Sue Flicop

At Monday night’s public discussion of the Citizens Advisory Group report on performance management, I was part of the group focused on pay-for-performance. It was an interesting discussion that I hope will continue in the future. An important distinction for us all to consider is the difference between a pay-for-performance systems and cost reduction methods in education. While in the private sector, increased performance and productivity might lead to the ability to cut staff, this is not necessarily the case in education. If a teacher is very successful on all the performance measurement points, we are not then going to add more students to the classroom, or reduce supports from coaches and professional development resources. The focus of performance evaluations in education is on performance, not on cost reductions.

For almost a year, I’ve been reading up on pay-for-performance in public school systems as part of my research for the Strategic Planning Group. In this group, I have advocated strongly for a 360º evaluation system, which would include feedback from all those people who interact with the employee being evaluated. For example, parents should have an opportunity to evaluate teachers and principals, and teachers should be able to evaluate their superiors. A strong evaluation system that gathers feedback from a variety of sources is an essential part of any pay-for-performance system in Newton.

Overall, I’ve found there are two main elements we need to include no matter what the details of the merit program are: a collaborative relationship with the unions and resources to help institute the system.

First, we need to work collaboratively with the teacher’s union to develop a system that teachers, administrators, and parents understand and embrace. This includes working together to determine how to measure an excellent education—do we use MCAS scores and/or SAT scores and/or other quantitative measures? What qualitative factors do we include? How do we measure the performance of teachers whose subject areas aren’t covered by tests, like art and PE? Do we focus on performance at the school, group, or individual level? These are thorny and quite possibly contentious issues that require input and agreement from the school system and from the community.

Second, we need to have the resources to institute a reward system and make improvements when performance falls short. I don’t just mean the costs of any monetary rewards, but also the costs associated with instituting a strong evaluation system and professional development. Evaluators must be properly trained and supported to create substantive and meaningful feedback that will lead to better performance and honest assessments. Without a way to evaluate staff and to help them improve their performance, a pay-for-performance system will be ineffective at improving our children’s education.

After attending and participating in both Strategic Planning presentations, I’m interested in the diversity of opinion about setting priorities among the 12 initiatives. About half of the initiatives were focused on what and how we teach, and include interdisciplinary learning, differentiated learning, technology and media use, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), etc. I didn’t see an overwhelming consensus in this area, though many put an emphasis on “educating the whole child,” which means including the arts, music, etc. in addition to other aspects of a traditional curriculum, as well as STEM and interdisciplinary learning.

I did see that every group felt some priority should be put on the teaching staff—either in hiring top quality professionals, in retaining them, or in giving them time to collaborate. Many felt that those all went together, but disagreed on which one would lead to the others. For example, I heard people say that if we focused on retaining top quality teachers, we would also attract top quality teachers as they hear that we value their work and provide a good environment in which to teach. Others felt that hiring the best teachers would automatically create a better environment and the collaboration would inevitably happen.

Many participants commented on some missing pieces, primarily regarding the financial situation of the schools (i.e. how can we make these initiatives happen without extra money?) and the school-parent connection (i.e. what can/should parents do to support this work at home?).  These are areas we can address to improve the Strategic Plan.

It was fascinating to hear all the different ways of prioritizing…the arguments were very persuasive and passionate. On the Strategic Planning Team, we did a similar exercise and noted all the connections between the different initiatives—this was also true for the many small groups who participated.