Research Shows Merit Pay for Teachers a Poor Idea

Did policy makers read the study published last week by the Economic Policy Institute showing that merit-pay for teachers may be ineffective and have unintended negative consequences.

EPI economist Joydeep Roy, co-editor with NYU’s Sean Corcoran of this series, noted that “Policymakers should probably think twice before they transfer to education the pay system that has helped generate the global financial crisis.”

Research shows that merit pay plans are less common in the private sector than people think.  Only one in seven employees is covered by a merit pay plan and most of those workers are in real estate or sales.

In the proposed plans for teachers supported by Obama and by the US Department of Education in their Race to the Top grants, merit pay plans tie teachers’ pay to the scores their students earn on standardized math and reading tests. Advocates of this approach base their support on two assumptions: first, that merit pay is long-established and widespread in the private sector, and second, that students’ test scores are a reliable way to gauge how well teachers are doing their jobs. Both assumptions are faulty, according to the research report by the Economic Policy Institute.

In Teachers, Performance Pay, and Accountability: What Education Should Learn from Other Sectors, They also note that researchers Scott J. Adams, John S. Heywood and Richard Rothstein examine the evidence that underlies these assumptions, concluding that the use of merit pay systems has negative consequences that often block the larger goal of improving the quality of services.

Daniel Pink, author of the best selling book,  Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, has an great presentation on YouTube discussing what motivates skilled labor people to do excellent work and surprisingly, it isn’t money.

The three reasons that Pink says people are motivated to do excellent work:

• they are aligned with the purpose of the job
• they are given some autonomy
• they are supported in gaining mastery of the job

Pink says, that “When the profit motive become unmoored from the purpose motive bad things happen—like poor quality, shoddy work.”   We don’t want teachers who are focused primarily on money and not on our kids.

Studies show that teachers are already purpose driven and while merit pay may temporarily improve performance over all it has no positive impact. Teachers need to be given more respect, more autonomy, better overall pay, supplies, and more classroom support to master their teaching skills.   Merit pay doesn’t work for the workplace and is a terrible idea for schools.  We need to stop looking for the silver bullet and start doing what we know works:  supporting teachers in the classroom. The solution sounds too simple in our high tech world, but it works.

Online University for Free

Worried about college costs?

College does not need to cost thousands of dollars per year.  Now there is an online university where students can go for free.  The only fees are for application and examination processing–both of which are nominal.

Meet the University of the People a nonprofit with a proven business model that is the world’s first tuition-free online academic institution dedicated to the advancement of higher education.

It was founded by educational entrepreneur, Shai Reshef, named one of  Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business” in 2009. Shai has 20 years experience in the education market.

Shai’s idea is to offer access to high education regardless of location, finances, gender, culture or race.  He is using Moodle (a course management system), open educational resources (OER), social networking and peer-to-peer learning as the model for the university.

You’re in luck if you are interested in studying computer science or business administration, since those are the only two programs in full operation at the moment.  So far the university has accepted 450 students from 87 countries, including the USA, China, Indonesia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia.  More programs will be added as the numbers of students grow. Students are not charged for taking classes or accessing study materials.

In order to be sustainable, the university needs 15,000 students — realistic, considering it is available to students worldwide.  The University also needs donations.  $80 will send one student to University of the People for a term. For some, that might be the cost of a dinner or a new sweater. For students, it’s the building block for a better life. Whether you donate $8 or $80, you are bringing students one step closer to their goal. The University needs US$6 million for sustainability.  So far Shai is the primary funder, with a donation of $1 million.

The academic leadership is impressive: in addition to Shai Reshef, there is Provost Dr. Harris Cohen (Columbia University), Department of Computer Science Chair Dr. Alexander Tuzhilin (New York University), Department of Business Administration Chair Dr. Russell S. Winer (New York University), and Associate Dean of General Studies Dr. Ruth Yakir (Kibbutzim College)

So if you are a prospective student, check out University of the People. If you would like to help make the world a better place, consider donating to help those who are missing the opportunity for higher education. With your help, higher education can become reality for millions.

Learn more about feeding the global movement at University of the People.

Why Many Students Should Pass on Ivy League Schools

Every year when spring arrives, the tension of waiting for college acceptance letters permeates my school. As high school educators, we watch as some of our students become despondent after getting rejection letters from the colleges of their choice. Getting into good schools is harder than it was five years ago, and this year I expect it to be even worse. As their trusted sources in the world of education, we teachers need to help students find a balanced perspective.

Here is some good advice to share with your students to help them not only accept their rejection letter,  but also look at it as an opportunity.  Here is a blog post I wrote for Edutopia, a great resource for teachers.

Teachers are the Key

Here is a pretty shocking statistic.

More than 40% of teachers today are disheartened and disappointed in their jobs according to a study just released by Learning Points Associates.   It is hard to be an inspirational caring teacher if you don’t want to be there.

The study showed that seven in 10 teachers cited testing as major drawback and 61 percent also  cited lack of support from administrators and nearly 75% cited “discipline and behavior issues” in the classroom.

This is a very challenging situation for policy makers because the solution to the education crisis in our country is the teacher.  Last week Michelle Obama wrote an article in US News and World Report that was titled “Teachers are Key to a Successful Economy.” I couldn’t agree more.

The Gates Foundation also came to the same conclusion after spending years focusing on small schools.   They are now focusing on teacher effectiveness.

As a long time teacher at Palo Alto High and someone who has seen multiple education fads come and go, I think thought leaders have finally come to the right focus —  the teacher is the key.  No matter what books are provided, no matter what curriculum is required …  the key is how the teacher feels about what she is teaching and how she treats her students.

I am sure everyone can remember a teacher they liked, but they can also remember a teacher they disliked because the teacher seemed to dislike students. Students know when a teacher doesn’t want to be there; they know it just by being in the classroom.  It’s not fun. At one point these teachers probably liked students and teaching, but they now somehow feel trapped in a job that no longer provides the same pleasures it once did. These teachers actually don’t dislike students; they dislike what they are required to do– teach to a test, like NCLB tests, year after year and work with ineffective administrators.

Over the past eight years teachers nationwide have been teaching to the NCLB test which is why many of them are disheartened and burned out.

No matter what the administration dictates, when a teacher closes the door and is the classroom alone with the students, he/she is in charge.   If the teacher is well-trained, then the students will learn more.  If the teacher is happy to be there, then the students will be more content in the classroom.   The teacher sets the tone; the teacher provides the activities; the teacher plans the day. Happy students work harder.  Happy teachers teach better.

It sounds like an old adage, but what we need to do as a nation is to support teachers in the classroom and modify the NCLB Act which is now up for Congressional renewal.  Supporting teachers is key to our success as a nation. Support means supporting increases in teachers salaries, respecting  the role of teachers in society, donating money to school foundations, volunteering to work in the classroom, and modifying the NCLB Act to so tha teachers are not motivated to teach to the test.

Students Write Letters to the Next President

Most adults wonder what teenagers think.   Now we have an opportunity to find out.

For the past couple of months, thousands of students across the nation have spent time in the classroom thinking about this country’s political and social issues and then writing their ideas down in the Letters to the Next President project sponsored by the National Writing Project and Google.  These letters have just been published this past weekend and now everyone can see what the next generation thinks. Below is a three-minute video now is up that shows students around the country talking about the issues that are most important to them.

To help users search the Letters to the Next President website has  a built in search bar that enables users to search by geographical region and by topic.

Kids loved the project because it helped them feel connected to the political process. It also helped that their letters were also going to have a national audience.  They wrote the letters using the collaborative features of Google Docs which enabled them to work with peers and get quick online feedback from their teachers.

Check out the letters. You will be surprised to hear what students think. You can use these letters in your classroom to show what other students are thinking about the major issues that face our country

Disclaimer: I am a long time high school journalism teacher at Palo Alto High School, Palo Alto, CA, but I also have children who are either employed by or otherwise have a financial interest in Google. I am not employed by Google and own no Google stock.

The Presidential Race: A Way for Teachers to Teach Skills and Get Kids Involved

The presidential race is getting hotter: Obama & Biden vs. McCain and Palin.   It is exciting to talk about it in the classroom and here is a way to do it and get student to learn important skills at the same time.

As educators, we cannot promote one person or one party over another, but that does not mean we should be ignoring the 2008 presidential race in the classroom.   The idea is to get the kids to watch the debates, read the blogs and columns, and come to their own decisions.   The classroom is a great place for kids to share their ideas and feelings about the presidential race.

Here are some ideas that will both get the students excited and involved in what they are seeing on television and on the web. 

There is a great unit plan from The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) called Propaganda Techniques in Literature and Online Political Ads. What could be more relevant?  It has some engaging ideas.

Turns out NCTE also has  a great website with lots of great free resources called ReadWriteThink.  You might want to check it out on a regular basis.

Here are examples of the multiple handouts for the Propaganda Techniques in Literature and Online Political Ads lesson plan:

• Propaganda Techniques Used in Literature chart,
• Analyzing Propaganda in Print Ads and Commercials,
• Propaganda Techniques Used in Online Political Ads handout
• Persuasive Essay rubric.

The goals of the lesson plan are outstanding:

• analyze texts to identify different types of propaganda techniques.
• identify and explain the goal of propaganda techniques used in a work of literature and an example of non-print media.
• compare and contrast examples of propaganda techniques used in a work of literature and visual media.
• identify and gather evidence from a secondary source.
• use visual literacy skills to analyze, interpret, and explain non-print media.
• participate in a class discussion, gather information, and write a persuasive essay that synthesizes information from their explorations of propaganda

Some of the books that teachers can use include Orwell’s 1984 and Brave New World, Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, Orson Card’s  Ender’s Game, and Margaret Atwood’s HandMaid’s Tale. There are many additional books, short stories, plays and movies that are also listed in the lesson plan and that you can use.  Just check out the website.

In addition to getting kids involved and interested in the presidential race this lesson plan helps  connect the real world with the literature they are reading, and provides and opportunity to teach them how to improve their own web research as well as evaluate the credentials of a website.

There is even more…to help you out.

There are some great resources offered by By the People, a PBS resource that is organized by the NacNeil/Lehrer Productions to bring the views of “ordinary citizens” to a national level.
They have news for students, lesson plans, teachers resources and even video.
going to the website OntheIssues which has every candidate’s position on all the issues.
Democrats: Barack Obama, Joe Biden; Republicans–John McCain, Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin herself offers multiple opportunities for kids to do research about issues connected with her campaign.

Kids can research the intelligent design vs. the theory of evolution debate, the abstinence only sex education vs. the Planned Parenthood sex education issues,  the problems associated with teenage pregnancy, the recent Alaskan history,  glass ceiling for women, and earmarks in federal funding.

In addition Google offers some election tools for teachers that are timely and helpful.

For teachers of English and social studies what is going on in the political world makes for a natural teaching opportunity that will engage students and promote learning of basic skills.
Hopefully, many of us will take this opportunity.  Let’s train students to be aware and engaged in the democratic process.

A Great Assignment to Start the School Year….Write Letters to Our Next President

School is about to start for many teachers and students around the country.  The first question for most teachers is so “what am I going to do in the first few weeks of school to get the kids excited about learning?”  Well, here is a great idea to get the kids involved and excited.  The National Writing Project is sponsoring an essay writing campaign called Letters to Our Next President in collaboration with Google.   The purpose of this—to get kids excited about writing,facilitate peer editing, and help students get involved in the upcoming presidential race.

It is super easy way to get kids to write a persuasive letter and submit it because it is all done on Google Docs. No collecting essays, no going to the post office just at the deadline to mail them in….just have the kids do it on the computer and submit it.   The instructions are all on the National Writing Project website.  It is also exciting for the kids because they can use the latest in collaborative Web 2.0 technology which makes them feel empowered.

One great feature of this assignment (thanks to the Google Docs platform) is that kids can work both at home and at school on the assignment without worrying about emailing the document to themselves or carrying it on a disk or data stick. That is because it is on Google Docs (a free service) which is available anywhere in the world that the user has an Internet connection.  Also, this exciting assignment will get them involved in the upcoming presidential campaign as well as get them trained in 21st century skills.

Another great feature of this assignment is all the support from the National Writing Project, an amazing support group for teachers of writing in all disciplines.  It focuses on the core mission of improving the teaching of writing and improving the use of writing across the disciplines by offering high-quality professional development programs for educators in their service areas, at all grade levels, K–16 and across the curriculum

If you don’t know anything about Google Docs, it is an online word processing program that facilitates collaboration. Kids can peer edit and even collaborate online easily.  All the students have to do is to go to Docs.Google.com and sign up for a Google Account (which is different than an email address).  The Google Account just registers the students as users so that Google knows it isn’t some machine signing up for the account instead of a real person.No need to change your email address.  Make sure students use the same password they have for their email address or they will forget it.  Once they do that, then they go to Documents and to File and they are in.

For instructions on how to use Docs, the kids and teachers can watch this video which gives the viewer an idea of how to use Docs. If you are going to take students into a computer lab, I suggest that you tell kids to bring headphones so they can listen to the video without disturbing the other kids (they will love doing that!)  Or you can play it for the class as a whole.  In addition, here are some other support materials that will help you get started on the National Writing Project website. They even provide support for teachers who have questions by writing to letters2president@nwp.org

Next, teachers need to register their class by providing name, school name and contact information (super easy form) and brief list of the class or classes. Teachers need to sign up their classes by September 8, 2008.  One last but important thing: there is a parent/guardian permission form (PDF) that needs to be send home with the kids and returned to the teacher.  That’s it.

To publish the essays on a special Google site,  the teacher submits the essays on Docs which will then be posted on the public website to showcase the students’ work.  The NWP and Google provide teachers an easy way to submit.

To get started, check out this very helpful video for teachers that shows some of the ways Google Docs can save teachers time and can make writing fun for students. The video is short,  to the point, and shows practicing teachers and administrators talking about how it helped in the classroom.

This project gives students in English and Social Studies classes an opportunity to write a persuasive essay about a real life topic that matters to them….the upcoming Presidential race..   Google Docs even created a special template for this project which can be found on the site.  The National Writing Project has a wonderful list of resources designed to help teachers and students do research.

My  freshman English classes and my journalism classes will be introduced to this project on the third day of school (after all the required formalities).  They will spend the day in the computer lab getting acquainted with Docs and with the resources.   It should be an exciting beginning of the 2008-9 school year both of students and for me as a a teacher.

General Resources

• The League of Women Voters Provides information about the campaign issues, voter registration support, and a citizen’s guide to the electoral process.
• OneVote 2008 A teen-oriented guide to the election produced by ChannelOne.com, a youth news site.
• Rock the Vote Aims to motivate young voters through its content and visual style, which appeal to teens.
• Googlitics Contains links and lessons to help students participate and learn about American political elections with online tools from Google.

Resources for Teens About Issues in the News

• These websites provide information about current issues, news, and culture, aimed at a teen audience.
• NewsHour Extra A news source for teens that includes Student Voices — essays and editorials written by students
• .Pop+Politics Provides a forum for discussion and debate among young people about current politics and culture.
• WireTap The Webby-winning national news and culture magazine whose targeted audience is young people.Related Resource Topics
• Teaching Writing – General Resources on Teaching Writing

Another valuable way to find help is to go to this special link on Delicious that has some additional resources for the Letter to our Next President project: http://delicious.com/ElyseEA
You can also search on Delicious using these tags:

• finding student models
• rubrics and tools for persuasive writing
• teaching persuasive writing
• tips for better WOF pieces

More Resources for Teachers provided by the National Writing Project

The Writing Classroom as a Laboratory for Democracy

Getting Real: Authenticity in Writing Prom

The Five-Paragraph Theme Redux

Open Education Resources Can Help Teachers in Planning for Their Classroom

Teachers—if you are looking for ideas and lesson plans to incorporate into your lesson plans, check out Open Educational Resources (OER). Most teachers don’t know much about them because they are hard to find on the web, but here are some websites you may find useful.

The open education movement is supported by many groups but one of the most generous funders is the Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, CA. One of the richest repositories of OER for grades K-12 can be found at www.OERCommons.org founded by Dr. Lisa Petrides in Half Moon Bay, California. Other groups targeting the K12 area include Curriki, HotChalk</a> and <a href=”http://www.scholastic.com/kids/”>Scholastic.</a&gt;. Scholastic is planning to come out with a special site of open resources some time this spring that will be built around book titles. It should be pretty exciting for English teachers.

Other excellent resources at the college level include MIT Open Courseware, UC Berkeley Open Courses, and Yale University Open Courses

Open Courseware Consortium lists all the universities with online courses. Here is a video about them. Monterey Institute for Technology and Education has wonderful courses available to high school students and Rice University has a great site called Connexions.

At the preschool level, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center founded by Joan Ganz Cooney, one of the founders of Sesame Street, is working to make preschool and early education materials available on the web. Keep an eye on them because materials from Between the Lions which teaches literacy skills will be appearing soon.

The Europeans have a great site and much of it is in English so you might want to check out , the EuropeanSchoolNet. Even in China, there is CORE, which has open educational materials in Chinese and English. Here are a couple of other important sites: Merlot that has about 60,000 members and CK12 dedicated to providing low-cost or free textbooks to students worldwide.

In my teaching, I have found these resources to be helpful giving me ideas and resources that otherwise would have taken me hours to prepare. I hope that they can be helpful to other teachers too.

Shortsighted plans for California education

The new year has brought bad news for education in California. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for a 10 percent spending reduction and a cut of $4 billion from the state education budget. Unfortunately, it most likely will not be just California cutting the education budget. It is a sad to think that our country can spend almost a 150 billion dollars a year on a war, but cut funding to educate our own children.

As a classroom teacher, I spend time teaching students how to allocate their time and prioritize. I also teach them that the same holds true for their spending habits; they need to prioritize and plan for the future. Somehow this wisdom is missing from the federal and state levels as our leaders spend recklessly today and fail to plan for our basic needs now and for tomorrow. Cutting the budget in a state that serves 6.5 million students is shortsighted. While it is admirable that Schwarzenegger is trying to balance the budget, he should not be doing it at the expense of education.

Poor education leads to higher crime rates and higher long term costs for prisons and prisoners. The increase in cost of corrections outpaced the cost of health, education, or natural resources, according to State Prison Expenditure report from 2001, seven years ago. In 2001, states spent $38.2 billion to maintain the states correctional systems. You can imagine what they are spending today.

“Nationally, FY 2006 general fund corrections spending grew 10 percent above FY 2005 levels. This was the fastest growing category of the four spending areas that NCSL tracks in its State Budget Actions reports and well above what policymakers expected: they had budgeted corrections to grow 4.1 percent,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The question I have for legislators and decision makers is the following: wouldn’t it be better for all of us if we spent more on education than on correcting adult criminal behavior?

Which of our presidential candidates will prioritize spending so that the education of our children will improve and correctional costs will go down?

What will it take for Schwarzenegger to see that his proposed education budget cuts are misguided?

The principal is the key to a good school

It comes as no surprise to me that an important study by Advocates for Children and Youth, a Baltimore-based nonprofit has found that principals are the keys to good schools. Anyone who would have asked teachers would have gotten that answer long ago.

“We believe the principal is key to leading a school to success. … It’s a matter of paying now or paying later. The cost is so much smaller if we pay now,” said Terrylynn Tyrell, the education director for Advocates for Children and Youth.

The principal sets the tone for the school starting with day one of the school year. He/she also sets the tone for support for the teacher. If a teacher does not feel supported or cannot get help when needed, then it directly impacts the teacher in the classroom. As a classroom teacher, I can tell you that is true. I have been lucky for for most of my teaching years in that I have had supportive principals. As a journalism teacher whose students might write articles that are critical of the administration having a supportive principal who is supportive of First Amendment rights is the key for me. When I first started teaching, years ago I did not have a supportive principal. It was in San Carlos, CA at a school that is now closed. My students wrote an article about teenage problems with their parents and I was reprimanded for that. I was told to “control those students” which, of course, impacted my program and the students feelings of independence and creativity.

New teachers in particular need administrative support with everything from classroom management to classroom supplies. I noticed in a NY Times articles that 50 schools got failing grades I am not surprised when the article said that the principals were being removed as a first step. We as a country need to find good administrators, pay them well, and then give them the support they need to work with the teachers. Education is a community effort and involves parents, administrators, and teachers. No one group can do it alone. We all need to work together. Hillary Clinton said it well in her book It Takes a Village: and Other Lessons Children Teach Us.