State Representative David Bly, MN District 25B

This past week I visited with some long time education friends. Bill Zimniewicz, of River Heights Charter School, and the gang of four who started IALA.

Below, that’s Bill, Dan Daly of Liberty Charter, Wayne Jennings of Designs for Learning and Wally Campbell MAAP STARS founder and then there’s me who took the picture - I guess that would make us the gang of five.

The goal of our organization IALA is to promote choice and diversity in education across the nation by promoting small schools with the capacity to promote relevance, relationship and rigor. We have connections with educators around the world hence the name International Association for Learning Alternatives. One of the founding members Don Glines started the Wilson Campus School in Mankato, which was called by many “the most innovative public school in the country.”

Don is a visionary who challenged the status quo and proposed a city of the future where school would be integrated into the workings of the community. A true reformer who believed in learner centered schools, empowering students to interact with the world around them in meaningful ways. Something author and child development expert Joseph Chilton Pearce says is what the journey from childhood to adolescence is all about.

This is just the kind of school that Bill has created at River Heights Charter in West St. Paul. I stopped in at his school to pick up some ideas for the coming school year. As you may know, the Northfield ALC is undergoing a huge transformation. Bill served as President of the Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs(MAAP)after my term and for years was the Director of South St. Paul ALC. About 5 years ago he embraced the work of Alfie Kohn, author of The Schools our Children Deserve, and decided he wanted to create a school that would treat students humanely and encourage them to pursue educational endeavors that would empower them to become critical thinkers, active citizens and creative individuals. With the help of an innovative schools grant he transformed his ALC, but when he realized the system would undermine this transformation he left with a few of his teachers and started River Heights Charter. Now he is promoting Dennis Littky and the Big Picture founder of the Big Picture school movement based on his school The Met in Providence, RI.

Unfortunately most of the current school reforms on the national and state levels are about standardization. A movement that promotes the belief that there is ‘one best way’ to teach and ‘one best set’ of things for students to learn. We just need to open their heads and pour it in. A system based on a notion of hierarchy that offers a pat on the back for those who comply and punishment for those who disobey or stray from the standardized norm. The tests do rightly draw our attention to the needs of various struggling learners. But the message I get from the performance gaps that exist among income and racial groups in our system is that we need to try different things for different needs and different learners.

Not so many years ago we used to hear more about ‘choice’ and individualized teaching. I still believe in public education and recognize that there are students who find success in the traditional setting. However, if we are talking about reform to fit the knew knowledge about learning and think about what our students need in “the 21st cetury world” - we need to think differently about reform and the many ways in which students learn. I think it is possible to have a system that maintains its goals as a public institution, but meets the needs and releases the potential of more students. The way I see Dennis Littky doing at The Met.

Q Comp
Speaking of reform, Wednesday I joined other District Staff for the MN Dept. of Education’s conference on the Governor’s new initiative ‘Quality Compensation’. To my surprise I did find some good proposals in the legislation. In particular money for meaningful professional development and recognition of teacher professionals who wish to take on a role of promoting teaching in their schools. However, the biggest problem with the reform is the Governor’s insistence on replacing the ’steps and lanes system’ of compensation with an unproven and suspect system of ‘pay for performance.’ Pay for performance on the surface makes sense to a lot of people and I realize I need to explain my concerns about it.

First, I should say that teachers should be encouraged to do a better job, even the best teachers can improve and looking at test scores and growth in the classroom can be a helpful and meaningful way to approach it - though not the only way. But most of what I see in ‘No Child Left Behind’ and in the ‘performance pay’ side of this proposal is the misuse of testing in an attempt to use an outmoded hierarchical punitive system to improve the ‘behavior’ of teachers. By ‘misuse’ I mean to use the test scores as a measure of teacher or school performance (a suspect venture because of the many variables involved - to say nothing of the potential to corrupt such a system) and not use it for meaningful information about how well students are doing so improvements can be made. This is a carrot and stick approach, which fits into a scheme of master/slave mentality where the master is coercing the slave to be obedient and do the master’s bidding whether he wants to or not.

I want teachers to be good teachers and make improvements because they believe in it and because it is the right thing to do not because they will be punished or rewarded for doing so. It is in my view, an insult to the profession to be treated this way. I would prefer to have teachers focused on teaching not on pay linked to their class room behavior. The thought that kept running through my mind was if there is improvement in student learning how will we know if it is the improved professional training and career ladders or pay for performance that caused it.

The Governor addressed the 800 administrators and teachers quoting Bill Gates, who says “the American High School is obsolete.” I thought it interesting that Pawlenty would quote Gates’ concern but not mention what Gates believes the solution would be. Gates says we need “smaller schools where better relationships can develop around more relevant material in a more rigorous environment.” The Governor went on to quote a study of teachers who left the teaching profession after five years. A number of them said they left the profession because “they did not feel supported and they did not like the degrading behavior of the students.” I can see how the professional development plan of the Governor’s proposal will help with the first concern, but I don’t see how either concern is remedied by a pay for performance scheme. It might be that smaller schools, and lower student teacher ratios would help with student behavior but that would cost more money.

Some who really haven’t studied the legislation believe it will get rid of ‘bad’ teachers, and end tenure. They want administrators to have the ability to get rid of a teacher if they don’t like them. I did not find that as part of this bill. Nor did I find that seniority or pay for experience would be eliminated - they could be in some way considered. This bill puts in place a system where some teachers can take on greater responsibility for helping other teachers grow in their profession and those teachers will be recognized for their willingness to take on this role. (Northfield had such a system in place after a study I participated in to find ways to attract and retain quality teachers, but it was cut for lack of funds.) Other teachers will be given a base pay and through the pay performance plan, could be paid additional moneys for meeting established goals of the academic growth of their students.

The details of the plan would be established by negotiation between teacher representatives and administration, as would the criteria for finding Master and Mentor teachers and what they might do. The method for determining student’s academic growth is also something to be designed and implemented by the local plan. But the plan is subject to approval by the Department of Education.

The Governor and the Department have made it clear they want to do away with the ’steps and lanes’ of existing contracts. They believe that linking pay to student performance will improve student learning. There is little evidence to support this belief. In my view it is based on a simplistic and cynical view of human behavior. Most quality studies show that increased quality is enhanced by giving employees greater control and ownership in the work they do. The first part of the proposal offers a good chance for this to happen and I believe it remains to be seen whether pay for performance helps or hurts in this effort. The risk to teachers is that the system of steps and lanes, which created pay equity for teachers at a time when there was rampant pay discrimination against women, could be traded for an untested and uncertain plan. The promise is that teachers will feel more professional as they can by greater effort increase their income.

Because the Governor is willing to put $260 per student on the table for trying this, we like many other districts will put forward a plan to see if we can make it work. A big problem is that there is only enough money in the system for 48% of the students in the state. So some districts even if they applied won’t be able to take part because there won’t be enough money to go around and there is no guarantee that after ‘06 Pawlenty will be around to continue the experiment. I will make every effort to be open minded about the proposal as we enter into discussion with the district and listen to concerns and interest that teachers may have. It will be interesting to see what will happen.

Here’s a recent story from the Duluth superior paper:

Teachers, Administrators Get Lesson on New Performance Pay System

By Brian Bakst, Assoc. Press

ST. PAUL - Hundreds of teachers and school administrators got a crash course Wednesday on a new system for tying teacher raises to performance instead of seniority, but only a couple of districts are on the verge of making the switch.

Participants came armed with questions about how to apply, how to structure raises and how to get buy-in among teachers. They left with tips on setting standards, analyzing data and going forward with negotiations.

“It’s not a simple conversion,” said Linda Trevorrow, the state Department of Education official in charge of the program, dubbed QComp. “It’s not just about the salary change. It’s more about a systematic change.”

The department put on the seminar to provide more details about the voluntary salary swap the Legislature and Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed off on a month ago. More than 800 people attended, exceeding organizers’ expectations.

The heavy turnout was understandable given the financial incentives lawmakers attached to QComp. Districts where administrators and unions agree to overhaul traditional pay models can qualify for $260 more per child in state aid, part of an $86 million pot statewide.

Before the Qcomp incentives, districts are entitled to at least $4,783 per student in state aid for the coming year.

“People are curious,” said Education Commissioner Alice Seagren. “The money is very tantalizing. They’d like to see if they can make it work.”

For decades, teacher pay has been determined by locally developed steps-and-lanes grids, which reward years of service and college credits earned on the side.

Under QComp, 60 percent of raises will be based on teacher evaluations and gains by students at the classroom and school levels. In participating districts, administrators and teachers will come up with local plans for measuring performance, subject to approval by the state. Teachers can never lose pay for missing their goals.