Human Resource Directors and Employee Unions

Tomorrow afternoon, the Faculty Senate at UW-Madison will hear from Bob Lavigna, the institution's Human Resources Director. Lavigna will be discussing HR Design, a new plan I've covered several times recently on this blog. It's a controversial proposal, in part because it shifts the focus on setting compensation from internal equity towards external markets.  It also reduces some of the benefits held by classified staff, who are currently unionized, and for whom perks like substantial vacation time slightly dull the pain stemming from the terrible wages.

I was therefore intrigued when this morning I delved into my Inside Higher Ed backlog of reading and found the results of a brand new national survey of HR directors and their opinions about the future directions universities need to take.  The results help to at least partially set the broader stage on which HR Design is occurring.   (Partially: the response rate for this survey is 15% and with just 324 participants, 42 of whom were at public research universities, who knows if Madison is represented.)

Here are some key highlights related to HR Design:

• Concerns about salary equity are losing ground. Nearly 32% of HR Directors at public research universities said they are paying less attention to equity in faculty and staff salaries than they did five years ago, and just 17% are attending to those issues more often, despite the strong likelihood (given austerity practices) that inequities are growing.

• Almost all HR Directors take a dim view of unions. Close to 90% of HR Directors at public research universities contend that unions inhibit their ability to re-deploy people and define job tasks, discourage pay for performance, and inappropriately protect poor performing employees.   Less than 1/3 of such Directors acknowledge unions' demonstrable roles in securing better salaries and benefits and ensuring fair treatment of employees.

• Few HR Directors seem able to ground their assessments in data. Just 28.6% of HR Directors at public research universities report that they have good data on employee performance, productivity, and satisfaction, and only 21.4% say they use such data in campus planning and policy decisions.  (Sidenote: Oh. My. God.)

• And yet somehow, HR Directors are able to attribute low morale among employees to recent budget cuts. 74% of those at public research institutions agree that budget cuts did major damage to staff rationale, and 20-30% say their offices are unfairly blamed for cuts to employee benefits and services and even layoffs.  The frequency of these statements is twice as common at public research institutions as compared to elsewhere.

These will undoubtedly form a nice backdrop to tomorrow's discussion. I'm hoping Lavigna keeps his statement short and sweet, to allow plenty of time for questions. I'm told this hasn't been the case at recent campus events; for example at last week's Academic Staff Assembly meeting the members were not given responses to ASEC's previously issued comments.  But I'm sure tomorrow will be different-- faculty like to talk, at least as much as we like to listen.

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Obama Offers Details on Education Plan

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that President Obama will unveil his education plan today. Reportedly, it will address performance pay for teachers, higher academic standards, dropout prevention programs, and direct aid for college students. He will not propose any legislation nor will he address the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (No Child Left Behind) at this time.
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UPDATE: From The New York Times Caucus Blog:

President Obama said Tuesday that the nation must overhaul its education system and dramatically decrease the drop-out rate among students to remain competitive in the global economy.

In an address to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Obama issued a challenge to states to increase the quality of reading and math instruction to keep American students at pace with other countries....

The president challenged teachers unions, renewing his support for a merit-based system of payment.... “It means treating teachers like the professionals they are while also holding them more accountable,” Mr. Obama said. “New teachers will be mentored by experienced ones. Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools.”

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Teacher Pay Down Under

The Australian teachers union is calling on the government to fund a voluntary system of performance pay that would be based on national teaching standards and would pay the most accomplished teachers $100,000 annually.

According to an article in The Australian:

Federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said a new career structure was required to move away from the current system under which teachers are forced to leave the classroom and undertake administrative positions to achieve further pay rises.

"This is a two-step process in giving professional pay for teachers," he said. "First we need to ensure as a country that we have a competitive professional salary to attract teachers in the numbers required to ensure a qualified teacher in front of every single classroom, no matter where it is in the country.

"Beyond that, I restate our preparedness to negotiate a framework that further recognises and rewards demonstrated teaching skills, knowledge and practice."

This seems to me to endorse something akin to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards but which would be built upon recognized national teaching standards and funded consistently across the country. More info here and here.

Kudos to the Strategic Management of Human Capital project for bringing this issue to my attention.

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DC Pay Update

Today's Washington Post reports on the new teacher compensation proposal put forth by Washington, DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

D.C. teachers interested in the huge salary increases proposed by Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee would not only have to relinquish their seniority but also risk dismissal by spending a year on probation, according to details of the plan released yesterday.

The tradeoff, part of one of two salary scenarios under discussion, could earn an instructor with five years of experience as much as $100,000 in base pay and bonuses. The structure would put the city's teachers in an elite class in a profession in which the national average salary is $47,600, according to the most recent survey conducted by the American Federation of Teachers.

D.C. school officials said the leaps in pay would be subsidized partly by private foundations.

See background blog posts here and here.

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Teacher Pay Reform in DC

Interesting developments on teacher compensation in District of Columbia Public Schools.... D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is pushing performance pay for teachers and apparently has gotten a number of foundations interested in funding the proposed reform.

As a Democrat for education reform, I am open to and interested in the overhaul of the traditional steps-and-lanes approach to compensating teachers (based on years of experience and advanced degrees--factors largely unrelated to teacher quality). We've got to think about ways to attract new talent into the profession. Increasing overall salaries is one approach, but a good portion of any increase needs to be directed toward individuals willing to take on additional duties and leadership roles, those with high-demand knowledge and skills, those willing to teach in more challenging environments, and those who can demonstrate their effectiveness on student outcomes.

The devil is in the details, and I am wary of pay proposals based entirely on test scores. It isn't yet clear exactly how Rhee's proposal would function exactly and it is still under negotiation with the D.C. teachers union, but it does sound "test-score heavy". For instance, how would teachers who teach untested subjects or untested grades be compensated under the new system? Would there be school-wide bonuses available on top of individual bonuses? Would school principals, curriculum specialists, and others be eligible for the new pay system? What test score or scores would be used? Would they be appropriately scaled? Would additional pay be based on a value-added methodology, on overall proficiency, on a single year or multiple years worth of data? Do any readers have answers to these questions?

Leaving these questions unanswered for the moment, Rhee's proposal would appear to give teachers the choice of sticking with the current system or giving up seniority and tenure rights for the chance at dramatically boosting their pay based on demonstrated effectiveness. And it would inject a bunch of new money into the system to fund salary increases. All in all, it's a deal that many teachers -- including the younger generation of educators -- may be willing to accept.

Read more:
Washington Post editorial (7/8/08)
Washington Post story (7/3/08)

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Additional resources on teacher compensation:
Brian Hassel/PPI - Better Pay for Better Teaching
Center for American Progress/Dan Goldhaber - Teacher Pay Reforms: Political Implications...
CPRE Policy Brief - Teacher Performance Pay
Denver's ProComp
ECS/Joyce Foundation - Funding Diversified Teacher Compensation Systems
Educator Compensation Institute
NGA - Improving Teaching Through Pay for Contribution

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The Education of Obama

Over the past several weeks, three particularly interesting articles have been written about Barack Obama and education policy. The Huffington Post ran the first on March 14, the New Republic ran the second on March 26, and Slate ran the third on April 4.

In the Huffington Post, Michelle McNeil opined, "Would Obama approach education reform with a centrist frame-of-mind if he had the full power of the Presidency behind him, and wasn't fighting it out for the nomination?" I don't know about a 'centrist frame-of-mind', but I honestly believe he would approach it with a problem-solving mentality and not just kow-tow to the status quo much as I believe Senator Clinton would.

In the New Republic, Josh Patashnik writes: "There's at least one issue ... on which Obama's record puts him sharply at odds with the party's liberal establishment: education. Obama has long advocated a reformist agenda that looks favorably upon things like competition between schools, test-based accountability, and performance pay for teachers. But the Obama campaign has hesitated to trumpet its candidate's maverick credentials. As an increasingly influential chorus of donors and policy wonks pushes an agenda within the Democratic Party that frightens teachers' unions and their traditional liberal allies, Obama seems unsure how far he can go in reassuring the former group that he's one of them without alienating the latter. And this is a shame, because Obama may represent the best hope for real reform in decades."

Undoubtedly, I believe Obama is playing it safe by not emphasizing his education reform ideas within the context of a Democratic primary. That's smart politics, but it's made easier by many others issues--from the economy to Iraq--that are trumping education as priorities among the mass of Democratic primary voters and caucus goers.

In Slate, journalist and blogger Alexander Russo offers a more critical take on Obama and his "lackluster record" on education. Russo writes that as an Illinois state senator from Chicago, Obama failed to evidence leadership and choose sides in a debate between Chicago Public Schools (the school district) and local school councils over local control versus centralized accountability. The same dynamic is playing out around No Child Left Behind (NCLB), says Russo, but "it's hard to imagine [Obama] taking charge of the continuing debate over whether and how [NCLB] should be renewed."

Indeed, sometimes the past is prologue, but I'm not sure it would be true in an Obama administration. As US Senator, Obama has offered some very substantive proposals on teaching quality within the context of NCLB. He has supported policies such as educator induction and urban teacher residencies that would get to the root of building stronger capacity within troubled schools and districts. He has shown a personal commitment to these issues. I can see him staking out a "mend it, not end it" position on NCLB reauthorization and working with Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman George Miller to work these proposals into a legislative package. Only time will tell.

What say you, Pennsylvania?

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