Linking Teacher to Student Scores - education

School Administrator, Oct, 2000 by SCOTT LaFEE

Agreement in Colorado

Historically, teachers have objected to evaluation systems conducted by administrators because they claimed the process was prone to politics and personal bias. A principal who didn't like someone for whatever reason, teachers complained, wasn't likely to evaluate that teacher positively or fairly.

The use of test scores in evaluating individual teacher performances raises similar concerns. Since 1994, the Douglas County School District in Castle Rock, Cob., has successfully operated its own pay-for-performance plan. For the most part, incentives are group- or school-based, established through discussions held at the beginning of each school year by involved parties, says assistant superintendent Ellen Bartlett.

Test scores have not been among the principal measurements of success at Douglas County. "There's a great deal of natural trepidation when you start talking about test scores determining teacher salary," Bartlett says, "so we've tried to come up with reasonable goals that can be effectively measured, usually by something everyone has agreed upon beforehand."

This year, however, the district added a new compensation option that allows individual teachers to earn a $1,000 bonus if they meet mutually agreed-upon goals, such as specific increases in students' reading or math performances. Here, test scores may be the evaluation tool, but Bartlett thinks the time is right to use them.

"We've had six years to show people that our performance pay plan is not punitive, that we are trying to reward people for doing the things we want them to do. After six years, I think people can trust us."

Rob Weil, president of the Douglas County Federation of Teachers, agrees. In general, he is opposed to tying teacher pay to standardized test scores. "It's stupid," he says. Yet, he acknowledges what is happening in his district is a natural, justifiable progression.

"One of the biggest reasons teachers have objected (to merit pay linked with student outcomes) is that nobody has been able to show them a fair way of doing it," Weil says. "With something like this, you can't make a mistake. If you do, you have to scrap the program and chances are nonexistent that you'll be able to do it again any time soon. I know a lot of teachers elsewhere object to this idea, but in Douglas County, we smell this coming and we want to have some control of it. In this, I would say we're pretty progressive.

Apparent success stories like Douglas County are countered by tales where incentive programs have not worked. In the 34,000-student Bentonville School District, located in northwest Arkansas, a cash-incentive program established in 1996 was dropped earlier this year after teachers complained the program caused dissent among peers. Bentonville's program included student test scores as one of the measurements for rewarding teachers.

Bradshaw, the professor at East Carolina University, says merit pay programs perish for many reasons, some as fundamental as simply placing a monetary value on behaviors or practices that teachers have traditionally done for free.