What can you say when a state decides to adopt a policy that has failed again and again and has been conclusively discredited? I call such proposals “zombie policies,” because they fail and fail but never die.
Justin Parmenter, a National Board Certified Teacher in North Carolina, writes here about a plan in his state to eliminate experienced-based pay and replace it with the obsolete practice of tying teacher pay to student test scores. The leaders in North Carolina call it ”merit pay.” It is also called value-added evaluation and test-based compensation.
Whatever it is called, it is ineffective and demoralizing to tie teacher pay to test scores. Those who teach in affluent districts will be paid more than those who teach in low-income schools or who teach students with disabilities. Presumably, the folks in North Carolina never heard of the POINT study in Nashville, Tennessee, a three-year study of whether teachers would produce higher test scores if offered a big bonus. The conclusion was that the bonus (merit pay) did not make a difference.
The final evaluation concluded:
While the general trend in middle school mathematics performance was upward over the period of the project, students of teachers ran- domly assigned to the treatment group (eligible for bonuses) did not outperform students whose teachers were assigned to the control group (not eligible for bonuses). The brightest spot was a positive effect of incentives detected in fifth grade during the second and third years of the experi- ment. This finding, which is robust to a variety of alternative estimation methods, is nonetheless of limited policy significance, for this effect does not appear to persist after students leave fifth grade. Students whose fifth grade teacher was in the treatment group performed no better by the end of sixth grade than did sixth graders whose teacher the year before was in the control group.
Have the North Carolina policymakers heard about the Gates-funded program to evaluate and pay teachers based on test scores and peer evaluations, which was tried in seven sites, including Hillsborough County, Florida, Memphis, Pittsburgh, and four charter chains? The program cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and it was evaluated by the RAND Corporation and AIR. The cost of the program was shared between Gates and the local districts.
The evaluation report of the Gates program was released in 2018. It concluded that the program did not improve student achievement, did not raise graduation rates or dropout rates, and did not change the quality of teachers. In some sites, teacher turnover increased. The neediest students did not get the best teachers because teachers angled to get students who would produce higher test scores. The program planners expected that as many as 20% of the site’s teachers would be fired but only 1% were.
Furthermore, in 2017, a federal judge in Houston threw out precisely the same evaluation system that North Carolina plans to use because teachers were judged by a “secret algorithm” and had “no meaningful way” to ensure that their scores were correctly calculated. The judge wrote: “The [teacher’s] score might be erroneously calculated for any number of reasons, ranging from data-entry mistakes to glitches in the computer code itself. Algorithms are human creations, and subject to error like any other human endeavor.”
Parmenter writes:
A draft proposal coming before the State Board of Education next week (April 6) would transition all North Carolina teachers to a system of “merit pay” as soon as 2023.
The proposal represents the culmination of the work of the Professional Educator Preparation and Standards Commission, which was directed by state legislators to make recommendations on licensure reform.
The proposed change would make North Carolina the first state in the country to stop paying teachers on an experience-based scale that, at least in theory, rewards long-term commitment to a career in education and recognizes the importance of veteran educators (if adequately funded by the state–but that’s a topic for another post).
Instead, compensation would be based largely on teacher effectiveness as determined by EVAAS, a computer algorithm developed by the SAS corporation which analyzes standardized test scores. Teachers who do not have EVAAS scores would receive salaries based on principal observations, observations by colleagues, and student surveys.
This plan is problematic in a number of ways. It would increase “teaching to the test” by offering a handful of larger salaries to those educators whose students do well on tests. Competition over a limited number of larger salaries would lead to teachers working in silos rather than collaborating and sharing best practices as cohesive teams. Teachers of subjects with no standardized tests are raising concerns that observations and student surveys are highly subjective, and basing salaries on them would be unfair.
Dr. Tom Tomberlin, who serves as the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s Director of Educator Recruitment and Support, has justified moving away from an experience-based pay scale by claiming that teacher effectiveness plateaus after the first few years in the classroom.
It’s an argument which shows a major disconnect between DPI and those of us who actually work in schools and experience first hand how important veteran teachers are to overall school operations.
Veteran teachers often work as mentors, run athletic departments, coach sports and deliver professional development for peers.
They have long-standing relationships with school families and community members that position them to be excellent advocates for the needs of their schools.
None of that value is reflected in a veteran teacher’s EVAAS score.
Brenda Berg, CEO of pro-business education reform organization Best NC, has been a vocal proponent of scrapping the experience-based pay scale. Berg, who serves on the compensation subcommittee that helped develop the plan, said this week that it’s clear our current system isn’t working and it’s time to be “bold” about change even if it’s “scary.”
I’d like to note that anyone who claims educator pushback to this plan is centered in fear of change is completely out of touch with what it’s like to be a professional educator. We are the most flexible and resilient people on the planet, and the last two years have illustrated that fact like never before. We also know what it means to be treated fairly.
It’s true that North Carolina is facing a major pipeline crisis, with enrollment in UNC education programs down drastically over the past several years. It’s true that if we aren’t bold about change we will soon have nobody left who’s willing to work in our schools.
But we also need to be bold about acknowledging the reason for this crisis. It isn’t because the licensure process is too cumbersome. It isn’t because veteran teachers are ineffective and making too much money. It isn’t because our teachers lack accountability.
The reason North Carolina’s schools are suffering from a lack of qualified educators is because for the last 12 years our legislature’s policies have made it deeply unappealing to be a teacher in this state. Those policies include cutting master’s pay and longevity pay, taking away teacher assistants, eliminating retiree health benefits and many, many others.
The solution to North Carolina’s teacher pipeline crisis isn’t a system of merit pay which devalues long term commitment to public schools and ties salaries to standardized tests and subjective measures.
The solution to the problem is comprehensive policy change that makes a teaching career in North Carolina an attractive proposition. That’s the kind of change that will allow us to put an excellent teacher in every classroom.
This proposal ain’t it.
You can share feedback on the proposal with Dr. Thomas Tomberlin here: Thomas.Tomberlin@dpi.nc.gov
State Board of Education members will hear Dr. Tomberlin’s presentation at the April 6 board meeting. Their email addresses are:
eric.davis@dpi.nc.gov
alan.duncan@dpi.nc.gov
olivia.oxendine@dpi.nc.gov
reginald.kenan@dpi.nc.gov
amy.white@dpi.nc.gov
James.Ford@dpi.nc.gov
Jill.Camnitz@dpi.nc.gov
Donna.Tipton-Rogers@dpi.nc.gov
JWendell.Hall@dpi.nc.gov
john.blackburn@dpi.nc.gov
mark.robinson@dpi.nc.gov
dale.folwell@dpi.nc.gov
If that zombie policy is adopted, we already know the destruction and disruption it will cause. All that tells us is that the hate public schools, corrupt, greedy, anarchist controlled (also known as KOCH libertarians and/or the Wal-Mart Walton or Bill Gates crime families, et al.) runs the state through their loyalist bought stooges, worse than zombies.
Now, if Putin and other enemies of the US wanted to destroy the US, what would be one of the strategies to achieve that goal besides electing MAGA morons to public office?
ANSWER: Destroy and distrupt the US democratic community based, elected school board, non-profit, professional teacher, public school systems that the few can’t control and replace them with greedy, corrupt CEOs.
As a recently retired HS Spanish teacher, I was continually learning, amending and tweaking my lessons & methods right up until the end of my 40 year career. There is no doubt that my years of experience made me a better teacher than I was in the early part of my career. One can say the same thing about any profession, from doctors or lawyers to carpenters or hairdressers. Why not use the same criteria for these professions–base their pay on the results or outcomes of their patients, clients, constructions or customers? Basing teacher pay on their students’ test scores may sound good on the surface, but when one factors in the reality of a student who doesn’t pay attention in class, doesn’t care about the class, doesn’t do homework, has a terrible, disruptive home life, doesn’t care about or has a bad day on the day of the high stakes test they are forced to take, among many other negative factors, it is ridiculous to hold teachers to those incredibly subjective standards. These are the problems we will always have as long as those in charge of educational policies are politicians, rather than educators.
“Why not use the same criteria for doctors or lawyers to carpenters or hairdressers–base their pay on the results or outcomes of their patients, clients, constructions or customers?” The answer is that users of those services have choice among competitors, whose reputations are in fact built on their results (in which experience plays a large role).
The purveyors of school choice, VAM ratings, and merit pay ignore a number of factors in their disingenuous equivalence of K12 ed with other services. The key factor of course is compulsory attendance. I can think of few professions that compare. Perhaps ER physicians/ nurses: those stricken with heart attacks, strokes, and the victims of car crashes are transported to whichever facility has room for them and treated by people dedicated to saving their lives.
The teacher shortage reflects a twin crisis — recruiting and retention. Some of the root causes are the same; some differ.
In my head of school days I devised a compensation system that was neither solely seniority nor solely merit based. Compensation was in three overlapping “bands” that were based on years of experience. Band systems are not common, but certainly not my invention. The “merit” element came when a faculty member reach the upper limit of her or his band. To move into the next band, the faculty member went through a peer review portfolio process.
They picked their own peer committee and assembled a portfolio of curricula, special projects, teaching “philosophy,” student feedback, professional development, future aspirations and/or anything else they thought reflective of their professional experience and growth. It was a non-threatening chance for reflection and affirmation. After the process, they received a bonus and “promotion” into the next band which allowed for increased compensation.
The entire system was developed by faculty and administration. Also, the faculty themselves voted on an annual compensation distribution that gave a larger % increase to less senior faculty so that the spread between high and low was not constantly increasing.
Sorry for the long comment, but this system was widely accepted and honored experience but with a comprehensive self-assessment component.
Red. 4. Ed.
If this proposal moves forward, one can easily foresee statewide strikes and opt-outs, legal or not.
North Carolina has a teacher shortage. This idiotic policy will make the shortage worse. Why should a teacher with 30 years experience accept lower pay than one with two years experience who got a job in an affluent suburb (thus higher test scores)?
and the entire VAM movement has already been implemented and debunked and resisted across the nation: why is NC so late in embracing it?
They bought the Bill Sanders idea late. They were stupid.
Must have bought it at a deep discount since it failed everywhere else
It’s all about poverty. Take two school districts, one that is relatively wealthy with generally strong test scores and one with a great deal of poverty and very low test scores. Flip flop the entire staff of both districts. You will see that the scores mostly remain the same. It’s not that the teachers in the poor district are so much worse. It’s that the students there get much less support than in the wealthy district.
Of course.
Nailed it, Mr. Gerhardt!
Can someone who knows how to do this please send the following to all the North Carolina legislators?
In 2011-2012 I was part of a Principals’ committee that was formed to work with the Gates Foundation to develop a pay for performance plan for administrators with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools of North Carolina. The logical conclusion for most of the principal participants was that this could not be done and that it exacerbated the problem of administrative attrition (teacher attrition was already rife after the cuts brought on by the Great Recession). None of the representatives of the Gates organization had meaningful experience as educators. They were all merely bean counters of one form or another totally wedded to data that promoted confirmation bias. The representatives of the district on the committee were desperate for national attention as “reformers” and the money that could come their way. When we were discussing the effect of data based evaluation structures I told the Gates rep that I was never motivated by my evaluation score. That I was motivated to serve my staff and students. The District Rep immediately pipped in and validated my comment by saying that my perspective is supported by the research. However, that same district assistant superintendent continued to advocate for “pay for performance” based on faulty evaluation methods. That same spring our superintendent mandated that every subject have standardized testing instruments designed by the district (Yes, Art, Music, PE, et.al) so that all teachers could be graded fairly for bonuses. I estimated that May that we dedicated over 500 man hours to testing at my school of 750 students, making meaningful instruction impossible to wrap up the year. My oldest daughter was a senior in high school that year. She was already preparing for 3 AP exams when it was then required that she take standardized tests created by the district in all 8 subjects she took that year. This would represent 10% of her grade as an incentive for high schoolers to take these tests seriously. Pay for performance cannot be done fairly or appropriately. It has merely become a code word for defunding teacher raises, benefits, and public education in general. We are running our teachers of and at some point communities will be left with children who have no school to attend.
The standardized-test-based “Value-Added Method” (VAM) of evaluating teachers has been thoroughly trashed by the very people who know the most about it: The American Statistical Association (ASA), the largest organization in the United States representing statisticians and related professionals, and they know a thing or two about data and measurement. The ASA slammed the deceptively-labeled ‘Value-Added Method’ (VAM) of evaluating teachers because VAM falsely claims to be able to take student standardized test scores and measure the ‘value’ a teacher adds to student learning through complicated formulas that can supposedly factor out all of the other influences and emerge with a valid assessment of how effective a particular teacher has been. But the ASA lays bare the fact that THESE FORMULAS CAN’T ACTUALLY DO THIS with reliability and validity. It’s pure political ideology to claim that VAM based on student test scores reflects teacher effectiveness.
In its official statement, the ASA points out the following and many other failings of testing-based VAM:
“System-level conditions” include everything from overcrowded and underfunded classrooms to district-and site-level management of the schools and to student poverty.
A copy of the VAM-slamming ASA Statement should be posted on the union bulletin board at every school site throughout our nation and should be explained to every teacher by their union at individual site faculty meetings so that teachers are aware of what it says about how invalid it is to use standardized test results to evaluate teachers or principals — and teachers’ and principals’ unions should fight all evaluations based on student test scores with the ASA statement as a good foundation for their fight.
Fight back! Never, never, never give up!