Education News Colorado

July 1, 2008

Written by Alan Gottlieb

Thursday, July 03 2008

From the editor

As predicted, the article in last week’s Education News Colorado Tuesday newsletter criticizing ProComp, Denver’s “results-based” teacher compensation system, generated a great deal of sturm und drang.

And, as promised, the newsletter you have before you contains a spirited defense of ProComp and an equally spirited critique of the critics, yours truly included (by implication if not name).

If this is the summer doldrums, I can hardly wait until things get busy. Last week’s big ProComp event was a meeting of the A-Plus citizens committee’s Finance and Facilities subcommittee, at which members called for significant changes to ProComp. One of the co-chairs questioned whether the program is worth salvaging (he concluded that yes, it probably was), and said that voters would be “surprised, and some outraged” to learn how ProComp dollars were being spent.

I will let the rebuttal below speak for itself. It is written by two very smart and knowledgeable individuals, who, for legitimate reasons, feel the need to remain anonymous. I’m sure some of you will frown upon this. But their point of view is important to get out in the public domain, and if this is the only way to do so, I can live with that.

I’ve also posted another defense of ProComp on the Schools for Tomorrow blog. This one was written by Barnett Barry, president and CEO of the Center for Teaching Quality in North Carolina. I’d love to keep this debate alive. After today, I will shift it away from the enewsletter and onto the blog.

There are many issues of equivalent import on the local education scene. It’s crucial to get debate on these issue out in the open. Too often, one hears grumbling and mumbling about some issue or program, but the disgruntlement and dissent stays submerged.

That was the case with ProComp. I’ve heard people talking for months about its perceived deficiencies. But the chat was always in corridors after meetings, or over beers and among friends. Now it has been brought out in the open. You, dear readers, can weigh the merits of the arguments and decide for yourselves where you stand.

Clarification: Last week’s enewsletter included an article on ProComp by Alexander Ooms. Ooms was correctly identified as a member of the A-Plus citizens committee. However, Ooms was speaking strictly for himself in his article. His views do not necessarily reflect those of other members or of the committee as a whole.

--Alan Gottlieb

ProComp critics display a lack of understanding

By Wonk Mom and Pol Econ Ed

“There’s little research on what makes for a successful merit pay plan, but … Denver’s program includes many of them: a careful effort to earn teacher buy-in to the plan, clarity about how it works, multiple ways of measuring merit, rewards for teamwork and school success, and reliable financing.”
   Time Magazine, 2/13/08

“The most promising professional compensation initiative to date …”
   Center for Teaching Quality website

“Groundbreaking …”
   Education Week, 11/09/05

“Obama backs Denver teacher pay plan”
   Denver Post, 12/31/07

How soon we forget. ProComp 1.0, hailed as the poster child for reforming teacher pay just a few short years ago, is now being attacked within Denver, before it has even had a chance to prove itself, or to evolve into a more successful ProComp 2.0

Alexander Ooms, board chair of a local charter school, railed against ProComp in the June 24 edition of the Education News Colorado enewsletter. And a member of the A+ Commission recently questioned whether ProComp “is a tool worth having at all.”

Here’s our response: yes, it is. And here’s why.

ProComp pays extra money (bonuses and base salary additions) to teachers for achievements in four domains: knowledge and skills, professional evaluation, market incentives (such as working in difficult schools), and student growth. And while the precise combination of these elements, and how they are measured, is flexible and subject to change, at present, the biggest critique of ProComp seems to be that most of the amounts paid under the program become part of a teacher’s base salary, as opposed to one-time payments.

First of all, it is worth realizing that many of us working outside K-12 education get raises each year, the amount of which is based on our performance, as measured by variables sometimes more opaque and less precise than those set out in ProComp.

And, guess what – we get to keep the raise, not just this year, but in the future. Outside of salespeople working on commission and year-end bonuses, most professionals are paid with a reliable base amount that is increased based in part on performance. Why would we want to compensate our teachers on “commission”? Who in their right mind would take a teaching job under those conditions?

So, the fact that a relatively small amount of pay is “at risk” each year under ProComp is hardly an indictment, and extremely misleading when you compare that to how other professionals are really paid. While we will leave it to economists to determine the appropriate balance between how much of ProComp should be base-building and how much bonus, we suspect the balance might ultimately favor base-building by something like 80% to 20%. In this light, the district’s 90% offer strikes us as reasonable.

Second, there are several technical reasons why the perfect merit pay plan for teachers has not been established in any city across the nation. One of us was among the 300 attendees at a national conference on teacher pay for performance in February, sponsored by Vanderbilt’s Peabody College’s National Center on Performance Incentives, with the nation’s top thinkers on this issue. It was clear from those discussions that we do not have the appropriate measurement technology or elements to be able to tie with high levels of confidence specific student test scores to specific teachers.

Until the day comes when we have that technical ability, we need to use proxies for this measure and handle it with care. Indeed, only 39% of DPS teachers are associated directly with students who take a CSAP exam. It would be ludicrous to suggest that an urban district should attempt to recruit teachers with a pay plan that is virtually guaranteed, under present conditions, to compute their compensation inaccurately.

The best we can do today is to use student performance as one of several measures, and measure it in several different ways, and use compensation, both bonuses and base salary building, as a means to focus attention on it. That is what ProComp does. As the technology improves, we should expect a greater proportion of ProComp dollars to be associated with measurable student achievement.

Third, very few teachers unions around the country are willing to even discuss merit pay. (ProComp has consistently been referred to as “results-based pay.”) Surveys show that it is not popular with teachers, with the possible exception of extra “combat pay” for working in at-risk schools. Teachers unions are mostly not interested in negotiating away any paycheck predictability.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association was bold enough to take this on, and to manage to forge a deal that makes income fairly predictable, while also creating an incentive system that redirects teacher behavior towards district priorities. Again, we suspect the current ratio of base-building to bonus may not be totally appropriate, but it is not the extreme problem some have been imprudently suggesting.

Related to that, the number of teachers who have opted-in to ProComp has actually been ahead of most early expectations. The limited evidence to date on improved student performance (see, for example, the recently completed preliminary ProComp evaluation), is promising, though not definitive, suggesting the project deserves more than 2 years of implementation before observers express disappointment. While it would also be nice to see more of the $25 million annual amount paid out to teachers, there was an initial fiscal expectation that the fund would build up to some degree over time, to deal with the growing enrollment of teachers in the program and their growing salaries from earning ProComp elements.

And, DPS is now trying to pay out more of the funds, in ways that fit the district learning priorities. In fact, more prudent and honest language to describe the current state of affairs regarding the balance of the trust fund would point to ProComp 1.0’s inability to accomplish one of the major goals of the compensation system: to serve as a tool to recruit and retain teachers (teachers in the early stages of their careers are still leaving the district in far too great numbers). The argument to pay more money out of the trust fund should be focused on data, and the very real need to put a lot more money into the early stages of a teacher’s career. That money is available. Let’s put it to use.

ProComp represents a political compromise, to be sure, but we should not underestimate the radical change in perspective that it took to negotiate this compromise. The entire nation paid attention to Denver, because this was so radical. And by making the plan inherently flexible, negotiators left open the ability to use this first important step as a roadmap towards a compensation system that is meaningful in every regard.

To say that ProComp today does not reflect everything that we hope a compensation system can be is to miss the point entirely, and displays a lack of understanding about the circumstances surrounding results-based pay in general.

ProComp administration costs, estimated at about $2 million, are also coming under fire. DPS, like most urban school districts, and especially those in underfunded Colorado, did not have anything close to modern technological systems for payroll, HR, and related management elements required for something as complex as ProComp. In order to implement ProComp, with its multiple variables and data input from various sources, DPS had to rebuild its entire human resource system.

In the long run, this is a very good thing, not just for ProComp, but for DPS more generally. In total, DPS spends about $1 billion each year, including federal funding, and most of this is for salaries for someone; $2 million represents only 0.2% of that total, which hardly seems excessive for implementing a key tool to incentivize better teaching.

Finally, the protest that “voters didn’t understand” ProComp because they didn’t understand that many of the elements build teachers’ salaries is ridiculous – if not completely politically dishonest. Despite Colorado’s reification of the initiative approach, voters are notoriously difficult to engage in complex policy issues.

Fewer than half of American voters can even name their own congressperson and two-thirds cannot name a single US Supreme Court justice. So, they are supposed to understand and memorize all the ProComp elements, and then be disappointed in their implementation?

Let’s be clear: the ProComp campaign called for higher pay for teachers linked to performance priorities and student success, and that is not at all a misrepresentation of ProComp 1.0 or the proposed changes to achieve ProComp 2.0. Indeed, to the extent voters had strong opinions on teacher pay issues, polls showed they had far greater enthusiasm for higher pay for teachers improving their own education and for professional development than for their ability to move student test scores.

Frankly, the campaign was clear to voters that an item they prize greatly, paying teachers for professional development, was included. While some reformers may not like the base-building knowledge and skill components of ProComp, their inclusion in the ProComp package is one of the clearest expressions of voter will. Any honest conversation that tries to “divine” the will of the voters, therefore, should not conveniently exclude those things that taxpayers like and segments of the reform community may not.

Finally, we are at a loss as to why Mr. Ooms would wonder if the foundation of ProComp is any good. The negotiated agreement and the mill levy language approved by voters allow ProComp to be revised. The union and the school district can increase the incentives for an element or even eliminate one if it is found not to be working. The foundation upon which ProComp is built is in fact the ability to make it better.

So rather than throwing our hands up in the air with another easy jab at “unions and bureaucrats,” we should demand that the union and school district do what they are allowed to do under the very imaginative and, yes, “groundbreaking” policy that they developed. They should make ProComp better based on what they now know so that they can get about the business of attracting and retaining great educators.

Yes, ProComp is complex. Yes, ProComp 1.0 was just a first step. This is what it was deliberately crafted to be, and it couldn’t have come about any other way.   Members of the A+ Committee ultimately crafted a recommendation that in large part reflects a commitment to the foundation of ProComp – that it can and should be changed over time.

But if a group of Denver citizens tries to undermine ProComp itself, the rest of the country, having marveled at our progress, will wonder what happened as they watch us set back the cause of compensation reform several decades.

EdNews highlights

Troubled Denver charter gets another chance

By Rebecca Jones

The Denver Public Schools board on Thursday gave the troubled Challenges, Choices & Images charter school another chance.

Board members voted to extend the school’s existing contract, which was set to expire on Monday, until August. And the board signaled its intent to approve, come August, a one-year probationary contract with the school.

The new contract, however, will be chock full of conditions that the school must meet if it’s to continue to operate, including an entirely new administrative staff, an entirely new governing board, a tough new personnel policy and tighter accounting policies.

“We want this school to succeed,” said board member Kevin Patterson. “That community and those students deserve every advantage we can provide them.”

Math teacher prep a national crisis: study

By Alan Gottlieb

Most education schools across the country fail dismally to prepare their students to teach elementary mathematics well, a new study says.

Unless math instruction in elementary schools improves markedly and soon, the United States will continue to lose its competitive edge to countries with superior math programs, the study warns.

Two Colorado teacher preparation programs – Metropolitan State College of Denver and Colorado College – were among the 77 included in the study. Both CC and MSCD “failed on all measures” to prepare elementary math teachers adequately. Forty-eight percent of the programs studied fell into this lowest category.

Blog highlights

CCI stays open: a travesty of a mockery of a sham

Friday, June 27, 2008
Written by: Alan Gottlieb

I haven’t carefully studied the strange case of Challenges, Choices and Images charter school. But then again, the facts seems so stark that I’m not sure I need to. In voting 7-0 to keep open a school that is by all measures failing, the Denver school board would seem to be doing the equivalent of keeping a ripening corpse on life support to make the family feel better.

Will Denver never close a charter school, no matter how hideous its performance? It is beginning to seem that way. The board’s reluctance to pull the trigger actually tarnishes even the city’s stellar charters. Unlike the Life Skills charter, which the district had valid reasons to spare, CCI students would have other options, which couldn’t possibly be worse. (Could they?)

Never mind that the school will have a new leader, governing board, chalk, fresh paint on the walls, fresh-cut flowers in every classroom, whatever. The fact that this school will remain open is, to quote Woody Allen (that well-known school reformer), a travesty of a mockery of a sham.

The impressive new DPS School Performance Framework ranks CCI as one of the four worst elementary schools in the city, the second-worst middle school, and the single worst high school See the data here ). CCI is not a new school: its CSAP results have been in sharp decline since 2005, and were not particularly good back then.

In 2007, not a single student was proficient in 8th grade math or writing, and just 8% were proficient in reading; in 10th grade again zero in math, 3% in writing and 21% in reading. I can hardly wait to see the 2007-08 numbers. On CCI’s School Accountability Report the school ranked low in every category, and was in decline in both elementary and middle, with a significant decline in high school.

And did you notice that I haven’t even mentioned the juicy stuff yet? The "mixing public and private dollars, hiring convicted felons and bouncing paychecks to its teachers," to quote the dailies?

The stringent corrective actions the board is now forcing upon the school are probably a couple of years too late. I guess it took a full-blown crisis, like having the assistant principal arrested for buying crack (not his first arrest by a long shot) to force some action.

I hope CCI becomes the next Denver School of Science and Technology. But I’m no David Blaine: I’m not holding my breath.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Legislative/political follies, School choice, Accountability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Edit this entry.

One Response to “CCI stays open: a travesty of a mockery of a sham”

1. Alexander Ooms Says:

This was a remarkable decision in several ways.
First, while the BOE did extract significant concessions — including the change of both governance and the entire administrative team — as Alan notes, the academic performance of the school has been poor for years (hence their probationary status). If the media reports on the more salacious details had never broken, it seems likely that the school would have continued without any significant change at all. It truly never should have gotten to this point, as this sort of reform should have been mandated earlier: it is reminiscent of the Animal House fraternity’s reaction when placed on “double-secret probation” - have a monster toga party. CCI seems to have done just that, since some of the more spectacular infractions occurred while the school was already on BOE probation.
Second is the juxtaposition with another of that evening’s votes: the narrow 4-3 decision to approve the application for Envision Charter Schools. Do the four BOE members who voted for both think they will be roughly equal in quality and think the opportunities for kids will be the same? And even worse, do the three BOE members who voted in favor of CCI and against Envision really imagine that the latter would have been a worse school? That kids would be better off at CCI than Envision? It is not the first time the BOE vote has favored bad existing schools against the promise of better new schools, but if you can’t vote to close the bad ones, it makes it a lot harder to vote to open new good ones.
Third are some factors Alan does not mention. CCI had an $18M bond (some reports have bond debt as high as $25M overall) from April of 2007. I had imagined the bond markets would have more discipline than sub-prime mortgages, but giving CCI $18M is full knowledge of the 2006 and earlier test results is remarkable. I can’t imagine commercial considerations were not a factor. In addition was the “private audience” between a former Mayor and the BOE. At some point members of communities whose children are graduating into society completely unprepared to succeed have to realize they are doing no one a favor by perpetuating low achievement. Even Al Sharpton is pushing for education reform (see the Education Equity Project). When you are to the left of Al, it might be time to look around.
What is clear about all this is the need for the BOE and DPS to come up with a different process for renewing Charter schools. The repeated designation of “probation” for failing Charter schools - many of whom stretch their probationary period across multiple years — is incredulous. After several years of work, DPS’s review process for a new Charter is, in contrast, pretty solid. If CCI had to come in the same door for renewal that Envision did for its initial Charter, it would hopefully have been a different story, but the current vague process and back-alley negotiations are less conducive to quality education than they are to assistant principals looking for a fix. There are lots of ways to improve the renewal process so that this does not happen again, and continuing to allow poor Charters to exist undermines the closure of equally low-performing District schools and the overall commitment to quality.

Are K-8s and 6-12s deckchairs on the Titanic?

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Written by: Rachel Pickett

The New York Times recently ran an article about a new trend in middle school reform: out with middle schools.

Schools from New York City to California (including our Mapleton district) are experimenting with absorbing those middle grades-only schools; they’re being incorporated into a K-8 or a 6-12 structure. Why, you ask? Well, the slump in test scores causing us educators so much grief gains massive momentum in these middle years. The idea behind the reform is that a K-8 structure absorbs some of the rough transition kids feel when they enter into traditional middle schools. 11-14 year-old kids are already bombarded with hormones, social cliques, and emerging adulthood.

In a K-8 structure they can turn to teachers they have grown up with for extra support as they deal with all of these many challenges. A different philosophy underlies the 6-12 structure: in such schools, educators are thinking, younger students will naturally focus on their futures as they watch older students work hard to get into college.

I feel mixed about the purposes of this reform. Fewer transitions make sense: I’m all for building community and continuity in kids’ learning lives. School can be a place of safety and stability, especially for kids growing up in poverty (given that living in poverty can cause family transience).

Maybe this new vision of middle school would help support safety for student learning – which would be a very good thing. And yet, switching to this structure isn’t going to change anything unless we’re also addressing bigger issues like best practice, poverty, race, student engagement, bullying, changing demographics and achievement gaps… in these new K-8 or 6-12 schools.

I don’t understand how we can even tell if this kind of reform is ‘working’ or not. We can and do look at test scores across the country, comparing the scores of these new schools with the scores of traditional middle schools. If the scores are higher we think ‘working’ and if they remain the same we scratch our heads.

We can wonder if changing structure will be a cure to falling test scores… and if we do that we are yet again putting a band-aid on this gigantic problem of school reform. How do we support student academic achievement when their scores begin falling? How do we support kids to such a degree that their scores do not begin falling in the first place? And, how can all kids discover that they are leaders in the world of tomorrow?

Focusing on structure alone is an attempt at circumventing our problems, and we can’t avoid them. However, maybe a supportive middle school structure can give us all the space we need to face and address them.

4 Responses to “Are K-8s and 6-12s deckchairs on the Titanic?”

1.    David Ethan Greenberg Says:
2.    June 26th, 2008 at 11:55 am e
On Monday the Denver School of Science & Technology opened its doors to its first class of 6th graders, step one in the transition from a high school to a secondary (6-12) school model. The decision was based on four years of experience with 9th graders who came in substantially below grade level, particularly in math. In many cases, despite devoting enormous resources to remediation…summer school, up to 500 minutes of math per week, tutors…it was impossible for the students to catch up within a year.

Our hope and belief is that it will be easier for 6th graders, given the proper academic setting and emotional support, to make the gains needed to catch up. This, in turn, will allow the school to provide these students a more challenging range of courses once they enter high school.

Ain’t no way to find out but to try…
3.    Paul Mueller Says:

I’m afraid I must disagree with your conclusion. Changing the structure and institution of education is the ONLY way to improve performance. The good will and suggestions of countless teachers, administrators, and commentators have not changed student performance and achievement in any meaningful way. Why? Because it is the system itself that resists change.

If we are going to improve performance, it must be through systemic changes. Vouchers and charter schools are two examples. Performance based pay rather than tenure based pay is another. Think about the failure of “tweaking” schools and trying to use “best practices” or focusing on school safety. These ideas have not led to change because they were not the only or even main problem facing our schools. It’s time to think differently about how to approach education policy.

4.    van schoales Says:

Rachel, You are right. Structural change will not have much impact on student success…remember the former Manual, Cole, West, North…the list goes on. You do, however need to change structure while you radically change the relationships among all in the school AND simultaneously change the teaching/learning environment. The linchpin for much of this work is built around school culture. Structure can be an enabling condition for much deeper change. The problem is that most begin and end with structure. It’s a new block schedule, algebra class, test, school uniform, advisory, charter etc. The challenge is so much greater than any one of these “solutions.” Schools need incredible leadership, detailed designs, clear measurable benchmarks and relentless attention to the development of a culture of excellence.

5.    Rachel Says:

Thank you both for your comments and experience! I can see how having a 6-12 structure would support kids and teachers because we get a more years to focus on our teaching and their learning. My point is that any structural change also needs to be coupled with thoughtful, reflective, innovative instruction that takes all students into account. If grade structure is the only thing changing then I don’t understand how that alone will boost student academic performance. When grade structure is coupled with intelligent shifts in classroom, curriculum, and instructional structure, who knows what the possibilities of our schools are? Maybe the sky is the limit…

Smaller districts facing challenges as well

Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Written by: Ben Everson

Boulder Valley School District is facing a split, DPS and other large districts around the state will be asking for more money this fall, but smaller districts around the state are facing tough decisions this summer as well.

The ( Longmont) Daily Times-Call is reporting this week on the ongoing deliberations by the St. Vrain Valley School District Board of Education to put both a bond issue and mill-levy override on the November ballot. This, as everywhere, is a potentially contentious issue in the face of rising prices and a weakened economy, and the Times-Call’s regurgitation of whatever the school board tells its reporters would seem to bear this out.

Interestingly, the bond issue has weaker support than the mill-levy override, which right now would seem to be passable — a first ever for this much less affluent Boulder County school district. And according to the district’s consultants, a smaller bond issue has a better chance of passing.

On one hand, this may be good news if the limited funds actually go towards shoring up existing buildings — the district is preparing to open two outlying high schools in the next several years while some of its central schools struggle with declining enrollment, disappointing student achievement, and deteriorating facilities.

Those surveyed by the district’s consultants seem to be more supportive of fixing what they have (and improving class size, etc. for students and existing teachers) rather than building more schools. There’s no indication in the story, however, of whether the board might allocate less bond money, if they choose that route. Unfortunately, the story also does not seem to include its own, even informal and anecdotal, poll of taxpayers regarding these proposals. Maybe next time.