Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus of Education, The University of British Columbia
[permission granted to reproduce if authorship acknowledged]
A Panel on Alberta’s Finances recommends that a portion of school board funding be tied to better school outcomes.
The panel observes that “the level of spending by a school board is not the key factor that drives better outcomes (p. 35).” But, It points out, “a number of [Alberta] school boards that have very high to high expenses per student have student achievement outcomes that are below 50% (p.36).” The panel knits together the two points and recommends that Alberta should revise its current education funding formula and consider providing “. . . incentives for sharing services and achieving better outcomes for students (p. 38).”
At first glance, it seems plausible that school board
expenditures and student outcomes should be related. But with a closer look,
the reasons why they are not related become clear. School board expenditures are
based on the cost of many factors. The costs of operating schools differ from
school board to school board. Some school boards in colder climates spend more
on heating and light, and more to attract teachers and administrators. If they
are responsible for a large geographic region, they spend more for
transportation.
Teachers are compensated for the number of years of teaching
experience. School boards that have a larger number of experienced teachers
have higher salary bills than ones with less experienced teachers. Urban
districts like Calgary and Edmonton in Alberta have large populations of
immigrant students requiring additional assistance to learn English. Rural and
remote districts typically have fewer ESL students. Spending more money for
heat, light, transportation, ESL classes, and teacher salaries cannot translate
into better student outcomes.
Even so, the Panel wants the reader to connect increased
expenditures with better outcomes. But there is no necessary reason why the two
should be connected. It’s like saying a more expensive automobile should get
better mileage than one that is less expensive.
I support shared services. If sharing reduces expenditures for
service so the money can be used for instruction, I am all for sharing. But I
know that withholding or granting rewards to school boards based upon how they
perform is wrong-headed.
At first glance, pay for performance seems a no-brainer in
the business sector where production increases, share price growth, market
share improvements and the like seem tangible and visible. Deeper scrutiny reveals that, even where the
outcomes seem obvious, incentives can induce people to find ways to cheat.
Until the sub-prime mortgage scandal in which individuals
could borrow money that lenders knew or should have known they would be unable
to repay, the Enron scandal was emblematic of the consequences of providing
incentives so great that individuals will cheat to obtain them. Enron used
fraudulent accounting practices to hide losses from shareholders arising from
failed business deals. Its behaviour led to the dissolution of Arthur Anderson,
which at the time was one of the largest accounting firms, for destroying
evidence in the Enron investigation.
It was no joke when, on April 1st of 2015, teachers andadministrators in Atlanta Georgia were found guilty of ‘racketeering’ for conspiring
to alter the answers that students gave on tests in 2009. It was inevitable
that, given that teachers and schools were rewarded for performance that some
teachers and administrators would cheat. In fact, the Atlanta cases was just
one instance of educational fraud prompted by the sanctions and incentives
associated with the implementation of the idea that the Panel recommends.
“If better outcomes are what you value and what we will be
paid for, we will improve outcomes – even if we have to cheat to do so.”
According to Forbes magazine, when Bradley Birkenfeld, one of the UBS bankers
who had helped US citizens evade taxes was asked by the judge why acted as he
did when he knew it was illegal, he replied “I was incentivized to do this
business.”
The Atlanta teachers and administrators did what they knew
was wrong for much the same reason that Bradley Birkenfeld helped people to
avoid taxes they were legally obligated to pay, because they were rewarded for
desired outcomes. Providing incentives for improving student outcomes will
likely do the same.
Cheating is a likely unintended consequence of using monetary incentives to motivate school boards to achieve better outcomes for students. A poor and largely unworkable approach in the private sector, it is unreasonable to think that rewarding school board performance will produce the desired outcomes.
References
Report and Recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Alberta’s Finances | August 2019 https://open.alberta.ca/publications/report-and-recommendations-blue-ribbon-panel-on-alberta-s-finances
Cheating is a likely unintended consequence of using monetary incentives to motivate school boards to achieve better outcomes for students. A poor and largely unworkable approach in the private sector, it is unreasonable to think that rewarding school board performance will produce the desired outcomes.
References
Report and Recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Alberta’s Finances | August 2019 https://open.alberta.ca/publications/report-and-recommendations-blue-ribbon-panel-on-alberta-s-finances