NEPC Review: Paying the Best Teachers More to Teach More Students

Critics of typical “single-salary” pay scales for teachers argue they under-compensate great teachers and over-compensate inept teachers. As a result, many pay-for-performance plans have been tried, with mixed results. This report proposes yet another variable compensation plan: paying the top quartile of teachers in a district a bonus for accepting up to three additional students into their existing classes. Without evidence, the report posits that having more students work with more effective teachers would offset any potential sacrifice in student learning. It projects significant district savings because larger classes would allow substantial reductions in faculty. The report does not address the well-documented problem of identifying high-performing teachers; it misrepresents the known effect of class size on student learning; and it ignores what is known about teacher pay, attitudes and job satisfaction. Projected outcomes are based on average class sizes, which obscure the potential impact on thousands of teachers and students in already overcrowded classrooms. Moreover, its proposed bonuses obscure the fact that teacher salaries overall are too low to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of talented faculty, especially in high-needs schools, and would likely remain so even under this more-work-for-more-pay model. Rather than a practical response to known issues with single-salary pay scales, the proposal seems primarily a scheme to reduce the teaching force. The report is superficial and misleading, and its proposal has no value as a nationwide model

NEPC Review: Teacher Absenteeism in Charter and Traditional Public Schools (Thomas B. Fordham Institute, September 2017)

This report compares average rates of frequent teacher absence (more than 10 days) for teachers with and without union or union-like contracts in traditional public schools and charter schools. The study&rsquo;s rationale is that such absences substantively harm students and cost taxpayers billions of dollars. It finds that teachers contractually allowed more absences are frequently absent more often than teachers allowed fewer absences. Based on these averages, the report concludes that the contracts result in non-beneficial, or uncalled-for absences, rather than absences for legitimate reasons, and it recommends that contracts be made less generous. However, the report lacks support for its major claims, ignores known discrepancies in data, uses cited resources in highly selective ways, ignores large bodies of contradictory research, and draws unwarranted conclusions. In addition, the report&rsquo;s idiosyncratic use of the term &ldquo;chronic absenteeism&rdquo; misrepresents the data and, along with its use of graphics, appears intended to create a national alarmist picture unwarranted either by the data or by other research. Accordingly, the report appears to be an effort to generate numbers and charts useful in discrediting teachers as irresponsible shirkers.</p

NEPC Review: An Opportunity Culture for All: Making Teaching a Highly Paid, High-Impact Profession

This report from a think tank called Public Impact begins with two unsupported premises: that only one in four teachers is good enough to help close achievement gaps, and that current efforts to recruit and retain excellent teachers are inadequate. To allow existing excellent teachers to reach more students and to develop excellence in their colleagues, it proposes a model for restructuring teaching. Hierarchically arranged teaching teams would rely on fewer teachers but more paraprofessionals, more digital instruction, longer work hours, and some larger classes. Teacher salaries would increase. However, while the report targets teacher excellence, it offers no specific means of identifying and assessing that quality. In addition, the report does not take into account relevant research literature in key areas, including teacher assessment, multiple influences on student achievement, digital instruction, teacher burnout, and teacher attrition. Overall, the proposal is based on unsupported assumptions, assertions and projections&mdash;wishes and beliefs that if the approach were put into practice, it would somehow play out to the benefit of students. Lacking an empirical base, the report is not a useful guide for policy.</p

Getting Teacher Assessment Right: What Policymakers Can Learn From Research

Given the experience to date with an overwhelming focus on student achievement scores as a basis for high-stakes decisions, policymakers would do well to pause and carefully examine the issues that make teacher assessment so complex before implementing an assessment plan. To facilitate such examination, this brief reviews credible research exploring: the feasibility of combining formative assessment (a basis for professional growth) and summative assessment (a basis for high-stakes decisions like dismissal); the various tools that might be used to gather evidence of teacher effectiveness; and the various stakeholders who might play a role in a teacher assessment system. It also offers a brief overview of successful exemplars

An Analysis of the 2005 National Technology Plan: Better for Business than for Children

This report identifies, analyzes, and critiques assumptions underpinning the U.S. Department of Education's National Education Technology Plan recommendations, and uncovers embedded advantages for business and privatization supporters

Welner, Kevin G., Patricia H. Hinchey, Alex Molnar, and Don Weitzman, eds., Think Tank Research Quality: Lessons for Policy Makers, the Media, and the Public. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers, 2010.

Critiques several Think Tank research reports on topics ranging from school choice, vouchers, charter schools, NCLB, standards, to teacher quality; prepared by Think Tank Review Project at University of Colorado-Boulder; gives evidence of weaknesses in many Think Tank studies and urges techinical critiques of other such reports be done; cautions policy makers, media, and the public not to rely upon non-peer reviewed studies