Pay for Performance Follies

The New York Times reports that an experiment in New York City public schools to pay students for their test scores on Advanced Placement exams has resulted in a small decline in those scores.

A little more than a year ago, the organization sponsoring this experiment, REACH, met with a group of UFT leaders, including President Randi Weingarten and myself. The REACH delegation included Executive Director Eddie Rodriguez and Wall Street hedge fund operator and Democrats for Education Reform honcho Whitney Tilson, both of whom are quoted in the Times article. REACH wanted our support of this effort, and our agreement to extend their bonuses to the teachers of Advanced Placement classes.

Between Randi and myself, we had close to fifteen years of actual experience teaching Advanced Placement classes on our side of the room. The Clara Barton High School AP class in American Politics we taught had participated in the We The People national civics competition, winning the New York City and States championships many years and placing as high as fourth in the nation on a number of occasions. There was no classroom experience, let alone experience teaching AP classes, on the REACH delegation.

We told Rodriguez and Tilson that they did not understand the motivations of teachers teaching AP classes and students taking them. AP classes are much more work for teachers, but the best teachers seek out opportunities to teach them, because they thrive on the challenge of teaching college level material. Students took AP classes because they understood that the work in those classes better prepared them for college, and that college admission offices look favorably on applicants who have successfully completed them.

If REACH really wanted to make a difference, we told them, they should be working to expand the opportunities for students of color and poor students to take AP classes. They could be providing support for the extra expenses – costly college textbooks, additional class time or tutoring and professional development for teachers new to the classes – schools incur when they sponsor AP classes. They should be working with the Department of Education to have small high schools on campuses create consortiums which could provide more AP classes than each school could ever do alone.

But REACH was firmly wedded to the dogma of market fundamentalism: monetary incentives would make all the difference. Experience with real world AP classes was immaterial.

Faced with this reality, the UFT declined to support the experiment and to allow the inclusion of teachers.

Now we have the results of this experiment with pay for performance, and they speak for themselves.

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