Now this being covered in the main stream media (NBC) gives me hope !!!
NBC News: States Struggle with Teacher Tenure
Boise Weekly: ABCs of Teacher Pay
Time: A Brief History of Tenure
Huffington Post Teacher Tenure Debate
American Progress Teacher Tenure Reform
Education Tech News: Email save Tenure
Hoover Institution: Teacher Quality, Teacher Pay
As always... Thoughts?
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11 comments:
More links that have convinced me that, at minimum, teacher tenure needs reform.:
NYT: Leader of Teachers’ Union Urges Dismissal Overhaul
WSJ: The Trouble With Teacher Tenure
NPR: Is Teacher Tenure Still Necessary?
Time Poll Results: Americans' View on Teacher Tenure and Other Reforms
I recently argued the opposite re tenure and I continue to be surprised with malleable my mind is educ. reform and other issues.
Since I have never been in a seniority based system, I have a hard time relating to why I would want to be ???
Now I have a pretty high level of internal motivation. However, I still like having both the carrot and stick in place to help me keep working, learning and improving. A little external motivation helps during those times when I would be tempted to coast.
Thanks for the links !!!
Good info here, but just to note that I've seen a good bit of MSM coverage of tenure, going back a few years. I've seen it covered through the lenses of budgets, quality of instruction, retention of newer teachers, just to name a few. But it's a big issue and one where I think there's a genuine--and sensible--shift in public opinion in the offing.
And nokomis--nice to have you around. Appreciate your insight and background.
--Annie
I think what changed my mind about tenure was thinking about what would make the biggest difference in closing the achievement gap for at risk learners and I kept coming back to outstanding teachers. I still have mixed feelings about this because it seems so harsh and imperfect when teachers deemed ineffective in underperforming schools lose there jobs in real life. People may have heard of "turnaround schools." They were in the news last summer. MPR explains that 34 MN schools were identified as being the state's persistently lowest performing. But seven of them also found out that they are making Adequate Yearly Progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law. These seven schools got both a "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" from the state in the same year! I guess what I'm trying to say is that to do better at educating all students schools need to find and keep the best teachers, especially in the most difficult settings; it's just that tools for measuring student learning and teacher effectiveness need to be improved as well.
And thanks for the welcome, Annie. I'm really enjoying the different viewpoints I've come across here compared to my usual blog reading.
I'm not really that concerned about tenure, which may come as a surprise. I'm not concerned because I believe, with regard to any given teacher, that it doesn't matter a whole lot to their motivation, and it certainly doesn't mean a darn thing to their ability. Of course, there would be the temptation to "lay back" and not become better if your job was "guaranteed" but I don't think most of us are wired that way, especially if we're standing in front of a bunch of wide-eyed kids every day as we WANTED to do.
Far more important, in my book, is that teachers should be paid for performance-- merit pay-- and forget every other restriction on how or if they keep their jobs. Most teachers who want and are able to do a "good" job will see that being rewarded and go right back to work. Only the poorest teachers won't get any pay increases (usually ten percent, as my company's merit system intended) and will eventually find something else to do or become "what they're worth."
J. Ewing
Your are correct that I am surprised !!! (hahaha)
The current system does work a little like this... Except it assumes that a Teacher that takes courses will be more effective. And they will stay effective. G2A Teacher Compensation
Which seems to not always be the case. Maybe Good Students don't always make Good Teachers... Or energetic self motivated 20+ yr olds may become less energetic and self motivated later in life.
The challenge is will the carrot(results based compensation) be above a base salary, and only paid in years when they really succeed? Helping Teachers understand that their total compensation may swing from year to year will be a big challenge? (they're not used to the concept)
In my company we call it "at risk compensation" or Short Term Incentive Pay. Our typical pay is set at ~avg market, however we can make significantly better in good years or when we as individuals really perform above average...
And as your responsibility increases, more of your compensation is put "at risk" to ensure you are highly motivated... That's why the big bosses can have big STIP payments.
Since the current system holds many non-energetic Teachers pretty flat compensation wise, and they still choose to stay. I still think the Mgrs need the freedom to dismiss them at times. Or we will not see the improvements that are needed.
Remember: it is likely that the worst Teachers are not highly internally motivated, and they are likely risk averse... Therefore they will often stay put with low pay just because it is comfortable and safe. So we probably have to push them out of the nest.
What becomes obvious is that you and I have vastly different experiences with what we are both calling "merit pay." That is coloring our discussion of applying merit pay to teachers. In my company, the only pay "at risk" was the raise you would receive and when you would receive it. For example, a strong performer during a good economy could expect a 10% raise every 12 months, or someone in the middle of the pack might get an 8% raise in 24 months, and somebody in the bottom 10% of the performance against objectives would get no raise at all, not even cost of living, for as long as their performance continued to be poor.
The other thing your raise depended upon was where you were in the broad "classification" system. You might be "Junior, associate, senior or consultant," for example depending upon your rank within the company, and you receive these promotions based on your merit. As you neared the top of your classification the amount of raise you could get was limited, so if your performance warranted it you would be promoted into the next class, where your salary was much less limited and you could get the raise you deserved. And of course, with each promotion you are expected to meet or exceed a higher set of personal performance objectives. For teachers, I have long suggested that we should have classifications like beginner, journeyman and master, so that the practices of the best teachers can be spread around and that everybody gets rewarded for it at their next review. Just because Gov. Pawlenty suggested it doesn't make it the wrong thing to do. :-)
This is the system I would recommend for teachers, where they can be rewarded for performance and not rewarded for nonperformance, while at the same time giving them a career path without going into administration to make more money. I think we should assume, even if we cannot prove, that the best teachers may be the poorest administrators, and that it makes no sense to make that trade, even if it is a reward for good performance. Better they should be rewarded for what they do best.
J. Ewing
Our raises and promotions work in the same way you describe. However, Short Term Incentive Pay is better in several ways:
- Smart employees never plan it in their budget because it may not be there next year. (ie like hourly employees w/ overtime pay...)
- If the economy tanks, the STIP targets won't get hit and the STIP is not paid. (ie cuts company's liability when it desperately needed) This way the employees and shareholders share the market and economic risk.
- The STIP motivates every year and does not carryover to future years. (ie no resting on past successes)
So if promotions and raises are how your employer's system works, do they demote people who lose their way, or are promoted above their highest level of incompetence... Peter Principle Or do they fire them?
It takes a good Mgr to accept they made a mistake in promoting the wrong someone. And having the stomach to return an employee to where they are most proficient. Often they start blaming and rating the employee poorly, and things go down hill from there.
I can see how STIP would be helpful in a private enterprise, but it isn't applicable to teachers, as I see it. They don't ever have a "down year"; there are always more kids.
My company was particularly good about recognizing "mistakes." If somebody was promoted too far, their evaluations showed it and they had a choice: live with no more raises, perhaps ever, or keep your raise and go back to what you were so good at doing before. Most of the time, AFAIK, they went back. The other choice, sometimes employed, was to redefine the job they were promoted to, or "promote them sideways" into something where they WERE competent. In the worst cases, we often joked they were given "an office closer to the door," but as we all know those things are often a positive turning point in people's lives.
Fortunately, the problem was largely eliminated because of the "dual career track" where you didn't have to go into management to get more salary. That's how it should be for teachers. One other thing: I'm not convinced that many of our teachers aren't overpaid. Things like tenure make the poor academic results seem like evidence of the Peter Principle, with teachers reaching their "level of incompetence" without ever having been "promoted."
J. Ewing
I thought part of the goal was that when the economy tanks, the Public Sector employees take some lumps with the rest of us... Just reducing their raises does not help cut the costs in the short term.
If that is true then their STIP could include multiple factors:
- Performance Rating (however generated) {60%}
- School's student retention and/or growth rate {40%}
- STIP does not trigger in periods of National, or possibly State recession...
When the economy tanks, the "pool" of money in an MBO-merit system gets cut or dries up completely, and if things get worse we lay people off or go to 4-day weeks or have rotating layoffs or ask everybody to take a cut so nobody gets laid off. All of these have the effect of maintaining a skilled workforce able to pick up again quickly when the economy rebounds.
Teachers would be no different, in a union-free environment. So long as state aid for education was a priority, eliminating raises for a year or two shouldn't be a problem, even after the "fat" has been wrung from the teacher compensation system.
BTW, I have a new term for teacher tenure, it's called "the Lemon Dance."
J. Ewing
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