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Schools to Offer Pay for Scores: Baltimore Incentives Up to $110 Per Student for Graduation Tests

Ohanian Comment: Andres Alonso graduated from Columbia University, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, earned a law degree from the Harvard University School of Law and then a Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2006. Twenty years ago, he quit a job at a Wall Street law firm to teach in Newark--emotionally disturbed, middle school children who spoke limited English. In 2003, while writing a education doctoral dissertation at Harvard, he was recruited to become the New York City deputy chancellor's chief of staff. When she retired in 2006, Klein chose him to take her job. In July 2007, he became the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Baltimore City Public Schools.

Here is an excerpt from a profile in the New York Times:



Dr. Alonso believes educators can make the difference. Pushed to explain, he spoke about Joel, a student in his first class at the Samuel L. Berliner School for emotionally disturbed children in Newark. In 1990, Dr. Alonso took legal custody of the boy, who was then 15 and no longer his student. And though there was never a formal adoption, he considers Joel his son.

"Once I took legal custody of him," he said, "then the question became, "Are the decisions that I am making for him the same decisions that I am making about the rest of my students?’ Because otherwise, there is no integrity in what I do."

He removed Joel from special education and pushed him to earn a regular diploma in four years.

"The challenges of taking him out of special education, creating expectations for him so he could succeed, working with people in the system in order to make sure that he was mainstreamed successfully, informs a lot of what I think," he said. "Expectations for kids make an extraordinary difference."




As everybody knows, CEOs have to move in and make changes. Alonso sounds like a complicated man. I'd like to ask him if expectations are so important, why he is instituting a program of payoffs. Are payoffs what turned his adopted son around?

by Sara Neufeld

The Baltimore school system will pay high school students who improve
their scores on the state graduation exams up to $110 each, a
controversial plan that would be a first in Maryland.

The system will spend $935,622 on the student incentives, part of a $6.3
million plan to help students struggling to pass Maryland's High School
Assessments that administrators presented to the school board last night.

State Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick approved the plan last week. But
in a letter to city schools chief Andres Alonso, she expressed concern
about the "lack of ... research" supporting student incentives and
required the system to closely track student results.

Grasmick's OK was necessary because the system is funding the plan with
money from the settlement of a dispute over a federal audit, and the
state must approve how that money is spent.

Financial incentives for students are being used in New York City, where
Alonso was deputy chancellor before becoming CEO of the Baltimore
schools in July. In a program created by a Harvard economist that began
last fall, students in New York can earn up to $500 for test scores and
good attendance.

According to accounts in The New York Times, the program has been
controversial, pitting educators who believe that students should learn
for the love of it against leaders eager to reverse the tide of low
student achievement.

While the New York program uses private money for the student
incentives, Baltimore is using public dollars. Alonso also said the
programs are different because New York's is for younger students and is
strictly about incentives. The incentives in Baltimore are part of a
broader strategy to help older students pass high-stakes tests.

Here, students who have failed at least one exam will earn $25 for
improving test performance by 5 percent from where they started,
according to the proposal submitted to Grasmick. If they improve an
additional 15 percent, they will get $35 more. And 20 percent more
growth earns an added $50, for a maximum of $110.

Starting with the Class of 2009, this year's juniors, students must pass
basic skills exams in algebra, English, biology and government, or make
a combined passing score, to earn a high school diploma. But earlier
this year, the state school board approved the option of a senior
project for those who do not pass the exams, and since then principals
have worried that they won't be able to keep struggling students
motivated to learn the material.

In an interview before last night's board meeting, Alonso said financial
incentives for students have the potential to be "tremendously
fruitful." The system's proposal said the incentives are designed to
affect enrollment, attendance and test pass rates by giving students a
reason to attend tutoring after school hours.

Robert Schaeffer, public education director for the National Center for
Fair and Open Testing, said the practice of paying students for improved
test scores is gaining popularity nationally. He said schools in at
least a dozen states are offering incentives.

Schaeffer, whose organization is critical of the standardized testing
movement, called the practice a "bribe" for students and a bounty for
teachers. Incentives "may temporarily boost scores and make districts
look a little better, but in the long run, there is no evidence that
they improve educational quality, close achievement gaps or make kids
into better students," he said. "They're like steroids, a short-term
performance boost. The long-term impact may be damaging.

"They distort the purpose of education, the belief that kids will do
better for the money and create false expectations about everything else
those students will do: Why aren't they bribing me in my social studies
class? How much will they bribe me in college?"

In the coming weeks, 34 Baltimore schools will be receiving a slice of
the $6.3 million for interventions to help students struggling on the
tests. Each of those schools must submit a plan detailing how it will
spend the money by June 2009.

The money will target more than 5,000 students in the classes of 2009
and 2010 who have failed at least one of the four High School
Assessments. The largest dollar amounts will go to the schools with the
largest number of struggling students.

The bulk of the money will go to more traditional interventions. The
biggest chunk, $3.1 million, will be spent on extra help for students
after school and on Saturdays, including one-on-one tutoring.

Tutoring will be provided by students' peers who have passed the exams,
in addition to college students, school staff and state-approved private
tutoring companies.

About $700,000 will be allocated specifically to pay high school and
college students for tutoring work. Alonso said after the meeting that
he is trying to provide schools with "a set of tools to motivate every
child."

There will also be an extra 10 days of training this summer for teachers
of the tested subjects.

The school system would have had to return the $6.3 million to the
federal government by next year if it had not found a way to spend it
that the Maryland State Department of Education approved. As the system
is projecting $50 million in budget cuts for the next academic year,
officials said they need to make use of all the money they can find.

The money was an outcome of a 2004 audit of how the school system was
spending its Title 1 money, federal funds earmarked for schools serving
large numbers of poor children. The purpose of Title 1 money is to give
poor children services beyond those that other students have, but the
audit found the system using it for routine operations.

As a result, state officials said in July 2004 that the system might
have to repay $18 million in Title I money. To prevent that, the city
schools and the state education department went through months of
federal mediation.

<>A deal was announced in October 2005 in which the system agreed to set
aside $9 million for extra tutoring and programs for the needy children
the $18 million was meant to serve. According to the terms of the
agreement, the state needed to approve how the $9 million was spent over
three years. Until now, only $2.7 million has been spent.

— Sara Neufeld
Baltimore Sun
2008-01-23


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