Evaluate teachers so we can pay them what they're worth
Teachers are seriously underpaid, but the public won't support paying the good teachers more without tools to evaluate them. Teachers ought to be leading the way in designing fair evaluation systems.
Courtesy of Washington Education Association
Linking teacher evaluation to pay is an increasingly hot button issue in Washington state and around the nation. Too much talk is about evaluation and too little about compensation. Sure, teacher evaluation is important. But it’s the wagging tail, not the dog. Evaluation schemes won’t attract and keep great people in front of the class unless positive evaluations bring meaningful financial rewards.
Teachers make an enormous difference in what children learn. Every parent knows teachers matter. Extensive scientific evidence backs up the importance of teachers to education outcomes. One oft-cited statistic is that a good teacher moves students up one-and-a-half grade levels in a single year. Students of a poor teacher learn only half a year’s material.
To reward good teachers we need to identify them. Evaluation should focus on measuring what students learn and then associating student learning measurements with the teachers who taught them.
We know we can measure student achievement because that’s what teachers do every time they assign grades. Teachers should be leading the discussion about how to do evaluation sensibly.
What teachers accomplish can be measured. It can't be measured perfectly. A system for evaluating teachers can be created that will do a pretty good job, but no system is going to be perfect.
Teachers and their friends have to realize that there is no public sympathy for keeping teachers immune from evaluation. But teachers should insist that evaluation systems be well-designed and fairly implemented.
While teacher evaluation is possible, what's our goal? If evaluations are simply to identify the small number of truly incompetent teachers, then we can make do with something a lot simpler than the kind of changes that are sweeping the country. But education won’t be changed much because there aren’t very many incompetent teachers.
If evaluations are to affect teachers across the spectrum, then evaluations have to be tied to substantial rewards across the spectrum. Evaluations without rewards are largely useless.
The primary issue should be teacher pay, and teacher evaluation should be the secondary issue. The real problem is that teachers aren’t paid enough. Not even close. Boldness is called for here.
Teachers, their friends, and their unions need to insist on compensation levels sufficient to recruit and retain great teachers.The top end of teacher pay in the new Washington, D.C. contract will be $140,000 per year. Here in Washington state, typical teacher salaries significantly lag salaries for other professionals and salaries at the top end are completely uncompetitive with other professions.
Depending on whose data you believe, Washington state teachers earn between 30 percent and 60 percent less than the state’s average college-educated income. If we want to recruit great college students into teaching and retain the good teachers we already have, then teacher salaries must be somewhat higher than competing salaries in other professions.
The state of Washington isn’t close. In the current budget climate, a pay increase will not all come in one year, but we could certainly set out a schedule of increases over several years tied to improving evaluations. Lots of issues matter for improving our schools. But teacher pay needs to be first on the list.
Too many reformers think that the issues of performance evaluation and inadequate pay can be split apart, and that the politically tough question of adequate teacher pay can be postponed to some imaginary future date. The two can’t be split. Teacher evaluation makes sense only when linked to meaningful financial rewards. Without increased teacher salaries linked to performance, teacher evaluations generate much sound and fury — but little real change.
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Comments:
Posted Thu, Sep 16, 8:05 a.m. Inappropriate
Mr. Startz writes: "Teachers and their friends have to realize that there is no public sympathy for keeping teachers immune from evaluation."
Gee. That's probably why teachers are not immune from evaluation. Mr. Startz has bought the big lie that teacher job performance isn't evaluated. It is. Kinda shoots a big ol' hole through his argument by exposing his desperate lack of knowledge on the subject.
Second, Mr. Startz asks "While teacher evaluation is possible, what's our goal? If evaluations are simply to identify the small number of truly incompetent teachers, then we can make do with something a lot simpler than the kind of changes that are sweeping the country."
Bad news, Mr. Startz. All of the fuss is about nothing but identifying the small number of truly incompetent teachers, and yes, we can make due with something a lot simpler than the kind of changes sweeping the country. Education reformers do not want to pay teachers more. They are using the boogey-man of bad teachers to try to scare everyone into the privatization of schools and union-busting. Again, this simple fact, that it's really all about removing bad teachers, not attracting and retaining good ones, blows the whole column into the garbage can.
Posted Thu, Sep 16, 9 a.m. Inappropriate
Here's an old joke. A man worked for years and years on a philanthropic project - to arrange the transfer of the money that the rich don't need to maintain their lifestyle the poor who need it. After years and years of work he declared that the work was about 50% complete - the poor have agreed to accept the money.
Likewise Mr. Startz has convinced the teachers that they should be paid more. Now if he can only convince the politicians and the voters to raise the taxes necessary to increase teacher pay he'll really have something.
Perhaps he hadn't noticed that the neo-conservative forces, the ones who want to reduce government to a size that can be drowned in the sink, remain strong and vocal.
Perhaps he hadn't noticed that grotesque mismanagement by District leadership has fostered organized opposition to the upcoming supplemental school levy.
We have already been through wave after wave of political rules that require teachers to be ever more qualified. The teachers are already evaluated. The sides that need to move first now are the legislature with the pay increase and the district administrators with their own accountability.
Posted Thu, Sep 16, 9:14 a.m. Inappropriate
I wonder if the author is a tenured professor, and how many classes they are currently teaching at the UW.
Posted Sun, Sep 19, 12:22 a.m. Inappropriate
If teachers were proud of the job they do they wouldn't mind a yearly evaluation. Doesn't happen. And contrary to coolpapa there are far more bad teachers then there are excellent ones. But the largest group of teachers are those mired in tedium and mediocrity. Student testing pretty much reflects it.
Excellent teachers should be paid lots of money. The mediocre ones given a year to shape up or they hit the highway. Bad ones should be fired, good luck with that.
Posted Mon, Sep 20, 7:09 a.m. Inappropriate
Good news, Djinn. Teachers are proud of the job they do, they don't mind a yearly evaluation, and they get yearly evaluations. It does happen.
Djinn confidently states that there are far more bad teachers then there are excellent ones but also claims that there is no yearly evaluation for teachers. In the absence of an evaluation, how can Djinn confidently make claims about teacher quality? Where is the data to support this absurd statement?
Djinn isn't just logically wrong, Djinn is also factually incorrect. Teachers ARE evaluated.
To say that any group of people are, for the most part average, is a tautology. Of course people are average on average. It's a stupid statement.
And to say that student testing reflects teacher quality is an ill-informed statement. The bulk of student achievement is determined by home-based factors, not school-based factors. All research confirms that.
Djinn, like a lot of the thoughtless people who support "Education Reform", talks about teacher quality but has no definition for it, no measure of it, and no benchmarks for it. If teachers are only measured relative to each other then we will always have only 10% of them in the top 10% and we will always have 10% in the bottom 10% - no matter how good the teacher corps may be.
Posted Mon, Sep 20, 2:17 p.m. Inappropriate
How about basing teacher pay on the students future income? Or happiness?
Posted Wed, Sep 22, 8:37 a.m. Inappropriate
coolpapa-
Great points!
"Of course people are average on average. It's a stupid statement."
"The bulk of student achievement is determined by home-based factors, not school-based factors. All research confirms that."
The right-wing think tanks that supposedly want to fix education seem to have few if any education credentials or political awareness.
The Director of the Washington Policy Center's Director of education is a lawyer, with no classroom experience at all.
http://www.washingtonpolicy.org/about/staff/liv-finne
If you read the report "Washington Policy Center's Education Reform Plan: Eight Practical Ways to Reverse the Decline of Public Schools", you'll read that one of the 8 practical ways is to 'Double Teacher Pay'. Really?? Where is that money coming from?
This report does seem to have some good conclusions, however, such as putting the principals more in charge of their own schools. Isn't that what a principal is for?
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