Merit pay for D.C. schoolteachers is a badly needed reform. I know from experience. Over the past four years, I've spent two lunchtimes a week tutoring at Marie Reed Learning Center, one of the poorest schools in D.C. Many teachers do care and try to inspire their students, but many don't. Whenever I hear teachers shouting at students to maintain discipline or writing off certain "troublemakers" as unteachable, I get angry, but no one wants to make waves, so complaints get no action. Like a lot of volunteers, I just take satisfaction in getting through to every child I can.
D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee is taking on an education bureaucracy that for too long has put its own interests first and left those of its students last. I met her when she spoke quite eloquently at the American Enterprise Institute on February 13, 2008. You won't have to watch this video very long to be inspired by her tenacity in support of D.C. students. A single mother, Rhee has put her own two daughters in D.C. schools, unlike some past chancellors.
One anecdote she recounted says it all. Early on after Mayor Fenty appointed her on June 12, 2007, she asked one of her assistants to identify which employee of the D.C. Department of Education was responsible for the most spending. Rhee was surprised to learn that it was a special education counselor whose failure to file timely placement reports, as required by court order, resulted in most of her special education students being sent to a very expensive private school in Pennsylvania instead of to the special education program in D.C. Rhee said, "I could have hired full-time tutors and a chauffeur for each of those students and saved a lot of money." Rhee ordered her assistant to call this counselor in for a 5 p.m. meeting that same day. The counselor refused initially, saying "I have to check with my supervisor." The assistant said, "The Chancellor is your supervisor." The counselor responded, "Should I bring my lawyer?" The assistant responded, "You bring anyone you want, just be here at 5 p.m." One of the dirty secrets of the D.C. school system is how certain D.C. Education Department employees pitch a lot of business to a select few law firms that specialize in bring suits that suck the lifeblood out of the system instead of fixing educational deficiencies.
I've learned that if I want pencils for the Math Club I run on Friday's I have to bring them. I carefully guard a piece of chalk and an eraser. I do my own copying. I have difficulty getting syllabuses so I can tutor in support of what the kids are supposedly learning. All of this in a school system that spends over $13,000 per pupil per year, the third highest in the country. See Figure 4 of the latest Census Bureau report.
When my two stepkids went to one of the best elementary schools in D.C. back in the early 1990s, the parents paid directly through the PTA for the nurse, the librarian, the computer aid, and for lots of other extras. One day, my stepson called home to say the ceiling tiles in his room had fallen in on him and his classmates because the roof leaked. I'm glad my kids went through elementary school there, but we put them in private school after that because no matter how good their grades, they had only a 1 in 3 chance in getting into the honors program in junior high and high school. There just weren't enough places for all those who qualified.
No wonder D.C. school enrollement has declined so sharply. Some charter schools have provided a good alternative. A few haven't. For two years after my stepkids left for private school, D.C. carried them on the rolls, despite numerous orders from us to drop them, so D.C. could commit fraud in obtaining undeserved federal subsidies. I finally had to enlist our city council person to get them off the rolls once and for all.
One thing economists agree on: get the incentives right. D.C. has had the wrong education incentives for too long. Michelle Rhee is fighting hard to get the incentives right, and I'll do everything I can to support her. Register your support at this link.
DC Schools
Oddly enough, I too spent a couple of years tutoring kids at Marie Reed, although my stint was probably twenty years before yours. I came away thinking that there were plenty of talented children who were eager to learn and had no difficulty mastering the material, competent teachers, a strange over-emphasis on black history, and general indifference to nearly everything else necessary for a good education. When it came time to decide whether to send our kids to the local schools, we did what so many other parents with options do, we moved to the near-in Maryland suburbs and sent our kids to the really good public schools found there in abundance.
So I'm certainly not an expert on DC schools but I am aware of many of the problems. I suppose in a sense, by leaving, I became a part of one of the problems as were you by choosing private schools. But what I found so incredible is the long term indifference of the DC school system to its obvious inadequacies. Not all the schools are terrible, but enough are and have been for at least thirty years that one gets the feeling nothing will ever be done. Over the years DC schools have turned out tens of thousands of poorly prepared students who don't learn until later in life that the were cheated of an important right by the system. There may well be many stirling examples of budding DC scholars that I don't know about, but I suspect it is fair to say that it was and is a second rate school system by any measure.
Which brings me to Michelle Rhee -- I can't imagine that paying students for academic achievment is an approach likely to work, since financial incentives are the wrong ones to encourage real effort from students. But DC schools are so broken that anything an intelligent, dedicated administrator thinks worth trying is fine by me. I wish her all the best as she actually tries to do something about a very difficult, long-term problem.
I like this blog.Nice work.
I like this blog.Nice work.
Paying for good grades is
Paying for good grades is something a lot of asian families do with their kids. We believe that going to school is a child's "job" and we pay for work well done. I can't decide whether this is right or wrong, but for my own kids it's their only source of income.
how can you believe that
how can you believe that paying children for deciding to take part in their education is smart? BAD idea! That is sending the wrong message about the real world. Although I agree that readjusting and changing budgets might prove to work I definitely dont think you should reward kids for just showing up. Thats sending them the message that they should only be held accountable if they are being rewarded. Ridiculous.
Not a bad idea at all . . . paying for work IS the real world
In the real world we all get paid for the work we do. Most of us wouldn't show up day after day if our employers took away the paycheck.
The Asian kids are achieving . . . so I'm guessing this is working for them. I wouldn't dismiss it so quickly.
I used incentives with my children, and I'm proud to say that both turned out to be very successful and productive people. We all need positive rewards . . . the type of reward might be a bit different for each child (I didn't always use cash), but the positive approach can be very powerful.
Not a bad idea...
As Michelle Rhee has stated, in the real world kids are staying away from school and making money. Why not combat that financial incentive with a short term financial incentive that will also benefit them in the long run.
See my blog post where I examine the recent CNN and article and conclude that Michelle Rhee is doing the best thing for DC Public Schools - radical change.
Solutions to Public School Problems
Paying for Grades
One of the good things about economics is that it stimulates excellent discussion of the key issues as evidenced by the above comments. Paying kids for grades or attendance is controversial to say the least.
I just want to put this in context. When I tutor, I encounter problems that require a social worker and a lot of resources. Two years ago, I joined several volunteers in encouraging one child not to commit suicide. He couldn't stand living in the shelters anymore, where he couldn't protect his younger sister. He had no hope anymore that his mother would overcome her crack addiction. Obviously, teaching anything in this context is nearly impossible.
Most kids aren't that bad off, but, when I ask them whether they have anything at all to read in the house, the answer is frequently no. Last year, I asked one young student why he didn't exhibit any interest in the math I was trying to teach him. He responded, "My dad doesn't want me to." It turned out, his dad, a bricklayer, wanted his son to join him in bricklaying and didn't want his son to learn math. I plugged away anyway, but I was taken aback by such a damning attitude.
When you reach the end of the line trying to interest children in their education; when you get so frustrated that you can barely bring yourself to the classroom anymore; when, despite all your education and experience, you can't come up with any idea of how to improve a child's academic performance, you start thinking of one thing that all these kids respect -- the power of money.
That runs against the moral values I was raised by. I was repulsed by the few kids I ever saw paid for grades as I was growing up. It sent a message that the result was more important than the learning process, and many of those kids cheated. However, now I'm dealing with kids who have never been rewarded for anything, kids who have given up on themselves, on their schools, and on their families. If money will get them back on the path to a good education, I'm willing to try it.
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