Merits of Merit Pay

The idea of paying effective teachers more has been around for a while, but has not gotten very far.  As reported in Education Plan Includes Merit Pay, President Obama’s education plan is to “increase the number of school districts that benefit from a federal program that supports performance pay for teachers.”  Currently, the Teacher Incentive Fund supports 34 districts at a cost of $97 million.  President Obama’s plan is to fund this program with an additional $200 million, with an eventual goal of incorporating as many as 150 school districts. 

            Pros and Cons of Merit Pay for Teachers helped me organize my thoughts on this issue.  There are many arguments listed for merit pay systems.  1. Most other professions offer some type of production bonus, so why shouldn’t teaching?  Personally, I find this idea a bit strange because your “commodity” is an abstract idea- student learning.  2. Merit pay could encourage teachers to work harder and achieve better results.  Another odd idea for me- could I possibly work any harder if I tried?  3. Merit pay could help recruit and retain the best teachers.  I think this idea may have some weight to it.  The low pay in teaching compared to other professions is sometimes a hinderance for teacher recruitment.  4.  Teachers are considered underpaid, and merit pay could help correct that.  I don’t think this is really a consideration though, as merit pay would only affect some teachers.  If you are concerned about underpaid teachers, you should just pay them more.  5.  Schools are in crisis and we should try to solve this crisis by whatever means necessary. I think the schools do need help, but to jump headlong into something not proven to work may turn out to be a huge waste of money. 

            There are just as many cons to the issue.  1.  Setup of a merit pay system would be a bureaucratic mess.  I agree with this.  No matter what the possible benefits, setting up a viable program would take a gargantuan movement.  I can’t see that happening.  2.  Merit pay will lead to less cooperation and collaboration among teachers, one of the factors that truly increases school performance.  Merit pay runs the risk of putting teachers in competition with each other and keeping good ideas for themselves.  3.  Success is nearly impossible to define, let alone measure.  How will a merit pay system account for schools with populations requiring special needs and services?  Trying to make a system that is fair and considers different student populations would be a near impossible task to make fair.  4.  Merit pay systems may encourage dishonesty and corruption.  Putting so much pressure on outcomes of tests will unfortunately encourage some to cheat, but I am more worried about the limits it may place on curriculum as teachers are more and more pressured to teach to the test.  5.  A better solution may be to just pay all teachers more.  I don’t agree with that.  A better solution may be to fund schools more equitably.  Not all teachers deserve to be paid more, and the schools are already being forced to make due with inadequate resources.

            Overall, I think the negative consequences and the vague, unproven nature of merit pay in education make it a bad idea.  There are some possible positives that could come out of it, but I think the money for these programs could be better used.  Certainly, I would pay attention to what is happening in existing programs of merit pay to better inform future decisions.      

Is the Grass Greener?

Do private schools really serve students better than public schools?  This is a complicated issue.  We all know that private school student achievement scores are higher than public schools.  Is this because they are institutions of higher quality learning and instruction?  I think not.  Taking students from their local public schools and allowing them to choose to attend a private school does not guarantee that they will achieve any more than they did in the public school.  

In an article I read called Public vs. Private, the author suggests that the scores from private schools are not better when adjusted for out of school factors.  This means that basically, private schools' scores on achievement tests are higher because their student populations tend to be higher- income, have involved, educated parents, and less special needs.  This article suggests that when you break down students' individual scores and compare scores of private school students who are low-income with the rest of the student body, they are not achieving like their counterparts.  The private schools are not meeting their needs, so what would happen if we suddenly started flooding private schools with students from the public schools who are low-income, full of special needs, and lacking in parental support?  My guess is that those private school scores would start to drop.  

I have a lot of personal experience within the private as well as public school settings.  I attended a private school for my elementary school years, then entered the public school setting in middle and high school, and went back to a private institution for college.  In addition, I taught at an urban private school for five years, and I currently teach in an urban public school.  As a student, my experiences in the private realm did not adequately prepare me in math.  I have some personal issues relating to my ability to process numbers and number relationships, so I was always a challenge for my teachers.  Most of my memories of the private school I attended relate to the fact that I was so unsuccessful at math.  I remember being drilled endlessly with flash cards, being moved to a grade level below me to participate in their math class, being berated in class for "not trying hard enough", and being given detention for not learning my decimal to fraction conversion facts fast enough.  When I entered public school for middle school, I was tested to see which classes I would be in, and I scored a full five years below grade level in math.  It wasn't until I entered the public school setting that teachers started to try to explain to me why 3x5=15 and why we might need to find the area of a shape.  Consequently, I started to very slowly learn math.  (Now, the public schools did immediately track me into a low group, which caused all sorts of problems later on when applying to colleges and disqualified me from AP classes in other domains.  These math tracking problems made me ineligible to enter public universities straight out of high school.  But that is a whole other soapbox...)

I saw another article called Public Schools Outperform Private Schools in Math Instruction which immediately drew my interest.  In this article, they talked about research being done that shows that the two biggest factors for public schools outperforming private schools in math achievement are teacher certifications and instructional practices.  The researchers decided to look at student scores on the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) assessments and tried to explain the results using five factors: 1. parental involvement, 2. school size, 3. class size, 4. teacher certification, and 5. instructional practices.  According to the article, all of these factors contribute to student achievement, and they wanted to find out which one had the biggest impact on higher math scores for students.  The results show that parental involvement and school size (more positives typically in private schools) were not factors in achievement scores.  They also noted that class size, which is also typically noted as a benefit of private schools, does not explain the public school scores being higher either.  

Teacher certification is a factor though.  Why?  Public schools require certifications of their teachers, whereas private schools may not.  In addition, public schools have a history of setting aside funds for teacher training, professional development, and curriculum development, whereas private schools do not.  Another factor was the instructional practices of the teachers.  In public schools, teachers tend to use more methods that benefit students' understanding of math.  Many private schools operate on a "back to basics" approach that does not benefit students.  In addition, many private schools do not pay as much attention to the current trends in instruction and curriculum.  The article also suggests that the autonomy and lack of accountability to a public body in private schools is not a good thing.  

I can't help but relate to this.  I have no way of knowing whether my teachers in elementary school were certified or not, but I can imagine that some weren't.  If I had gone to a public school, would my learning disability have been identified and addressed earlier?  I will never know.  In addition, when I taught in a private school, I did work with uncertified teachers.  I saw firsthand how this impacted students.  When I moved from working in a private school to working in a public school, I did not feel like the quality of education being received by the students was any less.  What I did find is that the needs of my public school students were much more severe.  

I think that instead of flooding private institutions with students they aren't ready for, any money that would be used for a voucher program may be better spent in improving local schools.  Why should students have to be bussed to a far away school to get a "good education"? In addition, I can't help but think that there is a conflict of interests when including religious schools in on this.  The school I taught at was religious, and one of their main missions was to teach religious doctrine to students.  One year I literally had the parish pastor come into my classroom on the first day of school and tell my seventh graders that he didn't care if they learned anything that year "as long as they became disciples of Jesus".  (You can imagine how that year went!) Religious institutions, while wanting money that would come from vouchers and high enrollment, do want students and parents who are serious about the religion in their schools.  Where does that fit in?  Are parents prepared to have their students indoctrinated in a religion that is not their own?  

In addition, I think the lack of oversight in private institutions is scary.  I was never accountable to anyone the entire time I worked at a private school in terms of what I was teaching and how I was doing it.  We spent all of our inservice times talking about the religion curriculum and "housekeeping" issues.  The day I started, I asked about the curriculum for the other subject areas and was handed my textbooks.  At least in the public schools there are the state learning standards and ways of being held accountable.  (And aren't we all about accountability now?)  

In defense of private schools, I have had and worked with many dedicated teachers who hold themselves to a high personal standard in the classroom and deliver an excellent education to students.  I just think that when talking about public money, it is better spent on improving the public system which does have an element of transparency and accountability in how money is spent.  Shoving needy students off on private schools may just bury their statistics in a system that doesn't need to publicly report its goings-on.  I don't believe that is servicing students.  

A New School Calendar?

In an article called Obama Proposes Longer School Days, Extended School Year, President Obama says that the idea of lengthening the school day or year is not very popular, but may be necessary to keep us competitive in the world today.  He says that our current schedule, which was created when the U.S. was made of farmers who needed children helping harvest at home, is not suited to the world we live in now.  He states that our current schedule puts us at a "competitive disadvantage" with other industrialized nations.  

President Obama advocates for extending the school year to 200 days per year, as opposed to the current average of 180 days.  This would put the United States at the same amount of time per year as countries like Scotland, the Netherlands, and Thailand.  (Topping the list of international comparisons are Japan and South Korea, who attend 243 and 220 days of school per year respectively.)  President Obama's ideas imply that the increase in the amount of days of school will increase student achievement in the United States.  Is this true?  It seems logical that more time in school would mean more learning, but many say that they extra time is only meaningful if it is academic time, and I would agree with that.  There is an argument against the lengthening of the school year or day because of the funding it would require, which would strain an already underfunded system.    

Another article called Finding Time for Success outlines different models being piloted around the country.  In Pittsburgh, "accelerated learning academies" are adding 45 minutes to each school day and 10 days to each school year to give students more learning opportunities without an overwhelming change to the year. In the Washington D.C. area, there are schools that are offering optional one month programs to low income students during the summer.  This model shows flexibility and allows parents to choose if the extended school year is right for their family.  Also in D.C. is a charter school which operates from 8a.m. to 4p.m. everyday.  The students there are at school for a typical adult work week of 40 hours.  In Fairfax County, VA, students in low income elementary schools are adding 2 hours to each school week by eliminating an existing shortened day in the week used for teacher planning. Other schools are trimming down the summer vacation and adding voluntary summer sessions.  These summer sessions are "well-attended".  This is another model that allows for some parental choice. What is worrisome is that there are surely students who need the extra time in school that opt out of it.  Is a voluntary system fair to them, or would making the extra time mandatory be more fair in giving everyone the same benefits of extra reading, math, and opportunities for what is typically cut out of the school day? 

How much does all this cost?  New Mexico recently added 25 days to the years of 29 schools in low income areas at a cost of $7.1 million.  Implemented statewide, this program would have a cost of $17 million per day.  A program in Massachusetts added longer school days on to 18 schools at a cost of $13 million.  This program's data has shown greater gains in achievement test scores than in traditional schools.  Many argue though, that there is not enough research to indicate that adding time to the year or day produces gains for everyone.  In addition, some maintain that the cost does not balance with the amount of achievement seen.  

In addition to the expense, other arguments with extension of the school day or year are that it conflicts with teachers unions, it causes conflicts with sports and other extracurricular activities, and that there should be curricular changes and teacher training with the extension of the year.  Then there are issues of how long to add on to the day or year.  In one study, the school day was lengthened to 9 hours four days a week with one short day per week.  By mid year with this schedule, teachers were "worn down".  (Duh!!! Can you imagine teaching for nine hours?) The next year, that school changed to an 8 hour 15 minute day, which worked better for all.  Still, there are obvious issues that need to be worked out, as this system may not be reasonable for all.

Also opposing lengthening the day or year are those that contend that we do not need to lengthen the amount of time in school, but shore up the amount of time on task in the regular day.  They suggest that the most important element that needs to change in the school day is the amount of time spent on management issues, transition times, etc. in the school day.  Supporting this is the fact that both Taiwan and the Philippines spend the same amount of time in school, but Taiwan's student achievement scores are much higher than those of the Philippines, suggesting that time is not the only factor influencing student learning.  Some say that the issue of adding time on to the day or year simply deflects attention from the real issue of the quality of instructional time.

Personally, I think we can come to a compromise in all of this.  As a teacher, I see how much pressure there is to cram curriculum into the existing day.  I see what gets cut out of the schedule.  But I also see that a lengthy addition to the day would impact younger students, students who had long travels to school or other transportation issues, extracurricular activities, and other extenuating circumstances.  I think the idea of adding a small amount of time to each day could be a great idea, if used correctly.  Adding up to 45 minutes each day allows teachers to make sure that students had extra time on productive learning tasks.  This will really only be effective if schools are also looking to eliminate wasted time throughout the day as well.  I do not feel that 45 minutes is an excessive amount of time to add to the day.  Students would still be able to engage in after school activities without returning home from them too late. 

In addition, lengthening the school year by 10 days may be a compromise we can live with.  In terms of my current year, we get out of school on June 12 this year.  Adding 10 days to the schedule takes us to June 26.  Students and teachers would still have all of July and August off. (We begin school again after Labor Day.) I believe that it is important to have a concentrated block of time off in the summer for students.  Many of my students have family in Mexico or other countries and take the summer to visit people they do not see the rest of the year.  I think that this experience is too important to take away.  In addition, many families take time in the summer to vacation or engage in other activities together.  All of this is important.  I do not think adding 2 weeks on to the year takes an excessive amount of time away from these activities.  

In terms of where this leaves us internationally, 190 days is comparable to Finland and 2 days shy of England.  Not bad company.  If the 190 days was also combined with an increase of up to 45 minutes per day, the total amount of accumulated hours gained over a year would be 140.  This would equal approximately 20 days added on to the schedule.  All told, we would be adding enough time to equal 210 days of school.  Internationally, this puts us just above where President Obama wants us.  (Please understand that the math is all the rough calculations of an English major!) An important piece I want to stress here is that schools need to be held accountable for using this time to increase on task time.  I also think it is important for all schools to address scheduling within the school to try to eliminate as much "wasted" time throughout the day as possible.  This would truly help us make the best use of the time the students have in school.  Just sitting in the building for longer amounts of time each day will not produce any positive results.

This leaves us with the financing issue.  Yes, it would be an intensive and large investment.  Some argue that it will be too much.  Can you really put a price on the possible benefits of this?  School financing is up for a big change anyway.  I think that minor additions to both the school day and year can be reasonable worked into any new financing plan that we come up with.  If our country is to progress, we have to invest in its future.  It is about as trite and cheesy a saying as you can think of, but that doesn't make it untrue.  

What IS the Best Way to Assess Students' Learning?

Standardized testing is all the rage today.  Thanks to No Child Left Behind, it is just about the only thing you hear about anymore when education comes up.  But what are we really measuring, and does it help student learning at all? 

I read an article called Measuring What Matters Least which lay out some of the worst factors about standardized testing.  First of all, multiple choice tests rarely tell us what students know, they tend to measure who is a good test taker.  This, however, is the mode most common in standardized tests, probably in large part because it is simple to score. However, open-ended or free-response items are equally poor as a measure of student achievement.  At first this seems odd, however, one has only to think about the dreaded "Extended Response" items found on the ISAT test to know why.  We spend an inordinate amount of time preparing for these extremely rigid types of responses.  I have even seen teachers develop basic "fill in the blank" type general responses that they make their students learn so that they can adjust their writing to the specific question come testing day.  Are these students learning? Of course.  They are learning to think that there is only one "right" answer in the world.  They are learning not to think on their own.  They are learning to write like robots.  None of these are the intended consequence of course, but with the pressure dealt to many schools to raise test scores- OR ELSE!- this is what we wind up with.  

Another standardized testing sin is the norm-referenced test.  A norm referenced test, like many commonly used today, measures student achievement against everyone else who took the test.  There is always a top and bottom 10% and always a middle 50%.  This does a horrible injustice to kids on the bottom.  How does someone in the lower 10% get out?  They have to progress past a certain percentage of other students.  This system does not honor students who show great personal growth and sets up an atmosphere of inappropriate competition.   

So what should we do?  In the article If Not Standardized Testing, Then What?, some measures of alternative assessment come up such as portfolios, written reports to parents, and parent-teacher conferencing as ways to help show the complexity of student learning. Interestingly enough, they also show some conditions to help make testing as viable as possible if in fact we cannot tear ourselves away from them.  For instance, they suggest no multiple choice tests, using criterion referenced tests, not using time limits, and testing less frequently.  This may be the most viable place to start as we think about changing the ways we assess students' learning.  As much as I would like to be able to use some other methods, I'm not sure the general public is ready for portfolios quite yet (and I don't think many teachers and school districts are ready for them yet either).  The No Child Left Behind era has made people think that a number can be the answer for determining student learning, effective teaching, and effective school management.  It will be a long time before people are ready to start addressing the variables involved in education and how to account for them.  

In the article Alternatives to Standardized Testing there are some descriptions of pros and cons of some of the alternatives mentioned earlier.  The article starts by saying that the primary role of assessment should be to improve student learning.  They go on to say that the general public needs to know that teachers assess students regularly as part of their teaching, so repeated testing throughout the year is a waste of time.  In fact, the goal of all the alternatives in this article value showing growth over a long period of time instead of the pressure of "showing what you know" in one sitting.  

First mentioned is portfolios.  A student portfolio in it's best use should be a collection of the student's work over time.  The work selected should be the student's choice of work to allow the student to reflect on their own learning.  At the end of a marking period, the teacher would use a scoring guide to score the portfolio.  Some would also have the student and/or peers score the work as well.  In order to ensure validity and reliability of scoring, schools could use "random sampling".  This means that an independent group could pick random portfolios from each classroom to compare scoring.  Furthermore, the random sampling could be used to show and compare trends across classrooms and school-wide.  This method is excellent for students because it honors their individual growth over time.  There are several negatives in portfolio assessments as well.  Portfolios work best with quality teachers who really know how to use them effectively.  There would need to be extensive professional development for anyone learning to implement them.  In addition, if schools mandate what has to be in a portfolio, then the curriculum can slant toward those particular activities.  Lastly, scoring is extremely subjective and a lot of work would need to go into addressing how to best deal with this.

I think it is this subjectivity that is the biggest obstacle to alternative assessments.  In the NCLB era, teachers are looked at as wanting to shirk accountability if they are against standardized testing.  However, I think most teachers are perfectly agreeable to being held accountable for doing their jobs as long as the method for evaluating this has anything to do with student learning and achievement.  Standardized testing has too many negative effects on students and is too unfair for us to say that it is a true measure of our students.  Are portfolios the answer?  Maybe, maybe not.  Perhaps it is a combination of approaches that is needed.  However, the most important thing to do now is to open up the debate and start objectively teaching parents and the public about alternatives to standardized testing and why they may provide a better, more fair way of looking at our students.

Physical Education and Obesity in Illinois

My school is participating in "Olympic Week in Chicago" next week.  This is a week designed to show support for Chicago's 2016 Olympic Bid.   In the online pd I participated in, they said that we should try to incorporate physical activity and movement into classes as part of getting students aware of physical competition, etc. This has had me thinking about sports and physical activity in schools.  At my school, we have gym for one 40 minute period per week. (And if your class has gym on Fridays or Mondays, you have even less than that considering holidays and days off.) In addition to this, we have a 20 minute lunch period. In this 20 minutes, students shovel in food (if they eat at all) and rush out to spend the rest of the time outside at recess. The exception is in the winter when it is below 30 degrees, they just stay inside sitting at lunchroom tables and cannot get up to move around. With the limited amount of time in the school day, this is the best we can do in terms of time given to physical activity.  And let me tell you, we are praised for even giving the approximate 10 minutes of recess to the kids because many of the schools in our area do not have recess at all. We cannot cut any time from regular "core" classes like reading, math, science, and social studies to add more recess time for students.  We only have one gym and one gym teacher who has a full schedule every day with a school of 850 students. 

There are so many issues that arise from a lack of physical education and time for physical activity.  From the impact on student behavior to student achievement, this is a topic that could rage on for many, many blogs.  I decided to think about how it contributes to the growing amount of obese children in Illinois.  I looked into this at the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) and found an article called The Role of Schools in Preventing Childhood Obesity  which outlined 10 key components for schools to help address the problem of childhood obesity.  The article was clear that schools were not the sole bearers of responsibility in obesity prevention, however they have research that indicates increased academic achievement and reduced obesity in schools that have implemented  these components.  Four of these components hit home for me: access to quality health education, access to quality physical education programs, increased opportunities for physical activity for students, and providing quality, appealing meals for students.  

Too often, schools are forced to cut out things labeled as "extras" in education such as music, art, and physical education. I know that in my situation, my gym teacher cannot possibly incorporate the necessary amount of health and physical activity in one 40 minute period per week. We have some sports teams that are available for students after school, but these limit the amount of students that can join to those available at that time of day and those who keep a "C" average in their schoolwork. These activities are also limited by the amount of teachers who are willing or able to dedicate their time to sponsor one of these activities.  In addition, my students are fed some of the most disgusting meals I have ever seen at lunch.  Most students choose not to eat at all. I don't blame them.  I read another report from the CDC that showed some contributing factors in Illinois' obesity rate. The 2007 Illinois Youth Risk Behavior Survey  shows that 13% of Illinois high school students are obese. 25% took no physical education classes at all. 52% do not meet the recommended levels of daily physical activity. 79% do not eat the recommended amount of servings for fruits and vegetables per day.  

Clearly, Illinois' students are headed in the wrong direction. Whether they want to or not, schools need to start taking action to help reverse this trend.  In my opinion, we are going to need more funding for "extra" programs and more time in the day to start addressing these issues.  One idea I found in the article A Solution "Fit" for Internet Generations  showed some creative thinking for helping students achieve more physical activity.  This article showed a pilot program that incorporated an online physical education component for high schoolers in Indiana and  Tennessee.  Both states showed that this helped students become more active. Students were also more likely to be engaged in it because it was in an online format.  The program used was called GoTrybe.  Students log in and create an avatar for themselves. It functions sort of like any incentive reading site where students can learn about health and wellness and build their own workouts using real video clips that they can follow to earn points.  Points are used to personalize your avatar and the like.  It may not be feasible for every school or district, but it represents some creativity in schools trying to address the issue of childhood obesity.