Reforming Educator Evaluations and Pay

Resources on Educator Evaluation and Pay Reform

In an April 14^th Informational Letter to school officials, Education Commissioner Susan Gendron announced that the state, in cooperation with a stakeholder group created by recent legislation, was to begin work developing models for teacher evaluation systems that make use of student achievement data. If Maine is to apply for up to $75 million in federal Race to the Top (RTT) grants, the state must show that such evaluation models are available for use by Maine’s school districts. Because Maine’s RTT application is due in Washington on June 1, time is short for the state and the stakeholder group to study and approve these evaluation models.  The Governor recently issued an Executive Order requiring that the stakeholder group approve at least one such model by May 14, less than a month away.

The Maine Heritage Policy Center has done some research work in this area, having produced two reports on alternative teacher pay models back in 2007. The first, titled Reforming Teacher Pay in Maine - Part 1: How Alternative Teacher Compensation Systems are Improving Student Outcomes, provides an overview of the concept of performance-based compensation, including a critique of the “single salary schedule” system under which nearly every teacher in the country is compensated today. The second research paper, titled Reforming Teacher Pay in Maine - Part 2:Making Alternative Teacher Compensation Systems Work, looks at best practices for performance-based teacher pay systems and made recommendations for Maine’s policymakers. Taken together, these two papers provide readers with a quick primer on performance-based evaluation and compensation systems.

Those looking for more information about the issue of performance-based evaluation and compensation systems for educators should check out the following links.

The Center for Educator Compensation Reform was created to support states and school districts who have won federal Teacher Incentive Fund grants. The Teacher Incentive Fund was created in 2006 and provides funds to states and school districts wishing to develop performance-based evaluation and compensation systems. The Center’s website contains a wealth of information on TIF-funded programs all over the nation and a clickable map shows provides details on the compensation reform programs that have been launched in the 32 states that have won TIF grants. Maine, alas, is not among them.

An excellent source for information on efforts to improve broader human resource management in schools is the Strategic Management of Human Capital in Public Schools project at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. SMHC, as it is known, takes a much broader look at how teacher and school administrators are recruited, trained, placed, supported, evaluated and compensated, and promotes a far broader and more comprehensive approach to the management of the human resources in the nation’s schools. A good place to start a review of SMHC’s work is a new primer on the concept of human capital management in public schools, which is available on center’s website along with a number of other resources.

Another source of good information on performance-based evaluation and pay systems is the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University. Like the Center for Educator Compensation Reform, NCPI hosts a website featuring an interactive map with information on performance-based incentive programs across the county (again, Maine is not among them.) Additionally, the site features links to a number of academic studies and working papers on performance-based evaluation and compensation systems, including papers from an excellent 2008 conference hosted by the Center.

Is performance-based evaluation and compensation for teachers and school administrators a massive right-wing conspiracy? Hardly. One of the nation’s leading proponents of teacher evaluation and compensation reform is the Center for American Progress, the nation’s leading left-of-center public policy think tank. The Center’s Associate Director for Teacher Quality, Robin Chait, has authored a number of papers on teacher quality and performance-based evaluation and compensation systems. The Education Commission of the States, a national research organization run by a consortium of the states themselves, has also done a great deal of work around reforms of this kind.

While the Race to the Top might be a temporary program designed to kick-start reforms on the state level, it is becoming increasingly clear that the federal government intends to make performance-based evaluation of teachers and school administrators a central part of federal law moving forward.

Because it has not even attempted educator compensation reform in any of its school districts, Maine does not appear on any of the maps on the webpages cited above. That cannot continue. Using student performance to inform teacher and principal evaluations will happen here in Maine, it is only a matter of when.

Policymakers at both the state and local level who wish to be at the forefront of this reform movement would do well to make use of the sources identified here so we can all begin the work of moving Maine forward.

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