• Can I Have Some Faculty With My College?

    The growth of contingent faculty reflects the increasing tendency of higher education institutions to operate like businesses. It’s no secret that this is a major feature of for-profit colleges, most of which have effectively eliminated tenure on the grounds that this will help flexibility and innovation.

    But what is the actual staff breakdown in traditional and for-profit colleges?

    I examined data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) maintained by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) combined with data from the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability.

    There were several surprises.

  • For Many Teachers, Reform Means Higher Risk, Lower Rewards

    ** Also posted here on “Valerie Strauss’ Answer Sheet” in the Washington Post

    One of the central policy ideas of market-based education reform is to increase both the risk and rewards of the teaching profession. The basic idea is to offer teachers additional compensation (increased rewards), but, in exchange, make employment and pay more contingent upon performance by implementing merit pay and weakening job protections such as tenure and seniority (increased risk). This trade-off, according to advocates, will not only force out low performers by paying them less and making them easier to fire, but it will also attract a “different type” of candidate to teaching – high-achievers who thrive in a high-stakes, high-reward system.

    As I’ve said before, I’m skeptical as to whether less risk-averse individuals necessarily make better teachers, as I haven’t seen any evidence that this is the case. I’m also not convinced that personnel policies are necessarily the most effective lever when it comes to “attracting talent," and I’m concerned that the sheer size of the teaching profession makes doing so a unique challenge. That said, I’m certainly receptive to trying new compensation/employment structures, and the “higher risk, higher reward” idea, though unproven in education, is not without its potential if done correctly. After all, teacher pay continues to lose ground to that offered by other professions, and the penalty teachers pay increases the longer they remain in the profession. At the same time, there is certainly a case for attracting more and better candidates through higher pay, and nobody would disagree that accountability mechanisms such as evaluations and tenure procedures could use improvement in many places, even if we disagree sharply on the details of what should be done.

    There’s only one problem: States and districts all over the nation are increasing risk, but not rewards. In fact, in some places, risk is going up while compensation is being cut, sometimes due to the same legislation.

  • The Stability Of Ohio's School Value-Added Ratings And Why It Matters

    I have discussed before how most testing data released to the public are cross-sectional, and how comparing them between years entails the comparison of two different groups of students. One way to address these issues is to calculate and release school- and district-level value-added scores.

    Value added estimates are not only longitudinal (i.e., they follow students over time), but the models go a long way toward accounting for differences in the characteristics of students between schools and districts. Put simply, these models calculate “expectations” for student test score gains based on student (and sometimes school) characteristics, which are then used to gauge whether schools’ students did better or worse than expected.

    Ohio is among the few states that release school- and district-level value-added estimates (though this number will probably increase very soon). These results are also used in high-stakes decisions, as they are a major component of Ohio’s “report card” grades for schools, which can be used to close or sanction specific schools. So, I thought it might be useful to take a look at these data and their stability over the past two years. In other words, what proportion of the schools that receive a given rating in one year will get that same rating the next year?

  • The Education Reporter's Dilemma

    I’ve written so many posts about the misinterpretation of testing data in news stories that I’m starting to annoy myself. For example, I’ve shown that year-to-year changes in testing results might be attributable to the fact that, each year, a different set of students takes the test. I’ve discussed the fact that proficiency rates are not test scores – they only tell you the proportion of students above a given line – and that the rates and actual scores can move in opposite directions (see this simple illustration). And I’ve pleaded with journalists, most of whom I like and respect, to write with care about these issues (and, I should note, many of them do so).

    Yet here I am, back on my soapbox again. This time the culprit is the recent release of SAT testing data, generating dozens of error-plagued stories from newspapers and organizations. Like virtually all public testing data, the SAT results are cross-sectional – each year, the test is taken by a different group of students. This means that demographic changes in the sample of test takers influence the results. This problem is even more acute in the case of the SAT, since it is voluntary. Despite the best efforts of the College Board (see their press release), a slew of stories improperly equated the decline in average SAT scores since the previous year with an overall decline in student performance – a confirmation of educational malaise (in fairness, there were many exceptions).

    I’ve come to think that there’s a fundamental problem here: When you interpret testing data properly, you don’t have much of a story.

  • Public Servants Versus Private Contractors ... Again

    Has the battle over public sector compensation turned a decisive corner? Have much-maligned government workers won an evidence-based victory?

    Reasonable people might think so, thanks in part to a study by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a nonpartisan group that keeps close tabs on government operations. According to the findings of the POGO report – findings that they call "shocking" – the "federal government approves service contract billing rates … that pay contractors 1.83 times more than the government pays federal employees in total compensation, and more than 2 times the total compensation paid in the private sector for comparable services."

    More specifically, federal government employees cost less than private contractors in 33 of the 35 occupational classifications reviewed – and non-federal private sector worker compensation was lower than contractor billing rates in all of the reviewed classifications. In one case, contractor bill rates were nearly "5 times more" than the full compensation rates paid to comparable federal workers.

  • What Are "Middle Class Schools"?

    An organization called “The Third Way” released a report last week, in which they present descriptive data on what they call “middle class schools." The primary conclusion of their analysis is that “middle class schools” aren’t “making the grade," and that they are “falling short on their most basic 21st century mission: To prepare kids to get a college degree." They also argue that “middle class schools” are largely ignored in our debate and policymaking, and we need a “second phase of school reform” in order to address this deficit.

    The Wall Street Journal swallowed the report whole, running a story presenting Third Way’s findings under the headline “Middle class schools fail to make the grade."

    To be clear, I think that our education policy debates do focus on lower-income schools to a degree that sometimes ignores those closer to the middle of the distribution. So, it’s definitely worthwhile to take a look at “middle class schools’” performance and how it can be improved. In other words, I’m very receptive to the underlying purpose of the report.

    That said, this analysis consists mostly of arbitrary measurement and flawed, vague interpretations. As a result, it actually offers little meaningful insight.

  • Be Careful What You Think The Public Thinks About Tenure

    Monmouth University polling director Patrick Murray offered this response to my criticism of how he described tenure in a recent poll of New Jersey public opinion (see my brief reply and Bruce Baker's as well).

    I’m not particularly keen on arguing about the wording of poll questions. As I stated in my original post, wordings are never perfect, and one must always take this into account when trying to interpret polling results. I took issue with Monmouth’s phrasing because it is demonstrably inaccurate, nothing more.

    But I do want to quickly add that, as is often the case, responses to poll questions about tenure are very sensitive to the nature of the description offered. A 2009 PDK/Gallup poll provides an illustration.

  • Collective Bargaining Teaches Democratic Values, Activism

    Some people must have been startled by President Obama’s decision to draw a line in the sand on collective bargaining in his jobs speech to the Congress last week. Specifically, the President said: “I reject the idea that we have to strip away collective bargaining rights to compete in a global economy."

    Given the current anti-union tenor of many prominent Republicans, started by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, it seems pretty clear that worker rights is shaping up to be a hot-button issue in the 2012 campaign. Collective bargaining rights as presidential campaign plank? It wasn’t that long ago that anything to do with unions was considered to be an historic anachronism – hardly worth a major Republican presidential candidate’s trouble to bash. Times have changed.

  • Serious Misconduct

    A recent Monmouth University poll of New Jersey residents is being widely touted by Governor Chris Christie and his supporters as evidence that people support his education reform plans. It’s hardly unusual for politicians to ignore the limitations of polling, but I’d urge caution in interpreting these results as a mandate.

    Others have commented on how some of the questions are worded in a manner that could skew responses. These wording issues are inherent to polling, and that’s one of the major reasons why they must be interpreted carefully. But one of the questions caught my eye – the question about teacher tenure – and it’s worth quickly discussing.

  • Revisiting The Merits Of Merit Pay

    Al Shanker was very concerned about the need to identify and replace incompetent teachers. The first time he wrote a column about it, his wife was one of the many people who warned him that the union’s teachers would be up in arms (see here). Shanker wasn’t worried, replying that "All of my members will read that, and they’ll all agree, because not one of them will think that they are one of the bad teachers that I’m talking about."

    He was right. Most of the members were very supportive, probably for a variety of reasons. First, most teachers take their responsibilities as teachers very seriously, thus favoring the establishment and enforcement of high standards of professional practice. Second, teachers who don’t believe themselves to be effective are more likely to leave the profession – see here. And third, we know from research that most of us just believe that we are simply better than most other people. Psychologists describe this "illusory superiority" or "above average" effect as the tendency to make self-serving comparisons between oneself and others, with the consequence that an overwhelming majority of people judge themselves to be "better than average" on a variety of traits, skills, and socially desirable dimensions ( here and here).

    Nevertheless, there are many teachers who support the idea of performance pay, even if they're wary of the details of how "merit" is defined (specifically, whether or not it includes test scores).

    Now, it’s no secret that I think merit pay for teachers is of limited practical utility. Nevertheless, it’s important to understand why, evidence aside, some people (including teachers) might find the policy to be attractive. These are my thoughts on the issue: