Pink and Teacher Motivation

I've completed reading Daniel Pink's, Drive, an inside look at what motivates people to perform.  His thesis is essentially that we are all motivated to perform if given the right combination of autonomy and purpose to complete a task.   On the other hand, he argues that extrinsic motivators often accomplish the opposite of their purpose, especially when the task is complex and requires creativity.   Rather than motivate, extrinsic "carrots" can narrow our focus, and turn enjoyable tasks into a job that we are unmotivated to perform.   Pink does a good job- and I believe much of what he says.   Allow teachers automony, provide them with a sense of purpose, and you are more likely to create a master teacher.   Agree or disagree- this book should probably be required reading for anyone considering new evaluation systems and pay scales based on teacher quality.

However, one statement got me thinking about teaching- and the seniority system of pay that currently dominates the field.   A system where the longer you teach, the more money you earn in a single year.  Pink asserts the following:

Of course, the starting point of any discussion of motivation in the workplace is a simple fact of life: People have to earn a living.   Salary, contract payments, some benefits, a few perks are what I call "baseline rewards."  If someone's baseline rewards aren't adequate or equitable, her focus will be on the unfairness of her situation and the anxiety of her circumstance.   You'll get neither the predictability of extrenisic motivation or the weirdness of instrinsic motivation.   You'll get very little motivation at all.

But once we're past that threshold, the carrots and sticks can achieve precisely the opposite of their intended aims.   Mechnaism designed to increase motiviation can dampen it.   Tactics aimed at boosting creativity reduce it.   Programs to promote good deeds can make them disappear.  

My question is whether or not our current system of pay  meets the requirement of  "fairness" Pink asserts is a prerequiste of  what he calls, motivation 2.0.   A system that does not reward increased responsibility by paying more,  but instead punishes it by increasing your workload.   A system that rewards teachers who take jobs as coaches- often at the expense of missing meetings required by those teachers who do not coach.   A system that says if you would like more money- you should leave your job early and find something else to do.   This does not seem like a "fair" system to me- and it leads me to wonder, "what type of teacher would find it fair?"   Is it a teacher who is not interested in leadership or responsibility?   Is it a teacher who has always wanted to coach athletics?   And which type of teachers leave the profession, or never enter the profession, because this is the type of pay structure that exists?

Maryland teacher's unions, and especially my own union, MCEA, are currently fighting tooth and nail to prevent a new evaluation system that would base 50% of that evaluation on student achievement data.   This new evaluation system proposed by the Maryland State Department of Education  is not likely to fix our educational problems.  It is replete with problems just like our current system.

However, if teachers, and the unions that represent them, were more proactive in addressing the failures of pay systems created more than thirty years ago, you wouldn't have politicians and state school boards trying to mandate changes to local school districts.   If we had teacher-leaders brain storming and researching in an effort to create pay scales based on leadership and responsiblity, instead of rewarding those who do just enough to get by, then perhaps we'd all be happy.   Perhaps we'd transform our schools and our profession.  And perhaps my union wouldn't  have to spend time defending our current broken evaluation system, from another, equally broken system proposed by politicians.

A call for leadership

I read and I read and I read.   And then I wonder "how can something so pure as the education of our children be so political?"   Can we not stop what we're doing and finally solve some problems?

I simply find much of what I read, especially from those who oppose performance pay, alarmist.   Diane Ravitch has made a second career of ringing the anti-merit pay bell across the United States.   Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post frequently republishes Ravitch's blog as part of this gospel.

In a recent post, Ravitch goes so far as to speak for all teachers:

Although teachers need and want higher pay, they are strongly opposed to individual merit pay.

A generalization that brings me to an article I recently read in the Christian Science Monitor.  Melanie Stetson Freeman wrote a piece more than a year ago about the evolution of performance pay in Denver, CO.   I was struck by this snippet:

Back in 2004, when the Denver teachers union voted on ProComp, many teachers had a deeply ingrained opposition to "merit pay." One poll about a month before the vote showed that just 19 percent of them were in favor. The district undertook a public-relations blitz and massive information campaign, and it ended up winning the support of 59 percent of teachers.

Teachers, once they understand that they can have due process side by side with merit pay, are willing to support an opportunity to earn more money in a less traditional manner.   However it requires leadership and stake holder input.  Off hand claims made by Ravitch are harmful to the dialogue.  She continues to say of merit pay that it,

destroys the collaboration and teamwork that are essential to the culture of the school.

However, the very same study that Ravitch notes as proof pudding that merit pay won't work actually concludes those who received merit pay were more likely to collaborate:

...what can we say about the way treatment teachers responded? Treatment teachers...were more likely to report thatthey collaborated with other teachers (planning, reviewing student test results, coaching and being  coached or observed) 

And I suppose this is my biggest beef with how merit pay is treated by its opponents.  Merit pay is not perfect.  Value added modeling has limitations.  And charter schools will not fix all our educational ills.  But neither will the status quo.  We need to spend less time yelling and making sweeping generalizations and more time figuring out how school reform can go forward recognizing the strengths and weaknesses put forward by both sides of the argument.

We can't afford to continue forcing people to line up on one side of this issue or the other.   Movies like Waiting for Superman, shows like those recently seen on Oprah, and polarizing figures like Michelle Rhee only exacerbate the problem.

But reform should not be held hostage by politics.  It must move forward with all stake holders contributing to a dialogue.  The question is when will we work together to decide what real and honest educational reform will look like?   It's happening in some places.   I just wish we had leaders here in Montgomery County willing to make it happen.

On Merit Pay- a summary of Montgomery County.

Merit Pay.  Here.   Here.  Here. And even here.
In Montgomery County the budget is dire.   Maybe it's too early to say it, but I can't see how MCPS teachers escape furloughs in the 2010-2011 school year.   Meanwhile, MCPS is turning down Race to the Top money with the blessing of MCEA.   And MCEA continues to take this purely anti-merit based pay stance despite a lack of data to support a conclusionn one way or the other.

While money gets handed out to other districts in the merit pay experiment, the question is whether the MCEA- MCPS stance is coming at a high price for the employees it seeks to represent and employ.   While other districts face the prospects of raises and bonuses, MCPS is faced with the status quo or worse, furloughs.  

Who wins by standing up to the political maelstrom of merit pay?   

If you don't believe in the measurement tool

I was rereading the recent report on Teacher Pay for Performance that many are citing as their "I told you so" moment.  But then I came across the paragraph below.   The researchers used survey data to ascertain teacher beliefs about the program.   One important finding, is that teachers did not appear to believe in the measurement tool:

Participating teachers generally favored extra pay for better teachers, in principle. They did not come away from their experience in POINT thinking the project had harmed their schools. But by and large, they did not endorse the notion that bonus recipients in POINT were better teachers or that failing to earn a bonus meant a teacher needed to improve. Most participants did not appear to buy in to the criteria used by POINT to determine who was teaching effectively. Perhaps it should not be surprising, then, that treatment teachers differed little from control teachers on a wide range of measures of effort and instructional practices. Where there were differences, they were not associated with higher achievement. By and large, POINT had little effect on what these teachers did in the classroom.

If teachers did not believe the measurement tool effectively captured who was the worthy of the bonus, why would they change their behavior?  

The Merit Pay Debate

I have had a little bit of time to read about the new study published  by the National Center on Performance Incentives on merit pay.   I recommend reading the executive summary and the discussion section at the end.   I always like to read the report, and then read the headlines that are published.

A good example on the MCEA BLOG: "Teacher merit pay fails the test."  

However, for those interested in learning more about merit pay, I recommend Jay Mathews blog.  Not so much the article, but the comments by readers and Jay that follow   Every once in awhile, you get some interesting ideas circulating.  And incidentally, some of the best, are not necessarily proponents of merit pay.

Merit Pay oh Merit Pay, how do you evade me?

Below, a conversation I'm having with InterACT blogger David Cohen. If I'm not mistaken, he's a paid contributor.


September 15, 2010 11:26 am
David,
I always appreciate your take. and by and large I agree with most of your post. But I must admit, as economics teacher, you lost me here:

“”There is also little or no evidence for the claim that teachers will be more motivated to improve student learning if teachers are evaluated or monetarily rewarded for student test score gains.”

Now, you might merely be stating a synopsis of the “research” but I hope you don’t mean to insinuate that teachers will not respond to incentives. The tenure based system employed by most districts is fatally lacking in this one area.

Are you against incentives in principle? In my cursory glance, I do not see mention of this in your recommendations for changes to evaluation systems in CA.

MM

Reply David B. Cohen permalink*
September 15, 2010 2:24 pm
Hello Mike,
I always appreciate being pushed to refine my thinking and writing, but this particular quotation comes from the report I’m citing. It’s not originally my statement.

However, I do agree with the statement. The key detail is the distinction between learning and test scores. So teachers might very well respond to test score-based incentives, but if the focus is on raising test scores, I have misgivings about the likelihood of improvement related to desirable learning outcomes. It’s the narrowing effect that we’ve seen with NCLB, and a dose of Campbell’s Law, which as you probably know, argues that high stakes decisions based on narrow measures will inevitably corrupt the measurement tool and the value of what’s being measured.

It’s also worth looking into the work of Daniel Pink, who presents a convincing case in Drive that incentives generally work better for simple tasks that we might not otherwise be motivated to do. Complex, creative tasks, and those we generally enjoy doing, tend to suffer when incentives come into play. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose will drive intrinsic motivation, which is generally more powerful and sustained than external motivation guided by rewards and consequences.

Old news from Baltimore

I've been having some conversations with union leadership. Mostly, I've become very discouraged with the way MCEA and MCPS have reacted to changes coming around the bend. Will MCPS be left behind? I read things like the quote below from a Sun editorial way too often.

Although some Maryland school districts -- including Montgomery County, the state's largest -- have resisted modifying the way teachers are evaluated, Baltimore City embraced the concept because it could bring millions of new dollars to its cash-starved school system.

Which leaves me to wonder whether my original decision to come to Montgomery County will eventually become an impetus to leave. Montgomery County Public Schools has long been the highest paying school district in the state. Can we manage to maintain that edge in the current political and economic climate?

I don't believe we can when I continue to read posts like this one from Tom Israel, exective director of MCEA. The language of MCEA and MCPS must change, and change now. Money. Real money, is on the line. Hopefully, it's not already too late.

Conditions on pay based on testing

This column in the Washington Post on conditions that should accompany performance based pay is getting slightly better than luke warm reaction on the MCEA message board. I'm encouraged by this, although I don't necessarily agree that there should be that many pre-requisites to performance based pay.

Pittsburgh

My wife says all they care about in Pittsburgh is the Steelers, and "there is no way in heck I'm moving out there."

I say, "Go Steelers."

The difference between the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association on the issue of merit pay is becoming more and more stark.

In large part, the pact codifies elements of the district’s Empowering Effective Teaching plan—its successful bid for $40 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s $500 million Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative. ("Winners Named for Gates Teacher Grants," December 2, 2009.)

Beginning in April 2009, the district and the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers jointly devised a plan to qualify for the grant dollars, an effort that officials said laid the groundwork for a bargaining process that put the goal of student learning ahead of traditional bread-and-butter union concerns.

“It wasn’t done by bullying. It was done by a mutual recognition of the need to change,” said Mark Roosevelt, the superintendent of the 28,000-student district. “Over the long haul, we think working with our workforce will show greater possibilities for students than engaging in fisticuffs.”

This would be cool

Considering a move to Pittsburgh.

Why Evaluation Systems must Change

Teacher evaluation systems around the country are in need of reform. But the most important reform that can be made is to link pay and performance. To be sure, evaluations as they exist today are tied too closely to over-worked and thus under-attentive administrators. This is why any new evaluation system must be on-going, robust, and involve multiple administrators and stake-holders. Parents, students, teacher-colleagues, subject specialists, and administrators must all play a role in the qualitative data gathering process. It is also clear that student performance data should be the wheels of any quantitative data gathering process. Considered jointly, these data points can successfully provide a window into the effectiveness of a teacher.

Currently, however, most evaluation systems do not do a very good job identifying struggling teachers, or in the very least, they do not effectively identify very many struggling teachers. As Jay Mathews notes in his Washington Post blog:

I asked some Washington area school districts, nationally regarded for their high performance and sophisticated management, what percentage of their teachers
were rated satisfactory in the last evaluation. I subtracted the number they gave me from 100 percent to calculate what portion of their teaching ranks could be considered ineffective. The results:

Fairfax County 0.9 percent, Montgomery County 5 percent, Loudoun County 1 percent, City of Falls Church 0.45 percent, Prince William County 1.7 percent. I could not find a school district in the area that admitted to having more than 5 percent unsatisfactory teachers. Most said the figure was closer to 1 percent. Experts tell me this is common throughout the land. I don't believe the numbers.

The evaluations are usually done by principals and subject specialists. I suppose they could be told to identify the bottom 10 percent, as some companies do, and offer them the severance funds, but as Hanushek points out their union representatives might object to that approach.

So the question remains, why are so few teachers identified as ineffective? Several years ago, MCPS asked itself this very question. It is unclear they had any definitive answers. I will spend some time now trying to answer this question.

In part, the answer is related to the fact that there is usually only one evaluator with the soul responsibility of determining whether a teacher should be identified as ineffective. But secondly, and most importantly, it is because there is virtually no incentive for an administrator to make this identification. And without performance based pay, this is unlikely to change in the near future.

In my next entry, I will attempt to show, using my admittedly limited knowledge of game theory, why so few teachers are identified as ineffective. I'll also offer a solution for improving the current state of teacher evaluations.

Make Administrators Accountable for Student Achievement

Recent debate about Race to the Top funds has centered around whether teachers should be held accountable for student achievement. But I have not seen much discussion of holding administrators accountable for the student achievement that occurs in their school. This might be even more important than holding teachers accountable. If principals were held accountable, they would actually have an incentive to get rid of ineffective teachers. Currently, principals fail to get rid of most ineffective teachers because its too much of a pain... guilt, documentation, time, effort, and for what? It's easier just to let them slide by. After all, principals are not punished when an ineffective teacher continues to teach in their building. But what if they were? What if their salaries were determined by the amount of learning that occured in their building? I'd bet you'd see alot more ineffective teachers dismissed than we do now.