Gordon Campbell on merit pay

(with thanks to Kip Wood in Nanaimo) Recall that Gordon Campbell talked about merit pay when he was interviewed for Teacher Magazine in 2001 before he was elected. Here's what he said:

"Our goal should be to encourage innovation and excellence among teachers because the quality of our teachers has a direct effect on student success. Generally I like the idea of merit pay, it would be dishonest for me to say I don’t. I don’t know how it works in the public education system right now. It’s not something I’m rushing around saying 'I’ve figured out how to handle merit pay.'”

Here's the link to the April 2001 Special Election Edition that included David Chudnovsky's interview with Campbell:

http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Publications/Teacher_newsmag/archive/2000-2001/2001-04-SE/index.pdf

From the Dallas Morning News:
(the same state where much of the testing paraphanalia is produced.)

Study: Texas' teacher merit pay program hasn't boosted student performance.

Nov. 4--AUSTIN -- For the $300 million spent on merit pay for teachers over the last three years, Texas was hoping for a big boost in student achievement. But it didn't happen with the now-defunct program, according to experts hired by the state.
The Texas Educator Excellence Grant, or TEEG, plan did not produce the academic improvements that proponents -- including Gov. Rick Perry -- hoped for when the program was launched with much fanfare in 2006, a new report from the National Center on Performance Incentives said. "There is no systematic evidence that TEEG had an impact on student achievement gains," said researchers for Texas A&M University, Vanderbilt University and the University of Missouri.
The researchers examined reading scores on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) for more than 140,000 students at schools participating in the program.
The TEEG plan, which provided incentive pay for teachers at about 1,000 campuses a year in lower-income neighbourhoods, was discontinued by the Legislature after the 2008-09 school year because of design problems.
Until the national center report, however, there had been no analysis of whether the merit pay plan was working to improve student achievement -- as shown by TAKS scores.
The researchers also found little impact on another aim of the program: reducing teacher turnover. Researchers note that in the first year of the program, teachers who received larger-than-average bonuses were less likely to leave their school. But most teachers received payments that were far less than what the state recommended.
"We're not surprised by the findings," said Richard Kouri of the Texas State Teachers Association. "We predicted the program would be a flop, and that's what it turned out to be."
Although lawmakers discontinued TEEG, they provided nearly $200 million a year for another merit pay plan that began last year -- the District Awards for Teacher Excellence, or DATE. Several North Texas districts, including Dallas, are participating in what is one of the largest merit pay plans in the nation.
But teacher groups remain skeptical of the new plan, particularly its heavy reliance on student test scores -- also a key feature of the TEEG plan. "The problem is that these tests aren't designed for this purpose," said Jennifer Canaday of the Association of Texas Professional Educators. "You can't take a snapshot of students' performance on one day and extrapolate from that whether their teacher is highly effective over the entire school year."