It makes me always think like some kind of sports theme is
or coming in there with that music, it's busted pencils fully
education talk educated educators talking education. Oh, it is
that day again, Johnny Lupinachi where Jacob chairman of the
board takes over puts us in our place and we get to be guests
on our own show. Yeah, we're talking about Jacob producer's
choice day, but you know, I got to say that I'm excited. I'm
kind of I'm not anxious. Maybe maybe I've lost that. Yeah, you
know, I think it's your new anxiety cat, Tim. I think I think
there's the Ember, the new addition to the selector family is
is bringing Tim reduced anxiety for producers choice. So this is
a win-win all the way around for Jacob. Yeah, Jacob, see
that? Do you want to take this opportunity to tell the
listeners about your new cat? Well, I guess, I mean, we did not
plan on getting cats out of the bag, Tim. We did not plan on
getting a cat. We've had cats. We've had seven dogs and we
still have another dog and we had a person, you know, my mother
in law, who had we've been taking care of for three years, move
out. And we were like, okay, man, we're we're back and they're
like, Hey, let's go check out and see maybe we can find a cool
place to put the canoe in the water and, you know, enjoy some
time away and just being out in the nature and driving along this
lake, go down a back road and look at this little little, you
know, area, just kind of like it said, Hey, come check this
place out. This would be a good place to put your canoe in.
Can you canoe here? Hey, can you canoe here? We got out and, you
know, we're like, wow, this is going to be perfect, man, for
the canoe, perfect. And, you know, looking at the lake and start
here in this noise, I'm like, what the heck kind of bird is that?
Yeah, no, no, and son of a gun, look down and underneath, out of
the bushes comes this little black cat and just starts, you
know, doing the serpentine around both of my wife's and the
shells and my legs. And we'd walk back to the car and this little
cat followed us. We opened the door. She jumped in and we said, well,
I guess we have a cat now. So brought her home. She's got, you
know, black cat. But if you look closely, she's got little hints
of orange in her tail and different parts of her fur. So we
called her Ember. And, and yeah, right before the show, she came
up and did what cats do when you're on the computer and on some
form of a video thing. She came up and decided to say, I'm
going to walk around here on your keyboard in front of the
camera. So I showed her to you guys. So that's the story. Yeah,
maybe she has, you know, reduced my stress level. I love it. I
love it. You know, they do say, you know, sometimes it's a
companion animal that helps reduce your anxiety, Tim. So you
could be on to something here. Mm hmm. Well, I'll let you guys
know, though. But I am so truly ready for Jacob chairman of the
board. Jacob. You're in, man, you're on, you're ready to go, I
think? Yeah, I'm ready to go. Thank, thank you for that story, Tim,
that was wonderful. And I think the listeners appreciate it
very much. But now for your moment of the producer's choice
for Cho, Cho, producer, Jacob's choice, chairman of the board.
Oh! You and I will have two choices. Chairman of the board,
Jacob. Oh, Jacob chairman of the board. I bet the board is
spelled B-O-R-E-D. We choose to go to the moon. Life's
tough choices. Who chose one? Man, what a good intro that
is. I just have to say, whoever made that did a great job. And
the cool thing is that it's modular so that when Johnny has a new
cool nickname for me or cool way of saying it, I could just swap
that in and out or whoever made it can do that. Fellas, Dr. Tim
Slacker, Dr. Johnny Lupinachi. Thank you so much for being here on your
own show. I really appreciate having here. Nice. Thank you, Jacob.
Today's topic comes not from me because I'm not perfect. Sometimes I
don't have the right question for the day. This one comes from our
listeners. Particularly the listener is again, my grandpa Jim.
Hey, nice. We love grandpa Jim. Now he's my grandpa, but he's also a
former teacher. And he has a nice mustache. So I think he knows
what he's talking about when it comes to topics like these. So
that's why I trusted him enough to take his question. Now, this
whole story starts in the family group chat where my cousin
sent us a graphic of the highest paid superintendents in Illinois
where me and my cousin come from originally. And next to it, it
has the terrible reading proficiency rates next to it. And
it's making a point that oh, they're making all this money and
the kids can't read. We've heard a thousand times. My grandpa had a
question based on that. And I will read it now to you.
Dear Jacob, you're my favorite grandson. Come on, Grandpa Jim. You
don't say that. Might be a good topic for producer's choice.
Should superintendents get paid for performance of their students?
They salary plus bonus incentives if students reach slash exceed targets?
Should teachers receive bonuses too? Personally, I'm not a fan of that idea.
Oh, I wonder what you guys are going to say. But how do you feel about that topic,
Tim and Johnny? Well, I am actually, I agree with with Grandpa
here. I totally disdain the idea every time it's come up. It is,
it has never been shown to do anything other than create
lots of chaos. It's meaningless to try to figure out, quote,
how you gauge performance and typically what ends up happening is is that,
yeah, we reduce it down to, well, let's measure it. And let's give people
phrases based on test scores. And knowing the history of test scores,
you're like, you can't do that. But I, to me, the biggest example of why you
would never want to do this actually comes in the no child left behind,
era Atlanta public schools, where they were given out big money bonuses for
test score elevations. And anybody, you know, out there from the
remember back at that time, those test scores in Atlanta
went up dramatically. And lots of cash was dispersed.
And geez, the leader of that school district, darn it. You know how you get that
raise with test scores, bring those tests in the back of the room after everybody leaves and
do a little eraser with your number two pencil eraser, put in a few right answers here and there,
inflate those test scores, grab that bonus, and get found out and become a headline story
and disgrace. And people like, yeah, that, that's not a reason to not give pay for performance.
That was just a person's character trait. No, let's understand what actually happens here.
When you put people under extreme pressure, and then also point out the fact that you could have,
you know, also now use the word extreme again, an extreme reward, nobody should be surprised
that this is the type of behavior that comes out of quote pay for performance nonsense.
And so, you know, that to me was the epitome of, oh man, I can't remember how to say this,
Johnny, see if you remember Campbell's law that whenever one social metric number is used to
produce some kind of social value, is that it will always be distorted. And that's where I'm
going to do that. And then Johnny, what do you, I mean, I got to imagine you're probably on,
on my page on this. Yeah, similar page, Tim. I love this question, Jacob. Thank you.
Jacob's grandpa for being a thoughtful listener for being an educator first and foremost.
And then for your great questions. But I agree with grandpa and Tim. I'm not a big fan of merit.
Pay, I think we just kind of call it that. But and for similar reasons, right, like it introduces
some strange factors into motivation, right? And then there's incentive then to focus maybe too much
on these tests or even give too much emphasis on, you know, learning being as maybe unit dimensional
as testing has lend itself to be, you know, merit pay has never been something I've been a big fan of,
even though I probably would have benefited from it in a few different teaching situations. So
however, I do think that the idea of compensating teachers better or, you know, creating incentive
programs for teachers is intriguing. So I'm not like, I'm against merit pay as it stands in terms
of like, hey, if you get a certain threshold of test scores, you know, maybe you're 90% of your
classes at grade level or above, you know, that's that's extraordinary. And you can get, you know,
act you have access to more pay. I think that that's not a healthy model. But something has got to
be there beyond just accountability because I'm a big fan of, hey, I just have been getting great
reviews. And how is it that, you know, I'm paid modestly in my district compared to people
who might not be doing as much or as good of work as I am. I mean, and so I think there's some
exciting things happening in our unions and districts that have been sent me. I don't want to say
incentivized being a teacher, but, you know, compensated, worked addressing addressed compensation
issues for teachers. But to bring it back to superintendents, yeah, man, this has always been
a tough one to me. I do think like a holistic kind of evaluation of your district should be
like a portion of your pay. Like it's a political position. I think it's a demanding one. So it's
a pretty high paying one. Sometimes some of the highest paid people in our districts are the
superintendents, right? I think that the job demands a high salary. But I am not fully opposed to,
and I think this has got to be thought through. I haven't actually thought through it,
you know, with detail. But, you know, a base salary and then maybe, you know, with option to earn more,
should you stay longer and be successful? And that's someone coming from a large urban district,
where, you know, it is constant turnover. So constant turnover. And I've flipped that around to,
you know, working in districts with teachers who may be our smaller rural districts who have
long-term superintendents doing amazing work, right? That could get pulled to go to some of these
bigger suburban or urban districts for more money. So I like the idea of like rewarding longevity,
success in some way that maybe makes the salary commensurable to, you know, being pulled away
into other districts. So I mean, I kind of, I'm against merit pay in general. If it's like,
you either got to say you vote for it or against it. But I like the gray area that maybe we could
figure something out that makes both teaching and being a leader in our districts, you know,
more enticing or more stable or more economically viable. I'm always for teachers making more money.
But I hate seeing them fight each other for it. Yeah. Right? Or give up good teaching in order to do
it because I know, you know, like if the goal is pass the test, I don't necessarily have to be a great
teacher to get most of my students to pass the test. I also could be doing great teaching. And
maybe on any given, you're not have a majority of my students passing a test. There are too many
factors there. Yeah, there are too many factors there. And yeah, and Jacob, you know, your
grandfather's question to me was really related to test scores and pay does the justification
for pay and potentially low test scores, you know, and it moved us into this conversation about,
you know, paying for for test scores. And, you know, we just had one of our great guests,
return guests, Chris Tanken, who was on and he has been doing the research on test scores. And
what are the contributing factors to test scores? And this is why test scores should never be used to
dull out any type of bonicing money rewards to teachers because and when people hear me say this,
they get a little bit of tight, but teachers don't have any control over test scores largely
because as Dr. Tanken can do, give him like four different socioeconomic statistics and he will
predict your school's test scores, you know, within a very slight margin of error before the kids
take the test. And he has done that and replicated that so many times, which is the simplicity of
saying, you know, the socioeconomic conditions typically are the are reflected most in that quantitative
score. And just for anybody, I was trying to point on Campbell's law and that is the more any
quantitative social indicators used for social decision making, the more subject it will be to
corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes,
it is intended to monitor. So in other words, in Atlanta cheating, of course there was,
you know, of course there was. So Jacob, I don't know if there's more there, but you know,
should teachers and leaders be paid more for doing incredibly awesome work? Yes, I think right now,
though, that really wasn't the question your grandfather was asking. Yeah, well, part of the question
and part of the reason that I felt like I knew where you guys would be going with it was sort of
talking about paying more based on the success of students and breaking that down, how would we do
that? I just immediately thought if they did something like this, it would go to test scores.
That would be the metric that would be used. Johnny was talking about how he would he does like
the idea of rewarding good performance. I want to ask you guys, if you, how else would you do it?
What is the good way to measure performance? Yeah, I think team based goals, I think like school
and district wide goals, I love this question, like the thought experiment, your grandpa sparked
here on busted pencils because I think it's exciting when you start to think about, well,
if our superintendent has incentive here, like we start to think we tease a little bit of merit,
pay, the district's doing well, you can make up to this much more. And if the district does well,
must mean the teachers have been doing something extra special. So I like some team based goals,
maybe like school wide incentives, it's like if our school hits these markers over the course
of the school year, retain students and does really great job with disciplinary rates,
like low levels of suspensions and it goes through a great review process and maintains that,
like hey, the whole school is in line for some kind of merit bonus. I love these ideas.
I think that's a possible way to do it based on team and merits. A while back and I was part of
some teachers working on with their local union around how you increase your individual salary
and historically that's been degrees. You get classroom hours and so many years of experience
and advanced degrees or continuing education credits or units. And I think some innovative
things are happening around our country and districts around this as well. It's no longer just go
get a degree, but there is a lot of like local set objectives in terms of achieving like a lead
teacher role. You know, being evaluated and moving along a particular rubric,
advances your opportunity for more pay. It's not simply collecting credit hours or academic
achievements, right? It's sexual like working together in a team, being part of an initiative,
dollars, all kinds of ways that you're evaluated in many districts to advance your career.
And I think these are exciting ways like percentage of like lead teachers in your school
can increase like the amount maybe a principal has to you know, pay their teachers. I think
there's some real exciting ways. Like I come back to it again Jacob like I did in the first
round of the questions is to me it's about retaining really great teachers. My entire career
you'd lose a great teacher to a school that could cherry pick them because it might have been
you know, either closer to where they lived or it's like a school that is a little less financially
stretched. They could make more in a better district. And you know, you know, I always thought
how can we keep teachers? Great teachers where they are not holding them down, right? Or not putting
it on them to be like, oh man, really? You're leaving us, right? It should never be on someone's like
conscience that they had to leave, you know, a place they were doing really good because the
money would be better somewhere else. That always irked me. I know I sound more like a socialist
now than ever. But I really always thought like if we could if we could figure out a way to pay
our teachers better, right? And it was really clear that their advancement in career and their growth
within our entire system. And we'd lose a lot less teachers, right? We'd lose a lot. And that's
same true. Like I knew many of teachers who thought, I don't know how long I can stay teaching in
the classroom. I got to go to administration because I need to make some more money here. Like this
isn't enough for the family here. And that's sad but true and not that they didn't become great
principles. But you know, I always thought like, what if we are paying our teachers?
Enough for them to stay teaching. So I love the idea of creatively exploring team goals,
school goals, district goals, retention, policies that help incentivize, you know, a merit
pay system that works for everybody. So Tim, would you agree with that? What do you see in the realm of
as Comrade Lupinachi said, collectivizing these goals into that merit-based system? And what do you
think? I agree with Johnny on that one. Yeah, we lose way too many teachers. I mean, first of all,
just from the shallow pay to begin with. But then the idea of our greatest teachers, you know,
what are the incentives for them to stay in the classroom? You know, one point, Johnny said,
you know, hey, you know, I got to go into administration to make some money. And I will tell you that,
yeah, some of them became great principles. However, a lot of them didn't. And in fact, couldn't
make the transition from great teacher to great principle. And so I would like to see the
the ability for teachers to stay put for that reason too is because there's something about
leadership that you really want leaders to emerge into those positions and not be, you know, enticed
only by the money. If there is a quantitative indicator that we might want to look at potentially,
now as we've been talking about this, I would like to maybe start to reward teachers on their
students level of engagement. As we've been talking more and more about that, we know the sad statistic
that after first grade for every year, a kid spends in school, their level of engagement decreases.
And, you know, we talked to Mike Bigley this week and talking about what they're doing up in
their school is that, you know, they're really trying to turn around the whole structure of
schooling, which we've pointed out the structure of schooling really does contribute to to low
engagement and teachers knowing that they have to do certain things, even when we know that they're
not the best for kids. You know, so engagement scores. And again, we'd have to make sure they're
valid, reliable, and all the things you do to make quantitative measures work. But that would be
way more interesting to look at engagement levels versus test scores across numeracy and
literacy scores, considering that, you know, if we can really be incentivizing teachers and
leaders and superintendents to create engaging classrooms, engaging schools, engaging school districts,
it might be interesting to look at there as a way to dull out a little extra cash.
I don't want to dwell on this part of the conversation for the entire duration of the show,
but just to make sure that we're clear on what we're saying and our stance on these things,
because there's sort of two separate parts of this. There's the teacher side and the
superintendent side. What I'm getting from this is that neither of you think that individual
teachers should be either docked or rewarded monetarily based on student performance on the
individual level, maybe some group based team goals could bear fruit down the line. But Johnny,
I believe you said you're sort of in favor of the superintendents having these sort of goals and
incentives because it's more of a political position. Tim, did you have a specific view on the
superintendents side of that issue? I don't know. I just don't, I test scores. Here's the other
problem, truly, scientifically research, scientific consensus, all those things. Paging test scores
to some individual factor, such as saying teacher X contributed to test score gains.
First of all, the research on that has been horrendous, and even some of the best psychometricians,
in other words, people who like to measure things, have pointed out time and time again
that it's an unreliable statistic to say that teacher X caused 0.25 points of reading score gains
because when they start looking at the other contributing factors, the other contributing factors
muddy the water so much that actually having any what we call reliability, that the number we
assigned to a teacher. And so then for every person removed from the teacher, the reliability
then of that test score diminishes. So to the point where you get to saying the superintendent
caused test score gains or contributed to test score losses, there's no real science to put any type
of stock in that. Johnny, I don't know if you agree. I agree with you on the level of like,
are we asking about measurement of learning for students? Yeah, and I think it's a, you know,
test score only as a poor measurement, but I think related to what Jacob brings up here is why
I might be shocking is I'm kind of a fan of it, and I know it exists in bargaining and contracts
for superintendents is, you know, like a bonus, like, you know, like if the district is doing
really well on a number of performance factors, and I think those need to be really thoughtful,
they might include test scores, but they also include things that, you know, like great attendance
rates, great retention and graduation rates, you know, for students, you know, increase participation
in skilled trades, all kinds of ways our large districts, you know, have, you know, factors that
can contribute to, you know, what I would say is a measurement of success from a leader,
right, which it would be requiring that they're, you know, supporting schools that teachers feel
really well paid and supported in there. And I know this is an unprecedented large urban super
intendents have this as a clause in many of their contracts, like, you know, you can earn up to
another $30,000 per year or an extra $20,000 or 12% of your salary, of your base salary can be earned,
should you meet, should the district meet, you know, certain criteria, certain performance bonuses
that are tied to metrics like academic gains, management efficiencies, and even innovative reform.
I'm, I'm, this is where I ends the socialist and me starts to sound a little more capitalist,
I'm a big fan of, and probably because I saw so much turnover, right? You're here, like,
you're here to do some big things, you better do them, because you have a short window to do them in,
and you got to incentivize, I think, short windows. If you're signing somebody to do what they say
they're going to do in a couple of years, then I think very differently than I think about teachers,
I think, for superintendents, then, then put, then put your action right away behind it.
Don't tell me it's going to take years to initiate these things. I'm going to start to tie money
to that. And if you want full pay, you're going to do those things pretty quickly and get moving on
them. But I think leading as, I think being a superintendent is a very different job than being
a principal or being a, you know, a school teacher, a classroom teacher. And so I'm a little more
capitalist-minded when it comes to incentivizing there, they're getting it done.
But you're talking, you know, and this is where, yeah, I agree with Johnny too. I was really doing
that narrow metric of, you know, somebody reading the paper, seeing a salary, and then seeing,
quote, reading scores, and making a decision there that that salary is justified or not justified
based on those. But, you know, the vast dimensions of leadership, I mean, you say, you know,
multiple different ways, as Johnny was pointing out, test scores potentially being, you know, one,
and as I said, engagement, which would be then, I think, you know, anything to bring up engagement
would be some form of structural leadership that actually breaks down some of the issues that
keep kids from being engaged. So if you're talking about, you know, a mixed bag of what we,
you know, might say multiple measures for somebody in such a high leadership, yeah,
incentivizing them to, you know, meet those goals to do great things.
That's, that's different. And to me, I don't know that that's capitalistic, socialistic,
or anything, or if that's just kind of saying we got a job to do, we want you to do great work
here, the things that we're very interested in. If we give you this job and you do the things
that you say that you're interested in doing the things we're interested in, if we make this work
in a nice harmony where everybody's happy, then we're going to compensate you well so that we keep
you. Yeah, longevity pay too. Put that in there as part of the performance, you know, bonuses.
I'm a big fan. Let's give everybody bonuses like Oprah, you get a bonus, you get a bonus. Jacob
gets a bonus for more producer choices. I can get behind part of that last idea with the Jacob
bonus thing. Sounds pretty cool. To put a bow on this, I think what we're saying is that we like
the idea that when people do a good job, they should get rewarded for it and that we should have
standards for how good people do, but that that idea lives and dies based on the validity of the
metrics you try to use to measure these things. That sound we can all agree on that. Man, you
interviewed us for 30 minutes for you to make that crystal clear point. I heard that down before
the thing. I actually had what this was all week. I've been guiding you through these questions
to get to my point, which was there. But unfortunately, there's only time for one last special
type of question. Let's go. Administrators, superintendents, these cold suits, just kidding. They're
great people. Guys, Johnny, tell me about a really good administrator you'd like to talk about
that you've worked with in 60 seconds. Oh, man, I love so many. There's a quick one, you know,
a local guy that I've worked with for a while, you know, Matt Ordar, if he's a great principal,
you know, he turned a really rough school around in a matter of a few years and
and he did it by being like a big gentle giant being firm and empathetic,
but supporting the heck out of his teachers and, you know, really taking a rough school,
a school that was struggling and had an identity of being a tough place to be a kid and a
worse place to be a teacher. And in a few years, really turned it around. And I believe that
that another big inspiring one is one who inspired me to actually be a teacher,
a principal, Deborah Myers, who wrote the book, Power of Their Ideas. And I really believe this,
a great principal can make a school an amazing place in a really short period of time.
So all you principles out there doing that work, keep it up because you truly are leaders who
make a difference. Same question goes to you, Tim. Tell us about in 60 seconds. I'm watching that
clock. I know about a great administrator you've worked with.
Probably like Johnny said, I've had some some great leaders I've worked with, but one who
just stands out to me Ed Cohen has moved on now. But great guy met him. Actually, while I was
in college learning to become a teacher, a summer job fair, he was in our college union
standing there recruiting to work at his summer camp outside of Baltimore camp area where he
he ran he was the camp director, but was also a Baltimore city principal during the the time
that he wasn't running the camp. And Ed had a magic about him with being with people
communicating effectively and being incredibly stern and harsh if you got on the wrong side of him
to the point where I was like, man, how does he balance such awesomeness and such?
What do you want to say? Just like, like, man, I'll crap. If you saw Ed coming in with that look,
it was like one of those things where he was like, oh, man, we're done. We're done. But if you
saw him coming in that in the other way with that, you know, just a happy look coming to see and talk
to you, you're just like, man, this guy is amazing. And so the way I saw him working with camp
counselors, people from international over the sites ages from again, you know, parents, kids,
everything, truly a great leader.
Tim, I'm going to be honest with you. That was that was slightly over a minute, but
he sounds so awesome. I let you go. Thank you. Thank you. I thought that needed to be finished.
So, well, Tim now, you know, yeah. Now I know about it. Dr. Tim Slecker, Dr. Johnny Lupinachi,
thank you so much for coming here on your own show to be interviewed. It's an honor to have you.
And I know you may have seen Saturday Night Live before they've got, you know,
oh, these hosts have been here this many times. You know, it's a big club for the like Steve
Martin stuff. You guys, this is huge. This is your 20th appearance on the producer's choice show
for both of you. Hey, 20 big ones, huh? Wow. So congratulations on that. We've had a great run
so far, guys. And Tim, it's time for something. And I want to remind you, it's not time to reread
on accident Campbell's law. It's time for the other thing in the chat. Well, Jacob, it's time for
your moment of sin. While some people think that dissent is unpatriotic, I would argue that dissent
is the highest form of patriotism. Well, thank you listeners for dissenting and listening to
busted pencils. This special episode of producers choice. And remember, you can grab great podcasts
packed with all kinds of busted pencils content on Apple podcasts, Spotify. And of course,
on the civic media website, or you can always find us at busted pencils.com. Hey, and don't be late
for a home room on Monday and be sure to grab next week's class in session on Wednesday. And if you
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Central time across every civic media network station for one hour of your favorite blue collar
scholars, Tim and Johnny, and keep busted pencils.