ficult to use evaluation data for program improvement. Evaluation designs were often haphazard or nonexistent. Data needed for thorough evaluation were usually inaccessible or unavailable. Program Management. Performance contracting is proving to be a useful research and development tool. People who are not a permanent part of the school system seem to be freer to implement radical changes in the classroom than are regular school personnel. A respected and influential "sponsor" within the school district is a great help in overcoming inherent frictions and impediments to change. To assure that changes are permanent and that they expand beyond isolated programs will require continued high levels of sustained effort by the Local Educational Agency (LEA). Flexibility is essential in program organization and management, since considerable program development will take place. Multiyear programs have advantages over single-year programs for this reason. Performance contracting programs impose special tasks of management and coordination not only on contractors but also on the schools' administrative personnel. The complexity of some programs has exacerbated these problems. School administrators must be prepared to face legal and labor disputes. Most of these can be resolved, but there are two potential areas for serious conflicts. One is the requirement for public control of all school programs. The other is teacher opposition to merit pay. It seems essential that local teachers be involved in program design and administration. Little effort was made in most programs to inform parents about the programs or to involve them. Many parents were confused by or hostile to some aspects of some programs. Returns to Contractors. Performance contracting does not seem to have generated large profits so far.* It has generated some follow-on programs, only some of which tie fees to student achievement. Established contractors tend to prefer other arrangements, such as consultantships, to performance contracting. Performance contractors will seek to convert their contracts to other types of programs. The performance contracts have enabled a number of firms to break into new markets and to receive publicity for their goods and services. Q. What does Rand consider the major advantages and disadvantages of performance contracting? A. The major advantages, according to the Rand report, are that it 1. Facilitates the introduction of radical change in education. 2. Places increased emphasis on accountability for student learning on the part of school administrators, contractors, and teachers. In fact, a number of firms competing for contracts a year ago will no longer bid. 3. Has brought new Learning System Contractors (LSCs) into the educational field. These are the major disadvantages: 1. Some performance contracting programs have been so complex that management has been severely hampered and costs have been unnecessarily high. 2. Performance contracting programs will probably continue to be narrowly focused because of difficulties of defining objectives in subject areas other than those involving simple skills or, in some cases, difficulties in measuring the attainment of objectives. 3. Performance contracting has exacerbated old problems to a point where they almost seem to be new ones. The most severe have been legal questions, issues of teacher status, difficulties in supplying the needed management skills, and, especially, problems of test selection and administration. Q. What criticisms have been made of the six-volume Rand report? A. Writing in the March 1972 Nation's Schools, Blaschke said it is a good source of general information for administrators. The appendices are particularly useful, for they include copies of proposals submitted by contractors, purchase agreements, contracts between the LEA and the private agency and between the LEA and program auditor and/or evaluator, interim reports, material lists, and so forth. However, Blaschke also said that the Rand reports fall “far short of capturing the real goings-on at the five contract sites analyzed." Among his specific criticisms are the following: The case study on Gary, while it provides a good probe of the political and personnel problems that have plagued project management, skimps on analysis of student gains and costs. That part of the Gary story has been handled in greater depth by both James Mecklenburger and the American Federation of Teachers . . . . Commenting on the Grand Rapids case study, Superintendent Elmer Vruggink said, "It was okay for a quickie job, but results were understated." Also, contrary to Rand interpretation, the resistance of the Grand Rapids Teacher Association to the contract project hinged more on salary deduction penalties proposed by the school administration than on lack of teacher involvement in planning, as reported by Rand. The GREA, in fact, was involved more than teacher associations in any other site. And Alpha [one of the contractors] hired the former GREA president to work on the project. The Norfolk case study overlooks a most critical event the complex contract negotiations, lasting more than a month, among the seven-project district, the evaluator, the state department of education, and the con 25 26 tractor. The delay pushed pretesting behind until midNovember, caused teachers to receive less training than originally planned, and was partially responsible for a mismatch between tests and curriculum content .... Test results in Norfolk were particularly disappointing. Rand misses the mark on its analysis of Texarkana during the first contract year but does a better job on the turnkey year which followed. Rand's criticism that the firstyear project was not a controlled, rigidly designed experiment indicates misconception of the intent of the project. It was designed to be an operational demonstration only. When Texarkana switched from the Dorsett program to a far more costly Educational Development Laboratories program, Rand reports Texarkana's financial pinch but fails to analyze why school officials did not pick a less costly program. 2. Some Guidelines for Daring Should your district consider performance contracting for any portion of its instructional program? The question is almost sure to come up if it has not already. A survey by Frederick C. Wendel reported in the March 1972 American School Board Journal indicates that while only 8 percent of the schools Wendel sampled in five Mountain states had as yet "begun to do something about" performance contracting last year, 34 percent had "done a little," meaning in most cases an exploration of possibilities. If this is true for a largely rural region, it probably means that more than half the larger urban districts have at least begun to examine the performance contracting concept. School administrators willing to accept the AASA challenge "to experiment with and validate new learning systems" will want to secure both the OEO and Rand materials discussed and summarized in Part I of this booklet. Part II now focuses on a number of guides and warnings for such experimenters. It is not a step-by-step recipe, for no recipe will apply to all situations. It is a statement of guiding principles. In any case, the first phase should be a needs assessment, which will be useful whether or not a performance contract is sought. The Needs Assessment By needs we don't mean the needs of teachers, board members, or administrators, although they should not be ignored. The school's primary clients are children. A performance contract that is adopted as a means of countering militant teaching demands, as some have been, is philosophically and pragmatically doomed. Board members may want to demonstrate that by emphasizing technology the district can get along with fewer teachers or with nonaccredited teachers. Or board members may think of performance contracting as a means of introducing merit pay (bonuses for producing greater pupil achievement). Don't let them. Teacher opposition has wrecked new instructional models before and will again. Sometimes performance contracting programs are conceived as a response to critics. Thus they may become a form of educational theater, staged to appease the attackers. Such programs have less chance of success than those genuinely addressed to the district's instructional problems; hence, the needs assessment. An assessment could well begin with a community survey involving parents, students, teachers, businessmen-the entire citizenry. Only when the real problems of the district are identified and clarified will it be possible to measure the potential of performance contracting for solving them. All of the districts included in the OEO study were interested in upgrading the basic skills of un Simple but realistic guides for sampling lay opinion are contained in Look into Your School 27 28 derachievers, chiefly those from lower socioeconomic levels. This is the area, of course, where urban schools in particular have failed most miserably. As Herbert Gans says, "The rate of school failure among the urban poor has been consistently and remarkably high since before 1900."5 This is why no one should expect miracles from performance contracting. It is a good reason for trying devices that have not been tried before. Elmer Vruggink, the Grand Rapids, Michigan, assistant superintendent for instruction who helped install three 1970-71 performance contracting programs in the Grand Rapids schools, recently completed a doctorate in compensatory education. "I found many things," he said, "but one thing I didn't find was improved cognitive skills achievement." The first statewide assessment in Michigan confirmed the cognitive skills deficit in Grand Rapids. The public visibility given this assessment coincided with a school tax election. The result was intensified public pressure for innovation in Grand Rapids. A review of some of the other early performance contracting projects will suggest the variety of other needs performance contracts have undertaken to meet. In Texarkana, for example, there was a high dropout rate (as high as 15 percent annually in poverty areas); pressure from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to desegregate; pressure from white parents who feared that desegregation would lower the quality of schools; vast achievement differences between black and white secondary school students; and an austerity budget. Charles Blaschke and Leon Lessinger (then Assistant U.S. Commissioner of Education) saw in the situation an ideal opportunity to test the technology and management techniques the success of which they had witnessed in other settings. Student needs were considerably different in the Cherry Creek, Colorado, schools. Cherry Creek is suburbia—clean, white, and solvent. In fact, when the state of Colorado set up a reading program in three Denver area districts to experiment with performance contracting for disadvantaged students, few could be found in Cherry Creek who were the requisite 1.5 years below grade level in reading. (The contract eventually worked out for Cherry Creek specified that students be only one year below national norms.) Cherry Creek's innovative superintendent at the time, Edward Pino, said, "Notwithstanding the quality of our program, we do have unmet needs." Pino negotiated a series of performance contracts, some internal, some external, to meet these needs. For example, a contract was negotiated with an interdisciplinary team of staff members (called the “I-Team”) to retain potential dropouts. Rewards to the team were based on results, but performance criteria were com 5 In the introduction to Colin Greer's The Great School Legend. New York: Basic Books, 1972. p. 4. 6 James Mecklenburger. Performance Contracting in Schools: Profit Motive Tested as Incentive to |