NCLB and Performance Pay

Washington education pundits continue to analyze Chairman Miller’s National Press Club (NPC) speech on the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Last week, we covered the building debate on multiple measures for the purposes of measuring adequately yearly progress (AYP). The debate is critical because the chosen measures will determine the law’s academic rigor. It is also important because the discussion assumes the expansion of the data points gathered by a school and district and those data points could be linked to an analysis of teacher effectiveness and to teacher pay.

The analysis of teacher effectiveness and pay is becoming a contentious topic in the reauthorization debate. In his NPC speech, Chairman Miller stated that the bill under construction in the House Committee on Education and Labor will include considerable support for teachers and principals, including “the performance pay for principals and teachers based on fair and proven models.” All parties involved in the reauthorization discussion would like to increase teacher pay, but how to do it is a matter of vociferous debate. The meaning of a “fair and proven model” depends upon who you ask. For example, the National Education Association (NEA) argues that merit pay, if not carefully done, would provide disincentives for teaching in challenging schools and in subjects that are not tested as frequently as math and reading/language arts. Proponents of performance pay, such as the Commission on No Child Left Behind (Commission), argue that pay for performance and other salary incentives are required in order to provide effective teachers for all students.
The debate remains contentious, but it is no longer the taboo subject that it was just ten years ago. Earlier this year, presidential candidate Senator Barrack Obama (D-IL) told the NEA at their national conference in Philadelphia that, “If you excel at helping your students achieve success, your success will be valued and rewarded as well,” and then mentioned merit pay in the question and answer session. Note that Senator Obama also sits on the Senate Committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) which has just begun to draft language for a reauthorized NCLB. Earlier this month, Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) introduced S.2001, a bill to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which is the vehicle for the Commission’s teacher effectiveness and performance pay proposals. Most important, Chairman Miller and his staff are entertaining creative pay for performance models and the most influential this year has been the report published by the Center for Teaching Quality in Hillsborough, North Carolina, Performance-Pay for Teachers.
The report, which has been presented to the House and Senate Education committees, was drafted by a bipartisan group of 18 teachers who have been district, state and national teachers of the year, Presidential Award winners, Milken honorees and National Board Certified Teachers. It has, in short, bipartisan practitioner clout and it uses that to detail a framework for performance pay that is attracting support from both liberal and conservative education advocacy groups alike. That is no small feat in Washington and that makes it a plan worth monitoring as the education committees in the House and Senate continue to draft and debate reauthorization language that includes the “performance pay for principals and teachers based on fair and proven models” promised by Chairman Miller.
Resources:
Ruth Marcus, “From Barack Obama, Two Dangerous Words,” Washington Post, July 11, 2007.
Performance Pay for Teachers (Center for Teaching Quality: 2007), http://www.teacherleaders.org.
Author: DAD