A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Should we go through the list? Should would we start where we were maybe?

SENATOR GLENN: Let's go here and then if questions get over on that way?

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Okay. Alright. Jeff.

SENATOR GLENN: We'll go with questions here and if people have questions they wanted to ask of the previous speaker back here, she's still here so we can get back on that also.

MEMBER: This question, I guess -- am I on?

SENATOR GLENN: Yes, yes.

MEMBER: ... goes more to Dr. Kelley.

There are apparently are two significant paradigms for, you used the term "the reward"-- One of them is increasing the knowledge base and the other is performance. So let me give you a hypothetical situation.

Teacher A takes every course available, increases his or her knowledge base very substantially, but has difficulty getting the kids to perform. Teacher B doesn't take all of these courses and does a very good job of getting her or his students to perform. Are we creating a monster here?

DR. KELLEY: I'd actually say that maybe the current system is not doing what we want it to do because it would give the teacher who took the courses but didn't perform in the classroom a lot more money than the teacher who didn't take the courses but was a much better teacher. I think that there's a lot of ways that teachers and others can develop expertise, and maybe in some cases, better ways of developing expertise than sitting in classes year after year.

I say that teaching some of those classes myself. But -- so I guess I think that maybe what we need to do is look at the system in ways that would -- to see if there are ways that we could reward the teacher that has the knowledge and skills and demonstrates them, whether or not they're the one that's sitting in the classroom.

Does that...

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Anne?

MEMBER: Okay. My question was, in talking about teacher merit compensation, has any effort been made to correlate that or to show that it relates to documented, sustained changes in teaching practices, how the teacher actually conducts the classroom over time? And I guess my question, the thing that really generates that concern is the continued emphasis on using norm-reference tests as the indicator by which schools improve because that does not result, generally, in improved teaching practices. In fact, it tends to narrow the kinds of practices that are used so that you can get the kids scores up on those multiple choice tests.

So I guess my main concern is I think we need some real indicators that students have learned, some broader indicators that students have learned, and ways to correlate that with improvement in teaching practice. And I didn't know if any of, if anything you're doing in terms of merit pay might address that or not.

DR. KELLEY: I guess I agree with your concern. I think that what's in the assessment is really important. And you're right. I think it does focus teaching toward whatever is in that assessment, so the quality of the assessment is critical to determining what the effects are. I think, though, that there are a range of teaching practices out there right now and that there is -- what we've seen is ...

MEMBER: I didn't phrase that very well. Can I just maybe phrase that...

DR. KELLEY: Sure, do you want to start again?

MEMBER: where it would be easier.

DR. KELLEY: Yes.

MEMBER: It's hard to answer a question that really wasn't. Is merit pay being connected with anything in terms of improved quality of teaching that's driven by pictures of student assessment that aren't necessarily correlated to just norm-reference tests? How broad is your look at merit pay? Or not your look but, in terms of what you know is happening with merit pay, what types of things drive that other than multiple choice tests and the like?

DR. KELLEY: I just want to -- I study group-based, school-based performance pay and I would refer to merit pay as individual, so, but what I'm ...

MEMBER: Okay, I'm sorry.

DR. KELLEY: But that -- I don't think we're -- there are a variety of kinds of assessments being used. Some of them are norm-referenced. Some of them are criterion-referenced. Some of them are basic skills tests, and some of them are higher order skills tests. And there is some research evidence to suggest that teaching practice is moving toward, as you said, what's on the assessment. In some cases, that may be a stretch, an enhancement of teaching practice. In others, it may be a narrowing. You know, I guess I think it's important, I'm not sure the details are important and what, you know, what assessment you choose is really critical. And how, you know, what kinds of supports you provide besides the compensation piece are really important.

I don't think -- I don't want to tell you what the committee's business is, but I'm not sure that the committee has to do those fine-grained design decisions, but I think the issues you raise are important, but they're design issues, I think, what assessments you choose and -- that would be my answer.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Paul.

MEMBER: Thank you for an interesting presentation from both of you. I would like to get your thoughts regarding what you have said and how it applies to what we might recommend.

Part of -- schools are truly cultural institutions. And as a superintendent who just went through the National Board certification process with his daughter, and who had to proof-read everything and go through it, I found that it was a very rigorous activity for her. But last week, we started to read some reports that raised some questions that I think bear discussion regarding this process. And Tom, you sort of led toward it in that you talked about the faculties doing something together.

In preparing for this meeting, I went back and read "A Nation at Risk." And the same things that we're talking about were said 17 years ago. And I looked at LIFE magazine's series that took place almost 50 years ago and the same things that were said.

So it seems to me that, from the perspective of the Commission, the recommendations that we make ought to be somewhat bold and transformational. And so the question I have for you is that are we skirting the edge when we talk about individual teacher activities and not looking to a recommendation being bolder that says, it's going to take a department, a group of teachers in a school to really make a difference? Because when my daughter goes back and, if she gets the certification, it will be good for her and her students. But it isn't going to do much for her school or her school district.

And so, are either of you prepared or do you believe that it takes a team to win the Superbowl in this activity?

MR. GILLETT: Absolutely. And it -- not the Superbowl, but the NBA finals. It helps if you've got Michael Jordan as your starting forward, or did a few years ago. I don't know if he could still. But -- so I think there's a role for individual teachers who are excellent teachers, and the role has to include engaging other members of his or her faculty in professional development exercise, in reflection on what is best practice, on figuring out ways to encourage the extension of good practices in teaching.

I don't even know if it should be confined to a department or a group within a school. I think it needs to get to be much more extensive than that, district by district.

Going back to, you know, "A Nation at Risk," "A Nation Prepared," "Tomorrow's Teachers," the Holmes Group Report, which I did -- all of them came in the '80s there. And you're right. If you pick up any of them today, a lot of what was written and said then is still true because we, collectively, didn't do some of the things that we thought were very important there.

We still don't have teacher salaries that are competitive with other professions. And I would point out, in Rochester, a teacher who's been teaching 10 years -- and this is not to demean the contribution of the other part of the comparison -- a firefighter or police officer makes $5,000 to $7,000 more after three years than a teacher makes after 10 years. And that's not even a profession-to-profession comparison. But we have yet to put our money where our collective mouth is on this. So, one of the threads in all those reports was, if you want a profession, you have to pay people. We haven't gotten to that yet.

So, and I would go further in response to an earlier question regarding the connection to compensation and teacher practice improvement, I think if you have a profession, that's one of the characteristics or features of a profession. It's not like, did I get paid enough to make sure that I do this. I don't think other -- I hope other professions don't think that way. As far as I know from my conversations, they don't. But they're professional and additional learning is a requirement and an expectation, and it happens. Interaction with colleagues is an expectation and it happens. Reflective practice, the post-mortem conference, routinely happens. We still aren't doing most of those things in schools, and we should be if we want to change how kids learn.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Ed.

MEMBER: I wanted to just reflect back on your comments a little bit, because I thought you touched, and just a few minutes ago did also again, on really this teamwork aspect, the professional aspect, but also a teacher not working isolated in the classroom, but be it a National Board Certified teacher as being a mentor, there are a number of programs out there that recognize some steps within the teaching profession -- that you may be a brand new teacher in the classroom to a more tenured teacher to a basically a master-mentor teacher and giving, within a school district, some flexibility to really use your lead mentor-teacher to really do some mentoring and teaching of the teachers and passing on best practices.

I think if we look through this -- and it was also hit on the Rochester plan -- it's really focusing on really the end game, and that's being improved academic achievement by the students. Because that drives everything else.

If we're looking at things that doesn't result at the end of the school year or progressing through the school year with kids achieving at or performing at a gradual or progressively higher level of achievement, then why are they in school?

And I think this is what we've got to focus on, is really these inputs and looking at ways, be it compensation, keep in mind, as you look at the compensation side, and you compare, be it with firefighters or people in business or what, there are balances, performance -- if an individual isn't performing at what the expected level is, they're not going to be in that position.

And Tom pointed, you know, unfortunately, there are teachers out there that should not be teaching or there are people you run into in all walks of life who are brilliant, but they don't have the foggiest idea how to convey that brilliant level of knowledge to someone else. And someone else that may not be that smart but can convey what they know readily to a group of students or people on a team are very valuable. So I think we've got to recognize those things as we move forward on it.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Not really a question.

MEMBER: No, I'm sorry about that. I can ask a question, but that was a ...

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Gov. Geringer.

MEMBER: In regard to the teamwork aspect, I want to approach that in a little different way and ask either of you if you know of any models for merit pay or enhanced pay that would look beyond the current year. What triggered me was thinking about the well-known research by Dr. William Sanders in Tennessee. And one of the things he documented was the remarkable improvement in performance when a student has three successive good teachers in a row, and then of course, what happens if you have three successive bad teachers in a row. So I'm predicating this on the principle that we can measure good and bad. Are there any enhancement systems out there that look across time rather than just across a school year or across a single test?

And the reason I ask that is that the true measure of student achievement is what they're like when they get into the workplace, and what are they like 2, 10, 20 years out. I don't know how far out to go, but far out.

MR. GILLETT: Very briefly, the example that I showed you looked at schools over a three-year period. And I know you're asking a different question, but I want to make that distinction. So there is some effort, and I don't think Rochester is the only one that's doing this kind of a three-year look on a continuous progress effort.

One of the difficulties that we have, so I'll ask the question back, is we have -- I don't know if it's because we're a city or typical of cities I guess would be a fairer way to preface this -- we have tremendous student mobility rates. So we may have the student in the district for three consecutive years, but more than half the time, at any level, he's not in the same school for three years. And from what I've read of William Sanders' work, I'm not sure how that student's progress could be validly traced. I think we ought to try and figure out a way to do that. And that's probably not necessarily what my state affiliate wants to hear. But I'm not ready to sign on with that, but I think it has some promise and I'd like to see it applied to some students in our district to see what it would tell us.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Jerilyn?

MEMBER: Well, I was thinking that, after reading the yellow piece, that we're talking about qualified teachers for student achievement. But we're also talking about teachers in a sense of more than one and then we talk student achievement. And just thinking about that, that brings me to a couple of things.

One is I totally agree with what Deborah Ball said. When we started out, we were going to talk about academic indicators, not work-related indicators. But having been a teacher and now an administrator, nobody's going to pay attention unless we're going to wave something green. So we've got to look at how that is related from one to another.

But looking at this yellow piece, in here there was this database for the digital library. The second part had fellowships, forgiveness loans and it talked about the academies. The third part then mentioned the ladders.

I was looking at that in terms of where are we going to put some money. Where are we going to put the money? Okay?

So it seemed like we were putting it in teacher indicators that were more work-related and not, like Deborah Ball said, in thinking and having teachers think about what they're doing, reflecting on their work and with what secret came up to show teachers talking about academic things that surely did affect achievement.

So, when you're thinking about this, and I guess this is what jogged my memory from Mr. Gillett and Dr. Kelley, was that we talk about individual, individual achievements or whether it's individual promotion by a teacher going through the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards certification. But we're talking about one person. And let's start thinking groups and thinking groups of teachers working together, using that digital library to talk about their teaching practice, put our money there.

When you're talking -- before, when you start talking about fellowships, forgiveness loans and the forgiveness loan brings up something with me because I, born and raised on an Indian reservation, and we have Indian health come and the doctors come and they come and get their loans forgiven for going to school, but we don't have good health service.

First of all, they come when they're new. They come in their first years of practice on us. We don't want them in their first three years. Send them back after they've been in there five or six years. We can do that. We've got computers these years.

But we're talking about individual, a program for an individual. We need to start talking about putting teachers in groups where they are out there working together. When you're talking about forgiveness loans, that's one person. What kind of -- and it is a part of a recruitment tool but we've lost the sense that Deborah Ball talks about, about that academic part that we agreed to focus on. And I get runaway here, but that's what I wanted to say.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Judy.

MEMBER'S DESIGNEE: One of my concerns, sort of from the beginning of this exercise, is that if this is the Commission on Math and Science Teaching, what is it in our recommendations that are essentially explicit to math and science?

And I've always had problems with the ones, with any kinds of recommendations dealing with incentives and salary because I see it as very difficult to tailor it to explicitly math and science activities. If it is, in fact, a broad recommendation to school districts or to states. Now Mr. Gillett said that he thought the Rochester process could be tailored to math and science and it did seem to me one could probably tailor it. But realistically, would school districts adopt it only in math and science? Or are we really making a recommendation that is broader than math and science?

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Rhetorical question. Anyone want to take a stab?

MR. GILLETT: That's what I was going to say. Sounds like a rhetorical question to me.

MEMBER'S DESIGNEE: But no, I mean, I'm asking a serious question. I am not part of a school system. And so my question is quite a serious one. Would school systems, would union contracts allow you to develop something that was explicit to math and science in this area or not?

DR. KELLEY: Often, the performance pay models begin or largely emphasize reading. So, I think that one could imagine room for either -- maybe not a singular focus on math and science, but encouragement of the development of plans that have rigorous demands in math and science in addition to a focus on reading. So, I think that may be ...

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Craig.

MEMBER: Yes. I was intrigued by some of the data contained in one of your slides. It had to do with the acceptable passing percentages. And I was intrigued, coming from an engineering background, is why it's acceptable to have only 72 percent pass rate for science, 74 percent for math, and 87 percent for social studies. I've grown in my career to recognize that you get what you expect or less.

MR. GILLETT: Okay. And let me clarify what...

MEMBER: I don't know if that was the just a made up set of numbers or not on that sheet of paper, but they look real.

MR. GILLETT: Well, thank you for giving me an out. But that, I wouldn't take that one even it was. No, they weren't made up.

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[Kelley/Gillett Discussion]

This page last modified November 30, 2000 (gkp)