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

[Dr. Gary]

Peter F. Drucker often mentioned Japan has used a form of merit pay for teachers for some time, paying the best substantially more than we do.

He also noted students attend classes six days a week, from early morning to late afternoon.

Perhaps it would be wise to study Japan's system(s) and others, before radically changing ours.

[julia]

I really don't like it when people who don't play the game keep making the rules. He has no idea how unfair merit pay would be, how teachers would teach to the test, how students would feel the pressure. And how unfair it is if one teacher has a group of underachiervers in a poor stressed area and another has Daddy and Mommy's darling who eats breakfast at home and has the room and quiet to do homework. Teachers would fight to not have the poor students in their class. You can't level the playing field so you can't really expect the same results. But the govenor who made his millions, making trashy movies that no child should or could watch, now gets to make the rules for underpaid, overworked, classroom teachers. It boggles the mind.

[Greed is Good]

I get that people want education run like a business.

I teach mostly gifted kids, I'm good with merit pay. I will benefit from it greatly. Of course I'm done helping other teachers succeed, because if it's him or me, I choose me.

If you want to pit us against each other, fine, but this is how it's going to look.

[Kim]

Mr. Johnson and Mr. Haas,
You were able to write these letters, thank a teacher. Mr. Haas, had you been listening to any of those teachers you wouldn't have found it necessary to rewrite your letter in the matter of five minutes. You would have carefully edited it to make sense the first time.

It's impossible for anyone to argue with those who will not see. The logic, the statistics, and the children don't matter. I can carefully lay out the logic argument, with studies and statistical evidence to prove it, but I won't. It doesn't matter.

Just for the record the federal money offered will not trickle down to the classrooms. It will pay for administrators to run the federal mandates that come with the money. The merit pay will not be founded on good solid research. Teachers, who are human, will panic about test scores will cheat and lie to get them. The teachers all children deserve will only flock to the schools with high test scores (Who can blame them??). The poor will become even poorer. And, in your old age, do you really want to hand over the country to a generation that was educated this way...?
Kim---A current teacher

[Young teacher]

If our dear governor and president find the idea of merit pay so appealing, why aren't they offering to place themselves on the same system? How about they take minimum wage as long as our state and country are in debt?? For that matter, why isn't everyone that supports this system willing to do the same to themselves? How would you feel if you were blamed for poor sales due to the economy and as a result didn't get paid as much. Sure, some teachers take advantage of the system, but there are many like myself that choose to teach the lowest performing students because we feel we can make a difference. I had 10% of my students from last year gain over 2 out of 5 possible levels on their math test last year. If we go to merit pay, watch how fast I take my talents and desire to a school that I don't have to worry about meeting my merit requirements.

[Sarah]

To Dori,

Test scores should not be used to judge a teachers performance. Everybody likes to point to test scores because the appearance is that they are fair when they are not. You have MANY students that are on your rooster but ditch 40-50 times a year. Why should a teacher have to bear that responsibility when obviously their influence is not in that child? Have you seen some of these standards which are so broad especially the latter ones. For example, "Students analyze instances of nation-building in the contemporary world in at
least two of the following regions or countries: the Middle East, Africa, Mexico
and other parts of Latin America, and China. " I can pick two of these but if the test unfortunately covers the one I didn't pick my students are at a disadvantage.

[Jef]

The problem I have with merit pay is it can't be done fairly. How do you evaluate P.E. teachers, shop teachers, art and music teachers? Do they get merit pay when the test scores go up? Do they get a reduction in pay when the scores go down? I teach 8th grade U.S. history. In May the 8th graders are tested on the CST in history, but not just on what they learned in my class. They are also tested on what they learned in 6th and 7th grade history. Do I get evaluated on how they do on the 6th and 7th grade portion of the test or do their teachers from those years get evaluated? I don't think merit pay on its surface is a bad idea, I just don't know how to make it fair if it is going to be based on test scores.

[Governator]

This is a wonderful opportunity for all the citizens of Kalifornia that have criticized the teaching profession to go back to college, get a credential, take a battery of tests and show these old teachers how it's done and make lots of money competing against them. Don't worry about the 50% attrition rate in the first five years of teaching, the pressure to perform under unimaginable circumstances, complying with ever-shifting political objectives and asinine bureaucracies will be an exhilirating endeavor worthy of your great effort. Enroll now, for the future of our kids and our great state!

[Teacher]

Hey Governor, if you really only want me to do my job for the money then I'll only do it for the money. Fair enough! Mercenary teachers will be comparable to mercenary soldiers. They won't fight (or work) for a cause, just the money.

[Involved Parent]

CA Parent groups have been fighting hard, for so long for school reform. And it is so rewarding to finally see LA's mayor, our governor, and our President fighting for issues (there are a multitude of them that all lead back to Teachers Unions).

I hope the public will embrace the political efforts now, as these efforts, if abandoned, won't likely be revisited for many years to come. If the public once again falls prey to the unions' commercials, campaigns, and rhetoric, one-half of CA's children will have no future, and CA will become an even greater cesspool of unemployed, criminal, Social Service dependent, drop outs. Our prisons are bursting with LAUSD drop outs. And the parts of our city you can't drive through are comprised of LAUSD drop outs.

The political climate is right. It's time to push ahead with school reform. High drop out rates can no longer be tolerated. There are no avenues to success for drop-outs in today's world. And LA won't be a place we want our children to live if we continue to allow our schools to produce people who turn to crime and Social Services to sustain themselves.

When LAUSD and it's unionized teachers say it's the parents' fault, they're not accepting their half of the blame. The reason we have so many parents who are drug addicts, criminals and Social Service recipients is because LAUSD let them down. They've been churning out these people for over thirty years in alarming numbers. At some point, we must face the fact that intervention in the lives of children who have "bad" parents, must be done at school. Who else better to turn them around? Schools are all they've got, five days a week.

Major changes are due, rethinking the system, and what it should be doing. Accountability is the first step. Necessity is the Mother of Invention. Let's give our schools and teachers some necessity, by holding them accountable. Unions are the roadblock to every change that is good for our kids. When they raise their voices, plug your ears, and think of the kids, and CA's future.

[Paul Moore]

The Business Roundtable, which has directed the attack on public education is now deeply enmeshed in an existential struggle to save itself. So the CEO’s have turned their school privatization campaign over to the US government and Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Duncan soldiers on with the dead-end corporate catechism. Charter schools are good, public school teachers are bad, and their unions need to stop their resistance to merit pay. Duncan has pledged to use billions of taxpayers money to close inner-city public schools and make sure those really bad teachers in those schools finally get their comeuppance.

But Duncan will fail just as the Business Roundtable, Gates, Broad, and the Waltons have failed because these forces have tried to hold back the tide of history. Economic globalization had been at the very foundation of the business model for schools, charters, vouchers, data driven instruction, merit pay, standardized testing, and most perversely of all, paying students to consume the corporate version of knowledge. It was the reason Bill Gates and the Walton family were among the driving forces behind these counterproductive educational policies. Big Business wanted a profit making private school system in their race with China and India to lowest possible wage for workers, Gates wanted contracts for his data-collection company Microsoft.

These Milton Friedman-inspired Reagan revolutionaries will mark the Bush years as the zenith of their power. This era spit up hucksters and charlatans like Rod Paige, Margaret Spellings, Armstrong Williams, Jack Welch, Ruby K. Payne, and more ominously for the future, Arne Duncan. It was certainly the time the attack on public education appeared ready to bear fruit. They had public school system wreckers like Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein in place, kids were dropping out in droves, and teachers were in full flight.

But something happened on the way to a global economy and a privatized education system to serve it. The whole thing fell apart. The plans made during the era when Wal-Mart and China were on their honeymoon and the credit default swaps and champagne were flowing on Wall Street and Bill Gates and Eli Broad thought they were destined to rule the world because they were richer than everyone else are canceled.

When a massive systemic effort like globalization dies its like a Hummer that has run out of gas. It will continue rolling down the road awhile longer. And that accounts for the absurdities that are coming out of charter-loving US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s mouth now. His tune will soon change though.

Because soon it will be every private school and charter school investor for himself. Private school students are being moved to the public schools by their debt ridden parents in significant numbers already. Obama’s education policy reflects the President’s own inability to yet grasp that the world he used to live in is about to evaporate. He himself will soon be fighting off the coup makers in the midst of the greatest economic dislocation the American people have ever experienced, the Greatest Depression.

[Stephen Blum]

Conan the governor never stops amazing me regarding the extent he does not understand what he is doing or proposing. He now wants to implement merit pay for teachers. Does he not know the California education budget was cut by 17 billion within the last year? Doesn't he remember signing these bills? Where will the money for merit pay come from? Is he aware that there is little or no evidence merit pay works? Few private businesses use it because they know it leads to “gaming the system”. California does not have money to waste on merit pay or other silly unproven solutions.
Students at low performing schools can already transfer to other schools. It does not seem he is aware of this either. The problem is finding them space in California’s already crowded schools.
Conan also wants to create a data tracking system to track students and educators. Where will the money for this new layer of bureaucracy come from?
Maybe California's "acting governor" should stick to "fixing" the prison system. He has done such a great job with them. Better yet, he should do what Sarah Palin did, resign. At least she understood that was best for the state.

[LAUSD Sam]

I am in complete and total support of merit pay, it is about time! There are too many lazy teachers collecting pay checks for doing NOTHING. Due to the "salary point" system, teachers that spend time taking menial online/professional development receive incremental raises rather than teachers that spend extra time tutoring and working with kids. It is a completely flawed system.

One thing in regards to the utilization of standardized test scores... It takes the state over 3 months to score them, and there is no recourse on the student if they do not try and/or fails the tests. THERE NEEDS TO BE ACCOUNTABILITY FOR BOTH TEACHERS AND STUDENTS. Many students take the CST (California Standards Test) as a complete joke, because they are neither rewarded nor punished for the WEEK LONG SERIES of tests. Seriously, how many of you would work very hard if you weren't getting paid? conversely, they all try their hardest on the CAHSEE (California High School Exit Exam) because if they don't pass, they don't graduate.

These issues need to be addressed, but nonetheless, I do believe it is a step in the right direction.

[LAUSD Sam]

I am in complete and total support of merit pay, it is about time! There are too many lazy teachers collecting pay checks for doing NOTHING. Due to the "salary point" system, teachers that spend time taking menial online/professional development courses receive incremental raises rather than teachers that spend extra time tutoring and working with kids. It is a completely flawed system! Individual pay > Student needs.

One thing in regards to the utilization of standardized test scores... It takes the state over 3 months to score them, and there is no recourse on the student if they do not try and/or fails the tests. There needs to be accountability for both TEACHERS AND STUDENTS. Many students take the CST (California Standards Test) as a complete joke, because they are neither rewarded nor punished for the WEEK LONG SERIES of tests. Seriously, how many of you would work very hard if you weren't getting paid? Conversely, they all try their hardest on the CAHSEE (California High School Exit Exam) because if they don't pass, they don't graduate.

These issues need to be addressed, but nonetheless, I do believe it is a step in the right direction.

[Carl]

Research has shown that the absence of merit pay has helped to drive down the qualifications of teachers. The best and the brightest can become frustrated when pay is based principally (or solely) on time in grade rather than performance.

To claim that merit pay can't be implemented is to claim that the quality of an education cannot be measured at all. That makes no sense. You might as well say everything is just peachy about the state's schools, because who can tell anyway?

We also need to get beyond the idea that teachers have some special right to cosmic justice in everything about their jobs and compensation. Sure, evaluation systems can make errors. Sure, principals and administrators aren't perfect. Welcome to the real world the rest of us live in, where pay for performance still manages to work somehow.

I bet that every parent who has put children through California public schools has come across some teachers who fell short, taught little, or in rare cases were close to nuts. Not only do the kids deserve to be rid of such incompetents, but so do the other teachers who are working hard and doing a good job. We need to pay those folks more, which the present system won't tolerate.

[ed]

According to the teachers, standardized tests don't measure how well a student is doing. According to the teachers children do poorly because children are malnourished. The reason kids do poorly is because they come from families in dire consequences. According to the teachers, the reason CA students perform poorly has nothing to do with California teachers.

Ridiculous. Students don't do well because there is no expectation that they do well. Because there are no measurable outcomes by which they measure themselves. So long as teachers are unwilling to put up a yardstick, say "That is how you are going to be measured," be it with math, english, or any other academic subject, and so long as there is no moral authority to expect achievement on the yardstick, kids are going to do poorly.

"They came from a demographically bad area, they don't have proper nutrition, blah blah blah." Keep on yapping while you fail to create the 21st century work force this state and nation require to be successful.

Sorry teachers, it IS you.

[SteveJ.]

To: Teachers should know how to spell.

1. You need to make two spaces after making a period and starting a new sentence.

2. You write the word out for the numbers one to ninety-nine.

3. You need to work on your reading comprehension skills. Your recall of the comment is incorrect.

Here is your theme, or life lesson. It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

[howard]

Hey, I'm all for paying good teachers more. But how do you determine "merit" for teachers? Best test scores? You get that when the kids coming into your class come from affluent and educated families. Best student ratings? That assumes that the teachers the kids like are the most effective teachers. Highest ratings given by principals? That assumes that the principal is qualified and capable of evaluating teaching, and also assumes that the principal doesn't play favorites or respond negatively to criticism. Highest scores on some multiple-choice test for teachers like CBEST? There's no evidence that this translates into classroom success.
Besides, most teachers are going to be "average." There's no way around this.
All these "merit pay" schemes assume that teachers really know how to improve student learning but perversely aren't doing it, but that paying them a bit more for doing it (or less for not doing it) would change things. Most teachers I know are doing their very best in a society that makes their job hard: not enough money for supplies, increasing class size, parents who don't or can't help them, and a peer culture that values athletics and street-smarts over learning.
It would be best to have good programs to help most teachers improve, and better ways of identifying the very worst teachers and helping them find another line of work.

[LA Teacher]

How ignorant most of these comments are. 9 month year? Try 24/7 while you are on schedule and planning when you are off.

So when an oncologist who treats difficult to cure cancers loses a patient, should we dock their pay as well?

[ann]

"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)...." Wrong. The teacher is the greatest factor and education level of parents trumps socioeconomic status and though it often also predicates that status, its not always so.

[LA TEACHERX]

Merit pay for teachers should be based on student achievement, as well as other factors. This system is already in place in many LAUSD schools where test scores are used to determine the progress individual students and schools make from year to year. Yes, cheating and teaching to the test do occur, however, students in some of the lowest performing schools in Los Angeles are making academic gains which were unheard of just 10 years ago. The governor's idea of sending students outside their neighborhoods to high performing schools has already been tried and was a major factor in the decline of California public schools ( 'busing'). The pressure is on and it has been working, along with a no-excuses policy which holds children and their parents responsible as well. Give the monies directly to the schools so that the legislators and teachers' unions haven't more opportunities to wreak havoc on us all.

[LAUSD Teacher]

Since you commented on my post, I feel it fair to rebut your statements.

You said, "The teacher is the greatest factor and education level of parents trumps socioeconomic status and though it often also predicates that status, its not always so."

Please, as others have pointed out here and elsewhere, while the role of the teacher is no doubt vital, the child's home environment carries far greater weight in affecting academic achievement. Furthermore, while you refute the role of socioeconomic status in favor of parent educational level, there is a statistically significant correlation between home values and student test scores.

This latter finding confirms my original argument. Nice try.

[Mistah]

How about merit pay for our elected representatives? Not based on the entitlements that they bring to our districts nor on how how they enrich themselves at taxpayer expense, but on whether they really heed the will of the people who they are supposed to represent.

[Honor student parent]

Ok, since the majority of teachers blame the failed schools on the rotten parents and their children, then why aren't they developing programs designed to "come down hard" on all of these delinquents (including parents)? Some times "tough love" is needed to change the norm. But, once everyone gets used to a new system, and understands the requirements, and consequences, they start swimming.

Teachers unions are so powerful and great at ensuring the teachers get everything, including protection, right or wrong. Seems to me that the greatest protection the union could provide teachers with, would be supporting, and financially backing programs that would force all the rotten parents and victimized children to shape up. And laws can always be re-written, and frequently are, when there is a strong enough driving force behind them. Why aren't the teachers and their unions the driving force?

Because the teachers have never had an incentive to do this. Why? Because under the current system they are untouchable, already have all they need personally, and have no reason to save these doomed children. They weren't wise enough to see the outcome, or their part in the failing of these children.

So, what do you say teachers? If you want our support, perhaps you should reconsider your role in these childrens' lives, develop your own plans to combat the problem, present them to the public, the majority of whom will support you, and force your billion dollar unions to part with a few bucks that for the first time, will actually be spent for the good of the children, and the community, rather than on a system that works against children.

[Anti-Federalist]

So Arnold wants to blow off California's Constitutional right to education for federal mandates...why don't we just save ourselves billons and billons of dollars and end state government all together...this is what Arnold seems to want.