Why School Reform Fails: A Case Study

A valuable article in Sunday's Strib about Q Comp, Governor Tim Pawlenty's "performance pay" system for teachers. The article notes that 99% of teachers in districts that participate in the Q Comp program receive the financial incentive it awards. It also notes that the districts participating in the program have shown no discernible improvement in their achievement levels due to the system. There is much we can learn from this simple tale of reforming a-go-go.

A GOOD IDEA . . .
Q Comp was supposed to reward highly effective teachers. Who doesn't like the sound of that? The idea was to begin moving away from the current system, which rewards teachers based on two criteria--their own educational achievement (coursework and degrees) and experience (number of years teaching). Unfortunately, these two criteria haves no correlation to the results toward which we want teachers to strive like quality instruction or student achievement. Creating a system that does reward these results, if only partially, is one of many areas reformers seek to change in our public education system.

RUN THROUGH THE POLITICAL PROCESS . . .
Even the Governor cannot simply dictate such changes. Public education is, after all, still public, which means that systemic changes are run through the sausage factory of legislators, school boards, unions and bureaucracies before being enacted. Many times, such as this one, the results of the factory no longer resemble the original intentions. While Q Comp started off as a way to reward highly effective teachers, it became an enhanced version of the compensation system we already have in place. Teachers are rewarded in Q Comp for taking more classes, sitting through more professional development, discussing more books and generally spending more time focusing on things that ultimately do not improve the quality of education, well-intentioned they may be.

DOESN'T CREATE CHANGE . . .
The culture of education permeates more than just schools. What I mean by this is that public schools believe nearly every challenge we face can be solved by . . . more education. Professional Development is a way of life for teachers and school districts, even if the results are non-existent. When faced with poor performing schools, teachers or principals, the first reaction is always to provide more training. (Whether or not training is the problem.) Q Comp, as it currently exists, helps feed this culture of focusing on inputs and training rather than on outputs and results. The system rewards performance--but essentially that performance is jumping through additional professional development hoops, not changing behavior.

OR THE INTENDED RESULTS . . .
Needless to say, it should not be a surprise that Q Comp is failing to have any impact on student achievement. Even if Q Comp did, in fact, reward those teachers who demonstrated great practice and high quality instruction, it is pretty doubtful that a single change to the compensation system alone would have a meaningful impact on student results.

THEREBY PROVING REFORMS DON'T WORK.
See? What did all this hard work and reform get us? Nothing. Teachers unions can now say with confidence and well documented data that performance pay doesn't work. Conservatives and anti-school folks can look at Q Comp and show how we're pouring even more money into schools without getting anything in return. Reformer-types can claim the program was so water-downed as to be worthless. School districts can blame the state for creating a new program that didn't do what it was supposed to.

Meanwhile back in classroom after classroom . . . .