New research on teacher ‘pay for performance’ schemes

Vanderbilt University’s National Center on Performance Incentives has just announced the publication of a text entitled Performance Incentives: Their Growing Impact on American K-12 Education, edited by Matthew G. Springer. The book’s Web site states:

The concept of pay for performance for public school teachers is growing in popularity and use, and has resurged to once again occupy a central role in education policy. [This text] offers the most up-to-date and complete analysis of this promising—yet still controversial—policy innovation.

In related news, the think tank Public Agenda has published a new study that finds:

Seventy-one percent of Gen Y teachers are open to rewarding teachers based on incentive pay, whereas only 10 percent of Gen Y teachers think that student performance on standardized tests is an “excellent” measure of teacher success.

I’ve posted on this topic in the past.

I’d also like to note that Dr. Ed Wiley, a quantitative research expert on the faculty of the U. of Colorado at Boulder*, has conducted research into accountability-based teacher pay programs, including Denver Public Schools’ ProComp. For an introduction to the quantitative models that underlie many ‘pay for performance’ schemes, I recommend this report by Dr. Wiley. (PDF format)

*Disclosure: I am a doctoral candidate at CU – Boulder and have studied with Dr. Wiley.

Updates on the Common Core Standards Initiative

Education Week reports that the Common Core Standards Initiative, an effort spearheaded by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association, proceeds apace:

Academic scholars, teachers, state officials, school administrators, and at least one librarian fill the ranks of the newly announced “work groups,” for developing K-12 standards in English-language arts and math… The two teams will have the duty of completing the second phase of common state standards. The first phase was the drafting of college- and career-readiness standards, a draft of which was released a few months ago.

 

Meanwhile, Ed Week reports here that at least seven states have suspended or slowed their own development of state standards in an apparent attempt to take a ‘wait and see’ approach to the national standards movement.

(For some background, see my prior posts on this topic.)

Reasons NOT to tie teacher pay to student test scores

Gordon MacInnes of The Century Foundation has published this brief on the topic of using student test scores to measure teacher effectiveness, a proposition that has been advanced by a number of school reformers. This very controversial topic recently returned to news headlines after the New Haven (CT) teachers’ union signed a contract that includes student performance in the evaluation process tied to teacher salary.*

Among the reasons MacInnes gives for NOT using student test scores to ‘grade’ teacher performance:

• Students are not randomly assigned to teachers (nor to schools) – some teachers might only be assigned students perceived to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’
• Standardized tests are evaluated for reliability and validity based on their intended purpose,  such as assessing 4th Grade math proficiency, not for evaluating teachers
• Compensating teachers according to individual performance might lessen the impetus for teachers to collaborate and share best practices

 

*See this New Haven Register (CT) article for more information on the contract signed by New Haven teachers.

Will national education standards lead to national standardized tests?

In this post last April, I described a new push by US governors and state educational commissioners to develop national education standards for K-12. Now, Education Week reports in this article that:

As 48 states charge ahead with plans to adopt common academic standards, the U.S. Department of Education will enlist experts and the public to help design a $350 million competition for the next step: the development of common tests.

In coming weeks, top Education Department officials will travel to Atlanta, Boston, and Denver for a series of meetings that will solicit testimony from testing experts, including those with research and technical know-how, as well as to hear from the public

SAT scores still vary by race, gender and economic class

USA Today reports:

Average national SAT scores for the high school class of 2009 dropped two points compared with last year, a report out today says. And while the population of test takers was the most diverse ever, average scores vary widely by race and ethnicity.

On one end, students who identified themselves as Asian, Asian-American or Pacific Islander posted a 13-point gain. On the other end, students who identified themselves as Puerto Rican posted a 9-point drop in average scores.

The SAT’s owner, the nonprofit College Board, highlighted the 40% minority participation rate among test-takers this year, up from 38% last year and 29.2% in 1999. Also up from previous years: More than a third of students say they are first-generation college students whose parents never went to college, and more than a quarter said English is not their first language.

“We are tremendously encouraged by the increasing diversity,” said College Board president Gaston Caperton. “More than ever, the SAT reflects the diversity of students in our nation’s classrooms.”

Additional information is available from the College Board here.

U. S. Dept. of Ed report shows American students lag behind other nations in science and math

CNN reports:

…A special analysis put out last week by the National Center for Education Statistics [compares] 15-year-old U.S. students with students from other countries in the Organization for Economic Development.It found the U.S. students placed below average in math and science. In math, U.S. high schoolers were in the bottom quarter of the countries that participated, trailing countries including Finland, China and Estonia.

According to the report, the U.S. math scores were not measurably different in 2006 from the previous scores in 2003. But while other countries have improved, the United States has remained stagnant.

In science, the United States falls behind countries such as Canada, Japan and the Czech Republic.

The report is available here.

ACT organization: Less than a quarter of incoming college freshmen ready for college coursework

USA Today reports:

Even as high school graduates in recent years have grown increasingly better prepared for college, too many members of the class of 2009 cannot adequately perform all of the academic skills they will need to succeed, a report says.

Just 23% of students, up from 22% last year, earned test scores suggesting they can earn at least a C in first-year college courses in English, math, reading and science, says the report, released today by the non-profit Iowa-based testing company ACT. It’s based on scores of 1.48 million 2009 high school graduates who took the ACT’s college entrance exam.

What can we learn from testing?

The NY Times has assembled a set of editorials on the subject of K-12 testing from a panel of experts, includine cognitive psychologist Howard Gardner (of whom I’m a big fan).

Governors, ed commissioners call for national standards based on ‘international benchmarks’

Education Week reports:

After years of debating the idea of national content standards, representatives from 41 states convened in Chicago today in what organizers hope will be a first, concrete step toward common guidelines in mathematics and English-language arts.

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers—the Washington-based groups that are co-sponsoring the meeting—want to build a prototype of high school graduation standards by summer, and grade-by-grade academic standards in math and language arts by the end of the year.

The undertaking would start with rigorous math and language arts standards that are aligned with college- and career-ready expectations and made available for states to adopt voluntarily.

Earlier this year, the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve, Inc. released this report (PDF) calling for the development of state and national standards based on ‘international benchmarking.’

NOTE: I previously blogged about the limitations of international benchmarking in March of this year. That post can be found here.

New report argues European test not useful in assessing American students’ standing relative to their international peers

The AP (via USA Today) reports:

The nation’s governors and other policymakers have advocated a deeply flawed European test to judge American students, a private study has found.

The National Governors Association and other groups have been pushing states to compare their kids’ performance to that of students around the world. The idea is to help the U.S. gain on better-performing countries by borrowing their best ideas.

To compare American schoolchildren, the governors have urged states to use tests including the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which is given to high school students in 57 countries. But the Brookings Institution, in a report released Tuesday, said the PISA test is too flawed.

The PISA test goes beyond learning to measure values and beliefs, the report found. For example, PISA asks students whether they favor laws that protect the habitats of endangered species. And it asks if children favor electricity from renewable sources and regulating factory emissions.

“These are political judgments,” said Tom Loveless, the study’s author. “For me as a citizen, before I would agree or disagree with any of them, I’d need to know more about them.”

 

The report is available for download from the Brookings Institution Web site here.