Some States, Districts
Abandoning Performance Pay
By Nora Fleming
Two competing pressures--decreased finances and
rising policy interest--have left the future of performance-based teacher
compensation uncertain.
A dicey fiscal climate and research that has shown
limited impact have led some states and districts to scale back, abandon, or
change their fledgling merit-pay programs, causing observers to wonder what the
next few years will hold for compensation systems that link teacher pay to
student achievement.
Just this summer, Texas officials squelched funding
for the country's largest merit-pay program, from $392 million to $40 million,
blaming the state's deficit. And New York City wiped out its $56 million
schoolwide program, citing disappointing research results.
Yet new examples are also springing up, largely
because of increased federal funding for performance pay and state and federal
legislation encouraging, and in some cases requiring, alternative-compensation
schemes.
Still, there may not be a "trend" to predict the
future of such programs, said Matthew Springer, the director of Vanderbilt
University's National Center on Performance Incentives, in
Nashville, Tenn., and an assistant professor of public policy and education.
"The next couple of years will be very telling
[because of] local/state revenue shortfalls as well as the possibility of the
federal funding well running dry, and the research evidence, to date, hasn't
been overwhelmingly positive," Mr. Springer said in an email. "At the same
time, it is critical districts/states do not lose sight of the fact that
current compensation practices are incredibly inefficient."
Abandoning Programs
While increasing attention has gravitated toward
the evaluation and compensation practices for teachers, specifically in
shifting from traditional salary models tied to experience and education levels
to merit-pay systems that factor in a teacher's impact on student achievement,
some say the interest in performance pay could be faddish and short-lived.
The journal Education Next reported this spring that only 500 out of 14,000
districts had merit-pay programs. Two of the largest programs in the country
were also dismantled this summer.
The 90 percent reduction of Texas's District Awards for Teacher Excellence program,
which provided one-time bonuses linked to performance reviews, will mean the
number of teachers receiving bonuses could decline from 180,000 this year to
18,000 within the next two.
The program is a victim of the state's budget
deficit that led to some $4 billion in cuts to school funding overall, state
officials say, and not lack of support for merit pay.
A Texas Education Agency official says the program
was thought to be successful, based on research conducted by the National
Center on Performance Incentives in 2010. Nevertheless, the agency said it
doesn't expect teacher performance to suffer from the significant decline in
bonuses.
Some Texas districts have had more favorable
results than others, however. In Houston, criticism emerged that the district
let too many teachers qualify for bonuses, yielding minimum impact on teacher
performance. The state reduced Houston's share for teacher bonuses this year by
$13.9 million. Now it will use that as an opportunity to rework its program,
said Jason Spencer, a spokesman for the district, tightening the eligibility
criteria, but making the overall bonuses high.
But both state and district teachers' union members
worry that the merit-pay programs themselves are a waste of money and do little
to improve teacher performance.
"Right now, our teachers can't work any harder or
do any more. Our teachers are already working longer hours with bigger classes
and are still expected to perform at a higher level," said Rita Haecker, the
president of the Texas
State Teachers Association. "We tend to disagree that people perform
better with a reward. We think people perform better when they feel supported
in their job and are paid a living salary."
Other states are also abandoning performance pay.
According to the Denver-based Education Commission of the States Alaska's
three-year program recently ended, mainly because of friction with local unions.
Iowa's program was also eliminated.
And money isn't the only reason some places have
backed off performance pay.
In July, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based RAND Corp.
released a study of New York City's merit pay program that
found no substantial impact on teacher, student, or school performance. The
district later announced it would discontinue the three-year program.
The RAND study adds to a growing body of research
that has found limited effects of merit pay, such as one conducted on Nashville
teachers last year.
The research is not abating, either. Mathematica
Policy Research has been commissioned by the U.S. Department of
Education to assess the 2010 round of Teacher Incentive Fund grantees over the course
of their grant cycle. It is unknown whether the first round of grantees,
awarded in 2006, will continue their merit-pay programs after their five-year
grants expire at the end of this year. TIF requires districts to institute
performance pay based on student achievement.
Coming on Board
A number of states and districts are still moving
forward with plans or pilots for new merit-pay systems, and others have
maintained them through innovative or hybrid models even though they face
limited finances and have yet to prove significant statistical impact.
Some of those efforts stem from increased federal
support for merit pay. A provision in the Race to the Top program requires
states and districts to change their teacher-evaluation practices and
encourages them to be tied to salary. In addition, funding for the Teacher
Incentive Fund has been increased from $99 million to about $400 million within
four years, giving states and districts the opportunity to try new ways of
paying teachers.
Indiana, Michigan, Utah, and Idaho, for example,
have all looked at implementing or expanding performance pay in their states
within the past year alone. And some places that even have a prior history of
ineffective merit-pay models are still trying to put new systems in place.
According to Kathy Christie, the chief of staff at
the ECS, many of the earlier state and district programs were unsuccessful
because the incentives were too small or the models were untested. The new
systems may have different effects, she said, because many have tried to
increase incentives and strengthen criteria and evaluation practices.
"We could have seen the first generation of
performance-pay systems, and perhaps we'll start seeing [a new generation of
systems] that are more robust, more meaningful, and have an impact on
recruiting people to the teaching profession," Ms. Christie said.
She pointed to Florida as one example.
Since the 1970s, Florida has tried a number of
models with limited success. The voluntary nature of its last performance-pay
effort found only 5 percent of the state's districts participating. Still,
Florida is trying again.
Its winning Race to the Top application in 2010
included a proposal to implement teacher salary increases linked to student
performance, and this past year, the state legislature passed a law that will
require districts to put new salary schedules in place for teachers by 2014-15,
linked to recently revised state teacher-evaluation practices.
Under the new plan, 50 percent of a teacher's
summative evaluation will be tied to student performance, and, based on locally
negotiated teacher contracts, teachers can earn increases if they are deemed
effective or highly effective. Payouts to teachers will be determined by each
district. The tighter a district's budget squeeze, the more likely raises will
be low, or nonexistent.
Kathy Hebda, Florida's deputy chancellor for
educator quality, said the state is optimistic the program will be more
effective than Florida's earlier merit-pay plans, given lessons learned from
the past. The new system uses salary increases rather than one-time bonuses,
which will provide more incentive to teachers Ms. Hebda said. The new
evaluations will also provide all teachers, regardless of subject matter, the
potential for performance-based salary increases. (In earlier models, the
incentives focused more on teachers who were able to be evaluated through
student assessments in core subjects.)
The Florida teachers union has already come out
against these efforts and has threatened legal action.
Virginia is also moving in the direction of
state-supported merit pay. Using a combination of state and federal funding,
Virginia is implementing a pilot program this year. An incentive package was
offered to 169 schools listed on a "hard to staff" list, that will provide
bonuses to teachers in those schools that receive exemplary ratings on the
state's new evaluation system, which links 40 percent of the teacher's
evaluation to student growth on state tests, among other measures.
The state is also developing improved evaluation
systems that link student performance to teachers, said Charles Pyle, the
education department's communications director, and it hopes the pilot program
will encourage more districts to restructure their compensation practices.
Twenty-five schools accepted the state's offer this summer.
Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich, a Republican, has gotten
behind a proposed merit-pay system for his state, too. While a number of the
state's Race to the Top districts are already implementing some form of
performance pay, the governor's proposal this past spring for a new
state-supported teacher-compensation system would have all other districts
implement some sort of performance-based pay for teachers by 2013-14, based on
their respective collective bargaining agreements.
Even the new models are controversial.
"There has been a tendency to avoid some of the
evidence of what works because it doesn't fit the popular narrative," said Rob
Weil, the director of field programs, for the American Federation of Teachers.
"We need to design systems that drive instructional improvement that lead to
increased student achievement. Many of the recent attempts have shown that this
is not happening."
Future of Merit Pay
Several large urban districts have adopted
performance pay the past few years and have kept them going despite limited
supportive research, disagreements with local teachers' unions, and declining
finances. The varied incentivized compensation models some districts have
implemented, which take into account more than student test scores, and, in
some cases, do not rely solely on state or district funding, may be the right
direction, say some analysts.
Denver's Professional Compensation System for Teachers, or
ProComp, one of the oldest surviving merit-pay programs, is a joint effort
between the teachers' union and school district and uses local taxes for
funding. ProComp factors teacher education level and skills, as well as
evaluations and student achievement, into account in determining salary
increases and bonuses.
In the District of Columbia's IMPACT-Plus, supported through private dollars,
teachers can earn higher bonuses based on the school they work in and the
subject matter they teach, in addition to their students' test scores. And
Baltimore's teacher-contract system, adopted last year, allows teachers to earn
annual salary increases tied to student performance, as well as such factors as
professional development and teacher evaluations.
Mr. Springer of Vanderbilt's performance-incentives
center said that many of the existing programs add on incentives or bonuses
rather than redesign compensation practices in ways that could potentially
yield greater results and cost less. He estimates 80 percent of districts' operational
expenses go toward outdated educator compensation systems, that aren't linked
to student academic outcomes.
Whether districts and states test innovative
compensation strategies given the available resources, he added, "will likely
be dictated by interest group politics and if the system can amass adequate ...
knowledge to design and operate them."
Coverage of policy efforts to improve the teaching
profession is supported by a grant from the Joyce Foundation, at www.joycefdn.org/Programs/Education.
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