Stuff the Universities, Let's Use Megaphone Intimidation to Spruik Primary and Secondary School Performance Pay. (April 10, 2007)

    It's been going on for months and it's been a marvellous diversion.

The federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop, has been able to virtually ignore the dilapidation of Australia's university sector, tossing only the occasional brickbat in its direction because the media, when it comes to matters educational, has been almost wholly preoccupied with Ms Bishop's equating the lack of adequate teaching in primary and secondary public schools to a lack of performance bonuses for teachers.

While New South Wales Minister for Education John Della Bosca would hardly be one to heap praise on Ms Bishop, when he writes in an opinion piece for the Sydney Morning Herald, "The Commonwealth Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, is trying to impose on the states and on public school teachers a simplistic, ill-defined and unworkable proposition for individualised, performance-based pay," and reminds us that "the Treasurer, Peter Costello, has already ruled out any additional funding," he is pretty well telling it like it is. So far there is little indication that Ms Bishop has any more definitive plans than she has for the Australian universities when she tells them go forth and diversify... or else.

In a recent policy brief  "A Plan to Improve the Quality of Teaching in American Schools" by Ron Haskin and Susanna Loeb written for the Future of Children, a joint venture by Princeton University and the Brookings Institution, the authors summarize their assessment:

Research on teacher quality shows not only that students who have good teachers learn more but that their learning is cumulative if they have good teachers for several consecutive years. The major goal of educational reformers today should be to boost teacher quality. We outline a five-part plan by which school systems could achieve this goal. The plan includes rethinking entry requirements for teaching, implementing a strategy to identify effective teachers, promoting only effective teachers, giving bonuses to teachers who teach disadvantaged students or in fields that are difficult to staff, and promoting professional development linked directly to teachers’ work. As part of its reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act this year, Congress could consider funding large-scale demonstration and research programs by school systems to test plans for improving teacher quality.

The authors then outline their "five-part plan" in some detail. For example they stipulate "Certification is intended to ensure that teachers have a minimal level of competence as they begin their careers. It can be a screening device to eliminate potentially poor teachers. But it is a blunt instrument that both lets some poor and mediocre teachers through its screen and blocks some potentially strong teachers. Thus, certification should not be the final word in determining who teaches. Further evaluation once teachers are in the classroom is essential to ensuring a strong workforce."

They also point out pit falls in evaluating teachers on the basis of student test scores: "problems arise in using student test scores to identify effective teachers. The use of test scores gives teachers an incentive to manipulate the system by teaching test-taking skills, focusing more on some students than others, undermining the performance of other teachers, or simply cheating," but expand their view adding, "...the most
reasonable conclusion is that test score changes should not be the only element in a system of evaluating teacher performance. Rather, school systems should judge teachers on a combination of student gains, principal evaluations, parent evaluations, and perhaps other measures, using a procedure that is developed cooperatively by school administrators, teachers, teachers unions, and perhaps parents."

Interestingly, Haskin and Loeb don't subscribe to Ms Bishop's precept of bonus pay as an incentive, although she may try to twist what they write to suggest that they do. What they do support is a system of promotion based on careful evaluation and support:

...the school system should develop a method for identifying effective teachers, based on both value-added measures and other measures, to decide which teachers should be promoted. It would be especially appropriate for school systems to use their assessments to identify teacher strengths and weaknesses to determine what professional development and supports they need to improve their teaching. If teachers continue to have problems after receiving support, then value-added assessment and other components of the evaluation system can be used as a basis for dismissal.

But where teachers are prepared to work in "problem schools" they do advocate a bonus incentive scheme and they do believe in awarding higher salaries for specialist subjects such as mathematics and science, manifesting a hard headed approach, "A similar strategy could be used to attract teachers to difficult-to-staff fields such as math, science, and special education. Teachers with strong math and science skills often have good opportunities outside of teaching, yet their pay is the same as that of teachers in other fields where outside opportunities may be more limited."

Finally, Haskin and Loeb lay down a implementation methodology which is based on "Congress [providing] the incentive and part of the financing for selected schools to implement creative plans for improving the quality of their teachers. School systems that want to develop such plans, involving any or all of the components outlined above, would develop proposals outlining their approach in detail. Congress would give the Secretary of Education the authority to solicit such grant applications and select the best ones for implementation and evaluation."

Somehow that last doesn't sound like Treasurer Costello working hand in hand with Ms Bishop who would work with the states to develop such an experimental system for proof of concept.

God forbid that the Treasurer or Ms Bishop should become constructive.