CPREConsortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Wisconsin Madisonchildren

February 2003 - Newsletter

New year's greetings to all of you from the cold and snowy Midwest! This newsletter marks the first anniversary of the CPRE-UW listserv. Your response to our listserv and newsletters has been very encouraging. The subscription base has increased from the original 90 or so, to almost 1000. A quick scan of the email addresses shows that although most of our subscribers appear to be from the U.S., we also have subscribers from several other countries, including Canada, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, The Netherlands, and Taiwan. Thus, although our research focus is on teacher compensation and school finance within the United States, it's clear that the interest in these topics is not limited to the U.S. We hope that you will all continue to share this newsletter with your colleagues and that our subscription base will continue to grow in 2003.

This newsletter features information from our 2002 National Conference on Teacher Compensation and Evaluation. Several pending publications are noted, as well as upcoming conferences at which our research staff will be making presentations. If you attend any of these conference sessions, we encourage you to introduce yourself to our staff and let them know that you heard about the session from the listserv.

Allan Odden
Co-Director, CPRE
Principal Investigator, School Finance and Teacher Compensation

2002 NATIONAL TEACHER COMPENSATION CONFERENCE OVERVIEW

On November 21-22, almost 400 people participated in our third National Conference on Teacher Compensation and Evaluation, held at the Radisson Hotel O'Hare in Rosemont, Illinois. Attendance was up by almost 100 from 2001, and was close to double that of the first conference. Five keynote sessions and 18 breakout sessions offered participants multiple opportunities to hear about cutting-edge compensation and evaluation initiatives, as well as learn about several jurisdictions that are using value-added analysis of student achievement gains.

We are in the process of posting to the CPRE-UW website the presentations for which we receive electronic files. Many of the presentations already are posted and more will be added, as they are available. You can access them from the final conference agenda at http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/conference/conference/Nov02/agenda.asp . Please note that although we tried to obtain a presentation to post for every session, we have not always been able to do so. However, we have included links to other possible sources for related information about a session, e.g., a district's website, where we have been able to identify them.

Overall conference evaluations were very good, although we did experience some over-crowding in several of the smaller breakout rooms. In response to those concerns and our expectation that the 2003 conference attendance could increase, the new Chicago airport area location we are considering for the 2003 conference has larger breakout rooms and better meal accommodations. If you're interested in attending the 2003 conference, reserve November 20-21, 2003, on your calendar. More conference information will be made available over the summer.

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Although every session was well attended and of interest to many people, we are highlighting several sessions in this newsletter to give them broader exposure because they relate to topics that are frequently visited on our website. Where possible, we have provided a link to the conference presentation.

Teacher Quality and Teacher Pay: keynote session by Dan Goldhaber

Dan Goldhaber, a Research Associate Professor in the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington, and an Affiliated Scholar of the Urban Institute's Education Policy Center, presented a keynote session that summarized initial findings about the relationship between teacher labor markets and teacher quality. Generally, Goldhaber is studying the degree to which current teacher salary levels are adequate to recruit and retain the teacher quality needed for standards-based education reform. Slides from his keynote session are available at http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/conference/conference/Nov02/goldhaberKeynote.asp .

Denver's multi-year compensation pilot project update

Interest in Denver's pilot has been strong since our first conference. In this session, Brad Jupp (union representative) and Shirley Scott (administration representative) gave an update on the pilot and what's expected next. The pilot is in its fourth and final year. Bonus compensation is paid to participating teachers based on achievement of two teacher goals that are agreed on by the teacher and administrator. The goals must be set in terms of student achievement, which is broadly defined, to also cover specialists. A teacher who achieves one goal receives a $750 bonus and $1500 for achieving both goals; on average, $1500 is 3-4% of annual salary. According to the presenters, using bonuses for pilot compensation and retaining the single salary schedule for base pay "held career earnings harmless" and was necessary to "get the conversation started" on pay for performance with teachers. In April 2003, the union-administration panel will present a draft of a pay for performance system based on the results of the pilot. This will be provided to interested groups for review & comment for six months, and then a final proposal will be developed. Teachers and Board will vote on successor pay for performance system in January 2004. Slides from the presentation are available from this link http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/conference/conference/Nov02/denver2002.asp . The district and Denver Classroom Teachers' Association also maintain a joint website ( http://www.denverpfp.org/ ) related to the Pay for Performance project.

Washoe County's evaluation system

Washoe County (Reno), Nevada, schools were among the first to adapt Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching to a standards-based teacher evaluation system. This session outlined the origin and evolution of the district's decision to use the Framework for this purpose, the process used to adapt it to an evaluation system, and the product itself. In addition to carrying out its own ongoing review of the evaluation system from the field test stage on, Washoe is one of CPRE's teacher compensation project research sites for standards-based teacher evaluation systems. The district's field test review found that teachers reported that feedback increased their awareness of areas for improvement, and there was increased meaningful dialogue between the teacher and the evaluator concerning teaching. Recently, district teachers and principals were the focus of web-based surveys conducted by the teacher compensation project to gather information on the perceptions and attitudes of teachers and administration about the evaluation system. View the district's presentation here ( http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/conference/conference/Nov02/washoe.asp ) and a CPRE case study on the development of the evaluation system ( http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/papers/pdf/Washoe TE 4-02.pdf ).

Pensions for Teachers: Possible Changes and Implications

In addition to the primary research focus of the federally-funded portion of the Teacher Compensation Project, additional related work supported by funds from the Carnegie Foundation is being done on emerging issues in teacher compensation. This session focused on a recent working paper by CPRE-UW staff on teacher retirement plans and five policy issues that have emerged as possible reasons to change some aspects of teacher retirement plans. The paper was presented as a working draft, with the hope that we will receive ongoing input and information about the issues and ideas raised in the paper. The paper is available in .pdf format at http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/papers/pdf/Pensions Draft.pdf .

The role that a retirement plan plays in a teacher's lifetime employment decisions is not known, yet retirement costs are a significant portion of school's compensation costs. Thus, one goal of the paper is to provide a "primer" on the two major types of retirement programs (defined benefit and defined contribution) and on certain plan features, e.g., vesting, benefit level, portability, etc., that are fundamental aspects of any retirement system. Changes to any plan feature can lead to very different individual outcomes, so that knowing what to change to accomplish a particular goal can be very difficult. Thus, the paper's coverage of basic retirement plan information is intended to provide a broad basic understanding by teachers, the public, and policy-makers, of important retirement concepts.

Another goal of the paper is to put on the table five issues that have been identified as possible reasons to consider changing teacher retirement plans. These issues are: (1) implications of moving toward a national market for teachers, (2) giving teachers greater pension choices, (3) increasing pension payouts, (4) improving equity, and (5) the potential impact of pension arrangements on the attraction and retention of teachers. While not taking a position on any of these issues, the paper summarizes the arguments in support of each of these issues, with the hope that presenting these issues will encourage broader discussion of them and their policy implications for teacher retirement systems.

A third goal of the paper is to present current research and what we know about the role that retirement plans play in people's employment decisions. Because many of the above five issues are suggested as ways to encourage teachers to come to or stay in teaching, it would be useful to know if teachers would respond to retirement plan changes in the manner expected. Even among private employers, relatively little is known about the impact of retirement plans on employees' decisions, and even less is known about teachers in particular. Therefore, a number of research needs are identified.

If you have comments or suggestions to share after you have read the working paper, please email them to the lead author, Steve Kimball, at skimball@education.wisc.edu .

STATE AND LOCAL TEACHER COMPENSATION INITIATIVES ON THE HORIZON

There are a number of teacher compensation initiatives that we will be watching in 2003, in addition to following activities at our current research sites. Here are some of the places that we've learned have recent teacher compensation activity:

  • The Colonial School District in Pennsylvania modified its previous individually determined bonus program to a group/school-based performance award program.
  • Several state-funded pilot programs are underway in Minnesota. Two of the pilot locations, Minneapolis and LaCrescent-Hokah, presented at our 2002 conference. In addition, Minnesota's new governor, Tim Pawlenty, has indicated that performance pay for teachers is one of his top priorities.
  • The State of Kentucky is accepting RFPs from districts for 10 pilots for differentiated compensation projects.
  • A teacher compensation redesign committee has been formed in Arlington, Virginia, to look at differentiated compensation.
  • This spring, Philadelphia School District will begin piloting a performance-based teacher assessment based on Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching. A session on the pilot program was presented at our 2002 conference.
  • As part of a comprehensive education reform project, the State of Idaho is beginning to look at possible changes to teacher compensation to support other reforms.

State-level initiatives often make it into the online sources that we track, but local initiatives are less likely to make the news. If you know of a state or local teacher compensation or evaluation initiative that you think we should know about, please email Lisa Armstrong of our research staff at llarmst1@wisc.edu .

CPRE-UW WEBSITE OFFERS SCHOOL REDESIGN COST SIMULATION TOOL

The School Finance section of our website offers a new tool that can provide information on the degree to which a school could finance, through resource reallocation, the core needs of several comprehensive school designs. The information can be used in conjunction with the strategies as to how and over what time period the resources could be reallocated that are outlined in How Schools Can Reallocate Resources to Boost Student Achievement (Allan Odden & Sarah Archibald, 2000). The report provides a feasibility cost analysis by identifying the salient programmatic and cost elements of each selected school design and, by assessing current resources in your school, indicating whether those resources are sufficient to finance the selected designs via resource reallocation. While the report also does not make any performance claims for the selected designs, it does give some evidence of progress made at other schools that have adopted the design. All costs represent reasonable estimates for each school design as of the summer of 2002. The designs available in the report include the following: The Odden Model, America's Choice, ATLAS, Co-NECT, Expeditionary Learning/Outward Bound, Modern Red Schoolhouse, and Roots and Wings/Success for All.

The simulation tool and more information about the report is available from our website at http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/finance/reports/ . Additional cases of resource reallocation can be found at http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/finance/research/reallocation.asp and more analysis has just been published in "You CAN Get There From Here: How Three Urban Schools Could Use Existing Resources to Afford Comprehensive School Reform," by Mark Fermanich and Steve Kimball and published in the Summer 2002 Journal of Education Finance.

PAPERS AND PUBLICATIONS

In the last newsletter, we noted that Allan Odden had authored a chapter on implementation issues and problems, and suggestions for improving performance-based evaluation systems, particularly as a foundation for knowledge- and skill-based pay systems. Publication information for that is now available. The chapter, "An Early Assessment of Comprehensive Teacher Compensation Change Plans," will be published in School Finance and Teacher Quality: Exploring the Connections: 2003 Annual Yearbook of the American Education Finance Association, edited by David Monk and Margaret Plecki. The book is in press. As part of their membership, current AEFA members will receive a copy of the yearbook and others may purchase it from their local bookstore. Membership information for AEFA is available from the group's website ( http://www.aefa.cc ).

A school finance article is in press at the Journal of Education Finance. CPRE-UW researchers Allan Odden, Sarah Archibald and Mark Fermanich, and Betheny Gross (currently at CPRE-Penn) are authors of the article, "Defining school-level expenditure structures that reflect educational strategies." It will be published in volume 29 of the journal.

Teacher compensation researchers Tony Milanowski and Herb Heneman presented two papers at the 16th Annual Conference of the American Evaluation Association, in Washington, DC, in the fall. The papers, "Evaluation of teachers' reactions to a standards-based teacher evaluation system," and "Transforming teacher evaluation: A standards-based teacher evaluation system," draw on findings from the Teacher Compensation project's current research on standards-based teacher evaluation systems. The papers have been submitted for publication to the Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education.

CPRE-UW STAFF TO PRESENT AT UPCOMING CONFERENCES

School finance and teacher compensation staff will be at most of the major educational conferences this spring.

The American Education Finance Association's annual conference will be March 27-29 in Orlando, Florida. CPRE-UW researchers are featured in several sessions. Session 1.5, The Operation, Validity and Human Resources Context of Teacher Performance Assessment Systems, will be chaired by Allan Odden, and features four papers prepared by teacher compensation project researchers (Geoffrey Borman, Herb Heneman, Steve Kimball, Tony Mianowski). The papers are based on research in Cinncinnati and Washoe County (NV). Session 3.2, Teacher, School and Fiscal Effects: A New Model and a New Look, is also chaired by Allan Odden, and includes four papers by school finance project researchers (Sarah Archibald, Geoffrey Borman, Maritza Dowling, Mark Fermanich, and Allan Odden). Dan Goldahber will be the discussant for this session. Allan Odden will be a participant in Session 4.6, Teacher Labor Markets: The Role of Compensation, which includes two papers by teacher compensation staff (Herb Heneman, Eileen Kellor, Steve Kimball, Tony Milanowski). Allan Odden will also be a panel member in session 2.3, School Finance and Teacher Quality: Selections from the 2003 AEFA Yearbook: Part 1.

The American Educational Research Association's annual meeting will be April 21-25 in Chicago. Although session information is not yet available, CPRE-UW staff will be presenting updated versions of several of the papers noted for the AEFA meeting.

Finally, if you plan to attend the American Society of Curriculum and Development annual meeting in San Francisco, March 8-10, visit the CPRE booth (#1536) in the exhibition hall. Lisa Armstrong, our office manager and familiar face to anyone who has attended a CPRE-UW activity, will be staffing the CPRE booth.