AGA Today
Florida to Link Teacher Pay To Students' Test Scores
Critics
Worry About Fairness
By Peter
Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday,
March 22, 2006; Page A01
HIALEAH, Fla.
-- A new pay-for-performance program for Florida's teachers will tie
raises and bonuses directly to pupils' standardized-test scores
beginning next year, marking the first time a state has so closely
linked the wages of individual school personnel to their students' exam
results.
The effort, now
being adopted by local districts, is viewed as a landmark in the
movement to restructure American schools by having them face the same
kind of competitive pressures placed on private enterprise, and
advocates say it could serve as a national model to replace traditional
teacher pay plans that award raises based largely on academic degrees
and years of experience.
Gov. Jeb Bush
(R) has characterized the new policy, which bases a teacher's pay on
improvements in test scores, as a matter of common sense, asking,
"What's wrong about paying good teachers more for doing a better job?"
But teachers
unions and some education experts say any effort to evaluate teachers
exclusively on test-score improvements will not work, because schools
are not factories and their output is not so easily measured. An exam,
they say, cannot measure how much teachers have inspired students, or
whether they have instilled in them a lifelong curiosity. Moreover, some
critics say, the explicit profit motive could overshadow teacher-student
relationships.
"Standardized
tests don't measure everything in a child's life in school," said Andy
Ford, president of the Florida Education Association, which is appealing
the new pay policy to a state administrative judge. "We should take a
look at the total education and not just what they can put on a bubble
sheet."
The pay program
approved last month by the Board of Education is mandatory and intended
to ensure compliance with a 2002 Florida law requiring performance pay
for teachers. The policy comes amid growing debate about the Florida
Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), which Bush has put at the center
of his school-restructuring plan.
The tests are
already used to determine whether students pass or fail certain grades,
and schools that test well, or better than the previous year, are
rewarded with bonuses that are typically divided among teachers and
staff, amounting in some cases to more than $1,000 a year.
Many schools
now hold elaborate pep rallies for students before the tests, as North
Twin Lakes Elementary did here recently. Dressed in T-shirts that said
"We can do it!" the children sang to the tune of Lou Bega's hit "Mambo
No. 5."
Put a little
FCAT in my life/A little bit of reading by my side/A little bit of
writing is all I need . . .
I'm doing good
on FCAT/Yes I am .
"The FCAT
doesn't measure everything, but what does?" asked Principal A. Louise
Harms, who has presided over significant improvements in test scores at
the school. "It gives you something to shoot for."
But with such
successes have come complaints. Under pressure to score well on tests,
some school districts have moved school start dates back to early August
to complete extra weeks of instruction before March exams. This has
aroused the ire of many parents, and others have complained that with
the tests have come too much pressure and too much homework.
The centerpiece
of the new effort, known as E-Comp, requires all school districts in
Florida to identify the top 10 percent of each variety of teacher and
award them a 5 percent salary supplement. For an educator earning the
average teacher salary in Florida of $41,578, that amounts to just over
$2,000.
Controversy
surrounds how that top 10 percent of teachers will be identified.
Those who teach
FCAT subjects -- basically math and reading -- will be ranked
exclusively according to how much their students have improved their
scores over the previous year. Teachers will earn points when they
advance their students from one level of proficiency to another.
Those who teach
other subjects must also be ranked according to "objective" measures
that the districts are supposed to design. State officials overseeing
those efforts are pushing to have teachers evaluated on test scores and
other objective assessments, even for subjects such as music and art. A
music test, for example, might involve playing a selection and asking
students what type of music was played, officials said.
"We don't have
all the answers today," Education Commissioner John Winn said when asked
how music, art and special-education teachers will be evaluated. "But we
will work with teachers to develop a system."
Although only
the top 10 percent in each field will receive the 5 percent salary
supplement, all public-school teachers in Florida will be affected by
the new pay policy because their annual evaluations will rely
"primarily" on "improved achievement by students," according to the new
rules, a criterion that is expected to be often measured with
standardized tests.
"I know it adds
pressures, but what profession doesn't add pressure for performance?"
Winn asked.
Schools in
Houston, Denver, Minnesota and elsewhere have similarly tried to link
teacher pay to performance, but those efforts have been either less
focused on test scores or narrower in scope.
The Minnesota
plan, enacted last July, is voluntary, and thus far more than a third of
the state's 339 school districts have expressed interest in the system,
state officials said. Districts that join the effort must base 60
percent of teacher raises on a handful of factors, including student
test scores.
Education
officials in Maryland and Virginia said that no such financial
incentives for teachers are required statewide and that they know of no
local school districts that operate that way. The District does not
directly link teacher pay to student performance either, spokeswoman
Roxanne Evans said.
Although
Florida school districts are seeking to meet a June 15 deadline for
compliance with the new policy, some teachers unions said delays would
be inevitable because the pay plans must be worked out in county
contract negotiations, which are likely to prove difficult.
One of the
biggest questions, aside from how teachers of subjects such as special
education and art might be measured objectively, is whether the point
system will fairly evaluate teachers in schools where students are
impoverished or lack English skills.
The state's
point system for teacher evaluations addresses such concerns in two
ways, Board of Education administrators said.
First, it
awards teachers points not for test scores but for improvements in test
scores, so a previously low-performing student will not necessarily drag
down a teacher's score. Second, having analyzed historical test scores,
the administrators think they have come up with a point system that
accurately reflects the degree of difficulty in lifting students from
one learning level to another.
"We did not use
formulas that weigh in socioeconomic data because we expect every
student has the ability to learn," said Christy Hovanetz-Lassila,
director of evaluation for the state Education Department. Instead, she
said, the point system implicitly takes into account poor students by
treating gains from lower levels differently than those from higher
levels.
The proof of
such reassurances will not be forthcoming until next year's rankings.
Until then, the program will be counted as a victory for those who have
championed instilling more economic incentives in schools.
Paul E.
Peterson, a Harvard professor of government and director of the
university's program of education policy and governance, described the
plan as "bold."
"Currently,
there is little, if any, connection between how much a teacher is paid
and how much their students are learning in the classroom," he said.
"This is a step in the right direction."
But despite the
enthusiasm for FCAT performance on display at North Twin Lakes
Elementary here recently, Harms views the prospect of ranking teachers
and paying them accordingly with some trepidation.
She said it
would be difficult to assign credit for the school's test scores on a
teacher-by-teacher basis.
"I don't think
it can be done fairly," she said. "And I don't want to divide or pit our
staff against one another. I want a team. I want unity."
© 2006 The
Washington Post Company