http://www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au

Yesterday, the Buffalo News reported that the Buffalo Public Schools and the Buffalo Teachers Federation had negotiated a new teacher evaluation system. But what is particularly significant is that the News simultaneously reported on and endorsed the contract negotiated between Washington, D.C. teachers and administration, and promoted it as a model for Buffalo. The D.C. contract — known as IMPACT but not mentioned by name in the editorial — has, according to the Buffalo News, four key components: performance-based teacher evaluation, financial incentives to raise test scores, limits on the protections of tenure, and increased ability of the district to lay off “bad teachers” without “economic cause”. But the News is either unaware or unwilling to report facts unfriendly to its position of support.

While the News editorial characterizes the contact as one where “performance and the quality of teaching, not blind seniority, will determine who is hired and who is laid off,” it downplays the fact that “performance” and “quality of teaching” are determined by student test scores. Following adoption of the contract, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee fired 165 teachers based on lack of improvement in student test scores over one academic year. The method is said to measure the “value added” to students by their teacher.

Student test scores do not equal good teaching

Despite all the rhetoric supporting the use of scientific research to guide education reform, the amount of evidence against using test scores as a basis for teacher evaluation is very strong. President Obama, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and a host of billionaires who support Rhee are imposing this practice across the country, despite the warnings of the scientific community.

In his video Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value Added Measures, professor Daniel Willingham summarizes the problems associated with what the News is promoting. But he is not alone. A recent report by the National Center for Educational Evaluation estimating the error in using test scores to classify teachers as effective or ineffective predicts that when using only one year of data, 35% of teacher classifications will be wrong (i.e., effective teachers will be classified as ineffective, and ineffective teachers will be classified as effective). For teachers in D.C., that means as many as 57 of the 165 teachers fired in DC might have been inaccurately identified as ineffective. The National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research also released a study examining the technical limits of using student test results to evaluate teachers. Among other things, the report found that different tests yield different teacher rankings.

The degrading effect of incentives

But more important than the technical limitations noted above is the philosophical underpinning of the entire system based on financial incentives to pressure educators to boost student test scores. Based on past practice, this gives rise to treating students as mere conduits of cash, leading ultimately to student abuse and debasement of public education. This is what happened under a similar system in England, Ireland, Australia and elsewhere during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The negative results of what was known as Payment by Results were widely recognized by contemporaries, and the practice was eventually halted. It was precisely this system — one that abused teachers and pushed many competent ones to leave the profession — that contributed to teachers unionizing in Britain. And most interestingly, it was a method of teacher compensation rooted in an effort to reduce spending on public education during a time of great expenditures following the Crimean War.

Related Posts:

• Teachers have a right to unionize
• Stephen Sawchuk: States Aim to Curb Collective Bargaining
• Anthony Cody: Teachers Beware — They are Coming for Our Pensions
• Thousand Demonstrate Against California Education Cuts
• Labor Beat Chicago Video Exposes Duncan’s Record

Individual Teacher Incentives, Student Achievement and Grade Inflation, Pedro S. Martins, Queen Mary, University of London

Abstract: How do teacher incentives affect student achievement? We contribute to this question by examining the effects of the recent introduction of teacher performance-related pay and tournaments in Portugal’s public schools. Specifically, we draw on matched student-school panel data covering the population of secondary school national exams over seven years. We then conduct a difference-in-differences analysis based on two complementary control groups: public schools in two autonomous regions that were exposed to lighter versions of the reform than in the rest of the country; and private schools, which are also subject to the same national exams but whose teachers were not affected by the reform. Our results consistently indicate that the increased focus on individual teacher performance caused a significant decline in student achievement, particularly in terms of national exams. The triple- difference results also document a significant increase in grade inflation.

The paper can be downloaded here.

Related Posts:

• Buffalo News endorses flawed system of teacher compensation