Learning to Buy the Best Teachers Has Its Lessons

Last fall, the public school system here took a radical step. No longer would simply working another year give teachers automatic raises, which is the norm in American schools. Instead, teachers would have to demonstrate a broad range of skills in their work with students, parents and other teachers. Those who didn’t measure up could see their pay cut.

Teachers saw it as a chance to burnish their profession’s tarnished reputation. “The thrust . . . was to make the Cincinnati Public Schools a place where professionalism was valued and we’d find good teachers,” said Nancy Holtkamp, 52, a teacher at Carthage Paidaia School. “That appealed to me.”

Such a shift, while major, was in line with other changes sweeping public education. Performance-pay plans similar to Cincinnati’s are about to get underway in Philadelphia and Toledo, Ohio, and legislation to establish a statewide plan was recently signed into law in Iowa. California distributes more than $600 million in annual bonuses to teachers and schools based on student test scores, but lawmakers and school district officials have debated adopting plans more similar to Cincinnati’s.

But now, even as Congress puts the finishing touches on legislation that stresses accountability, the closely watched experiment here appears to have gone off track. Many teachers are angry and frustrated, and earlier this year they voted to oust the union leaders who negotiated the deal. And while administrators and teachers are working hard to regain momentum, the problems serve as a caution light to other school districts.

The largest lesson that teachers, administrators and experts draw from Cincinnati’s experience is that, while describing good teaching is possible on paper, it is not easy to recognize it when you see it. Evaluating teachers’ skills when thousands of dollars ride on the outcome turns out to be expensive, time-consuming and controversial.

The nation’s leading expert on performance-pay plans for teachers is Allan Odden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison education professor who was deeply involved in creating the Cincinnati model. He says other school districts should heed what’s happened here.

For example, he said, districts should not try to cut the pay of weak performers because it sparks too much opposition. Also, teachers need to be given specific examples of what is expected of them--videotapes of exemplary lessons, for example, so they have a target to shoot for.

Finally, he said, reform-minded union leaders shouldn’t get too far ahead of their members.

Rick Beck was ousted as president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers in April. The move was widely interpreted as a sign of teachers’ discontent with the evaluation system, and Beck said he now agrees that changes are needed. “We haven’t proven to the membership that the process is reliable and valid.” Until that’s done, he said, the traditional method of paying salaries ought to remain.

The performance-pay experiment is not the first time the 44,000-student school district and its teachers union have been on the cutting edge of reform. Teachers here review the performance of their peers. Failing schools can be shut down and reopened with an entirely new staff.

All of that, however, has not been enough to halt middle-class flight that has left a district that is 70% black and is considered by the state of Ohio to be in an academic emergency.

Cincinnati Supt. Steven J. Adamowski, who has been on the job two years, says performance pay is essential to the district’s turnaround. But he recognizes that the transition will not always be smooth. “This is about as fundamental change as you get.”

The tradition of paying teachers based solely on their experience and training began in the U.S. in 1921 in West Des Moines, Iowa. Before then, teachers were paid at the whim of school administrators. Women and elementary school teachers earned less than men and high school teachers.

Experiments with merit pay based on student test scores surfaced periodically. Most, however, were aberrations that disappeared quickly amid controversy over their cost or fairness.

Critics of public schools assert that merit pay is common in the private sector and effective at improving employee performance. But Edward Lawler, a management professor and director of USC’s Center for Effective Organizations, says that’s largely a myth. While professionals’ pay is often based on merit, most businesses give financial incentives only to groups of workers or to managers, whose performance can be readily quantified.

“The idea of individual pay for performance in the U.S. is highly valued and poorly managed and delivered, and often doesn’t work,” he said.

These days, schools are once again experimenting with a wide variety of ways to use paychecks to encourage teachers to work harder, learn new skills, take on additional responsibilities or boost test scores.

In Cincinnati, teacher evaluations are based on a review of a “portfolio” of teaching-related documents and on six in-class evaluations.

Many teachers still support the plan. “I don’t know how you can be more fair,” said Cynthia McCollough, a veteran teacher of learning-disabled fourth- and fifth-graders. But others see the process as unfair. Joyce Johnson, a first-grade teacher at Millvale School, said that the observations were excessive and that the judgments of the teacher who evaluated her were subjective. A veteran of 21 years in the classroom and a former “lead” teacher, Johnson works in a school that serves black students who live in nearby low-income housing projects.

“If you’ve never been in that type of situation, your expectations of a classroom are totally different from the ones I have,” she said.

Johnson wound up with a “novice” ranking, the second-lowest of five performance categories that eventually could cause her pay to be cut.

“Our incoming president said the system has to be tweaked,” she said. “I say you’re going to have to take a wrench to it.”

The evaluations went more smoothly at Carthage Paidaia School, a magnet school on the far north side of the city. There, Principal Margaret Hammond threw herself into the process.

“I have good, strong teachers to begin with, and this is making them even stronger,” she said.

The teachers were grateful for her help. But even there, some dislike the system.

Melanie Beyersdofer, a 39-year-old third-grade teacher, fell only one point shy of the top rating. Still, she opposes linking evaluations to salaries.

Next year, Cincinnati teachers will vote on whether to take the next step and allow salaries to be based on the new evaluations. In the meantime, however, the school board is also waiting to see whether the evaluations actually improve student achievement.

“The whole purpose for all of this is to improve student achievement,” said Kathleen T. Ware, an associate superintendent who oversees the pay system. If performance pay isn’t raising student achievement, then “we’ll have to go back and take a look at the system because something’s wrong.”