EDITORIAL - Education value added and performance pay

While those high schools that appear in the top tier of the education value-added ranking published by this newspaper last week had reasons to preen, we warn against wild celebrations and urge deeper analyses of the findings to fully determine their message and application.

We, at first glance, can point to two.

Easily the most apparent is that the vast majority of Jamaica's high schools, including many that did well in this survey, are dismal performers. Many are close to being failing schools.

But perhaps the more important of the observations are the possibilities offered by this report for fashioning a performance-based incentive and remuneration system for schools and teachers, long championed by this newspaper, but stoutly resisted by the teachers' union and the education apologists.

The report to which we refer was commissioned by The Gleaner and done by our pollster, Bill Johnson, looking at the examination outcomes of students/schools in math and English after five years of secondary education. These two subjects are worthy proxies for the broader offering, given their positions as critical foundation subjects in the education system.

In arriving at the rankings, Johnson first looked at the average scores in these subjects with which children entered more than 300 high schools - traditional, upgraded, technical, new - after the 2008 GSAT. Those averages determined the position of each school.

At Waterford High School, for instance, the mean average grade for math or the students it received in 2008 was 37 per cent. That placed it 135th among all the schools, based on average scores.

Based on grades

Five years later, when the students wrote the Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate (CSEC), the performance of the school was determined based on the weighted grades received by students. For instance, a grade one pass received a weight of 40, so that if 100 per cent of the students received a top grade, the school would gain a maximum quality score of 4,000.

Waterford High's quality score was 140, or around three per cent of Campion's High 3,761. But Waterford's quality score ranked it 38th. It had, therefore, provided a comparative value added of 97: the difference between the ranks at GSAT and CSEC. It had the greatest value-added gain of all. At Campion, where students entered with an average math score of 97 and the school's ranking was number 1, the school retained its top ranking at CSEC, thus its comparative value added was nil.

Vere Technical was, with a comparative value-added score of 60, the top performer in English. But what ought to continue to be worrying to policymakers and teachers, even where when advances were made, is that the quality scores at CSEC are badly wanting.

Surely, much of the fix has to take place at the early-childhood and primary levels in preparing students for secondary education. But even as this survey suggests that some schools, in difficult circumstances, add value to their charges, we believe that much more can be done with existing resources.

That effort, in part, requires holding teachers accountable, including linking their pay to performance. The teachers' union tends to argue that this can't happen until all schools are on par - with the same quality of students and with the same financial backing of a Campion.

That need not be the case. The Johnson survey has more than sketched a model. We should get on with completing it.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.