Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Big, bold plan to spend $6 billion on education has some cutting-edge parts

I think Senator Meeks and Governor Blagojevich deserve a lot of credit for putting forward a big-picture, innovative plan for education in Illinois. Everyone agrees that we need to improve education and most people agree that we need to invest more money into education. Finally, there's a big, bold plan out there (right at the top of www.illinois.gov) that would demonstrably improve education if implemented.

I think the most innovative part is a call for merit pay instead of seniority pay, with the full support of the teachers unions. (That is, the plan calls for the unions to work to craft a merit pay plan. I'm not suggesting the unions support the concept today.)

For some background on merit pay, check out Denver. They are probably running the most aggressive merit pay system in the nation. And the teachers unions crafted the plan.

Here's an interview in Education Sector (a neat independent think tank) with Brad Jupp, a labor organizer with the Denver Classroom Teacher Association and a lead negotiator and advocate for the merit pay system.

The whole interview is worth a read, but here are some of the best parts.

ES: What were some of the specific lessons you learned in the pay-for-performance pilot?

BJ: The most important lesson was that you can build pay systems around pragmatic judgments. By pragmatic judgments, I mean decisions that are not necessarily based on researched psychometric standards but reflect common sense and professional judgment to make effective decisions. In fact, almost all pay systems–including the single salary schedule in place in most schools today–are built around pragmatic judgments. We will never create a perfectly objective basis for compensation decisions, but if we rely on the common sense of professionals we can go a long way.

The second thing we learned, which is very important, was that differentiated pay did not destroy workplace morale; it created new challenges, but in our pilot schools, we never saw the plummet in morale predicted by opponents of alternative compensation schemes.

The third thing we learned was that, when teachers set goals and plan to meet them, students perform well whether teachers meet those goals or not. When teachers set high-quality objectives, objectives that have clear, measurable outcomes and well-articulated strategies to meet them, and those objectives are assessed routinely throughout the year–kids learn more. Learning became the cornerstone of the way we built the pay system.

A fourth thing that we learned was that we need to think hard about how to connect the stakes in a pay system to the behavior that we're trying to change. Policymakers often think of pay systems in very simple ways: "If I put a lot of money on the table, it's going to change people's behavior dramatically, so I'll put a lot of money on the table for the behavior I want." But you often don't need to do that, and you may, in fact, be making a big mistake.

We've found, for instance, that a $1,000 incentive to work in a high-poverty school with low-performing kids doesn't motivate teachers in schools with wealthier kids that perform well to move to that low performing school. On the other hand, it does motivate teachers to stay at that high-poverty school after they've been hired there. Maybe what you need to do is to put a small amount of money on the table, stabilize the workforce, and then build the workforce in these schools over time, rather then to assume that what you want the incentive to do is to steal teachers from the suburbs. Another example is that it doesn't take a whole lot of money–only about $330 in the compensation model that we have–to get people to commit to look at their objectives twice a year. But if there's no money, they don't do it. Sometimes smaller stakes make a big difference.

There's a lot more, including why teachers should embrace accountability measures, because then they'll get paid more (as they should).

I also love the call in the plan for longer school days and longer school years.

So, say what you want about the efficacy about licensing the lotto to come up with the money, but this is the best plan that's out there about how to improve education. I think it's a big step forward.

9 comments:

Anonymous,  2:43 PM  

I can't stand your association with the HDO thugs. But this is an excellent post.

Bill Baar 3:08 PM  

Something like this should never have been down without hearings and far greater participation.

It will come back to haunt the Democrats.

Extreme Wisdom 5:51 PM  

DJW,

This is isn't the 'best' or the most 'bold' plan by any measure.

It's more of the same with a thin icing of 'reform' that will simply be co-opted into more spending with less accountability.

Here is a bold plan.

1. Zero out property taxes for education (50-70% cut for most residential owners & businesses)

2. Pass HB750 increases

(This constitutes about $2-3 billion tax cut for a state reeling from overtaxation, over spending, and over regulation)

3. Abolish the absurd and useless "district", which educates no one and serves no purpose but spending money on bureaucracy.

4. Use new and existing education dollars to provide every IL child with a $7000 scholarship to be used at any school of their choice.

5. Convert every IL school into an independent charter run by pricipal, teachers, and parents who choose it.

6. Repeal all state mandates and replace with a rational, sequenced, and robust set of standards which are tested

(independent of the schools which game the testing system)

YEARLY. The schools must pass 90-95% of their students (give them the freedom to decide how) as well as offer a remediation program for those who don't pass.

____

I'm working on the transition details (which are no small thing), but the fact is that the above is light years better than another sop to the existing structure, which is simply beyond reform.

Fund Children, not Systems.

Oh BTW, if you are going to sell off lottery and highway proceeds, shouldn't that money go into the bankrupt pension system, rather than into the pockets of the private interests that are now salivating at the prospect of reaming Illinois Drivers and Taxpayers.

Yes, Yes, yes, We know the mantra. "It will never pass." The emasculated (and paid for) Republicans in the House and Senate all agree with you.

Yellow Dog Democrat 5:52 PM  

Bill and Anon -

Teachers actually don't have a problem with merit pay, as long as the merit pay is a reward for going above and beyond the call and not a substitute for a regular paycheck and COLA. Great teachers deserve an extra thank you in their paycheck.

Surprisingly though, merit compensation doesn't actually translate necessarily into better performance, at least according to business guru Jim Collins. In "Good to Great", the examined the compensation packages of the best CEO's, and a rigorous analysis by the smartest business wizards in the country found no link between economic incentives and performance. While they need to make a good living, great leaders are motivated by the desire to build great results over time, not by money. I'm betting the same is true of great teachers.

And keep in mind that compensation isn't actually the biggest problem for teachers who've been around for awhile. The things they gripe about are working for incompentent administrators, not enough resources for professional development (like continuing ed) and just the grueling work conditions in some school districts.

I think what we need to do to keep teachers from burning out is make sure we're providing them with the tools to succeed in the classroom, and we should look at a sabbatical program that allows them to step away from the classroom for awhile, maybe go back to school or work in the private sector for a year or two, and then come back to the classroom with new ideas and new energy. Australia has implemented such a program with great results.

Ironically, where we need the money is to raise base salaries, so that people who want to teach don't rule the profession out because the salaries are too darn low.

Try to buy a home in Chicago, most suburbs, or the St. Louis Metro-East area on a teacher's salary. It isn't easy. When business school, law school or medical school is waving around numbers that are bigger by a factor of three, four or more, it's tough to say "I want to teach" if you're thinking of getting married and raising a family some day.

Anonymous,  6:51 PM  

School choice

Merit pay

change education funding

more Montessori in earlier grades

Phonics based reading

Anonymous,  6:53 PM  

Hearings, public input, democracy
not in this oligarchy
trust a Chinese food sleaze
and a Roofer to run state government

JBP 10:44 AM  

What if schools ran 365 days a year and provided 3 meals a day to students, then had after school programs lasting till 6pm just in time for school supper?

We could have paid volunteers staff these schools at night, and make sure our children are not up to any mischief on the internet!

Then if the students did read some non-approved books or post objectionable material on the world wide web, they could be permanently positively punished.

If only our teachers had the resources to control every aspect of our students lives, Illinois could continue its drift to becoming the Nanny State.

JBP

Extreme Wisdom 4:14 PM  

Dan,

If and when anything like this passes, it will have ALL of the money, but NONE of the reforms (merit pay, consolidation).

Anonymous,  9:27 PM  

In Springfield "Big Bold Plan" is legislative code for:

"Money for Nuthin' and Chicks for Free"

In the Departments and Bureaus it's code for:

"We gotta move those refrigerators, we gotta move those color TVs"

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