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Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has for years been a proponent of paying some teachers more based on their performance, and he has made some headway in introducing merit pay in the city schools. But the policy has plenty of critics, from teachers who say merit pay divides them to statisticians who point simply to flaws in the measures on which pay calculations are based.

In the video above, University of Virginia psychology professor Dan Willingham gives six reasons in three minutes why paying teachers based on their students’ test scores isn’t statistically sound. But Willingham doesn’t totally rule out the prospect of paying better teachers more: “Merit pay can’t work until there’s a way to measure teacher performance that’s fair,” he concludes.

Governor David Paterson. (Via Flickr Creative Commons)

An important story slipped by our watch late last week: Governor Paterson waded into the debate on how to evaluate teachers. In an interview with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, Paterson said that efforts to judge teachers based on their student test scores concern him:

“How would you assess a teacher who could go into a very difficult school and does a good job bringing a class up to, say, state average on standardized tests and then a teacher that’s a little lazy in an affluent community, where all the other teachers are doing well, [and] benefits from the location?”

Beth Fertig, WNYC’s education reporter, points out that Paterson’s remarks come in the context of a heated debate between teachers unions and those who advocate for test-based accountability, including the Bloomberg administration and, now, some in the federal government. While the local union partnered with the mayor on a merit-based pay initiative for teachers, it has quarreled with him on efforts to measure individual teachers.

Exactly where Paterson stands on education issues has been a subject of debate since he took office. Though his father is a close adviser to Randi Weingarten, the union president, Paterson himself has become a vocal supporter of school choice. With the governor taking few steps to get involved in education policy, the mystery has been a kind of moot point so far. There’s also the small problem of how long Paterson will hold onto his seat. But even if this term becomes his last, Paterson will be an important player in the mayoral control debate this year. The fate of the 2002 law lies in the hands of already-vocal legislators — but just as much in the hands of Paterson.

Federal Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings visiting a Chattanooga school in 2005.

Bonuses for teachers based on value-added measures. Firing and selective re-hiring of all teachers. Were these the key reforms responsible for the significant improvement of the “Benwood eight,” a group of struggling schools in central Chattanooga?

Elena Silva of Education Sector argues in Phi Delta Kappan that what really turned around these schools was validation, support, and on-going professional development for Chattanooga’s existing teaching force:

[It} would be a mistake to conclude that efforts to bring different, more effective teachers into the Benwood eight represent the only -- or even the primary -- lesson of the Chattanooga reforms. What Benwood teachers needed most were not new peers or extra pay -- although both were helpful. Rather, they needed support and recognition from the whole community, resources and tools to improve as professionals, and school leaders who could help them help their students.

The pay incentives didn’t attract many new teachers, Silva says, but they were “a way of signaling that the local community valued the Benwood teachers and supported their work.”

Silva says that though the district made all teachers in the Benwood schools re-apply for their jobs, the majority were re-hired and the teaching staff in these schools did not change significantly, although the numbers she cites suggest that the re-hiring process was more than just letting go of a few bad apples.

If cleaning house and providing performance incentives weren’t wholly responsible for improvement, what was? The answer is all the more crucial given the blitz of new and expanded merit pay plans, teacher-linked data collection, and aggressive evaluation of teachers in districts across the country.

Silva believes it was a host of reforms focusing on supporting teachers and improving their practice. (more…)