Merit Pay at the Secondary Level

Assessment based teaching/learning, which would be needed if we were to adopt merit pay for teachers, requires a different approach in the 9-12 vs. the K-8 curriculum. Secondary curriculum in most schools is a combination of required courses plus elective courses which allows some latitude for students to choose their own course of study. The most common tract in McPherson High School is a college prep program. If students are going to be equipped for college, this program should prepare them for assessment tests (required by “No-Child-Left-Behind”) and other standardized or college preparedness tests. Other students may choose other tracts, often along vocational lines, which may or may not cover the full range of skills, knowledge, and concepts required in assessment testing.

To accomplish this, some courses would need to be required to insure proficiency in assessment testing. Curriculum decisions would need to be made as to what these proficiencies are, what course work would be required to cover these, and how many course hours will be allotted to accomplish this. There should not be so many courses that student’s choices would be lessoned significantly. In all courses whose primary function is to prepare students for assessment proficiency, a pre-test may be needed at beginning of year followed by a post-test at the end of the year that can be used to determine student progress individually and collectively along with measuring teacher effectiveness – to determine merit pay.

One could use math as an example of this process. Determination would need to be made of what required courses would be needed to cover math proficiencies. Those in college prep program could elect to skip these courses if they followed continuum of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, etc. A similar process could be set up for science, reading, writing, and social studies.

In the elective courses, not designed specifically to teach assessment proficiency, teachers need to know what the proficiency requirements are. Then, teachers of these courses should attempt to include, where appropriate, those skills, knowledge, and concepts for assessment testing so that student’s proficiency would be re-enforced and enhanced. Beyond that, teachers will teach what has been established as the curriculum for this course of study. To establish a basis for merit pay, tests need to be developed or purchased from some reputable source where student proficiency and teacher effectiveness can be measured for that course.

If this sounds like all course work will be focused on “teaching to a test”, that is exactly what it is. If a school district accepts this philosophy of assessment based teaching/learning in order to fairly administer merit pay, one may have to face some possible negatives.

One of these is that student “learning” will be determined by the test used to measure what a student needs to know. Some would argue that present assessment tests given to students fail to measure that. For one thing, there is an emphasis in these tests on knowledge of random and isolated facts rather than problem solving skills that are a better measure of student’s preparedness to enter the real world. Plus, there is some criticism of the way these tests are structured and written.

Secondly, teaching students and students learning is not an exact science – there is not one way to do it. Teachers are not programmed robots and students are not sponges. Learning varies from student to student, class to class, and year to year. The best teachers recognize this, use creative approaches, encourage relevant problem solving approaches, take the time to re-group and approach learning in other ways if material is not learned, etc. Not encouraging and not allowing professional teachers to use their skills and experience curtails academic freedom and can discourage good teacher retention.

But, on the other hand, without agreed upon student proficiencies, one runs the risk of continuation of some ineffective teaching and students leaving school poorly educated.

I would suggest that the best way to approach this dilemma is to set up the curriculum process, administer the tests, and use the results to measure student proficiency, effectiveness of teachers and curriculum. Do all this without implementing merit pay. Adjustments could then be made in teaching strategies, in testing programs, and curriculum offerings without threat to teachers. Over time, if a general consensus is reached that our district has an excellent process in place, then institute merit pay. I contend that the most important element in quality education is good teaching and any process established should support, encourage, and reward their work.

Making Education Relevant

One of my strongly held educational philosophies is that all instruction should be relevant to students, especially at the secondary level. Before someone gets defensive, I’m not suggesting that it isn’t, I’m simply urging that with all curriculum planning we should be asking the question. “Why should students be required to learn this? We used to get away with answers like, because it is “knowledge for knowledge’s sake” or “learning this expands one’s mind” – no more. Quite frankly, there is so much information out there today that we have to be selective in what is taught. First and foremost, our educational system should be instilling in students the insatiable desire to see learning as a continuous life time experience. Secondly, our educational system should be teaching students the core knowledge and problem solving skills they will need to do the above. I think the best way accomplish these goals is to make sure what we teach is seen as relevant to students.

In some courses it is easy: for example civics, especially during an election year like we’ve just gone through, or economics when we are facing a financial crisis as we are today. Some courses are career oriented, like carpentry or agriculture, and relevance to that career is the focus. But, other courses, most in fact, are not so easy, and it takes some serious thought, creativity, and effort to make it relevant. Schools can be somewhat isolated from the working world and some courses of study can fall into the trap of being too sterile and artificial. I think it is important that all students should be involved in often held discussions where it is made clear to them what they are expected to learn and how this knowledge relates to their lives now and in the not so distant future. With this understanding, it should help students to develop an interest or it at least makes learning the skill or knowledge tolerant since they can see what they are expected to learn and how it will impact them. If this can’t be done, maybe we shouldn’t be teaching it!

Beyond discussing relevance with students, I think an excellent way to accomplish this is to expand the school environment, making it a community environment. There should be a revolving door of community people going into the school to speak with students about how things are done in the working world. And, where appropriate, students going out in the community to see, hear, and get a feel of how things are done in the working world.

The focus should not be career selection, although students might make judgments along those lines. The focus should be on relevance to their education. One can pick any course of study to illustrate this. Using chemistry as an example, speakers could be brought in from Hospira, NCRA, McPherson Hospital, Certainteed, Chemstar, just to name a few companies that have chemists on staff that can explain to students how chemistry is an integral part of their business. Plus, other companies like water treatment, sewage treatment, oil field workers, feed companies, etc. who make extensive use of chemistry, even though they don’t have chemists on staff, could explain how knowledge of chemistry affects their business. These people could bring some real world examples and every day problems where knowledge of chemistry is necessary. We just mentioned 9 different potential speakers without even working at it. I think we could do the same with other courses of study resulting in many speakers and a lot of real world relevance.

The nice thing is that it wouldn’t cost schools much to do it. It would take a couple of full time facilitators to take requests from teachers for programs, to go out and arrange for these speakers, video tape these classroom sessions, and compile a data base of DVD’s that could be used in the future. The subject matter could be as simple and/or as advanced as needed for the education level of the course. I’m confident that business owners, managers, and employees would look foreword to working with students and teachers a few hours each school year. I stumbled across this process in the last few years of my teaching career when I started teaching economics with no curriculum and no text book. I asked a wide variety of people from the community to come in and it worked out amazingly well. They were more than willing to come and students learned more than I could have taught them about the real world of business, labor, banking, agriculture, insurance, government finance, manufacturing, sales, management, etc. Remember, these speakers are almost always passionate about their work and very knowledgeable.

It would not be an easy process to set-up. It would take some serious organizational skills. Parameters would need to be developed for guest speakers, for teachers, and for students – they need to be simple. Initially you will have some sorting to do regarding the quality of experiences. But, just imagine the extent of the data base that could eventually be created where real world relevance would be the underlying goal.

Plus, the school district would get a bonus – large numbers of local people coming into the school and working with students and teachers which might very well give them some ownership in the school experience besides paying taxes.

Extra Curricular Activities in Our Schools

Let me be up front and clear about my attitude toward these sometimes expensive extra curricular activities in our schools – I am supportive of them within reason. To me they represent some of the best educational experiences that students are exposed to in their school years.

I am well aware that there are some in every community who do not look kindly on these programs. In times of budget cuts, which we are likely to face in tough economic times, some will want these activities cut back providing money for only the core subjects of “reading, writing, and arithmetic.” I don’t support this view. I think there are multiple reasons these activities are important in the school experience.

To begin with, most extra curricular activities stand the very severe test of public scrutiny. If the band is out marching in a parade or putting on a concert, a significant portion of the community sees and hears them and will evaluate their performances. Whether athletic teams win or lose is a matter of very public discussion. When a theatre performance is put on, it is out there for the community to critique. This is true of most extra curricular activities. Students and teachers, being well aware of this public scrutiny, strive to do their very best. It would be real interesting if the standard classroom functioned in a similar environment. I’ve never figured out how this could be done; but, if it were, I would suspect that the teaching that goes on there would be significantly impacted. The atmosphere would be different. The need to motivate, encourage, to include all students in the process, and the strategies employed to get students to learn the skills and concepts being taught might very well be “ramped up.”

Secondly, extra curricular activities provide students with the opportunity to pursue special interests that the school doesn’t offer in the normal classroom setting. Students often will spend hours beyond school time honing their skills and knowledge with these activities. If students are involved in debate they will spend hours preparing their arguments; if contest time is approaching, music students will spend hours practicing and rehearsing; if school newspaper or the Annual due date is approaching, hours will be spent to get it “just right”; when students from technical programs such as carpentry, FFA, and automotive go out and compete in state and national contests they are putting in significant prep time, etc. In preparing themselves for these activities, they are, without even thinking about it, putting to use core skills and knowledge they have learned in the classroom. If we could find ways to get all students to fully understand how the core skills impact their present interests as well as their future endeavors in life, I think their education would be more effective. How many of us have lamented our failure to learn skills and knowledge when we were in school? Maybe there is a lesson to be learned there by our educators – that all instruction should be prefaced with the question, “Why are we learning this?”

Thirdly, these extra curricular activities often give students the first opportunity to work collectively in a group organization. They may have to assume responsibility or maybe take some leadership role where they learn to work with others in accomplishing tasks. They may be forced to learn how to effectively conduct meetings, organize limited time and resources, delegate tasks, etc. All of these skills might very well be put to use as they get out in the working world.

In addition, these extra curricular activities can and often do create a social comradery that psychologists tell us is so important to our mental health. It can create relationships that continue on for years beyond their school experience. Ten, twenty, thirty years later it is often these activities that alumni spend their time reminiscing about. But more importantly, it teaches students the importance and joy that relationships provide; and, it often manifests itself in participation in churches, business organizations, clubs, and other social groups (formal and informal) that become a part of their lives.

Extra curricular activities are important to our school experience and should be encouraged and supported by our community as long as they have good leadership so that they are a positive learning experience.

Merit Pay at the Elementary Level

Having taught school for 15 years before I went into the business world for the next 30 years, I’ve watched with great interest the debates over the best ways to improve the education of young people.

One suggestion that has been around for years that is again being discussed is the “carrot” of better pay for teachers with the “stick” of accountability – merit pay. Why would many if not most teachers oppose this? Well, the bad teachers will because their careers might be shortened. Good teachers often oppose it as well – why? Quite frankly, they don’t feel comfortable with administrators making these evaluations. Teachers feel they would be too subjective – by definition lacking in reality and substance.

When I taught I was fortunate to do so under some good administrators. They had well-organized schools, well-disciplined schools, wherever possible they stood behind their teachers, they waded through the mountains of paper work which is the fate of administrators, they often attempted to motivate their teachers to focus on doing their very best for students each day, provided at least one good thoughtful seminar a year, etc. They were paid 2 to 3 times what their teachers were paid and many became administrators because they felt suited to that role and/or were attracted to the money, and we teachers thought more power to them. All of them had been teachers before, but several I knew were not particularly outstanding teachers, which was OK because many outstanding teachers would make poor administrators. That was my experience and is the experience of many teachers.

To have these administrators making judgments on my teaching effectiveness would have made me uncomfortable – especially if it impacted my pay check. Administrators clearly can and should make judgments on whether a teacher loves kids and deals with them fairly, can control the classroom, are prepared day-to-day, teach “students” not “material”, inspire and expect excellent work, are knowledgeable and avid learners themselves, and like their job. These should be part of an evaluation; but, as important as these things are, they don’t necessarily lead to students making acceptable progress in learning the core skills. There is a way to measure this. It requires a very involved testing and curriculum process that many schools do not have in place.

Students should be tested on core skills and knowledge at the beginning of and the end of each year up through the 8th grade. Beyond the 8th grade, because of variety of educational tracts students take, it would require another evaluation process that I would like to address at a different time. The data from these beginning of the school year tests should show competency level collectively for all students and individually for each student. This allows teachers to know which students will need remedial work to hopefully “catch up” and there needs to be curriculum available to help accomplish this. Then, the teacher needs to know what skills and concepts students should achieve during the year to stay on track for their grade level. A curriculum guide and/or course of study needs to be available that will accomplish this. If a district has good teachers, this guide should be loosely constructed so that teachers have some latitude to use their own creativity to accomplish these standards.

At the end of the year, a post test will be given to students with competency measured collectively and for each individual student. Those that score at appropriate level advance to next grade. Those who do not, must attend summer school or repeat the grade level. Each of these underperforming students should be evaluated to determine if they have learning disabilities, bad home environment, emotional/psychological issues, etc., that need to be addressed.

If the above process is not in place, teachers shouldn’t and can’t be held accountable. But more importantly, if they are in place, tests become meaningful for each student and trigger proactive responses from the educational system on behalf of each student.

The above process focuses on students achieving measurable, “minimum” standards, which is essential. But, there are excellent students and/or students with exceptionally deep seated interests that the standard curriculum does not address. These students should be identified. It then becomes a challenge of a teacher’s creativity, with the help of programs such as student learning centers, to arouse and encourage these students to achieve well beyond the minimum standards and to pursue their special interests.

In the final analysis, I think most school boards, administrators, and teachers choose not to run the risk of implementing merit pay because of the “fire-storm” it is likely to cause within a school district. If a school district like McPherson, can perform well (towards the top in the state and nation) in standardized assessment testing, ITBS, and ACT, which they do, why create an environment that could be so contentious that it could have a negative impact on education of our young people? However, if a process like the above does provide a clearer picture of teachers effectiveness and students progress, maybe it should be implemented without “muddying the waters” with merit pay in order to improve instruction of our young people.