House Committee Tackles Teacher Effectiveness

Special Educators to be Impacted

On Wednesday, the Education and the Workforce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing to address one of the most controversial topics under discussion for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act/No Child Left Behind: defining teacher effectiveness.

 On Capitol Hill – consistent with new legislation in many states – movement has been away from accepting a teacher as effective simply because they are deemed “highly qualified” and toward basing effectiveness – in part – on the academic outcomes of students on standardized assessments.  What such a system looks like for special educators and other educators who are not directly linked to a standardized assessment is now under discussion, though few answers have emerged. 

 

CEC has been actively engaged in many of these conversations, often raising questions that have not been considered, such as how to evaluate teachers in co-teaching situations and how to create systems that encourage and reinforce collaboration between special and general education.  CEC has many ESEA recommendations in this area (which can be found here) but CEC wants to hear from you!  How is your school handling evaluation /pay-for-performance systems for special educators?  Respond to this posting or email pubpol@cec.sped.org

This week’s hearing marks the beginning of the process to draft legislation regarding teacher effectiveness.  Witnesses included:

• The Honorable Kevin S. Huffman , Tennessee Commissioner of Education provided a summary of the new Tennessee statewide teacher evaluation system which will be launched in 2011-2012 whereby 35% of a teachers evaluation will be determined by value-added scores from standardized tests.  Tennessee is currently working to determine what measure will comprise this 35% for teachers in non-tested areas and for this coming year will use a school-wide growth score.
• Mr. Tom Boasberg,  Superintendent of Denver Public Schools  outlined Denver’s Leading Effective Academic Practice system (LEAP) evaluates teachers based on multiple measures (student outcomes, principal observation data, peer observer observation data, collaborative professionalism/contributions to team and school, student perception data). 
• Mr. David Cicarella , President, New Haven Federation of Teachers discussed how collaboration between the union, the mayor, and superintendent resulted in the implementation of a new teacher evaluation system which includes multiple measures of professional performance tied to professional development.
• Ms. Kate Walsh, President, National Council on Teacher Quality outlined recommendations for the reauthorization of ESEA, one of which was have federal policies that prompt states to reconsider K-12 certification for special education teachers, particularly those teaching in secondary school.  Citing an NCTQ finding that 35 states do not require that secondary special education teachers graduate highly qualified in any core academic areas, and that 16 states only require special education teachers to be qualified in one core area, Walsh spoke of the need to increase special education teacher competency in core academic areas to advance teacher quality goals.

For more information on the hearing, click here. 

Tell CEC about your evaluation system and whether it includes pay-for-performance by posting to this entry or by emailing pubpol@cec.sped.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Sam]

Our school does not currently provide pay for performance however we are in the process of possible changes due to Senate Bill 5 in Ohio, and this is one of the outcomes. I think it is very important to stress the difference between highly qualified teachers and effective teachers in our education system today. After reading Ms. Kate Walsh's recommendations it is evident there are some concerns regarding whether our teachers today are truly HQT and what schools do we trust to provide our schools with these educators. Her recommendations to Congress are very well written and reasonable, asking for educators to be more effective. In order to pay for performance should we only base the performance off of state assessment results or should it be trusted in administrations opinions of our performance as well? I think it is evident the definition of teacher effectivenss and highly qualified teacher needs to be cleared in order to go on with a pay for performance base to be put into play.

[Khara]

In response to the issue of pay-for-performance: I taught for 10 years Raleigh, North Carolina, and I taught at a school that was in its second year of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP). One of the key components of TAP is performance based compensation. Teachers can earn money (a bonus check after the end of the school year) for performance for up to three areas: school wide performance, classroom performance, and individual teacher performance (based on evaluations). Each factor is weighted, so even if your class does not perform well, you would still be awarded money if you exhibited good instructional practices.
However, as a Special Education Teacher with a Resource classroom, with students from all grade levels, I did not have my own "class"; my students were in the regular education classroom and were pulled-out for one or two periods a day. Because of this, I was not eligible to receive any money for classroom performance, no matter how well the students I served did on their end of year tests. I did not exactly see this as fair when I was the one providing all reading and math instruction to many of my students. Many of my students, while they did not pass the end-of-grade test, made a substantial amount of growth from the previous year; some of my students made one to two years growth.
Since this “merit pay” was in addition to our regular salaries, we could not complain too much. However, I question the systems and legislators who feel that teachers should only be paid based on performance, doing away with salaries altogether. Even the best teachers sometimes have “bad” years, especially if they have a lot of ESL, Special education, or at-risk students in their classrooms. They could have excellent personal evaluations but still end up with low standardized test scores. It is demoralizing and stressful knowing that your students did not make AYP. Add to that the possibility that you cannot ever count on a steady income, because you won’t know how your students will do until after testing is completed, is going to discourage many teachers from staying in the field. It is also going to discourage those who may have considered becoming teachers.
I believe that the idea of pay-for-performance is a good one, but evaluations, which can often be very subjective, need to be looked at very carefully and specific, realistic criteria needs to be established. The concept needs to be studied much more before these decisions are made. I agree with the Honorable Kevin S. Huffman that measures for teachers who work in non-tested areas needs to be worked on. This also goes for Special Educators who co-teach or pull students out of regular classrooms for parts of the day.