The topic today is merit pay for teachers. Clearbrook-Gonvick, school in my area has implemented it. One of my colleagues is a former teacher from that school. While he seemed to believe in the system, he did have some concerns. I think there are many advantages to the way we are paid. Minnesota system of tenure is a great motivator. After three years of teaching and administrative evaluation an educator’s job is fairly safe. However, I don’t believe that our salary structure is completely fair and balanced. The increase in our pay during union negotiating years pales when compared to inflation. Most of the increase goes into rising health care costs.
The Economic Policy Institute suggests the idea comes from the marketplace. People think that in the real world bonuses, raises, and paychecks stem from a job well done. According to the institute, anytime the incentive system is tied to single standard problems arise. The researchers from the institute state that performance based pay cannot be tied to student performance. Personally, I believe it is a two-way street. Students have to be motivted to learn. Parents have to care.
University of Wisconsin economist Scott Adams challenges the assumption that the real world operates on merit pay. He concludes that less than one in ten workers have incentives tied to bonuses. My good friend Mike contradicts this. Mike’s wife Mandy is a vocational rehabitation counselor. Unemployed people come to her for advice and training. If ten people maintain gainful employment for six consecutive months she recieves a small raise. However, she would could be terminated if she doesn’t meet those objects.
Therein lies the problem. What is the major source of teacher motivation? I believe teachers strive to do a good job. They care about their students and want to see them succeed. All want a comfortable standard of living, yet aren’t necessarily obsessed about monetry gain. Although, more dynamic young people would enter and stay in the profession if the salary was more consistent with other professions.
The article listed some fascinating examples of performance objectives backfiring. As a history teacher these got me thinking. There is a sociological term called thelaw of unintended consequences. This phenomen basically suggests that any stimulus will cause an unforeseen response. Alcohol was banned during the 1920s Prohibition era. The demands stayed just as strong and the supply was driven underground. Organized crime filled the vacuum and the streets became more dangerous. The Soviet Union demanded that its shoemakers produce a alloted quota of shoes. Craftsmen produced massive quantities of small children sized shoes to meet their quota. There was then a shortage of adult shoes and the population suffered. The Pentagon marked success in the Vietnam War by a rising bodycount. As a result, commanders on the ground killed civilians and embellished the number of Viet Cong and NVA killed. Finally, the current events magazine U.S. News and World Report ranked colleges according to their admissions difficulty. Failure to appear on the report led to negative public perception. As a result colleges eased their admisson standards and hordes of ill-prepared students qualified. Would merit pay lead to an unintended consequence? What would that then be? The researchers from the institute state that performance based pay cannot be tied merely to student performance.
An addition barrier to implementation is public perception. Many people believe teachers work part-time and should work in the summertime. Countless educators do so. That is the way it is. Would summertime be better spent improving your techniques as a teacher. Of course, recharging the batteries to prevent burnout is another requirement.
The roadblock to merit pay is evaluation. What in the world constitues a good teacher. A well respected teacher knows content, related well to students, is helpful, and connects to parents. Lastly, students have to learn from that teacher’s instruction. Any possible combination of these objectives constitutes a well rounded teacher. Would there be a way to uniformly judge teachers on these standards. Who would then evaluate these teachers; students, parents, peer teachers. I would think a combination of these people would be an adequate group.
I discussed merit pay in my blog last week. What struck me about your comments was the idea of students, parents, and peer teachers doing the evaluation. I think it sounds good in a perfect world, but I don't have a lot of faith in that method for real life. Students can be so fickle. While some of them appreciate a good teacher, others would know one if it hit them in the head! Because teachers aren't very highly esteemed in the community anymore, I would feel uncomfortable having my income depend on them. I've had parents disagree with some things in my classroom. When it comes down to it, I am a trained professional in the educational field and they are not. Do I get to "evaluate" the local doctors and decide how much money they deserve? Of course not, I know nothing about medicine. It seems silly to put our fate in the hands of people who aren't trained in our field. I am all for merit pay, but I worry about the methods we would use to utilize it.
ReplyDeleteWow! Your posted raised some really interesting points and some really good questions. I will try to hit on the one that struck me most and keep it succinct. First, I had never thought about merit pay in light of the law of unintended consequences. I believe there could be many. Teachers may begin to view the “goal” as achieving a bonus instead of teaching minds. Evaluators may begin to look beyond the affective components of teaching and focus only on measurable data. In theory, I like the idea of merit pay but we just don’t have the details of it hammered out yet. I hope the conversation about those details continues so we can develop a suitable pay system. The one we use now isn’t working. Maybe using student "growth" data like MAP scores and an affective rubric to measure classroom culture would work?
ReplyDeleteOf course you had to find a great article to get me all wound up. The bottom line is merit pay, like communism is great in theory, but in reality it just won't work. Many people do comparisons with other jobs just like you did with the shoe maker. As a kid that grew up in coal country you see bonuses and quota's all the time. My concern on this is would the merit pay be the base right now for schools, or would it be set at a higher rate. At a Power Plant, workers have a set wage for their hours they put in and overtime for the hours they put in outside of their normal times. They receive a bonus for hours with no down time and incentives for safety awards. Merit pay here works great, but I don't think it could work in the school system because of that. So if a teacher is considered a good teacher, would they just receive the normal wage or base? This already isn't an incentive to be a teacher. Would teachers be paid for their time outside of school spent on their lessons? I don't think the school boards would want to pay overtime; they already are extremely difficult with just our pay as it is. Would their be a incentive for meeting AYP? If so what would it be and what do you do with the teachers that are non core teachers? I think this is another hoop for educators to jump through. It seems to me that the public would like a teacher to work harder, but not pay them more. This is where the plant and the school would differ with merit pay. The plant would give you a reward or bonus for doing a good job, as an educator you just have to get ready for next year.
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