Back to School

Seth Godin is one of the most popular business writers in the world. Recently he blogged:

Who looks you in the eye and says, given your skills, you could do better

You have enough leverage to really make a difference.

Could you set aside the fear and go faster?

I know youre holding back

It takes love and kindness and confidence to bring the truth to a friend you care about. If youre insulating yourself from these conversations, who benefits?

You see, thats what I was trying to say, as we role-played a teacher coaching conversation last week. I just didnt have the right words. I meant to tell this imaginary teacher what Seth said.

Instead, evidently I said this, which the MTR team immediately turned into a coffee mug for posterity:

The Oregon 529 College Savings Board on Thursday cut its management fee on its all investment funds, saving 133,000 accounts at least $500,000 a year.

TIAA-CREF Tuition Financing Inc., which manages one of the plans, also agreed to waive its fees on a conservative money market portfolio that has generated negative investment returns for more than a year.

TIAA-CREF’s Kerry Alexander, program director for Oregon’s plan, said the insurer will make the same fee-waiver offer to its three other state 529 plans with a standalone money market investment option. Those plans are Connecticut Higher Education 529 College Savings Program, the Minnesota College Savings Plan and Georgia’s Path2College 529 Plan.

The Oregonian reported last week that the money market fund had posted a negative 0.3 percent return since March 2010. Other large money-fund managers have waived fees on mutual funds to ensure investors don’t lose money in them.

The overall reduction in Oregon’s management fee comes on top of fee reductions by underlying mutual funds in the direct-sold Oregon College Savings Plan managed by TIAA-CREF. Two portfolios — its international equity index and inflation-linked bond — saw total fee reductions of 33 and 14 percent.

Investors in the broker-sold MFS Oregon 529 Plan also will see fees reduced.

Oregon Treasurer Ted Wheeler proposed the fee reduction this week based on the network’s jump in total investments from $746 million in early 2009 to nearly $1.4 billion at the end of March.

Currently, investors pay from $4.40 to $12 for every $1,000 invested in most Oregon College Savings Plan funds and even more in the broker-sold MFS Oregon 529 Plan.

About $1 of those annual fees go to the Oregon Treasury to manage and market the plans; the rest goes to plan sponsors TIAA-CREF Tuition Financing Inc. and MFS Investment Management.

Under Thursday’s board action,  would fall to 50 cents per $1,000 as early as June 1, according to plan director Michael Parker.

The plan’s underlying mutual funds shaved the fees they collect so that investors will now pay from $3.80 to $10.80 per $1,000 invested each year.

TIAA-CREF will waive the management fee it collects on the Money Market Portfolio to ensure investors don’t lose what they’ve put into it. It will evaluate the fund performance each month and adjust its fees accordingly to ensure returns don’t turn negative, officials said.

As of March 31, only 2,800 accounts have invested about $15 million in the portfolio, which is down 20 percent from a year ago.

The state board stopped short of dropping its own 0.05 percent management fee on the fund. Wheeler pushed to waive it, saying investors in the fund didn’t expect to lose money. He also noted that Wall Street heavyweights Charles Schwab Corp. and MFS had waived fees on their money market funds.

But board members Lynn Hennion and Jennifer Cooperman said they worried about the precedent a waiver would set should other portfolios lose money in the future. They said the plan offered at least two other conservative investment options that were performing well. Hennion said investors should take responsibility for their own choices, and Cooperman noted that money market funds can lose money.  

Plan director Michael Parker said the state would contact Money Market fund investors and let them know about the plan’s other conservative options.

Schools leaders can earn up to £140,000 a year for teaching in tough areas or taking over more than one school, it was revealed.

Classroom unions condemned the move, saying it was inappropriate at a time when many public sector workers are facing a pay freeze.

The NASUWT also claimed individual state schools were already bending the rules on heads’ pay by awarding them generous perks such as private health care, additional leave, free cars and membership of private clubs on top of their salary.

The latest disclosure comes just days after it emerged that 700 heads in England are currently being paid more than £100,000 a year, with estimates that the true total could be higher than 1,000.

But Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, defended the changes, saying that the top pay rate would only be awarded in “exceptional” circumstances to mark out the hardest working heads.

The recommendations will ensure “rigorous justification for rates of pay which reflect the nature and degree of challenge required for a head teacher’s post”, he said.

The School Teachers’ Review Body – a Government quango that assesses teachers’ pay – was tasked with analysing rules on additional payments to senior staff.

This follows concerns that some school leaders were receiving huge discretionary payments for taking on additional tasks – inflating their salary above £200,000 in some cases.

Head teachers working in England and Wales can currently earn a flat rate salary of up to £105,097 a year, while an inner-London head can be paid up to £112,181.

In a report published on Monday, the STRB called for a 25 per cent limit on the “discretionary” rewards a school leader can receive, on top of their salary, for taking on additional responsibilities.

This would take the pay of an inner-London head teacher up to £140,226. The 25 per cent “bonus” should only be awarded to those taking on “highly demanding roles” such as leading an underperforming school or managing more than one school, it was claimed.

But Chris Keates, NASUWT general secretary, said the report “failed abjectly to tackle the serious, outstanding issues in relation to leadership pay”.

“This recommendation will not address the increasing evidence of disproportionate and excessive benefit packages being awarded to some head teachers, in addition to increased salary,” she said. “There is an increasing tendency for schools to offer packages of benefits in addition to salary, including private health care, additional leave, a car and/or membership of a variety of clubs.”

The Boston Celtics lost tonight. Until mid-season they were the top team in the East. What happened?

The Celtics made a trade. At the time of the trade, my favorite NBA commentator, David Berri, imagined the following conversation:

Celtics General Manager Danny Ainge: Sam, what can I do for you?

Thunder General Manager Sam Presti: Danny, how about you take the two worst players on my team? And in return give me a big man that can help me contend for a title?

Thats in fact what happened. The Celtics traded a slightly above average center, Kendrick Perkins. In return, the main attraction was supposed to be Jeff Green, pictured above.

Berri has always had a very simple but profound notion about the NBA. People overvalue scorers. People undervalue many other things. And not just fans. Even famous general managers like Danny Ainge, who has spent his life playing, coaching, and now evaluating the game.

Berri is an economist and a fan. He has zero special knowledge of the game of basketball. Instead, he has complicated mathematical regressions. The formulae tell him things which experts may overlook. In this case, he knew that Jeff Green, the guy the Celtics got, was a terrible rebounder for a man of his size (69). He is also a very inefficient scorer. As a result, he harms his team every minute he plays.

Ive written previously about the MET project, funded by Gates Foundation. The early finding is that the popular teacher evaluation rubrics the forms filled out by many principals and other evaluators seem to be overlooking something. We just dont know what.

These tools, when used by trained observers, fail to predict student learning very well, as measured by student test score gains. These evaluation tools are like Danny Ainges eye.

The problem is we dont have a David Berri yet. We do not have a much better way of evaluating teachers such that we can do a decent job of predicting the future (how much each teachers kids will learn, as measured by VAM).

In fact, the early MET data, released to the public a few months ago, seemed to show that Harvard political scientist Ron Ferguson was closer to being David Berri than any of the teaching experts. His approach is to never observe the teacher at all. Instead, survey kids.

That is, if instead of giving an expert on of these teacher evaluation forms, you give the kids a survey called Tripod, you are more likely to be able to predict the learning gains of that teachers students.

My belief is we need to open up the teacher evaluation challenge to the hive mind tens of thousands of curious people around the world who have zero expertise in teaching, and therefore may be able to see things that experts cannot.

I will explain my idea in a future post. It involves putting lots of teacher video on the web. But only with explicit permission of teacher and kids for each clip.

Essentially, wed create a game that allows anyone to try to predict student learning by watching teachers in action.

My belief is some new insights would emerge that move our field forward. Whether those insights will come from a retired calc teacher in Omaha, an off-Broadway actor who knows something about performance, a psych grad student in India, or a security guard at a pork and beans cannery, I have no idea.

But Id bet a lot that someone would move us forward if we made the raw video easy to play with and think about.

State education officials, starting in the 2011-12 academic year, will co-manage five of Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools to try to turn them around.

The schools – Frayser High, Hamilton High, Northside High and Raleigh Egypt Middle schools in Memphis and Howard School Of Academics Technology in Hamilton County – are part of the state’s new Achievement School District. They’ll be run as their own school system. This is the least stringent way for the state to take over schools.

“The home school district still maintains significant control and oversight,” Kevin Huffman, Tennessee Education Commissioner, said Monday. “Our goal is not to run or manage schools for the sake of running or managing schools. It’s to figure out the places where we could be most helpful and engage in those schools. It puts really positive pressure on the schools to improve.”

Also Monday, Huffman announced the appointment of Chris Barbic as the achievement school district’s superintendent to lead the reform effort. He begins the job Aug. 1.