By Jennifer Moody
Albany Democrat-Herald | Posted: Saturday, October 11, 2008 12:00 am
If voters decide to start paying Oregon's teachers based on performance, Peg Cornell probably won't have to worry.
The 20-year educator teaches Advanced Placement classes in biology and environmental science at Crescent Valley High School in Corvallis. High achievement is the norm.
But Measure 60, the Bill Sizemore initiative up for a vote next month that would link teachers' jobs and raises to "classroom performance," doesn't actually define those words. That's just one of many objections Cornell, as president of the Corvallis Education Association, has to the initiative.
If "performance" means "high student test scores," Cornell worries the measure will send teachers running from special education, high-poverty schools, English language learner classrooms or any other challenging environment. If it means "student growth rates," teachers might abandon students already scoring at the top of their test game for their classmates further down the chain.
Even when students are performing well, it isn't clear who should get the credit, Cornell said. What if, for instance, literacy scores rise in a classroom where students spend half their reading time working in small groups with specialists or parent volunteers?
The bottom line is the measure offers "a simple answer to a complex problem," she said. And like all such problems, she added, "a one-paragraph piece of legislation is not the answer."
Sure it is, if the legislation is left broad enough for local adaptation, says former state legislator Jeff Kropf, who argues for passage of Measure 60 in the November Voters' Pamphlet as an individual and director of Americans for Prosperity.
"The vagueness of the measure is both its strength and its weakness," he said. "It's a strength because it allows flexibility for the right kind of implementation, the team approach in getting teacher buy-in. Its weakness is it can be implemented in a manner that doesn't make it work."
Although he stressed he supports Measure 60 only as an individual, Kropf says he sees its benefits at Oregon Connections Academy, an online charter school based in Scio where he is chairman of the board of directors. He believes the measure would allow more schools to organize systems like ORCA's.
At ORCA, according to Principal Jerry Wilks, the school sets overall goals. Teachers then work with administrators to set separate goals for their students and themselves. Teachers who hit their targets receive a pay bonus of up to 5 percent; more if the school also makes the grade.
The school has no union. It provides cost-of-living raises but doesn't have a traditional step schedule for degrees or years of service.
"Coming from a brick-and-mortar situation a lot of years, I think what it does is kind of pull the staff together to focus not only on their own performance but the performance of the school and to take some ownership of that," Wilks said. "I think that's really powerful."
Laura Dillon of Talbot, an ORCA kindergarten teacher who also taught and substituted in public school buildings for 10 years, likes the system.
However, she acknowledges, ORCA's efforts are easier to measure in numbers: how many children logged on today, how many "live" lessons have been held this month.
If Measure 60 focuses on a teacher's professional growth, she's for it. If everything comes down to how well the students do, she's not so sure.
"If the intention of this measure is to make educators better at educating our children based on their - the educator's - performance, then I am in favor of this measure," she said.
But her husband, Tim Dillon, who teaches special education at Hoover Elementary School in Corvallis, has no uncertainties. To him, Measure 60 is simply a bad idea.
"Connections (Academy) is a public school, but it's small enough that there's probably enough oversight. They can reward the right number of teachers with the right amount of bonuses," he said.
But replicate the system in a traditional school district and you run into problems, he said. Administrators trying to evaluate hundreds of teachers shouldn't raise the stakes by tying those evaluations to dollars earned. Working in a classroom full of students with varied backgrounds is much different than working at a keyboard far away.
He remembers the 13 years he taught at Centennial Elementary School in Scio. One group came to him with the lowest test scores in the district, and they continued to struggle. The next year he had high achievers who topped all the charts.
"I looked really good that second year," he said, smiling. "I didn't look so good that first year."
Measure 60 opponents note that unlike businesses, which have some control over what goes into their products, teachers have to take whoever they get.
"A student comes to my classroom with 12 to 13 years of life - and school - experience," said Sue McGrory, who teaches language arts and social studies at Calapooia Middle School in Albany. "This combines with their socioeconomic level, their nutrition, their safety, their home situation, their parents' level of involvement and expectations, their changing hormones, et cetera, et cetera. There are so many factors that influence how well a student does in school that to pin all on the teacher seems nonsensical.
"If we have high expectations and a rigorous curriculum, we are called mean, and if we have looser standards, then we must not be doing things right," she added. "We can't win."
Cornell, the Corvallis union leader, points out that good teachers already set professional goals, are strong advocates for quality and have no fear of accountability. Used correctly, the local evaluation system teachers currently face is already able to weed out the teachers just marking time.
Measure 60 specifically states seniority won't be a factor for raises. But seniority shouldn't be a crime, Cornell said. Experience has value, and teachers should be rewarded for gaining it.
Sure, she said, it's possible to game the system. But Measure 60 wouldn't change that. Nor would it guarantee that districts without capable, communicative administrators able to evaluate "performance" would suddenly develop them.
Kropf agrees: Communication will be the key to successful interpretation of the measure if it passes.
At ORCA, he said, the bonus system is "a powerful tool at improving teachers' ability to perform."
"The reason I say that is the way we implement teacher merit pay, it gets teacher buy-in because they're involved in seting ther own goals, both as a school and individual," Kropf said. "We think that's the key to really getting the benefits of teacher merit pay."
At traditional schools, the seniority system allows teachers to go through the motions and still collect a paycheck, and to keep their jobs in tight budget years while their younger, more energetic but less experienced colleagues are let go, Kropf said.
"It doesn't seem fair to pay an older teacher more money than someone newer at teaching, if the newer teacher is doing the better job," his argument states. "In the end, it comes down to this: Which is more important, job security for older teachers or making sure kids get the best teachers possible?"
Granted, Kropf said, kids come into the classroom with different life factors. But good teachers are able to analyze needs and tailor instruction accordingly no matter what the child is like - and they're already being evaluated on those efforts.
"I really don't think it has anything to do with the ability of a teacher to perform with any given group of students that they have, no matter what the economic situation of the student or the background of the student or parent support," he said. "When teachers make that adjustment and bring out the best in that student, they ought to be rewarded for that."
Measure 60 still allows plenty of local control, Kropf said. It doesn't prohibit cost-of-living increases or say teachers in math and music have to be treated the same.
Districts could set different performance goals for different teachers to accommodate high-risk classrooms, he said, or teachers who work part time or to make sure those passionate first-year teachers have time to get on their feet.
"That flexibility is the strength of the measure," he said.