Meritless Pursuit of Pay-for-Performance

The history of merit pay in schools is almost as old as public education in America. It has failed many times over and in many forms. Many have pursued pay-for-performance (PfP) for teachers as a panacea for alleged public school ills. Progressives and conservatives have promoted it. Both President G.W. Bush and President Obama have supported it. 

Chapter 12 of Diane Ravitch's brilliant new book, Reign of Error, lays out the old and new history related to merit pay in schools. In short, old schools and new schools of many types pushed by many different entities have failed to implement successful PfP plans. 

Unfortunately, my kids' district keeps signaling a move from the current teacher salary schedule to a complicated, labor-intensive, stack-ranked pay system for teachers. I worry a PfP is being produced by local officials without a thorough look at the educational reasoning and research.

How Much Evidence Do We Need?

Teachers Were Never the Problem

Public Education's Eight Ball

International Evidence: Finnish Lessons

State-wide Evidence: Wisconsin DPI

Local Evidence

Turn This Ship Around

My good friend, Fr. Joe Zimmerman, chimes in this week with his own review of Diane Ravitch's new book, Reign of Error. Zimmerman blogs at ivyrosary.blogspot.com.

Diane Ravitch has bitten off a lot to chew. She aims to change the direction of ten years of national education policy. She attacks No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration program which she originally promoted. But she attacks with equal vigor the Race to the Top program of Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.

Author of fourteen books on education, she has been awarded the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize sponsored by the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and like Moynihan, takes opinions from both sides of the political spectrum seriously.

Diane Ravitch: Public Schools' Modern-Day Dewey

Three years ago, a colleague of mine kept telling me I just had to read Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Admittedly, I knew little about Ravitch then and was less enthused to take on the read, realizing Ravitch previously served in President George W. Bush’s administration. My colleague, however, was relentless in getting me to take on the book. The persistent pestering paid off and her book instantly became one of my favorite professional reads.

Two pages into Ravitch’s reflection on her life’s work, I was hooked. She jumped right into a courageous mea culpa for formerly supporting failed education reforms--such as accountability, high-stakes testing, and school choice. At the time of her conversion, Ravitch was already well-past retirement. Instead of looking back nostalgically, Ravitch reflected critically on her former support for competition-based education reforms. Ravitch asked herself, “What should we think of someone who never admits error, never entertains doubt but adheres unflinchingly to the same ideas all his life, regardless of new evidence?” I was and still am impressed with Ravitch’s open-mindedness and authenticity. Since then, I have soaked up almost all that she has written. 

Ravitch was a renowned education historian long before The Death and Life of the Great American School System, but has emerged in the past three years as the most respected, modern-day defender of public education. She is refreshingly authentic in an educational world saturated with self-serving reformers. She is as critical of President Obama’s test-based education policies as she is of Republican plans to dismantle public education. She stands for public education. Her style is direct. Her work is reasoned and researched. She courageously takes on the corporate education reformers determined to inject free market ideology into public education. She thinks critically and is a prolific writer. She is the John Dewey of our era.

Just in Time for Labor Day, A New Employee Handbook

A big deal to many Janesville school employees, but a sidebar note in the local paper (and just in time for Labor Day!) was the unanimous board approval of the school district’s employee handbook this past week.

As noted in my last posting, the Janesville’s teachers union is one of the last holdouts in Wisconsin to be subjected to Gov. Walker’s discriminatory Act 10 legislation, which ends most collective bargaining rights for almost all public employees. This questionably constitutional and purely partisan legislation forced districts, like mine, to shift the rules and regulations of work conditions from collectively bargained labor contracts to district-produced employee handbooks.

Of course, this is what Wisconsin (and more commonly non-Wisconsin) neo-cons wanted. Top-down management dominates. The public educator’s perspective is devalued. Under Act 10, hierarchical bureaucracy now trumps collaboration and teamwork in many Wisconsin public schools. This is a step back from the collaboration-focused professional learning community (PLC) model I desire for all Wisconsin public schools. Most frustrating, this neo-con concocted counterfeit medicine distracts all of us from the eight ball.

Embrace Yesterday and Today for Tomorrow

Monday I “officially” report for my 11th year of teaching in Janesville’s public schools. This year, however, will be my first season of servicing Janesville without a negotiated contract between the district and my teachers union.

Janesville’s teachers union is one of the last holdouts in Wisconsin to be subjected to Gov. Walker’s discriminatory Act 10 legislation, which ends most collective bargaining rights for almost all public employees. Even though the constitutionality of Act 10 is still in question and now before the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, my district and union are forced to stumble together into uncharted territory this upcoming school year.

As we stagger forward, the historian in me finds value in looking back. History matters. I concur with Einstein, "Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning." Better understanding the past allows us to move forward better.

A Lesson George Zimmerman Never Learned

Usually I trend toward indifference on high-profile court cases, like the George Zimmerman trial, when the constant media coverage kicks in.

However, this case was different. I was and continue to be enthralled on many levels.

My anger toward Zimmerman and his supporters persists. Regardless of what the jury’s "not guilty" ruling indicates, Zimmerman’s inappropriate racial profiling, unnecessary gun-toting, and his obvious hypermasculinity (which allowed him to ignore the 911 dispatcher’s advice for restraint) are deserving of some sort of just punishment.

This Zimmerman case reminds me of my involvement in a criminal chase. I have shared this following story from time to time with my students and long before the Martin-Zimmerman incident. I wish Zimmerman had heard it before he played sheriff in pursuit of Trayvon.