Summit Prep, a model high school south of San Francisco, has the smartest teacher development and compensation system I've seen -- and they are part of a coherent school model I wrote about last week. It's primarily a skill-based system that is focused on what teachers need to know and be able to do to accelerate student achievement. It is closely linked to the most extensive professional development program I've ever seen.
Demonstrated expertise across seven dimensions of the Summit Prep continuum places teachers on one of four levels: basic, proficient, highly proficient, and expert. The measured dimensions of teaching include Assessment, Content, Curriculum, Instruction, Knowing Learners and Learning (i.e. special ed, ELL, etc), Leadership, and Mentoring.
Summit founder Diane Tavenner said, "Teachers are charged with gathering and presenting evidence of their performance as demonstrated in student work and achievement. For example, a teacher wanting to be evaluated as highly proficient on Curriculum/Differentiation would have to present evidence he/she consistently differentiated throughout the course, and that students of all levels of prior knowledge and skill were able to access and demonstrate mastery as a result."
Placement and movement on the continuum are based on a combination of principal evaluation, peer evaluation and self evaluation is considered. Summit pays math and science teachers more because that's what the Bay Area market demands. To move from starting salary (over $50,000) to top of the scale (near $100,000) a teacher must be rated expert in at least four of seven dimensions. It usually takes at least two years to move up a level.
Student achievement is the basis for all goals that determine annual performance bonuses of up to 10 percent of base salary. The smart bonus system is based on:
25 percent school-wide results: API, College Acceptance, AP Equity and Excellence, Parent and Student Satisfaction.
25 percent grade-level results: API or AP Equity and Excellence, other external assessments, Parent and Student Satisfaction, and Peer Input.50 percent individual results: API, AP Equity and Excellence, Observation and Evaluation, Parent and Student Satisfaction, Self Evaluation, Director Evaluation
What I love about this system is that it "empowers teachers to present any and all evidence they believe is valid and appropriate to judge student performance, while simultaneously ensuring that objective student performance data is always included. Teachers embrace it and respect it because they have control over presenting a total package of performance."
Summit, like all the other California CMOs will be introducing blended learning models next year. Summit will undoubtedly tweak their pay and development system accordingly. Other systems, including those that recently adopted value-added measurements, will have more work to do. Here's some advice I provided to New York on their proposed pay system back in April:
In addition to building a dynamic data framework, it's important to note that personal digital learning will change school structures. There will be more differentiated staffing: teaching teams with three different levels with unique roles. Master teachers will guide new teachers and paraprofessionals. Teams will be augmented by remote teachers, specialists, and tutors supporting students online. Teams and technology as a tool will make it more difficult to directly link the gain of an individual student with the performance of an individual teacher.Blended learning -- school models that incorporate online learning to boost productivity -- introduces new roles and relationships. It makes learning more of a team sport. Informed judgments based on demonstrated expertise, like the Summit system, will be augmented by team-based recognition and incentives.
Diane has been thinking about how the system will adjust to the blended learning environment, and she believes Summit is well positioned. "I see a shift in percentages of the bonuses -- more toward grade level team and school-wide vs. individual" And, "the continuum as a structure should hold up well, since we have a culture that embraces adding/removing/revising the strands based upon what we are observing is most important to student learning in our environment."
As I concluded few weeks ago, "While edReformers may not like it, dynamic staffing models will require the application of judgment in teacher evaluations and that's hard to write into policy." Diane summarize the Summit employment philosophy:
It is a core principle of charter schools -- hold us accountable for our outcomes, and give us flexibility with our process, and it has to be extended to our students and teachers. For me, the confidence and willingness to embrace and allow for judgment is central to the success of not only our pay systems, but blended learning as well. The power of the Summit system is not that we have developed a magical list of the perfect evidence that with precision accuracy tells us who is a good teacher and who isn't. It's powerful because it gives teachers a high degree of accountability AND responsibility, and thus attracts the right people and incents them to perform.
When you step back and look at it holistically the "carrots" get us more than 90 percent of what we want and create a culture where people are happy, resilient and motivated -- a place where I want to work and kids want to go to school. I have a tolerance for a system that isn't 100 percent perfect because I have a stick if I need it -- at-will employment. This same approach is bleeding into our blended plans. It is what will ultimately allow us to create the space for teachers and students to create and design ways to get kids to our outcomes (college/career ready) in ways we can't even imagine today.
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Peter Meyer: Michael Winerip's Wrong-Headedness About Race to the Top
Watch this clever video about economic pay incentives studies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
I did not get in to teaching to make $100,000 a year. I became a teacher to help kids learn and improve my community. If you want to reward me for being a good teacher, if you want to honor my efforts, then help me help my students by:
1. Fighting for universal health care so my students can go see a doctor when they're sick.
2. Fight for the DREAM Act so my undocumented students have hope.
3. Get rid of military recruiters from my school who send my students to the Middle East to become cannon fodder.
4. Stop advocating for corporate run "non-profit for now" charter schools that are transferring public assets into private hands and make principals dictators by violating the most basic principles of democracy.
5. Advocate for a more just economic system. Trans-national corporations teach our students to consume junk food and trash culture. Help teachers work for a more socially just economic system that respects our students as human beings and responsible citizens.
That and $50,000 would be just fine.
The folks at Summit have found that hiring and retaining great teachers, particularly in math & science, in the Bay Area actually has something to do with compensation.
Less economic inequality would benefit Bay Area kids, but in the mean time I'm glad there are gap closing schools like KIPP, Summit, Downtown College Prep, and Aspire.
2. The folks at Summit just figured out what the American Federation of Teachers has been saying for the last 100 years? Not too bright those folks at Summit.
3. Sure...every teacher would like to be better compensated but the corporate model of education and merit pay are more about dividing teachers and breaking unions than improving education. Operationally define a "great" teacher. You can't. If you're not honest or intelligent enough to admit that then stop writing about education.
Did anyone else catch this? It should be "teachers," without the apostrophe.
"Student achievement is the basis for all goals that determine annual performance bonuses of up to 10 percent of base salary. The smart bonus system is based on:
25 percent school-wide results: API, College Acceptance, AP Equity and Excellence, Parent and Student Satisfaction.
25 percent grade-level results: API or AP Equity and Excellence, other external assessments, Parent and Student Satisfaction, and Peer Input.
50 percent individual results: API, AP Equity and Excellence, Observation and Evaluation, Parent and Student Satisfaction, Self Evaluation, Director Evaluation"
Of those metrics, even in a "thoughtful adult culture," one can be sure that the test is getting used in ways it's not designed. But, the real point here will wind up being a productivity boost, a phrase that disgusts me, to a supply-side view of education. "Blended learning" will ultimately increase class sizes, because that's how productivity gets boosted. And the kids will keep getting churned out with great bubble-filling skills and a lack of creative, higher-order thinking skills, to say nothing of a love of learning and confidence in themselves as actual learners, not test-takers.
I am all for professional evaluations in a cooperative environment, and am impressed that Summit Prep includes parent and student feedback into their model. I am also all for valid assessments of student learning that do not treat them like products. An invalid assessment tool will produce invalid evaluation data - it's like including an altimeter on a Ford Focus dashboard, to use your metaphor.
You stated correctly that "judgement" will always play a role in evaluations, and no amount of teacher-presented evidence will overcome failures witnessed by an active school leader in classroom visits or other instances. When evaluation is tied to pay, cooperative conversations between leadership and faculty are no longer cooperative, and the carrot has a long shadow that looks much like a stick, creating compliant employees, not innovative educators. "Peer Input" has the potential to poison school dynamics and kill that "thoughtful adult culture" you mention. I'm sure that with the right leader and the right staff, this can work for a while, until the leader moves on or the staff shifts.
Downtown College Prep recruits students not well served in middle school and propels nearly all to 4 year universities--you just can't accuse these guys of creaming.
No thanks.
That's a very clever rhetorical trick - school-wide, grade level and personal progress are measured by standardized test scores never intended to be used in such a way.
The other way teachers are "rewarded" is by replacing them with online options.
Spend your money and time on helping poor schools that are firing teachers right and left. Enough of this teacher evaluation craziness.
The point of raising this example is that it is a thoughtful no surprises teacher-designed system.
Ever heard of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards?