be charged by the school.” The actual value of the scholarships would never exceed $7,000 in a given year according to this bill summary.

Contrast that with the tuition offered at high performing private schools in Memphis.  Memphis University School costs $19,550 and then some and Hutchinson costs start at $15,520 for kindergarten and rise to $19,840 by 9th grade. This isn’t a phenomenon limited to the best of the best Privateschoolreview.com notes that the average cost of attending private schools in Memphis is $8,786.

That means the difference between the average private school and the voucher would be over $1,700. For the higher end private schools, the difference runs thousands more.

I’m a bit perplexed as to how LEAs and private schools would handle this difference. One provision of the bill summary states that the schools would be required to take the voucher as payment in full of normal tuition costs. However, another provision states that the participating school could require students to make up the difference out of their own pockets. Either way, we find ourselves in the same place – one where voucher students would likely find themselves priced out of high quality private school options.

Final Thoughts

In summary, whether one agrees conceptually with vouchers or not, the reality is that this bill doesn’t guarantee quality for the students left behind or for the voucher participants. It saps local districts of millions of dollars a year while providing no screening tool to ensure that students attending schools on vouchers will in fact be receiving a better education than the school they left. It just assumes that private schools will be better than what the voucher students leave behind and only holds them accountable for results after they have failed kids.

As a public citizen, I have a problem with my tax dollars being spent this way. I generally oppose voucher programs on principal, but I this one is particularly bad for the reasons I’ve outlined. Try again, Senator Kelsey.

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Today 114 of 141 superintendents submitted a letter to lawmakers asking them to stick with the common core standards through the governor’s review process. They also asked that the TNReady Assessments be administered as planned in the 2015-16 school year.

In the letter they also cited the common core standards as part of the dramatic improvements we’ve seen in Tennessee over the past few years.

Let’s hope our legislators listen to our superintendents. These people see the impact of these standards every day, and if they think it’s worth while sticking with them that says a lot about their confidence in their teaching staff and in the quality of the standards themselves. It’s also their reputation on the line should their districts flounder in the first year of implementation. If their word doesn’t carry any weight with our elected officials, I don’t know what will.

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When I asked her why she was leaving, she said how hard it was, but gave me a very insightful answer that I think is relevant to the current merit pay discussion going on in SCS. If everything was going to be based on teacher evaluations, she said, she couldn’t afford to be at a school where she wouldn’t be able make a high evaluation score simply by virtue of the fact that the school was a priority school.

This was two years ago, before the district was even considering merit pay. I think that Anne’s rationale for leaving a priority school is more true today than ever before given the district’s new proposed merit pay system. My fear is that should this merit pay scheme go into effect as written, with no other changes to accompany it, the policy will lead to a mass exodus of quality teachers from the places where they are needed most, our lowest performing schools.

Level 5 Is Possible

Before continuing, let’s make sure we’re clear on something – it is possible to be a level 5 teacher in a priority school. EdWeek reported in a study they did last year in Tennessee that of the 83 priority schools across the state in 2013, there were about 375 level 5 teachers. That’s about 4.5 per school, suggesting that while not easy, high evaluation scores are possible in high need schools.

However, unless the merit pay system offers some type of compensation like a bonus to teach in these schools, I’d wager that many teachers won’t want to go work in these places if it threatens their salary. I’ll go so far as to predict that if this policy is enacted without any other supports, the district will see a mass exodus of high performing teachers from priority schools.

Why This Will Happen

There are three reasons I think this is a very likely outcome. First, test scores can and do fluctuate from year to year within priority schools for a number of reasons, and with these fluctuations come fluctuations in evaluation scores that many teachers don’t feel are their fault. I’ve known teachers who teach tested subjects in high need schools go from 1’s to 5’s in one year, and it goes the opposite way as well.

Much of this variation is subject to circumstances beyond a teacher’s control, such as attendance within the school and quality of administration. For example, my second year teaching, attendance in our building was atrociously low, which I believe played a role a collective drop in overall scores building wide. That wasn’t something that teachers could control, but had I personally been paid based on my performance, my raise would have dropped, resulting in thousands of dollars lost over my career because of something that was beyond my control.

Second, evaluation scores are often perceived to be subjective to the thoughts and desires of administrators. The belief among many of my district level colleagues is that, rightly or wrongly, evaluation scores are loaded. Many feel that teachers who are liked and valued will get the higher scores. One SCS teacher recently shared to me that they felt the best way to obtain a good evaluation score was to become a coach or be a disciplinarian, as it would make the principal more likely to give you good scores. If teachers don’t have trust in the system, they won’t stick it out in difficult environments.

Third, many high performing teachers do not have their own data and have to take that of their school. If the school’s data is a 1 or a 2, there’s almost no way that these teachers can achieve a rating of a 5, no matter how good their evaluation score may be. When push comes to shove then, its just another reason why high performing educators won’t stay in priority schools.

These self-reported teacher findings are backed up by additional research. A study in Texas by Kirby, Naftel and Berends (1999) found that teachers are especially sensitive to pay and working conditions, especially those who worked in districts with high levels of economically disadvantaged students (60 percent or higher).  Another researcher, Podursky (2001) found that “if all teachers are compensated equally, and without reflecting the difficulty of the task at hand, then they will naturally move to jobs with less stress, fewer demands, and easier students to teach.”  A final study by Hanushek et. al. (2001) concluded that teachers need to be paid at least 50% more to teach in hard-to-staff schools. This would not happen under the current SCS policy as written.

In summary, if teachers feel that their salary will go down in a challenging situation, they’re likely to leave for greener pastures. It doesn’t really matter if this is actually the reality – it’s the perception grounded in a pre-existing belief about priority schools and the existing evaluation system. Unless this changes, I fear we’ll see more teachers like Anne driven away from priority schools under this new merit pay system.

Possible Solutions

There are ways for the district to overcome these problems when it comes to salaries. One proven way is to offer signing bonuses or salary bumps for teachers to work in hard to staff schools. Experiments in Mississippi and California in which signing bonuses are given out at intervals during a multi-year period found that this increased teacher recruitment and retention to high need schools. However, to date the only schools in SCS that do anything like this is the iZone, which offers a $1,000 signing bonus and a $1,000 bonus for staying with the district each year after. Unless this changes, I fear that more teachers like Anne will make the same tough decision and leave our priority schools for greener pastures.

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The post Losing the Best: Unintended Consequences of Merit Pay appeared first on Bluff City Education.