Governor proposes merit pay for educators

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced this morning a special legislative session focusing on education that he hopes will establish merit pay for teachers, allow students at low-performing schools to transfer to other campuses and use data to track students and educators.

The governor also wants the legislature to abolish a law that bars the use of student test scores in teacher evaluations. Under federal guidelines, states that prohibit the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers cannot apply for $4.35 billion in education stimulus money known as Race to the Top funding.

Some California educational leaders have said federal officials are misinterpreting state law, but Schwarzenegger vowed to do everything necessary to make sure California qualifies for the federal funding.

"This is an incredible opportunity for our students and our schools," he said at a press conference in Sacramento.

Not all of Schwarzenegger's proposals apparently would have to be passed by the Legislature to be implemented, but the governor said he hoped state lawmakers could finish their work by early October so the state could meet the deadline to apply for federal funds. 

Several other states, including Illinois and Indiana, have changed their laws or policies to qualify for Race to the Top funding.

The announcement could kick off a contentious fight with the state's powerful teachers unions. Union leaders have already said they are against a state-wide merit pay system and using test score data to evaluate educators.

The reforms could also be difficult to implement.

"They are absolutely sweeping," said Brad Strong, education director for Children Now, a national advocacy group. "But there are political realities and logistical issues ... We need substantially more resources for these to really take hold and be effective. Unless that's part of the conversation, the state will be hard pressed to make much progress."

-- Jason Song and Jason Felch

Photo: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times

 

Comments

[Scott Lansing]

How about the money going toward merit-based pay -- if there's potential for an increase in salaries -- first goes toward improving free lunch programs in schools. Students who don't receive adequate nutrition cannot effectively learn and retain the information needed to meet state academic standards, especially if that free lunch is the only meal they receive each day as a result of their families' low socioeconomic status.

I think teachers should be rewarded for improving the lives of their students. Once free lunch programs are revamped, maybe merit-based pay will be slightly more appropriate in evaluating teachers whose students aren't malnourished and have the aptitude to succeed in school.

[dori]

I think teachers should be judged on test scores. Like any other profession you are judge by your ability to perform the job at hand in the most proficient way. I know several teachers who do not get the oppertunity to move forward because another one is politically connected and not the best for the job. Who wants that sort of person teaching our children. I want the best teaching my kids. this is a question that all you need is common sense. You would want the best to run your company why not teaching our kids.

[Adrienne Garrison]

I have been teaching for 24 years communiting 45 miles to a district that has most of it's children struggling because of their families dire situations. I guess I won't be able to afford to teach there if the Governor gets is wishes. I will have to transfer to my home town of upper middle class students that are supported by their families who score well on standardized tests to be able to afford my home.

[Lenard Hogue]

I am an educator in the San Joaquin Valley. I teach eighth grade English Language Arts. I have a problem with merit pay based on a standardized test score. A standardized test score is a poor way to judge a student's worth. It is a snapshot of a single moment in time for that student. It doesn't tell anything about that student's true intellectual abilities. The truth is that most standardized tests measure skills and concepts learned at Bloom's second, third, and fourth level of learning. A multiple choice test can not truly assess student learning at Bloom's higher levels; the levels at which the state standards are written. This has been verified by scientific studies too numerous to mention, a fact often ignored by politicians like our dear governor.

Give us as educators merit pay, but make that merit pay of a different nature. What did this student become? Did they improve in their academic abilities while in my class? While they were in my class did they learn how to use their academic knowledge to help cope with the real world they live in? Did they gain a greater appreciation of life and learning while they were with me? Did they began to get a glimmer of what could be, instead of being stuck in the reality of their present circumstances? These are important issues in the lives of our children. Do our students need to learn the skills and concepts put forth in our state standards? Absolutely! However, we need to teach and educate the whole child, not just the test scores. This is how we will prepare them to be successful and contributing members of our society.

[For the children]

This must be done. Hopefully Californians will rally behind our governor on this one. There is no accountability in our public school systems, and the unions have way over-stepped their bounds. I hope the current Healthcare issues don't drown out school reform. Merit pay and accountability are long overdue.

[sethook]

Merit pay only leads to cheating within the school system. test scores will become useless as has happened across the country. Teaching the test will become the main curriculum.

[AnonC]

If California wants a fair judgment of teaching practice it could do it easily and cheaply by putting in place a statewide inspectorate staffed by veteran teachers (who are given sabbaticals to do this job).

If "merit pay" is done locally then local "politics" will trump any objectivity. If it's done on just test scores, then what happens to those who teach the around 70% of kids who will never qualify (or want to qualify) for college? A test score system will declare those teachers as "under-performing." I guess it'd also spell doom for any "low value" course sequences such as Arts, Music, Shop classes etc.

How about California has an epiphany and starts treating education, be it for college, for vocation, or just for education's sake as a basic social good, and preach that to society rather than this "high output" stupidity?

[LA Teacher]

OK, merit pay me if you want. 1/3 of my class was absent on Monday- because it was Monday! Only one student in my 3rd period does homework. It's not like this every year, but there are years like this.

People who have not taught should walk a mile in our shoes.

I made sure to make it to the top of the salary scale because I knew this was coming. I feel sorry for all new teachers. They won't come to the inner city.

[Steven Kent]

Merit pay for what you bring to the table -a master's degree, unique experience, etc. YES!

Merit pay from a measured performance is impossible for all teachers. We have about 12 subject areas in my school, only 4 of them are tested. I guess the rest of us, either get a free pass and no merit or we have to be evaluated the old fashioned way, by supervisors actually observing our skills.

Hey, why don't we just have observation for all 12 areas. That would be logical. Oh, yeah, the first thing to go in educational politics is logic!

[Steven Kent]

Comment lost -do over:

Merit pay for what you bring to the table -master's degree, unique experience, etc. YES!

Merit pay based on measured performance won't work for all. We have 12 subject areas at my school; only 4 of them are tested. So the other half of the teachers get a free pass or no merit pay.

We could measure merit by observation rather than assessment, but hey, that would be logical. I think we would violate some educational policy if we apply logic.

[Bob Johnson]

I wonder how long it'll take the education-destroying CTA to torpedo this legislation. Heaven forbid teachers having to actually prove their worth in order to keep their jobs, like the rest of us suckers.

[Lara]

So Indiana, Population about 6 million; and Illinois, population about 13 million
have changed their laws and policies to get federal Race to the Top education funding.

California has a greater population -- more than 36 million.

Doesn't reassure me that Indiana and Illinois have changed their laws and policies to get education race to the top funding. California has many complex
issues including how it has continued to cut education funding. Most of the federal funds will be used to take care of new federal mandates.

[Jose Q. Public]

The Governor is simply pushing a shock doctrine approach...taking advantage of this economic crisis (due in large part to the deregulation free market approach of the Bush years and zealotry of Friedman-economics) to further privatize our most important public and natural resources. Merit pay and teachers are not the problem...let's begin with Conservative - Government retrenchment and faulty priorities by conservative nativist zealots

[Gilberto Esquivel]

What the Governor is proposing is tantamount to union busting. What ever happened to utilizing funding for smaller classrooms, transportation, after-school programs, and adequate lunches for students? Does he think that money is what motivates teachers? It's what motivates him and all of the bone headed moves that he, wall-street, and the GOP have made. Teachers know going into the profession that a virtual vow of poverty is taken when hiring on. Believe me this is not what motivates teachers.We do it for the love of people. Not the money. When we see that our students' families are suffering economically and they nor their parents have no health care or safety net, that is what breaks our hearts. Not the want of money!

[Teachers should know how to spell]

Adrienne Garrison was the first to comment on this article. She is a teacher who claims to be very concerned that she might be offered more money if merit pay were to pass. She made 3 spelling errors in her 3 sentences. Can you count them?

She sounds like a great teacher. I can see why her local school district passed on the opportunity to hire her. They probably found spelling errors on her resume.

[Agent Mike]

As long as this state allows Unions to wag the dog, the only decision that will go forward are those that the union finacially profits from. CTA will never stand for merit pay raises, based upon this formula, hense this will not happen.

[Jamaul Cannon]

Teachers need to shut up and stop whining about how "inaccurate" and unreliable test scores are. Its just another way of dodging accountability, something they've done for decades. SAT scores aren't the most reliable way of measuring intelligence, LSAT scores aren't the best predictors of performance as an attorney, MCAT scores aren't the best way to predict what kind of physician someone will be. There's no perfect way of assessing aptitude, but their ARE ways of predicting, and standardized tests are one of those ways. If teachers spent half the time actually preparing lesson plans to improve student performance as they do fighting any and every attempt to make them actually teach, schools would be markedly better without a single extra tax dollar being burned by the school districts.

[Mike Haas]

Teachers, Yes, I want you to teach to the test. The tests will measure how will your students can read,write and compute. You will be evaluated on your student's growth. Please stop talking about your living in poverty. The average teacher makes $60,000 for working a nine month year. Can't lose job for incompetence. How many other jobs offer those perks?
Mike Haas(retired teacher)

[Mike Haas]

Teachers,
Yes, I want you to teach to the test. The test will demonstrate how well your students can read, write and compute. You will be evaluated on your student's growth, NOT absolute score. Please, no more mention of teacher poverty. The average teacher earns over $60,000 for a nine month year. They cannot lose job for incompetence. You don't know how good you have it.
Mike Haas (retired teacher)

[lostinla]

......I guess some teachers might just want to pay some of their students to NOT take the test......

[Greg Mour]

Inasmuch as the role of the teacher is not the key variable in determining a child's success or lack thereof on state standardized tests (socioeconomic status, for instance, is a far greater indicator), merit pay is seriously flawed.

Moreover, it invites nepotism on the part of administrators in placing favored teachers in classes designed to reflect test score gains. In addition, in the absence of adequate monitoring of the proctoring of tests, such a system would invite cheating on the part of teachers.

After twenty years in the teaching profession, I am not naive to think that my colleagues are above reproach when it comes to money in our increasingly hardscrabble economy.

Merit pay is not a valid measure to reward teacher achievement. On the contrary, it would usher in a plethora of problems instead of solutions.

[Tim]

My wife worked as a teacher for 11 years before becoming a counselor. She taught in a low socioeconomic neighborhood where many of the kids wouldn't even bother to answer any of the questions on a test. If you measured her kids' test scores against kids in a higher socioeconomic neighborhood, it wouldn't be an accurate indication of her performance. I also don't think that having pay based solely on education and time in the district is a good idea (it should be one of many factors just like the private sector). Another reason pay shouldn't be based on test scores is because, even with the same teacher, they vary from year to year - some years are just worse than others (you get a low performing class). Lastly, I'm not sure that paying a bad teacher less is going to turn that teacher into a good teacher.

[Carol]

Mike Haas--The tests don't tell us how well kids can write, because they only have to write an essay in 4th, 7th and 10th grades. All the other grades it's strictly multiple choice.

For the math test, yes, you need to understand the problem, but you also need to understand how multiple choice tests are written, how to eliminate certain answers. It's not just math that's being tested, but how to take a test. How many of us will build careers where, in our daily routine, we must answer multiple choice questions.

Until we move (ha!) to essay tests and "show the work" math tests, then I will never be in favor of merit pay.

[reginald]

First, he annihilates the education budget for California, now he wants to hold teachers solely accountable for California's poor performance? How about merit pay for Governors and other underperforming politicians? Oops! That would make too much sense!

[Paul]

As usual, there are a number of nasty comments about teacher's 'whining' regarding tests. Some talk about how this kind of accountability works in businesess, so why not schools. Astonishing how people think of kids; as bottles on an assembly line we need to fill with facts. A 'business model' indeed.

How long kids can remember facts for a test is the thing we need to measure the LEAST..it tells us nothing about a child and his abilities & consequently nothing about the ability of the teacher.

Home educated or alternatively educated kids often talk, think, read & reason circles around their regularly schooled counterparts-all without certified experts.

Why do you suppose that is?