Pay for Performance

I have been so worked up over this issue for so long, that I thought when I sat down to write this blog that it would practically write itself, and yet, I have been sitting here staring at an empty page and trying to decide what it is that I really want to say.

You see, when the idea of pay for performance first came out, I applauded it.  I thought it was about time that teachers that work so hard and care so much, who put passion and commitment into their work, should be recognized.  I was sick to death of seeing poor teachers continue in our profession.  I thought it was about time that we got rid of those teachers who were just there to earn a paycheck and didn't really care about their ethical responsibility to the children in their care.  It seemed like such a logical path and such an affirmative cause.

What  I didn't fully realize is that the decision for how the system would work would be left up to politicians and people who have never walked in a teacher's shoes. We would not be like doctors who police their own profession or lawyers who regulate their own membership, but we would be the pawns in a wicked game of political power and circumstance. 

I could give you all the little details of why this system hasn't worked, from personal experience, but it doesn't really matter.  The bottom line is that the formula for being a "highly effective" teacher, which is the road to performance pay in Florida, combines a principal's evaluation with student growth scores.  The problems with that formula are so enormous that it's hard to contain in a single blog. They have tried so hard to be fair, but a principal's evaluation, no matter how hard they try, is still subjective, and the growth scores are a crap shoot in any given year.  Sure, there's a state test to determine growth scores for some teachers but is that even that fair?  You can argue that the teachers have no way to control for what their students come to school with or you could argue that students who make a perfect score often count as "not making growth" when they make a perfect score the next year, so how can those growth scores be fair?  I could spend this entire blog just talking about things that effect the scores that are out of a teacher's control!

And to complicate it even more, there is no state test for K-1 students (and for many resource and specialty teachers).  I could tell you about the year that my growth score was dependent on a state test and that the communication was so poor at the state and county level that our school never got the word of how to open the portal to test high achieving children so... because our children made so high on the pretest and then just repeated their perfect scores on the post test, they were deemed not to make progress!  Of course, that certainly is water under the bridge. However, I guess I still haven't gotten over it, because I'm bringing it up here! It's just hard to live with because it effected a large number of extraordinary teachers.  That year most of those exemplary teachers were not highly effective, although they had very high Principal evaluations.  It wasn't because they didn't teach their heart out or because their students didn't make exceptional progress. It was because of a glitch and a line of  poor communication.

Or we could take this year's announcement of last year's scores.  My kindergarten group showed amazing progress as a group and individually.  I was so proud by the end of the year.  I won't go into all the individual successes we had, but they were numerous.   Our growth score for last year was determined by a county-written test designed for pre and post testing.   The test had never been field tested.  It was a new test, designed by "somebody"  - hmmmmm...  Anybody see a problem?  This was also the year that we were told at the beginning of the year that kindergartners would be pre and post tested and monitored each nine weeks in Language Arts, Math and Science and pre and post tested in Art, Music P.E. - I don't even remember all the absurd testing that we were suppose to do.  When I first heard it, I thought it was a joke, but no, "someone" had decided that this made sense for five year olds?  About sixty days into the school year, the county finally "listened" to the outcry and came down to a more reasonable testing schedule but by then, much of the damage had been done.  We had complied with the original requirement so we had essentially lost 60 days of initial instructional time.  As the data began to arrive, it was full of mistakes.  We had students with scores over 100%, missing data, and missing students, so the data was useless.  We called... and called... and called... the Testing Office to have the obvious inaccuracies fixed.  I'll bet they flipped a coin in the testing office and the loser had to take our calls!  It would really have been comical, except it affected children and our reputations as teacher! The data was basically unreliable - and this was going to be our growth scores to determine if we were highly effective?

I shouldn't have been surprised  that when the growth scores came in, that I was called into the Principal's Office.  The Principal explained to me that I had a 1% growth score.  1%!!!!!!!  That means that exactly 1% of my kinder students made progress last year!  I had about a second of absolute panic when I thought - could I really suck that bad?  But then reality began to set in.  No... this was a class that had made incredible progress. I could go student by student and rattle off the amazing things that I had witnessed. We had worked so hard. I looped this class, so I still had most of these students as first graders.  No way! No, this was not possible...  As I began to put it together, I noticed my Principal sort of smile.  "I know," she said, "there has to be something wrong with the data."  OH MY GOSH!  A 1% growth score put me in the "Needs Improvement" category! I am a National Board Certified Teacher with over 30 years experience. I am a former Florida Teacher of the Year.  I have published 19 books for teachers and now, I was in the "Needs Improvement" category!  Really?!! Thankfully, the Principal and Assistant Principal went right to work to begin notifying the Testing Office that there had to be something wrong with the data.  It ended up that there was a large group of teachers at my school - and I later learned at other schools - that were effected.

That was October.  We had to submit an appeal and were told "someone" would look into the matter, but for months, we were to hang out, having nothing to go on but a 1% growth score.  How did we know that anybody was even looking into the problem?  What would the parents in my class think, if that news got out?  I looped this class so I still taught most of the same students.  Would the parents trust the success they had witnessed in their students or would there be that little seed of doubt?  Would they wonder?  Would it get out  that a former Florida Teacher of the Year had a 1% growth score and was an ineffective teacher?  Would my name be published in the paper?  I know all of that seems a little irrational, but I am sure that in some way, it went through the mind of every teacher involved.  It's embarrassing.  This is our life's work... Our county had allowed our reputations to be defined by a poorly written test with no history and a data system that was untested and obviously full of inadequacies and inaccuracies...

Just last week, the new scores FINALLY came back - We had waited four months - FOUR MONTHS! - and I am thrilled to say that my growth score was 95%, which does put me back in the "highly effective" category, but you know what?  Who's to say that those scores are right either?  I am suppose to learn something from this process that will make me a better teacher,  but what I've learned is that this state is not ready for pay for performance.  They don't have the structure in place to make decisions that effect a teacher's morale, pay, and reputation, because each of those things in its own way effects the children that we teach... and they deserve better.

Did the state or county learn anything from this debacle?  It doesn't look like it... because this year K-1 teachers in our county have yet another new test.  This time it's a computer-based test - for kindergartners... hmmmm... see any problems?  To start with, our school simply doesn't have the technology to support a computer-based  program of this magnitude, so the very foundation is full of holes.  We have one tech lab that supports 1300 students and with the intermediate testing schedule, we might get into the lab a handful of times a year.  I have three computers in my classroom  (for 36 students!), just recently bumped up to six, but what instruction do I want my students to miss while they get on the computer?  I already have students come in before and after school and give up my planning time to help accommodate, but it's still not enough.  Of course, students can get on the programs at home, but that just widens the divide between the haves and the have nots!  The students that need the most instruction are the very ones that don't have computers at home.  But none of that  really matters, I guess, because once again, my ability to teach will be judged on the scores from a computer-based program - that even the designers of the program say was never its purpose...

Pay for performance can still be a good idea , but it's an idea that we are obviously not ready for... It's time has NOT come...

Are Teacher Evaluation Growth Scores Fair?

Lucy Calkins recently said in a workshop here in Jacksonville,  In times of your life when you were called a failure - what that does to your dedication, your sense of power!  It is debilitating.  Oh Lucy, how I understand that quote - how sad that I understand that quote...

 I feel like someone just kicked me in the gut.  Rarely have I ever felt like that as a teacher - once when dealing with an extremely difficult circumstance with a parent - once when dealing with a heart wrenching circumstance with a child.  In both cases the situations were so unfair and unjust that I just couldn't reconcile my own sense of fair play and justice.  Now is another such time.

I have always believed good teacher evaluation, that moved us toward pay for performance, could be a good thing for our profession.  I believed that teachers that worked hard and really went the extra mile deserved pay commensurate with  their skills and effort.  I was certainly never afraid of accountability or being evaluated.  As long as I continued to be a learner who was willing to give 100%, I felt like all the details would work themselves out.  I liked the idea of a career ladder for teachers who didn't want to leave the classroom. I knew some type of evaluation beyond the Principal's yearly visit would be part of the formula, and while I always worried about fairness, I put my faith in the system.  Now I know, first hand, what it feels like to work hard and go the extra mile and then let a committee's interpretation of test data tell you that you have not done all that you can for the students you teach, even though you KNOW that is NOT the case.  It feels like someone thrust a dagger in your heart.  

In my situation, it is really not the test itself that was at fault, but poor communication that resulted in 10 teachers of first graders at my school being denied credit for the success of their students.  Basically, a computer-based test was used that  didn't allow for the teachers to document the growth of their higher students.  Students topped out at the beginning of the year so there was nowhere to go at the end of the year but to repeat the same high scores - which equaled no progress! Did you get that?  There are a million details that come into play - one paragraph in a 150 page manual written in 2009 that alludes to testing at a higher grade level, training where "testing up" was supposedly explained but somehow missed by an entire grade level of teachers, a Coordinator who supposedly relayed the information to principals that never made it to teachers,  teachers who knew the problem and asked for direction and were told that testing up could NOT be done, teachers who followed the chain of command thinking they were doing the right thing, a district that decided to make an allowance for the same problem the year before but not this year - I could go on and on, but it really doesn't matter.  The plain and simple fact is that teachers who worked hard to do the very best they could for their students - students who DID make the progress - are being denied the growth scores that would label them "highly effective."

These are some of the BEST teachers that I know.  Five of them are Nationally Board Certified.  Half of them have been "Teachers of the Year." They are all overachievers who, I am sure, have some of the highest Principal evaluations in our building, because they would be satisfied with nothing less.  Most of them have leadership oozing from their pores.  These are exemplary, seasoned teachers who have built entire careers on being "highly effective."  They are leaders who have provided demonstration lessons all over the county - actually, through videotape, all over the country! About half of them looped their kids from Kindergarten to First.  In Kindergarten they were "highly effective," but as first grade teachers, with most of the same students, they are, all of a sudden, only "effective."   I wonder how the parents of the students who were rated as not showing growth - some of the highest students in the grade level - would feel if they knew?  It is because these teachers continued to teach and introduced so many first grade skills in kindergarten that they had such high scores at the beginning of first grade. So basically they are being penalized for teaching at such high levels as kindergarten teachers!  While this does not effect teachers' pay, at this time, it might in the future.  However, I doubt even one of these teachers will care as much about the pay as they care about not being considered highly effective, which implies that they did not do all that they could do for the students in their care- that some of their best students are considered as not make any growth - that they are failures...  This is about their names - their reputations - their professionalism.

I am one of those teachers.  After almost  40 years - with an entire career of being "highly effective" - this year I am only "effective."  Don't get me wrong.  I haven't spent my life teaching so that I could get some fancy label.  I absolutely love what I do.  It's a calling for me - a mission field.  I can't imagine doing anything else and at this late date, I certainly will not be making changes in my professional commitment.  But... it is demoralizing.  Honestly, it feels like someone just kicked me in the gut. It's not only me.  I have watched some of the finest teachers I know let this get to them... and I understand. It also effects our Principal and Assistant Principal, the Guidance Counselor, the Reading Coach, The Media Specialist - all of those who have to depend on our growth scores, along with the rest of the K-5 school, to prove their own effectiveness.

I know that nobody said life is fair, but until we can figure out a fairer system for evaluating teachers, I will stand with those who oppose this type of measurement.  And right now, we all have a moral responsibility to shed light on a failing teacher evaluation system.  Can we ever put our faith in a system that allows this to happen?

O-M-Gosh!

I have been required to do lots of things over my career that did not feel developmentally appropriate, but this year may just take the cake.  In the name of accountability and performance pay the county is asking Kindergarten teachers to give pre-tests in Math, Language Arts and Science.  Each of these is basically a one-on-one test in my co-taught class of 35 children!  Then there is the group Art test and the group Music test (not sure about that one because it's not in the building yet).  All of these are baseline pre-tests to be repeated as post-tests at the end of the year.  In addition to the county requirements, the state requires two subtests of the FAIR and the ECHOS which make up the state's FLKRS - all one-on-one testing, due within the first 30 days of Kindergarten.  When I first heard all this during pre-planning, I thought maybe the county tests were extremely short screenings that could reasonably be accomplished in the first 10 days of the school year (the county has come off the 10 days because of the backlash!) but the tests are actually long and thorough. Although I haven't yet seen the information that we will be receiving, it looks like we will have an abundance of information in which to make decisions, but all of the assessment has left our students feeling very defeated - even though we have stressed that they are not suppose to know everything on the test until the end of the year. It's left the teachers pretty beat up too!

Besides, there simply being too many tests in these early days, I am concerned about the time that the students are missing in training rituals and routines.  As we move into the fourth week of school, I am worried about the amount of instructional time that is being lost.  Instead of spending time in the classroom with my co-teacher supporting her teaching or vice versa, one of us is teaching without support while the other tests.   I worry about the time the students are missing that I usually spend just smiling, sitting close, and making sure that each child feels safe and comfortable in our new environment.  Today a parent of a student who is still being peeled off his mom every morning told me that he said the days are just too long and it's so-o-o-o hard!  Kindergarten - so hard... I worry what they must be going home and telling their parents about the test, test, test environment. I am embarrassed to try to make a rational explanation to parents. I worry that I have seen more tears and anxiety stress in our little ones and less laughing than in previous years.  I worry that the stress and frustration that I feel is being passed on to my children.  I worry that we will not finish the pre-tests in time for the county's new first nine week tests in Language Art, Math and Science!  And I'm not usually a worrier...

Is this madness?  Is this really the face we want to portray to our children and their parents as they walk through our school doors for the first time?  I understand accountability as well as anyone. I understand the theory of paying for performance.  I have always been a diagnostic prescriptive teacher so I am thrilled with the amount of information we will have on each of our young charges so that we can assess strengths and weaknesses and measure gains, but at what cost does all this come?  I have to believe that the folks making the decisions have the BEST of intentions but have not considered the cumulative effect of so much testing on such young children.  Maybe it's just lots of different people looking through their own lenses at all the small pieces and no one really looking at the big picture.  Kindergartners really are different.  Would any early childhood specialist ever recommend this type of school beginning?  This really is madness! What ARE they thinking?

Update:  During the sixth week of school we received an e-mail from the Superintendent letting us know that our Kindergarten students would only be required to take the Math and Reading baseline pre- and post-assessments, and that all 3 additional tests (Reading, Math, Science)  which have been scheduled at the end of each nine weeks would be cancelled!  Did you hear that LOUD sigh of relief?  Of course, by the sixth week of school, most of the cancelled baseline  pre-assessments have already been completed and the damage is done.  However, maybe now we can finally get on with teaching...

A New Evaluation System for Teachers?

Administrators in my county have recently been out of their buildings for three days to learn, yet another, new teacher evaluation system. I believe it was negotiated by our union and will be the foundation for identifying effective teachers and part of the formula for paying them accordingly. I have always been an advocate for accountability and I believe that performance and evaluation should be somewhere in the formula for pay, but spending this time and attention on an evaluation system seems to be trying to solve the problem by looking at just a tiny part of the problem. It's like the blind man who picks up the elephant's tail and thinks the animal looks like a snake!

There are strong teachers and there are weak teachers in education - no argument there. That might be the problem but the solution is not to identify those weak teachers and then pay them a substandard wage to drum them out of the profession. The problem is systemic and has been a part of education for... ever. After graduation, there is no system for lifelong learning.

The problem starts in the beginning of a teacher's career. The problem is that after teachers graduate from college, their learning stops! There is no system in place to make sure that a beginning teacher has the support that she needs in those first years to figure out how to put that book knowledge that she has gained into practice. Yeah, we give beginning teachers a "mentor" but in most cases that comes with no release time and really just means it might, or might not, be someone you can ask a few questions and who might check on you every now and then. Good teachers search out a real "mentor", someone that they can align themselves with. They watch her every move, get into her classroom as often as possible and ask a million questions. But that's not a system, that's an individual teacher figuring it out on her own.

Not only that, there's not an improvement model for teachers in the midst of their career, when they have the basics under their belt, to grow and learn, so they just continue to do what they have always done - good or bad. They might get a new little nugget here and there and if they have the money and time, they might attend conferences and really seek out educational opportunities. On-line opportunities abound for the eager learner, but it's not easy. There is no system to help you navigate the opportunties or encourage you. You often pay your own money and spend your own time for benefits that are self-motivating and self-gratifying, but not necessarily rewarded monetarily.

As you move into the sunset of your career, I guess everyone just assumes you already know everything. You've had years of experience, but if you've simply been repeating the same things year after year, without growing, are you really any better? There is always so much more to learn.

An evaluation system might hunt out the weaker links in our schools, but a better way might be to put the time and money into quality professional development offered in an array of opportunities that could be self-directed or even self-designed. If the money and time being put toward designing evaluation systems could be put instead toward providing quality, empowering professional development, then the changes would be tenfold.

I know because I was part of a reform design that provided that type of on-going, job-embedded, quality professional development. The buy-in by teachers was exciting. I believe that we were able to turn very ordinary teachers into exceptional teachers because of the support that we were able to provide. One of the things about good professional development is that it changes a teacher's practice from then on. Most teachers really want to improve their skills. They didn't go into teaching because of the money they were going to make. Most became teachers because they want to make a difference in the lives of the children they teach and unless they become disillusioned along the way, they continue to believe and are eager to learn new techniques that work. So instead of spending our time on designing a complex evaluation system that labels teachers proficient and failing (haven't we seen how well that has worked with our school?), why not spend the time and money on a system that supports lifelong learning ?

Performance Pay

Performance Pay is one of those ideas that I have endorsed over the years. I do believe that teachers who go above and beyond should be rewarded for their work, but in order for Performance Pay to work it has to be fair. TLN did an excellent report "Performance Pay for Teachers" that was written by 18 highly accomplished teachers suggesting ways that performance pay could be used to make that crucial difference.

Unfortunately very few of their models can be found in our county's program. Our system was a collaboration between the county and our Union and is approved by our state. Extra money, a one time $2330 minus taxes, is paid to the top 25% of teachers in our county. As I understand it, teachers are placed in different "silos" depending on what they teach and then the top 25% in each silo receive the extra compensation. While the system is designed around student achievement and teacher performance evaluation, unfortunately that means the weight is on a single day of testing. FCAT, our state test is used for teachers where it is possible. Other assessments, such as the DIBELS for K-2 teachers or county-made Music, PE, Art pre- and post-tests, are used in the elementary school and I'm sure any number of other assessments so that every teacher can put their name in the pot. That every teacher has a shot at the bonus is one of the positives.

With only 25% of teachers compensated county-wide, I'm glad to say that about 50% of the teachers at my school will receive the bonus. We are an A school and one of the few in our county that met AYP. However, these are some true, but strange circumstances.

1) We have a first grade classroom where two teachers team taught the same group of students all day. One took two months maternity leave during the year. The teacher that took maternity leave got performance pay. Her team teacher, that was with her side-by-side including teaching the class during the maternity leave, did not get the compensation.

2) We have two kindergarten teachers who team taught side-by-side the same group of students for the entire year. One got performance pay. The other did not.

3) Our second grade teachers are departmentalized. That means that one teacher teaches the Language Arts and her co-teacher teaches Math/Science/Social Studies. Each teacher has a homeroom and they switch classes mid day. Because most 2nd grades in my county are not departmentalized, there is not a silo for 2nd grade math teachers, so our 2nd grade Math teachers got their performance pay depending on how their homeroom did on the Language Arts DIBELS - no Math involved! Mind you, they never teach a single period of Language Arts but their performance pay depends on what is taught by someone else. If you are the Language Arts teacher in 2nd grade, your performance pay depends on your homeroom. In other words it only depends on what you do with half your students. I guess the other half don't count!

4) Or take this final example. Two fourth grade math teachers teach side-by-side. They have two sections of Math. One section includes a homeroom for each of them. Because of the way the class size amendment information has to be inputted into the computer, they each have a list of their own students in their homeroom, although they never have the homerooms divided for Math instruction. They always teach together. Two other homerooms (headed by two Language Arts teachers) make up their other section. So when performance pay is distributed, the Language Arts teachers and one of the math teachers gets performance pay and the other Math teacher didn't. Understand that these two Math teachers have worked with the exact same children in a room together all year, but because the children were required to be divided in the computer, one homeroom made the mark and the other didn't! One teacher gets the money, the other doesn't!

Does this sound as ridiculous to you as it does to me? Can you see where this could be divisive? Let's face it, the economy is tough. Teachers are not exempt from the financial stresses that are seen throughout our country. We have teachers whose homes are in foreclosure, whose husbands have lost there jobs, and money, especially right now, can be a dividing issue. Of course, really nice things happen too. I overheard the teacher in the first instance say to her partner that if they couldn't figure out how to get the money for both of them, then she would split hers. Such a generous gesture, but how ridiculous that they would even need to have that conversation. I am sure the first two will appeal, but if history is any indicator, it won't make any difference (if it does, I'll post a comment). They will be told there simply is no more money. It's all been given out.

One of the most disturbing trends over the years in my small sampling at my own school is fewer inclusion classes and Special Education teachers getting the bonus than the regular population teachers. That's not to say that none of the inclusion teachers ever get the extra money but it seems to be a lower percentage. I am bothered about how this will effect our inclusion teachers over time. Will they begin to feel that all the extra effort that they give in taking the most difficult children in our school is not worth it?

I decided to try to help figure out how compensation for Special Education teachers was designed so that our Special Education teachers could see why they are falling short (4 of the 7 are Nationally Board Certified). If at least 25% of Special Education teachers were getting better results than we were, I wanted to know how we could improve, but it was one brick wall after another. First of all the list is not published so you can't go to the high performers to search for strategies to improve your own student achievement. When I e-mailed our Special Education Department for information, thinking that there must be someone looking at high achievers and how to replicate their work, I received no response at all. And when I tried to question the process (Which children counted for me? If a child was in both Survey periods in my school but did not transfer to my class until the end of the second survey period, did that child count for me? Did all of the special education kids count for the general education teacher? How about those students who were on special standards? Who else was in my silo? Was I just considered with other inclusion classes or also with self-contained classes? Were all special Education teachers, regardless of what they teach, lumped together? and the list goes on), I was sent from person to person and really never got accurate answers. For the most part, it really seemed like they didn't know the answers, which begs the question, "Does anyone have their finger on the big picture?" When I went to the Union I was sent generic answers that basically said "see the web site." I yearn for a system of performance pay that would be an incentive to improve student achievement, instead of a mysterious system where teachers say, "I have no idea why I got it," and "I have no idea why I didn't get it." Transparency would go a long way.

With all that said, I am glad that some of our teachers will get a bonus because I believe that teachers certainly deserve it, but this is such a flawed system that you have to begin to ask, "Is it really worth it?" There are so many better ways to distribute performance pay, but our pay is so entwined in the political process, I wonder if it's possible to ever get it right? Our children deserve better!

P.S. - If any of my facts are incorrect, it is because the system is so cloaked in mystery and misinformation that it is difficult to get accurate facts. If I have misquoted in any way, I would be more than happy to write a retraction.