Grading Texas

Public schools – the backbone of our state’s educational system – are just that, public, offering opportunities to millions of kids, regardless of family income – or lack thereof. We all know that, right?

Right.

But I get a little concerned (annoyed may be more accurate) every time someone in officialdom starts comparing the public schools – or any other component of government, for that matter – to capitalism or the corporate world. The latest example is Abilene ISD Superintendent Heath Burns, quoted today in the Abilene ReporterNews defending merit pay for teachers, despite a new study (at least the second in less than a year) showing that merit pay doesn’t work.

“I would say one of the foundations of capitalism is that the highest performers earn higher wages,” Burns said. “I think it’s unfortunate that hasn’t been a common practice in public education, and I am pleased that public education is moving in that direction.”

Burns, however, is not engaged in capitalism. He is the superintendent of the Abilene Independent School District, not Abilene ISD, Inc.

Burns does have a duty to his school board and the taxpayers to apply sound business practices to the administration of public education, practices assuring that tax dollars aren’t wasted and that taxpayers are getting the best product – welleducated kids – for their investment.

Merit pay, however, is not a sound business practice for the public schools, according to researchers.

This week, researchers at Vanderbilt University who spent three years studying a merit pay plan in the Nashville school system concluded that teacher bonuses as high as $15,000 didn’t improve math scores for their students. They determined that the teachers in the study didn’t need the lure of bigger paychecks to perform at their best.

In a similar study released last fall, researchers from Vanderbilt, Texas A&M University and the University of Missouri concluded that the meritbased Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) program had no impact on TAKS reading scores in Texas. The TEEG, which had been championed by Gov. Rick Perry, has been discontinued. But it has been replaced with another merit plan, the District Awards for Teacher Excellence (DATE), which some districts, including Abilene, are using.

Texas needs to increase teacher pay, but not through dubious “merit” plans. In a blog post yesterday, I noted that teachers are in the classroom because they want to educate kids, not because they plan to get rich. I also noted that teachers who decide they can no longer afford to teach will soon try something else.

Some even may choose to ascend the pay ladder by becoming superintendents.

http://www.reporternews.com/news/2010/sep/22/aisdsuperintendentdefendsincentivepayfor/

I am not sure who came up with the concept of merit pay for teachers, but I suspect it wasn’t a teacher. More than likely it was a collection of selfanointed education “experts” who haven’t set foot in a classroom – except for maybe a few photo ops – since their own graduation days. Those are the folks, including Gov. Rick Perry, who have been persistently promoting the bad idea.

As you may have read by now, merit pay was shot down (again) by a new study. This one was conducted over three years by Vanderbilt University on the Nashville school system. It reinforces a study, released last fall, dismissing as ineffective a $300 million, Perrypromoted merit plan in Texas.

The Nashville study concluded that offering teachers annual bonuses of as much as $15,000 had no effect on student test scores. It suggested that teachers already were working so hard that the promise of extra money failed to convince them to work harder or change the way they taught.

About 300 math teachers in grades 5 through 8 participated in the study, which was backed by federal funding. Half the teachers were offered bonuses for hitting targets for gains on annual test scores, and half were ineligible for bonuses. Researchers found no significant differences on class results between the two groups.

“Pay reform is often thought to be the magic bullet. That doesn’t appear to be the case here,” Matthew Springer, a Vanderbilt education professor who led the study, was quoted in the Washington Post.

In the Texas study last year, researchers from Vanderbilt, Texas A&M University and the University of Missouri concluded that the meritbased Texas Educators Excellence Grant (TEEG) program also had no impact on student achievement gains. Their findings were based on TAKS reading scores for more than 140,000 students from participating schools.

The TEEG program, which grew out of a pilot merit pay program established by Perry, was discontinued by the Legislature after the 200809 school year. Lawmakers replaced that plan with a $200 millionayear firstcousin, the District Awards for Teacher Excellence (DATE), which also is based on improved test scores, among other indicators of student achievement. The program is optional with districts.

Merit pay is based on a faulty premise, the premise that teachers are in it for the money. Teachers want and deserve decent pay, but they aren’t in the classroom to get rich. They are in the classroom because they want to educate kids. Teachers who decide they can no longer afford the profession will soon try something else, not wait around for a chance at bigger paychecks because their students had higher test scores than the kids in the classroom down the hall.

Texas needs to take steps to increase teacher retention, including more opportunities for professional development and higher pay for experienced teachers. But merit pay isn’t the answer.

http://www.statesman.com/news/education/studyteacherbonusesdidntboostscores930377.html

Senate Education Chairwoman Florence Shapiro got some attention last week by announcing the obvious – Texas needs to scrap its school finance system and rebuild it. Hope may spring eternal, but I would be more encouraged were it not for a couple of things, namely:

# A revenue shortfall now forecast as large as $21 billion – It could inspire courage and creativity under the big pink dome in downtown Austin, particularly if there is a new governor next year. Or, it could spark blind, slashandburn panic.

# The current state leadership – Gov. Rick Perry and legislative leaders have known for years that the school finance system was in trouble but have largely ignored it, unless nudged by the courts. Perry made things even worse in 2006 (only four years ago) by insisting on legislative approval of a law that gave more emphasis to cutting local property taxes than funding schools. The result was a state finance scheme that falls $4.5 billion short each year of fully paying for those tax reductions, while many school districts struggle to balance their budgets.

Talk, even from legislative chairs, is inexpensive. Following through with positive action won’t be. Meanwhile, Texas’ future is on the line.

As reporter Gary Scharrer pointed out in the Houston Chronicle, Texas spends about $50 billion a year – in state, local and federal funds – to educate nearly 5 million children.

But the system is still heavily dependent on local property taxes. And, thanks to wide disparities in property wealth throughout the state, there are still large inequities in funding among school districts, despite the “Robin Hood” school finance law. Many schools are underfunded.

Rep. Scott Hochberg, a Democrat from Houston who understands the school finance system better than most of his colleagues, noted that previous efforts to calculate the true costs of education have been unsuccessful.

“When we get that information, we have historically ignored it because it’s too expensive,” he said.

Charles Miller, a financial expert from Houston who serves on a school finance study committee with Shapiro and Hochberg, proposed the creation of a new, independent policy center to provide legislators and taxpayers with recommendations for making public education more efficient and productive.

That may be a good idea, provided the Legislature doesn’t use it to simply delay providing some overdue financial assistance to school districts next session.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7204962.html

Sometimes, there is a very thin line between being political and being disingenuous, and the Republicans who purport to represent the best interests of Texas taxpayers in Washington have crossed it.

First, they thumb their noses at thousands of Texas educators and millions of Texas school kids by voting against the $830 million allocated to Texas in emergency federal education funding because of a Democratic amendment to ensure that the education dollars are actually spent on education.

Thanks to a Democratic majority, Congress passed the bill a few weeks ago anyway. But Texas’ money is still held up because Gov. Rick Perry has refused to assure the federal government that the education dollars will be spent on education.

What’s wrong with spending education money on education? Absolutely nothing, unless, apparently, you would rather monkey around with your constituents.

Now, the congressional Republicans are pushing for an amendment to strip the “education dollars for education” requirement from the funding law and allow the $830 million to begin flowing – sooner or later to Texas.

The ploy may work. But without a written restriction in the federal law, there will be absolutely no guarantee of a net gain of $830 million for Texas classrooms. The current state leadership – barring significant changes on Election Day more than likely will deduct at least part of that $830 million from state education funding, which is what congressional Democrats were trying to prevent.

Trust us, the Texas Republicans in Congress are saying.

But why should anyone in the education community trust the GOPers? First, they voted against educators. Now, I suspect, they are trying to fool them.