In a democracy, ideas are to flow from the people to the government, not the other way around.

Im agreeing with you on Phil Jackson.

GGW,

The issue is sustainable improvements. I have no doubt that D.C.’s heaviliy funded schemes could have produced more good than harm for the 40,000 students in that district, just like the breaking of unions and subsidizing the flight of jobs from our industrial belt in the North to the South, provided more short-term good to the Sun Belt. But it unleashed the forces of greed, and impoverished us all. And that rapid deindustrialization created much of our educational problems.

George Soros explained the financial collapse of last year was like a number of bottles filled with water, while only one is poisoned. But that makes all of the water worthless.

Who would invest their career in inner city schools if a flawed VAM put it at risk every few years? Would you become an inner city teacher if flaws in the model put your career at risk one out of ten years, or one out of four years, or even one out of 20 years? Let’s say the model leads to an injustice 5% of the time. For every victimized teacher, how many fellow teachers would be demoralized? For every teacher whose career was destroyed unfairly, how many would have to put up with how much more stress with the Sword of Damacles over them. At what point would self-respecting teachers say that thet won’t take it anymore and flee the profession in mass?

But I’d support TAP’s performance pay. The VAM would be for bonuses so imperfections would balance out. Plus most pay increases would be for teams not individuals.

The best thing about performance pay is that it could encourage collaboration and open discussions.

So, the burden of proof is balanced with incentive pay, but when it involves the potential death penalty for individuals’ careers, then the burden of proof must always remain on the VAM.

In fact, our legal system is fundamentally based on that burden. So, trade-offs for a flawed VAM must included our respect for contracts, due process, and the rule of law.

Which gets us back to self-respect. Who wants to be a member of a profession that is denied the fundamental rights of citizens? Any profession that would trade their rights for a boost in test scores, to paraphrase, is worthy of neither, and will lose both.

I agree most folks would agree with you that the burden of proof should fall on those who want to use merit pay. Usually, once you have a default position, the burden of proof is on those who want change.

Just musing aloud, but I wonder if that the best thing.

Two thoughts:

1. Shouldn’t the burden of proof be on what compensation scheme is most likely to lead to gains in student achievement?

Ie, let’s say there were evidence that flawed VAM (for the reasons Dan describes) leads to kids learning more. I’m not saying that evidence exists. If it did, wouldn’t the burden of proof be on those defending the status quo?

2. Why do you and others hold merit pay to such a higher standard than other places where judgment is required?

You cannot perfectly measure the performance of your students. Do you throw up your hands and give them all the same grade? Of course not. You choose to give imperfect grades because it’s better than essentially giving no grades.

What about hiring? The decision to hire someone, whether you’ll give them a couple million dollars, is super subjective. Yet you do not advocate we should simply give everyone an equal chance (a random lottery for who gets teaching jobs).

So we’re cool with blocking people from a $2 million lifetime job based on an interview and maybe a sample lesson….

….but we’re against paying one person $2.1 million based on much better — though admittedly wildly imperfect — data? Does that make sense?

Your thoughts on the value-added by Phil Jackson? Would he have won all those championships in Chicago or LA without his cadre of superstars? I know you’re a big bball fan and participant.

A few minor points:

I was suggesting exactly what you raised–that broad knowledge of the world is crucial to teach in K-3, is difficult to test, and is vital to reading comprehension after grade 4.

In my state (Arkansas), K through 2 aren’t tested. Just 3 through 8. So maybe it just needs to be made clear to teachers of earlier grades that classes should include lots of background knowledge, not just decoding.

For school-wide merit pay, I suspect that peer pressure would overcome the impulse to freeload, but that could obviously depend on the particulars of a given school.

Additionally, I read two of the studies that Dan had linked to from his website, and while they did acknowledge that there were varyiations in consistancy in performance from year to year, it was consistant enought to compare to other private sector rating sytems.

Additionally, in one of the studies the author did mention using multiple years to get performance data.

I think we understand your point, but I think you are overlooking a major point. The burden of proof is on advocates of merit pay. You argue that it may not be more difficult to raise the value-added of lower performing students than higher performing. IN THEORY you may be right, but value-added models fall apart if your theory doesn’t hold.

But, if I understand Dan correctly, researchers would probably find patterns of evidence for your theory if evidence was available.

On the other hand, you are ignoring the preponderance of evidence from practical experience. I’d think that the overwhelming majority of neighborhood school teachers would agree that it is much more difficult to add value to lower performing test scores. The basic reasons should be obvious. With so many troubled kids, you can’t address the academic deficiencies until you address the emotional needs of those students.

I’d also suspect that the “Matthew Effect” is crucial. Once your learn to read, and then read to learn, and once you have the background knowledge, and all that feeds into more motivation, students with those advantages can “take off.”

This is a distinction that should be obvious, and most likely explains a big difference between charter schools, even those that try to keep creaming to a minimum, and neighborhood schools.

Some reactions and questions:

Missing data. But how does this lead to overall bias? Do you think that within in a given school, 10 poor kids will leave all from the same classroom, while no poor kids will leave from any other classroom? Do you think that poor kids will all leave one particular school while no other poor kids will transfer into that school? What about the possibility that the overall effect would be a wash, if poor kids move around in all sorts of directions and then it all balances out, on average?

Scores correlated means that difference scores are unreliable. Could you point me to a more detailed explanation of this point?

Same score gains might not be equivalent. There should be a way to collect data on how much students at various points in the distribution tend to improve from year to year. Thus, if students in the bottom decile average an improvement of 20 scale score points next year, while students in the top decile tend to improve by 30 scale score points, then you would know that it’s easier to get scale score improvements in the top decile. And then the cut scores for any rewards could be set accordingly.

Other people affect what teachers do. This problem would be ameliorated, wouldn’t it, if a merit pay plan rewarded everyone on a school-wide basis for school-wide improvements? Let’s not limit the concept of “merit pay” as only consisting of rewards given to reward individual teachers standing alone. There are other ways to structure merit pay.

Should teachers worry about short-term gains? I’m not as sure what this means. “Broad knowledge of the world” may in fact be quite important to one’s success on reading comprehension tests, as Hirsch often points out.

Effects of peers in different classrooms. See above about a school-wide plan.