Performance pay works in the Prince George's schools

By William R. Hite Jr. and Donald J. Briscoe

Performance pay is supposed to be the third rail of education reform. But in Prince George's County, we have shown that it doesn't have to be.

Two years ago, we agreed to reward teachers and principals who elevate student achievement in high-need schools. Our program shows that the government can be a catalyst for school reform and that the Obama administration's plans to dramatically expand incentive programs are essential to changing school systems that currently fail, or cannot afford, to reward effective teaching.

It also shows what administrators and teachers can accomplish when we work together. During the 2006-07 school year, Prince George's schools and the unions joined hands to create and implement the district's first pay-for-performance program, supported by a five-year, $17 million grant from the federal government's Teacher Incentive Fund. TIF helps states and school districts develop innovative systems to reward teachers and principals who boost student achievement in high-need schools.

Yes, we had our disagreements as we worked out how to supplement the existing compensation system, which is based largely on seniority and qualifications, not performance. But thanks to the involvement of teachers and administrators selected by the unions, we were able to create a voluntary program that provides up to $10,000 in bonuses for effective teachers in high-need schools and as much as $12,000 for administrators who work to turn around struggling schools. Two committees that included teachers and administrators designed both the cash-incentive structure and the program's professional development system, which helps teachers improve classroom instruction and assists teachers and administrators in earning their bonuses...

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Is Arne Duncan giving up on education reform?

By David Ellison- Oakland Tribune

TO CHARTER OR not to charter? That is the question.

Hamlet pondered whether to battle "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" or to just give up. My fear is that, in pushing for more charter schools, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has given up.

Charters never really became laboratories for innovation.

They simply adopted the "new ideas" all public schools would if they had the freedom and the funds: longer school days and years, smaller schools and class sizes, careful selection of motivated, gifted teachers, strict accountability for both students and their parents, site-based management. "...

Charters have such freedom. But their claims to operate with less state funds than most public schools are spurious.

For one, charters usually receive substantial outside support. Even more significant, since salaries account for more than 90 percent of most schools' budgets, charters typically employ younger, far-less expensive faculty, and turn them over after only four years, thus keeping expenses artificially low.

In other words, charters attract our best new teachers but quickly burn them out.

This is reform?

True reform would address the real and enduring problems plaguing public education, such as the fact that the teaching profession generally attracts our least qualified college graduates; that the worst of them too often staff inner-city schools; that schools stand more segregated by race and class than ever; that they follow the same factory model as a century ago.

Many (certainly not all) charters — such as Summit Preparatory High School, which I featured in my last column — offer at least a few of our inner-city children a way out of an obviously broken and shamelessly unjust system of public schools...

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Why Michelle Rhee Has to Play Tough

By Richard Whitmire

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The forces lined up against D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee -- angry teachers, grumpy D.C. Council members, the nation's top teachers' union leader quarterbacking the opposition -- are essentially asking one question: Why can't you behave more like that nice Arne Duncan?

Indeed, with his aw-shucks humility and his anecdotes about playing b-ball with the president, Duncan has undeniable charm. That charm was honed in Chicago, where he never played in-your-face politics and never publicly suggested there was widespread incompetence among the teaching force, qualities that contributed to President Obama's tapping him to be U.S. secretary of education.

By contrast, Rhee appeared on the cover of Time wielding a broom to symbolically sweep incompetence out of her public schools. Yikes.

But there's a reason Rhee plays hardball: She has no choice...

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New York Mayor Wants More Charter Schools

More charter schools may be coming to the city under a plan proposed Wednesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Speaking at a 10th anniversary celebration of charter schools at the Sisulu-Walker Charter school in Harlem, the mayor said if reelected, he would fight to abolish the cap put on charter schools by Albany.

Bloomberg's plan would double the amount of charter schools in the city to 200. He is proposing that by 2013, almost 10 percent, or 100,000 public school seats will be charter.

"Charter schools like Sisulu have succeeded because they empower teachers and principals to set high expectations," said Bloomberg. "They encourage innovation in the classroom. They create competition among schools for students. But most importantly, they give parents more options in deciding what's best for their children."

In addition, he pledged to raise $100 million in private funds for charter school facilities...

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