Another thing bonus pay won't fix

A National Education Policy Center (NEPC) review of a report from Georgetown University's Edunomics Lab finds the report misreads or ignores well-established evidence on class size, teacher assessment, pay, and job satisfaction in its proposal to pay bonuses to the "best" teachers in a district for teaching more students. The report proposes paying the top 25 percent of teachers bonuses for accepting up to three more students in their classes; the drawback of larger classes would, the report asserts, be offset by the benefit of more students enrolled with effective teachers. Yet the report projects outcomes based on data about average class sizes, which obscures the experience of thousands of teachers and students in already overcrowded classrooms. Further, the proposed bonus system ignores evidence that teacher salaries overall are too low to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of talented faculty, especially for high-needs schools. The NEPC reviewer characterizes the report as one of many responses to the criticism that "single-salary" pay scales under-compensate great teachers and over-compensate inept ones. But, "rather than a practical response to known issues with single-salary pay scales, the proposal appears to be primarily a scheme to reduce the teaching force," the reviewer concludes. "The report is superficial and misleading, and the plan it proposes has no value as a nationwide model." More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

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Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP) is an education support organization that works as a collaborative partner in high-poverty communities.