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Dateline Texas: Another teacher merit pay plan bites the dust.
Texas is canceling the Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) program and is shifting some of the funds to another incentive program. The TEEG program rewarded individual teachers at poor schools for individual performance. Surprisingly, to the State and the sponsoring politicians, the program was not successful.
Lead Your School Readers, I was there when this plan was hatched. When the project was assigned to TEA, I was called to give them my ideas on how to best implement the plan. Here’s what I told them:
1. The plan must award teams of teachers. When teachers are awarded individually, it quickly creates a “pie” mentality. If you get a piece of pie, then my piece of pie becomes smaller. In effect, this “pie” mentality reinforces teachers working in isolation, instead of breaking down the practice. Now, I have a financial incentive not to help other teachers. Instead, reward teams of teachers for reaching team goals. Now, I have an incentive to help my team, because if we lose – I lose.
2. The metrics must be based on the concept of value added. Otherwise, there is a disincentive to work with the most difficult students.
3. Get an expert to help craft the basic plan. Building an incentive plan is only easy at a surface level. There are lots of moving parts and it requires a lot of attention. Letting busy, but well-meaning amateurs create their own local plans from scratch is a recipe for disaster. As an aside, Ed Rogers, of the Penicle Group (www.peniclegroup.com) is an excellent resource if you are considering implementing an incentive pay plan.
By the time I finished point 3, it was obvious that they were irritated with my advice. So, I told them good luck and that I hoped that they would prove me wrong. After four years and $100 million, they didn’t.
In summary, I do think that the way that we approach compensation in education needs to be addressed. Raw experience should not be the sole determinant of salary. But, when people think that incentive plans can replace leadership and collaboration, failure is assured.
Think. Work. Achieve.
Your turn…
Showing posts with label Incentive Plans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Incentive Plans. Show all posts
Monday, May 18, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Improving America's Schools - Letter #2, Part 1 (Rewarding Success)
The following post is based on thoughts related to:
Letters to the Editor that the NY Times has recently received concerning public schools. The link is: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/opinion/l17educ.html?emc=eta1
Joanne Yatvin writes, “… to reward school success, it (the government) should split those rewards among all those who have contributed: parents; the whole school faculty, including the principal; and the students themselves.”
My opinion differs from Ms. Yatvin. In regards to rewarding school success, I am not a big proponent of individual rewards. I believe that team based incentives work best in schools. I also believe the incentives should be in the form of flexibility to make expenditures that benefit the campus. Some examples include training, tools, resources and small capital projects that are selected by the entire staff and benefit the campus as a whole. The staff should be rewarded for working smart and efficient by being given the opportunity to work even more smart and more efficiently.
There is no need to extrinsically reward parents, their children performing at high levels is all the reward they want and need. As for rewarding students, student motivation is a direct reflection of staff motivation. Student who care about results have teachers who care about results. Students who don’t care about results have teachers who don’t believe that their students are capable of performing.
Think. Work. Achieve.
Your turn...
Letters to the Editor that the NY Times has recently received concerning public schools. The link is: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/opinion/l17educ.html?emc=eta1
Joanne Yatvin writes, “… to reward school success, it (the government) should split those rewards among all those who have contributed: parents; the whole school faculty, including the principal; and the students themselves.”
My opinion differs from Ms. Yatvin. In regards to rewarding school success, I am not a big proponent of individual rewards. I believe that team based incentives work best in schools. I also believe the incentives should be in the form of flexibility to make expenditures that benefit the campus. Some examples include training, tools, resources and small capital projects that are selected by the entire staff and benefit the campus as a whole. The staff should be rewarded for working smart and efficient by being given the opportunity to work even more smart and more efficiently.
There is no need to extrinsically reward parents, their children performing at high levels is all the reward they want and need. As for rewarding students, student motivation is a direct reflection of staff motivation. Student who care about results have teachers who care about results. Students who don’t care about results have teachers who don’t believe that their students are capable of performing.
Think. Work. Achieve.
Your turn...
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Improving America's Schools - Letter 1, Part 1 (Performance Pay)
The following post is based on thoughts related to:
Letters to the Editor that the NY Times has recently received concerning public schools. The link is: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/opinion/l17educ.html?emc=eta1
Jacqueline Ancess writes, “In education, research on performance pay shows no substantive gains in student achievement, and all Mr. Obama’s policy will do is reinforce the ill-conceived notion that low-level standardized tests are a valid measure of student achievement. Instead, pay teachers a salary that signals teaching as a profession.”
The above comment has three areas that I want to address, performance pay, measuring student achievement, and professional pay. First, I will discuss performance pay.
When I was a teacher and young administrator I was a proponent and vocal advocate for individual performance pay for teachers. I believed that if my students outperformed your students that I should be paid more. Especially since as a rookie, and the lowest paid teacher on the campus, my students were some of the highest performers on the campus. Then the district I was working for at the time created a pilot program where campuses could create their own incentive programs and my campus choose to participate. We created a very objective and complicated system that rewarded teachers for individualized performance. The program was a smashing success and a dismal failure. It was a success for me personally, because as a big fish in a small pond, I gobbled up most of the incentive pay. It was a failure for the system because overall, campus performance did not change. And here is the reason why, individualized incentive plans create a disincentive to assist your peers. The bigger the financial prize for the individual, the bigger the disincentive to assist the group. So on the whole, I can not disagree with the research that Ms. Ancess references.
Unless…
Performance programs will move the needle on student performance when they are team based. That means that in order to earn the reward, the entire team has to be successful. When this occurs both individual and organizational goals align. If I want to earn the incentive then I have to help and support my peers. To do anything less jeopardizes my potential income. This is the same concept as playoff money in professional sports. Individual salaries may differ, but if the team makes the playoffs everyone gets an equal share of the reward.
My closing comment on performance plans is to point out that incentive plans are not a replacement for leadership. A campus with no plan and great leadership will outperform a campus with a great plan and poor leadership every time.
In my next posts I will discuss measuring student achievement and professional pay.
T.W.A. – Your turn…
Letters to the Editor that the NY Times has recently received concerning public schools. The link is: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/opinion/l17educ.html?emc=eta1
Jacqueline Ancess writes, “In education, research on performance pay shows no substantive gains in student achievement, and all Mr. Obama’s policy will do is reinforce the ill-conceived notion that low-level standardized tests are a valid measure of student achievement. Instead, pay teachers a salary that signals teaching as a profession.”
The above comment has three areas that I want to address, performance pay, measuring student achievement, and professional pay. First, I will discuss performance pay.
When I was a teacher and young administrator I was a proponent and vocal advocate for individual performance pay for teachers. I believed that if my students outperformed your students that I should be paid more. Especially since as a rookie, and the lowest paid teacher on the campus, my students were some of the highest performers on the campus. Then the district I was working for at the time created a pilot program where campuses could create their own incentive programs and my campus choose to participate. We created a very objective and complicated system that rewarded teachers for individualized performance. The program was a smashing success and a dismal failure. It was a success for me personally, because as a big fish in a small pond, I gobbled up most of the incentive pay. It was a failure for the system because overall, campus performance did not change. And here is the reason why, individualized incentive plans create a disincentive to assist your peers. The bigger the financial prize for the individual, the bigger the disincentive to assist the group. So on the whole, I can not disagree with the research that Ms. Ancess references.
Unless…
Performance programs will move the needle on student performance when they are team based. That means that in order to earn the reward, the entire team has to be successful. When this occurs both individual and organizational goals align. If I want to earn the incentive then I have to help and support my peers. To do anything less jeopardizes my potential income. This is the same concept as playoff money in professional sports. Individual salaries may differ, but if the team makes the playoffs everyone gets an equal share of the reward.
My closing comment on performance plans is to point out that incentive plans are not a replacement for leadership. A campus with no plan and great leadership will outperform a campus with a great plan and poor leadership every time.
In my next posts I will discuss measuring student achievement and professional pay.
T.W.A. – Your turn…
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