If teachers are evaluated and rewarded on the performance of their individual students, what incentive do they have to be good team players? Why prize the overall performance of their students and school over how kids perform in the teachers’ own class? This essential question was brilliantly posed by Matthew Ladner at Jay Greene’s blog last week.
The impetus for the question was a New York Times magazine piece by Michael Lewis on Shane Battier of the Houston Rockets, who is “widely regarded inside the N.B.A. as, at best, a replaceable cog in a machine driven by superstars,” according to Lewis. ”And yet every team he has ever played on has acquired some magical ability to win.”
In basketball, gaudy personal statistics earn you megabucks and create incentives to pad you stats regardless of whether it helps your team win. Battier, however, is a white space employee. “The term refers to the space between boxes on an organizational chart,” Ladner explains. ”A white space employee is someone who does whatever it takes to achieve organizational goals and makes the organization work much better as a whole.” What does this have to do with teaching? Plenty.
As we move into the era of value-added analysis for teacher merit pay, this article provides much food for thought. School leaders must consider carefully what they will reward, and give some consideration to how white space behavior is rewarded. Rewards should not just be based on individual learning gains- reaching school wide goals should also be strongly rewarded. Otherwise my incentive as a math teacher will be to assign six hours of math homework a night- and to hell with everyone else (see Iverson, Allen).
“There’s no reward for being a white space player OR a superstar in the current system of teacher compensation,” Ladner concludes. “Just an old player.” The unintended consequences have been the undoing of many a school reform effort. If Ladner’s right about this — and I think he is — the consequences may be unintended, but they will not have been unforeseen.
Robert, whenever I read posts about “incentivizing” teachers, my eyes glaze over because the issue seems so beside the point. Most teachers I know work like maniacs and get crappy results nonetheless. Most teachers (at least in the suburban schools in CA and NJ where I’ve worked) ARE trying as hard as they can; the critical variable is therefore not teacher effort, but the IDEAS in teachers’ heads. Fix that problem (i.e. banish “progressive” ideas and enthrone E.D. Hirch-ish ideas) and achievement should start to take off. Pay incentives wouldn’t make me work much harder than I already do. I work hard because I want to do a good job, and I think other teachers –most of them, at least –are the same. I wonder what you think about the issue.
My first principal used to say “you must INspect what you EXspect.” I agree, but I’m not sure we know how to do so particularly well. I’m convinced of two things. 1) Accountability matters a great deal, and 2) I have not yet seen a satisfactory accountability method. And while I agree with you that most teachers work like maniacs, I fear for those who work hard, do right by their kids, and run the risk of running afoul of badly conceived accountability schemes wielded like a cudgel by not terribly thoughtful people.
That’s what I think.
Personally, I like the look of the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) program, the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP). This program recognizes the importance of accountability for every student, how hard teachers work already, that team work matters, and for those wanting an opportunity to lead without leaving the classroom there are opportunities to do so within their school. Performance pay is based on individual, team and school wide effort and achievement. The school Principal is also included in the mix, as leadership is recognized as critical to the success of any program or initiative. Yes, individual PBP can discourage teamwork, just as team-based PBP can discourage individual effort. A combination of the two makes sense to me.
1. RP, amgio, in schools that have already implemented merit pay based on student performance, are there report of teachers becoming less team oriented? Ie, any 6 hour math HWs?
Seems like: no.
2. I love all things Michael Lewis, plus I’m a junkie on the arbitrage of hoops, plus I’m a Dukie, so suffice to say I’m all over this article…and there’s a lot of misreading of it in eduworld.
a. The point of the article the NBA *GENERALLY* does a good job of compensating players by merit, but there are a few that are under-recognized, and Battier is one.
Someone who can scoop up 2 or 3 these OUTLIERS (out of 440 guys in the league) can put a nice team together.
b. While the FANS might under-appreciate Battier, the NBA insiders already did appreciate him. This is evident in two ways.
b1. Battier’s compensation. He earns about $7 million per year, putting him slightly above the 75th percentile for all NBA players. So the market does value him. Can one make a case that he should be at the 78th percentile instead of the 75th? Perhaps. But he’s in the ballpark.
Other white space players are similarly compensated way above their “base stats” (scoring and rebounds). James Posey, who helped the Celts win the title, is another Battier like example. Does the little things (including biiiig pregame hugs for each starter), and was rewarded way higher than a typical aging guy who doesn’t start and can’t create a shot.
b2. There are a number of new metrics (Win Share, PER, +/-) that average fans don’t follow but insiders do…and they DO account for many “White space” issues.
I didn’t get the impression from the Lewis piece that he was highly regarded. Indeed, he left the impression that he was a cog. That said, your point about compensation is well-taken, Michael. It’s also fair to say that the level of scrutiny given to NBA players, whose every twitch is videotaped, broadcast live and played out live in front of tens of thousands of people is extraordinary. Thus we’re more likely to see the things a Battier does well, appreciate and compensate them, than the classroom teacher who gets 2 or 3 observations and a couple of standardized tests as the alpha and omega of her data points.
You run a school, Mike. Can you site examples of white space teachers who improve the performance of everyone around them. I assume you can, but the challenge is capturing that performance in a way that you can use a the fair basis for compensation. What about math or literacy coaches? What about teachers in non-teasted subjects? What about EVERYONE in an elementary school who is not a classroom teacher? We know those high performers when we see them, but how do you quantify it and compensate them accordingly?
Read this for more on Battier
http://dberri.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/back-to-battier/
Agree: there are a ton of white space teachers and it is difficult to quantify.
Imagine 3 equally skilled teachers. One uplifts other teachers by exuding positive energy and encouragement. One keeps to himself, neutral. One is a complainer.
For example, one way I get a sense of how teachers in our school perceive one another is when we survey teachers about their impressions of the school overall.
Teachers rarely cite a peer in a negative way, but only certain teachers come up organically as really terrific, in questions like “What are 3 strengths of the school?”
But I just use that information to thank the + teacher and let him know others appreciate him, and sometimes (if my relationship is good, as I’m not the principal) to challenge the neutral or complaining teacher to change/improve.
Still, I think if the choices are:
1. Status quo, no reward for performance
2. Rhee plan, opt into merit pay for raising student achievement as measured by tests and observations
3. Merit pay which also tries to look at “White space”
I’d personally pick #2 as best imperfect balance of all interests (with kids’ interest in effective teaching as most important interest).
Even as someone whose hoops game almost entirely consists of Battier like contributions…
The whole point is moot, anyway. How much “working together” is going on anyway? There is a large disconnect in the “ideal” of working together and the “reality” of working together. Circumstances simply do not allow for meaningful collaboration in the modern classroom setting. I teach 7th and 8th grade math, and quite frankly, I go at it alone – not for self-serving reasons, not because I am lazy, but because one daily prep period (45 minutes) is not enough to bring about meaningful collaboration. I have to grade tests, homework, and I have to plan lessons. I am overwhelmed.
In Japan, the whole structure of the school day is different. The school day is longer, and multiple prep periods are afforded to teachers so that they can work together and share best practices. I am a first-year teacher, and a little direction would have gone a long way, regardless of the merits of my own teaching.
I have answered math questions posed by other teachers, and I have been inspired by activities that other teachers have conducted in their classrooms, but these experiences have been few and far between for me. I would really like to know what kind of collaboration is going on in other schools. I do know a lot of other teachers in NYC, and my impression is that my experience is the norm.
Again, I find Mr. Ladner doublespeaking as I saw him post postively about value added methodology elsewhere. It would not surprise me, however, that he would post negatively about a fair and more accurate measure of instructional effectiveness since it would hurt his true motive: to push school choice regardless of educational soundness. With his background in political science, how did he become a research director in education? Perhaps he doesn’t really even understand how value added data can be used!