This is no surprise: Education Week reports that most bonuses for higher scores were paid to teachers in affluent districts. This could have been predicted in advance. Teachers who teach advantaged kids are superstars because the students are well-fed, live in secure homes, have regular medical check-ups and educated parents. Their schools get higher letter grades. Rewards based on test scores ignore the fact that test scores are highly correlated with family income and education.
The Indiana Department of Education has announced how it will divvy up $40 million that state lawmakers set aside in 2015 to reward teachers who are rated effective and highly effective. Those bonuses will disproportionally go to teachers in wealthy districts, a fact that has many in the state up in arms.
Carmel Clay Schools, where just 9 percent of their 16,000 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, will get the most— $2.4 million or roughly $2,422 per teacher. Another well-off Indianapolis suburban district, Zionsville Community Schools, where fewer than 5 percent of students qualify for the free and reduced-price lunch program, will receive about $2,240 per teacher. Meanwhile, Indianapolis, the state’s largest district will receive just around $330,875, or $128.40 per educator. So teachers in those wealthy suburban districts will get bonuses nearly 20 times larger than effective and highly effective educators in Indianapolis.
Indiana State Teachers Association President Teresa Meredith calls it a “flawed” system.
“While educators at well-resourced schools performed well and received a much-deserved bonus, the educators teaching in some of the most challenging districts where socioeconomic factors can negatively impact student and school performance, were left out,” she said in a statement. “We need high-quality educators to teach at our most-challenged schools, and this distribution of bonuses certainly won’t compel them to do so.”
Legislators may take another look. I hope they look at the history of merit pay. It has never worked, if worked means better education or higher scores. I have a chapter in “Reign of Error” on the history of merit pay.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What are the lead levels for drinking water in poorer school districts?
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Average blood lead levels in the US today are about 2 micrograms/deciliter. They are very low in comparison with most other countries and have fallen 80-90% over the last half century. In 1976 the US pop average blood lead level was 12.8 micrograms/deciliter. There is no reliable data on the health risks of such low blood lead levels.
About 4% of the children tested in Flint had blood lead levels above 5 micrograms per deciliter. Supposedly if one has a blood lead level of 6 what is suffering from “lead poisoning” while if one has a blood lead level of 4 one is “safe”. There is no evidence that the health risks at 6 micrograms per deciliter are significantly greater than the health risks at 4 micrograms per deciliter. Nor is much of anything known about the magnitude of the health risks of such low blood lead levels.
Like many public health topics there is a large degree of hysteria in the response to the Flint situation.
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And there is no evidence for Climate change either .
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6104a1.htm
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If you are interested in the water in schools, here is an excellent article.
http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/education/99093-two-schools-15-miles-and-worlds-apart
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And the irony is that teachers working in the affluent districts already get paid a higher salary.
Is this the way to get the “brightest and the best” teachers for those high poverty areas?
If the government insists on merit pay, there is a formula to prorate the differences which would give the faculties in those “low performing” schools a chance to partake of the “riches”.
Eventually, when the teacher shortage hits, they’ll have to give bonuses to get certified people to teach in those less desirable districts.
I foresee a lot of churn in the future.
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An additional pain to go with the irony: teachers working with low-income students likeliest to produce low scores are the first blamed, the first harassed and the first removed from the classroom — all while the “press” then makes a fuss over the fact that our nation’s poorest schools have the lowest number of experienced teachers.
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Of course, ciedie. If we want the most experienced teachers in the poorest schools, we should offer them more money and other incentives, such as smaller classrooms, trained teacher aides, social workers, and other support personnel and services. But that is not going to happen in the near future. 😔
(And we still need to do something about alleviating poverty in this country.)
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And ciedie, we both know that The Buffalo News perpetuates this myth. It’s a miracle that the district finally got a new contract after twelve years of “negotiations”.
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The last thing they want is certified teachers. They prefer employees to oversee large rooms filled with children hooked up to devices.
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Yes, Abigail, they want to pay less. But they will also receive less as far as well-educated children are concerned.
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ciedie aech: excellent point that needed to be made.
If I may add, remember that snappy excuse used by rheephormsters of all political colors and hues, “poverty is not destiny,” used to justify the bitter medicines they force down the throats of public school staff and students and parents?
No, poverty is not destiny. It’s in great part the result of human-made rheephorm mandates that ensure worst educational & management practices that predictably lead to more failures as defined by test scores and such. And the feedback loop keeps justifying comforting the more comfortable and afflicting the more afflicted.
Which, of course, from the POV of the heavyweights of the “new civil rights movement of our time” justifies doubling down on whatever they’ve been doing that hasn’t been working.
By which they mean increasing disparities in income and education and life outcomes.
Because there’s $tudent $ucce$$ in policies that make ₵ent¢ out of inequality…
Rheeally! But not really, if one is interested in a “better education for all.”
Thank you for your comment.
😎
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At least in Indiana you can get a bonus for an effective evaluation. In Florida, only veteran teachers with Highly Effective evaluations and high SAT scores qualify for the Best and Brightest bonus. Florida is now facing a teacher shortage thanks to the implementation of merit pay and ridiculous requirements for bonus money that few teachers qualify for. You can read more about Florida’s failure to attract and retain teachers here https://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2016/12/22/teach-in-florida-sexy-beaches-hotels/
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I’m so old that my test scores were not allowed. I would have had to retest for the money. Boooo
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I know a teacher at my school who is older and from England. She didn’t have any SAT scores so she actually studied, sat for the SAT and got the score she needed for the bonus. Unfortunately, this year her VAM knocked her down from Highly Effective to Effective and she no longer qualified for Best and Brightest. Her Biology students had a 96% pass rate on the state EOC but her VAM rated her “needs improvement.”
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It is obviously a horrible idea that will discourage people from working in poor school districts. It does, however, make it easier to declare many urban districts a “failure” due to the high concentration of poor students. This, in turn, makes them vulnerable to takeover and privatization. If this happens, most of the ELLs and classified students will be charter rejects and wind up in an under funded and under resourced public school. We should call this a discriminatory “race to the bottom.”
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Segregation has many guises.
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bingo
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Many years ago, when my kids were young and going to public schools, their schools always scored among the highest (if not the highest at that time) in the district, and of course, their elementary, middle, and high schools always celebrated these scores, as if they had done some kind of miracle of teaching.
As Mr. Zorba pointed out at the time, we live in an area with a whole lot of middle class and upper middle class families, many, if not most of whom, were well-educated. His point was that these kids came from relatively affluent, college-educated families, and it really wasn’t that the local schools had done such a great job, it was that the kids came from the “lucky” families.
I am not suggesting that the teachers in their schools were bad or anything. Many of them, in fact, were quite good, some were “okay,” and a few of them were not so “okay.”
But these were kids who would have done well, anyway.
A whole lot of the test scores depend upon the socio-economic status of the parents. And until this country gets serious about addressing the profound problems of poverty, things are not going to change fast enough in the schools.
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Same thing with my children and the Kirkwood School District (which always ranks at the top of those school rankings-LOL). Educated parents and many well-to-do families who value public education.
In contrast when I moved out here to a rural poverty district, while the parents are proud of the public schools and the schools are a focal point for the community, there is no where near the commitment of resources for the schools nor is the attitude for academics as comprehensive. Even my son, as a freshman, noticed the lack of focus on academics by too many students and the lack of experienced teachers as we cannot pay like counties to the east toward St. Louis and therefore we are a “feeder” district where many beginning teachers leave after a couple of years for a 25% or so increase in salary for the same and maybe even lesser student loads.
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And I’m betting that many of the districts in St. Louis County, like Kirkwood, like Clayton, like Ladue and others (yes, I grew up in St. Louis County) had way more resources than the poorer rural schools. Decent school libraries, smaller class sizes, better science labs in the upper grades, more support staff.
Imagine how much worse things were in the St. Louis inner-city schools?
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Okay, Zorba, having grown up in St. Louis you had to know this was coming:
What high school did you attend? LOL!!
Also have you seen this Riverfront Times article? http://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlouis/where-you-shouldve-gone-to-high-school/Content?oid=2497512#
There’s a great chart linked in the article that can help one decide for both public and parochial schools. Quite humorous and spot on.
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Hazelwood. Although, way back when I went, there was only one Hazelwood High School. The district has grown quite a bit since then.
Yes, I’ve seen the Riverfront Times article- one of my brothers sent it to me awhile back. It’s very cute. 😀
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Ah, a North Countian, eh. Back when probably there were still a lot of truck farms, farms in general, and woods!
I grew up in White County, oops I mean South County closer to the Meremac River than to St. Louis. And yes back then it was mainly fields and woods and truck farms-family owned small businesses. Had a creek that ran (and still does-my sister a retired teacher lives their) through the backyard and into the woods.
I grew up in the Catholic schools K-12 having gone to Vianney High School back when its students were known as “greasers” due to the blue collar nature of their parents.
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Yep, North County. In area, it was a very large county, and while there were certainly suburbs there (we lived in one), most of it was still farm land. Back then, at least.
(And, although I haven’t lived there in over 40 years, I am still a St. Louis Cardinals fan.)
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Zorba,
Please define a “quite good” teacher, an “okay” teacher, and a “not so okay” teacher. I hear these kind labels all the time and I really wonder what they mean. They, of course, will mean different things to different people.
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I’ll start with “not so good.” Examples are teachers who are trying to teach outside their area of expertise and haven’t bothered to learn the subject matter they are teaching (such as a coach, who majored in PE with a minor in English, teaching math, and very poorly, but he was a great coach, and they had to stick him somewhere. A French teacher who barely spoke French. And so on.) Also includes the teachers who belittle or insult their students- although they exist, they are rare, thank goodness. The teachers who are close to retirement and just “putting in their time.”
And okay teacher is one who knows their subject matter and can convey it to the kids. They may not be inspiring, but their students learn what they’re supposed to learn. An okay teacher can maintain order in the classroom so that the kids can do what they’re supposed to be there for- learn.
A quite good teacher not only knows and conveys their subject matter and maintains order, but brings in something extra to the lessons, makes the kids think, makes the kids excited about learning, notices when a kid seems tired, or depressed, or is having some problems at home, and takes extra time to work with that kid, and involves a counselor or social worker (assuming the school has them) when appropriate.
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What I’m interested in is to see how a center school for the lowest 1% level students does when teachers are evaluated with a VAM score based on the students’ test grades. Yes, we are told that the formula takes into account the special nature of the students. I’d love to know how it factors in medical conditions where students lose function or even die. Then, many of the classes are statistically too small to calculate fairly though we know that fairness has nothing to do with it. Add to it that many classes are run by subs because teachers are not to be found.
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No matter what statistical “magic” they claim is at work, we all know the scores will correlate to the socio-economic levels of students. Their mystical algorithm will punish the teachers of the poor, disabled and English language learners. We need to accept that some things cannot and should not be measured. VAM is a fake! Observations from local trained administrators are by far a better option.
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the policies which produced the disproportional rewards to the more affluent. Who developed and successfully promoted them? Did it happen in 2001-2008, or 2009-2016? Does either president Bush or president Obama deserve a larger part of the blame….or the credit?
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Adding insult to injury, more likely than not the teachers in poverty districts spend more of their salary supplying the classroom with needed items than do teachers in the wealthy districts which supply the teachers with what they need to teach-what a friggin novel concept, eh!
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Teachers in high poverty districts also supply students with winter jackets and crayons to take home as needed. My school delivered Christmas gifts to children who might not receive any.
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An uneducated populace is an easily manipulated populace…see some of the comments from above
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Which comments? Name names, don’t be afraid.
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