What 2010 education research really shows about reform

A review of 2010 education research on charter schools, value-added measures and merit pay shows that the results were not great news for supporters of these reforms.

Race to the Top and Waiting for Superman made 2010 a banner year for the market-based education reforms that dominate our national discourse. By contrast, a look at the “year in research” presents a rather different picture for the three pillars of this paradigm: merit pay, charter schools, and using value-added estimates in high-stakes decisions.

There will always be exceptions (especially given the sheer volume of reports generated by think tanks, academics, and other players), and one year does not a body of research make.  But a quick review of high-quality studies from independent, reputable researchers shows that 2010 was not a particularly good year for these policies.

First and perhaps foremost, the first and best experimental evaluation of teacher merit pay (by the National Center on Performance Incentives) found that teachers eligible for bonuses did not increase their students’ tests scores more than those not eligible. Earlier in the year, a Mathematica study of Chicago’s TAP program (which includes data on the first two of the program’s three years) reached the same conclusion.

The almost universal reaction from the market-based reformers was that merit pay is not supposed to generate short-term increases in test scores, but rather to improve the quality of applicants to the profession and their subsequent retention. This viewpoint, while reasonable on the surface, not only implies that merit pay is a leap of faith, one that will likely never have its benefits “proven” with any degree of rigor, but also that the case against teacher experience and education (criticized by some of the very same people for their weak association with short-term student test score gains) must be reassessed. On that note, a 2010 working paper showed that previous studies may have underestimated the returns to teacher experience, and that teachers’ value-added scores may improve for ten or more years.