Obama: ‘It’s Time To Start Rewarding Good Teachers, Stop Making Excuses For Bad Ones’
Obama: ‘It’s Time To Start Rewarding Good Teachers, Stop Making Excuses For Bad Ones’
Our guest blogger is Robin Chait, Associate Director for Teacher Quality at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Today, President Barack Obama outlined his education agenda in a speech to the U. S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. It’s a comprehensive agenda for reform that, if implemented, would have a profound impact upon the U.S. educational system and student achievement in this country. Obama clearly understands that America’s long-term prosperity depends upon a strong educational system.
He called for dramatic changes to improve the quality of education received by most students — we don’t have time for incremental reforms that lead to modest improvements. In particular, his focus on “recruiting, preparing, and rewarding outstanding teachers” is essential, because we know from research that teachers are the most important school related factor affecting student learning.
Obama’s strategies acknowledge that the ways we recruit, prepare, and compensate teachers are outmoded and put high poverty schools at a disadvantage. He talked about rewarding good teachers with more money for improved student achievement, while giving all teachers the support they need to be successful. He also insisted that teachers who are unable to improve after being given support be removed.
As the Center for American Progress has noted, these strategies are critical to attracting and retaining more talented teachers:
Retention incentives might include increases in pay, such as performance pay, and in responsibility, such as career ladders that provide teachers with additional responsibilities as they become more effective. And efforts to improve or replace ineffective teachers can take multiple forms—from teacher-led initiatives such as peer review, to rigorous evaluation systems that identify teachers who need additional support, to heightened standards for tenure or changes in tenure systems.
And while improving our educational system won’t likely help the immediate economic crisis, it is a critical investment in long term economic growth. As The Wonk Room has pointed out in the past, “since the 1970s, the U.S. educational system has rested on its laurels, and we are losing ground” to the rest of the world.
Obama’s education plan represents an important investment in both stronger schools and long term economic growth. And he understands that quality teaching is key to both.
11 Responses to “Obama: ‘It’s Time To Start Rewarding Good Teachers, Stop Making Excuses For Bad Ones’”
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And it’s time to stop parading bad management theory as good. Pay for performance imploded Wall Street. Commissions, executive incentive compensation and stock options distorted behavior such that companies put out junk financial products.
Surely, President Obama recalls his days as a student, when tests were stuck on a forced bell curve. Bottom 10% fails. All students could’ve achieved mastery of the subject, yet 10% would get a D and another 10% an F.
Did President Obama ever work in a setting with forced rankings and merit pay or pay for performance?
Our elected leaders and corporate big chiefs operate on faulty theory. It’s easy to bribe people to perform, yet that does real damage. Teachers become competitors for the carrots. Cooperation is negatively impacted. Intrinsic motivation wanes.
President Bush turned schools into testing mills. President Obama will turn teachers in Wall Street executives. Surely they’re smart enough to optimize their pay. The problem is it will suboptimize education.
March 10th, 2009 at 2:52 pmI would be interested in reading about how other countries handle these issues of teacher quality.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:46 pmI feel the same way about bloggers. I would give the entire Wonk Room a 50% merit raise.
March 10th, 2009 at 9:59 pmStateofthedivision, in education as in many endeavors, cooperation and competition are not mutually exclusive and can be complementary. The teachers unions have an interesting perspective on this issue, and I’m not sure whether there is any actual evidence showing that the union’s perspective on this issue is correct.
Assuming that we will “fail” a certain percentage of teachers is probably not realistic. Remediation will work in most cases. Paying enough money to attract more capable individuals as teachers instead of blowing it on gas for Halliburton is where we can find common ground.
March 10th, 2009 at 10:37 pmLeaders don’t deal with bad teachers via a pay system. They coach/mentor/educate.
When all systems fail (hiring, continuing education, coaching, reassignment) a good leader considers a firing as their failure.
Leaders don’t motivate people with pay. It’s generally not in the top five motivators. Hacks demotivate employees with bad pay systems that distort behavior. President Obama proposes such a system.
Read Alfie Kohn’s work.
March 10th, 2009 at 10:59 pm…higher *base* salaries….
March 11th, 2009 at 3:33 amI believe we should motivate teachers with higher bas salaries, merit pay, and attempt to remediate/coach/mentor/retrain those who need it. There are some people with tenure who have, perhaps partly because of their tenure, become poorer quality teachers. I’m unwilling to tie a school administrator’s hands to deal with documented repeated underperformance after attempts at remediation in the name of academic freedom. The freedom of the press is strong enough to take up the slack.
However, we also need to motivate teachers with smaller class sizes (which have a stronger correlation with graduation rates than teacher pay or per-student spending) and better school facilities. We need to make our schools as good as and as important to our culture as sports. Teachers should be making star salaries when they help their kids way more than par, it’s only fair.
March 11th, 2009 at 3:33 amHmm, I typed comment #7 before #6, which was a typo correction. It’s odd to see comments out of chronological order. The sorting must only be accurate to the minute.
March 11th, 2009 at 3:35 amYikes – “performance pay” sounds to me a hell of a lot like “teach to the test”. If you give teachers incentives to prove their performance and get pay based on that, you can kiss creative, out of the box thinking and teaching good bye – hello SAT-focused teaching!
March 11th, 2009 at 9:33 amAnders, would SAT scores be as appropriate to measure as graduation rates?
March 11th, 2009 at 11:49 amBoth equally crappy, but I’m sure you’d agree with that. Rather than setting a higher standard in graduation rates, the bar would simply be artificially lowered.
March 11th, 2009 at 1:34 pm