The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), created in 2006 as a $600 million plan to “support efforts to develop and implement performance-based teacher and principal compensation systems in high-need schools” and bolstered in 2009 under the Obama Administration, has now been functioning long enough to evaluate some of its results. Five districts are nearing the end Read more about Is the Teacher Incentive Fund a Good Investment?[…]
A crucial question at the nexus of the issues of student achievement and battles between school districts and teachers unions is the issue of teacher pay scale. A helpful study by Jason A. Grissom of Vanderbilt University and Katharine O. Strunk of the University of Southern California has recently delved deeply into this question and Read more about Teacher raises: What works best?[…]
The New Teacher Project (TNTP) has recently released a new report, Keeping Irreplaceables in D.C. Public Schools: Lessons in Smart Retention, which holds up the reforms begun in DC public schools by former schools chancellor Michelle Rhee as a model for human capital reform. The main thrust of the reforms highlighted concerns good teacher retention Read more about Is DCPS a model urban school district?[…]
Last week Andrew Rotherham from Time magazine wrote about whether teachers should be able to sell their lesson plans. He talks about kindergarten teacher Deanna Jump, who has made more than one million dollars selling her lesson plans online. That is what teachers are looking for, since the new Common Core standards are in effect; textbooks Read more about Should Teachers Be Allowed to Sell Their Lesson Plans?[…]
In a recent article for Slate, Ryan Fisman reflects on the current emphasis on teacher effectiveness. Is firing bad instructors the only way to improve schools? According to new research, maybe not. Few districts have the “luxury” of being able to fire low-performing teachers and replacing them with more effective ones. This being the case, Read more about How to Build a Better Teacher[…]
Over the past decade, teachers have seen changes in both their conditions of employment-from pay to retirement benefits-and their practice. Far too often, these policies have been made by people who talk about teachers, rather than talking to them. Last fall, Education Sector surveyed a nationally representative random sample of more than 1,100 K-12 public Read more about Teachers “Trending Toward Reform”[…]
Green Dot Public Schools (GDPS), a charter school network operating in inner urban Los Angeles, announced earlier this month the approval of a contract with its teachers that includes a pay-for-performance evaluation tool. Though the agreement does not “make the critical link between teacher compensation and student performance,” it does position the charter group to Read more about Green Dot Announces Pay-for-Performance Agreement[…]
Last month, Jack Jennings of the Center on Education Policy wrote an article refuting the contentious AEI paper claiming that public school teachers are overcompensated and under-achieving (see a summary of this study here). Jennings contrasts the methodology of the AEI study with a study from an impartial group, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Read more about Higher Wages Would Attract, Keep Better Teachers[…]
The Center for American Progress has released two new reports that attempt to predict the outcomes of traditional defined-benefit pensions for teachers vs. cash-balance plans. Redefining Teacher Pensions: Strategically Defined Benefits for New Teachers and Fiscal Sustainability for All, by Raegan Miller, argues that since teachers are the single most important school-based resource affecting student Read more about Pension Reform May Attract Better Teachers[…]
The American Enterprise Institute released a paper earlier this week that seeks to prove public school teachers are overcompensated by “52% more than their skills would garner in the private sector.” Traditional estimates of teacher compensation generally compare teacher salaries to the salaries of workers with similar education and experience in the private sector, then Read more about Study: Public School Teachers are Overcompensated[…]
A recent report released by Public Impact proposes a strategy for getting an excellent teacher into every classroom, which would “close most of our stubborn achievement gaps in just five years.” An “excellent teacher” is described as one who produces well over today’s typical year of learning growth, and the authors emphasize that it is Read more about Seizing Opportunity at the Top[…]
On August 31, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado wrote an op-ed piece for the Boston Globe, demanding a re-evaluation of teacher compensation in this country. Senator Bennet served as superintendent of Denver Public Schools from 2005 to 2009, and was named by Time as one of the leading educational activists for 2011. A portion of Read more about Bring Teachers’ Pay into this Century[…]
American Teacher is a new full-length documentary based on the New York Times bestselling book Teachers Have It Easy, produced by co-authors Dave Eggers and Ninive Calegari and directed by Academy Award winning filmmaker Vanessa Roth. The film seeks to shed light on the startling statistics of the teaching profession—such as, 46 percent of public Read more about The Teacher Salary Project presents “American Teacher”[…]
The fact that well-qualified teachers are inequitably distributed to students in the United States has received growing public attention. Studies in state after state have found that students of color in low- income schools are 3 to 10 times more likely to have unqualified teachers than students in predominantly white schools. In Speaking of Salaries: Read more about Speaking of Salaries: A Report from the Center for American Progress[…]
The Illinois Senate passed SB7 unanimously in April, 57 to 0. Last Thursday, the bill also passed House nearly unanimously (112 for, 1 abstaining and 1 against). The Bill now goes to Governor Quinn’s desk for signature. SB 7 was developed during months of discussions involving a wide variety of education stakeholders including the Illinois Read more about Illinois Senate Bill 7[…]
For the past four years, New York City has experimented with merit pay. Recently their experiment came to a halt, after $57 million and no increase in test scores in schools that received bonus money. Why did NYC’s merit-pay program fail? According to the Wall Street Journal, one reason is that unlike other incentive programs, Read more about Merit Pay in NYC[…]