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A Case Against Merit PayPosted Saturday, March 14, 2009, at 11:23 AM
Merit-based pay
Over the last eight years the education system has been held hostage under No Child Left Behind. Now before I get jumped on for blaming education woes on President Bush, let me be very clear. NCLB run properly can be a very good educational system. Unfortunately, one of the tennets of getting NCLB enacted, the Bush Administration demanded that the individual states be responsible for paying for NCLB and if the states didn't use NCLB they could actually be punished. A little bit backwards but okay. Because individual states were reponsible for paying for the program we now have a system in which different states have different standards for the education of their children. And also because of this, we have what is now called "Teaching to the test". What happens is as part of NCLB there is standardized testing at the end of every school year and how students do on those tests determines what monies go to the school and whether or not, in some cases whether the school can stay open. So thusly, teachers teach more from the book than they do actually educating. Case in point, the school I am currently teaching at is also the school I graduated from. When I went through, every junior had to write a thesis paper in English. It gave us the basic writing skills, the three point paper, how to do research, all of this led to us being better students. But because of NCLB our school has abandoned that because teachers are trying to get through the book so that their students will perform well on the end of course exam. President Obama has promised to instead of getting rid of NCLB, to instead reform it. I am afraid that in its current state it may be unreformable. But that's not what this blog is about, thats for another blog. The point of this is merit pay. Merit pay will reward the good teachers with higher pay while presumably the poorer teachers will be encouraged to get better or move on. Inheritently this is a good idea but there are a lot of pit falls that can occur. In order to give teachers pay raises you are going to need to have a way to measure their teaching ability. Once again end of course exams will come into play and how students to on those tests will determine how the teachers will get paid. Now, in college this kind of system would probably work well, because at the college level only those who can afford or get enough loans or scholarships or want to go will actually attend college and the merit system would work fine. But at the high school level we have a completely different system. In the United States we have a belief that anyone, no matter your sex, race, creed, or abilities has the right to learn and we have passed laws to ensure that happens. I have no problem with that what-so-ever. But the inherint problem comes in when you try to determine what teachers get raises. Do you measure a teacher that has mostly intelligent students on the same level as a teacher that has mostly special education students? If you do then merit pay simply wouldn't work. If you have a teacher who has a mix of students how do you measure that. Let's use this as an example. You have a teacher with 10 students (now this is just an examply because we are in system where most teachers have at LEAST 20-25 students in a class). Now, out of those ten students you have two students that are highly intelligent, two students that are about average intelligence. three students that have ADHD, two students who couldn't care less, and one student that had another learning disability. This teacher is a great teacher that has a lot of great ideas for student learning but when it comes time for the test four students bomb the test, three barely pass, two get on the range of a B grade and one passes with flying colors. Only 30% of this teachers students did well enough to merit a pay raise for this teacher. Even though of the 70% who didn't you had a couple of the students that are good students but they simply freeze up when it comes to tests, you have the ADHD students and the learning disability student who have never done well on a test and never will and you have that one student who just couldnt't care less. Is it fair to that teacher that they don't get a raise based on student performance? Under this system a teacher would be best served to simply teach to the test and that their students are prepared for the test so that they perform to the best of their ability. But under this system are students truly learning? Sure they could probably recite a book front to back but could they sit down with you and tell you what actually was in that book. Chances are, no they wouldn't be able to. Now if you could devise a system of merit pay but it was more based on what was actually learned and not taught that would be a system that would be beneficial to students and teachers. As I said early merit pay is something that would probably work fine but at the high school level my fear is that a lot of students would be left behind. I guess we will just have to wait and see. Comments Showing comments in chronological order [Show most recent comments first] |
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You're right! The open secret is that commonly used standardized achievement tests are insensitive to instructional differences and thus are foolhardy bases for teacher merit pay.
"Now if you could devise a system of merit pay but it was more based on what was actually learned and not taught that would be a system that would be beneficial to students and teachers."
Actually, it's not all that difficult. Much, much easier than the arcane so-called "value-added models."
The methodology is described in papers that can be accessed at http://ssrn.com/author=1199505
I can understand the points you make against merit pay however, what will make the best teacher do the best job with what they have to work with. Do some care more than others? Do some push the lesser kids away? It is a hard job, I am not doubting that a bit but I still feel those that put in the better effort should be rewarded. I am sure the same union would go to bat for a teacher doing a proven poor job. Is this right.....?
No if a teacher has become a cancer to his/her students they will not be protected. Most teachers try their damndest to teach to a student.
Having said that there are a number of teachers out their that are laughing stocks and the union does not actively protect them.
What the union (mine at least, I don't know about other unions because there are more than just NEA out there) is protect those teachers that have through no fault of their own have made mistakes.
But if a teacher is simply in the job for a paycheck (though I couldn't imagine why, teachers are paid extremely low salaries for what we do) they won't last long in the job.
Merit Pay will improve the educational system. My father at the age of 50 went back to Little Rock Central High and taught Math for 12 years. He can tell you stories. I went to LR Public schools from 1974-1980. I can tell you stories about my teachers that came from Philander Smith but you would just call me a racist hick from Arkansas.
Barney Frank is about to demand names of who received AIG bailouts. Very Goebbels of him. Let's publish their names and shame them. Change we need! Change we can believe in! It is not meaningful to use Hate and Anger to solve problems. It only turns us against each other and makes us feel better if "they are punished".
Well the Dems and Obama admin have paved the way to the return of the 90% tax bracket. This is how it starts. Let's stick to a chosen group than expand it. Change is here!
I have actually given consideration to starting a fund to pay Red Willow teachers Merit based pay to attract the best talent to the McCook Area. The only way you will attract the best talent from the Eastern part of the state to McCook is to pay them more.
I have given many this topic many hours of consideration and have contacted several business leaders in McCook to support the program.
The key to succcess is making kids think and attempting to be "the best you can be". This is normally realized when kids are out of college and look back and realize that 1 particular teacher made a difference. My father was one of those teachers in Little Rock, Ar. He taught "dumb kid math" at Little Rock Central. His motto was "Try". If you tried he basically passed you. Why? Because most kids don't try. By him "convincing" kids to try all of there measurable results improved. Grades, test scores, going to college or getting into the Military. I recommend you review P.A.R.K in Little Rock. Keith Jackson, the former football great and current Arkansas Razorback radio play by play man started this non profit in 1989. His results are impressive. I am a supporter of P.A.R.K.
To simply say that incentive pay won't work because we can't figure out to pay it out is not on option.
My father went back to teach because he wanted to make a difference. He took life experiences to school. He went to law school, was a professional commodity trader, had an economics and Accounting degree. He had lived a life, raised 4 children and could relate to these kids because he had life experiences. What did this earn him. He was paid the same as 27 year olds with 4 years experience. Did I mention that he also served in the Navy for 4 years. He also taught his kids history as he played the trumpet for JFK's inaugral and the U.S.S. Independence was deployed to Cuba in 1962. The teachers Union told him to stick with Math.
Merit based pay can improve a community.
Have you ever considered that you could do a great service for the students that you teach. Ask them True of False that the Russians lost 29 million people in WWII and the US lost 400,000. You could order the World at War and show a chapter each Friday. Teenage boys need to know why 50,000,000 people died 60 years ago, regardless of your lesson plan.
When you taught about President Grant did you discuss the depression that the country experienced in 1874? Pretty timely for today's economic crisis. The circumstances are eerily similar. Along with the crisis of 1914. You might not get there this year but still worthy.
Back to merit pay. Every non-union career that I can think of pays for performance. Union jobs pay for minimum job requirements being met.
When I was in college education didn't draw from the best talent pool. Therefore, in a Darwinian world you would think that as compensation increases, those jobs would attract more people and therefore increase the talent pool. Seems basic to me. But teachers fight and fight. So go on and fight and tell us why merit pay won't do any good.
Okay here's the problem and I guess I could have stated that ... merit based pay based on testing is a horrible idea because good teachers will get penalized for students that simply can not take a test.
The best method for merit pay is through student and administration, hell even parent reviews of teachers.
The reason teaching doesn't attract is because all across the board all teachers are being severely underpaid. There are teacher shortages everywhere because the pay frankly sucks.
And it's not the unions keeping the pay down it's administrations who every find some way to pump a whole bunch of money into school and then tell the teachers we don't have enough to give you a raise.
Preface To Educational Reform & Merit Pay...Teacher Preparation is Impossible since there is no core curriculum, therefore how then can we have teacher accountability?
Let's ill-prepare our teachers in Instructional Science, let's also have them going to school nights after long days for Master's degrees and let's have this challenge overlap with their 3-5 years as neophytes on the job. Oh, and let's pay them very little while they have sinking debt from undergraduate and graduate degrees and in paying for a dependable car and a place to live and multiple insurances and of course saving while their young for when they grow old, and having a family before they grow too old. And, when they become nearly inured from being constantly observed and evaluated based on the achievements of others, let's complete the denigration by offering them tenure, or security in a profession that does not offer merit-based pay nor a ladder to better status. Go, be happy and remain energized doing at age 63, make that 67, what you use to do at 22.
Oh, but we already are doing these things, and topping it all off with further reminders of the lowly status of being just a teacher by relabeling school administrators who once served teachers as knighted Educational Leaders. And let's welcome in parents and Educational Reformers with bizarre and often strident ideological stances to more fully scrutinize every teacher's every move. The narratives surrounding educational issues are controlled by politicians and self-serving foundations with na*ve agendas (try emailing a foundation; they will send you any of their "white papers" FREE, but will not let you post back anything to them or their audience).
It does not have to be this way, but those of us caught up in labyrinthine conditions are often the most difficult to rally against their oppressors; doing so requires rising above "cognitive dissonance" or the tendency to over-value something that requires so much from us.
Should you not find sense in the current state of affairs join me in mounting Teacher-based educational reforms. There are two that I believe deserve your attention and comment. One would be to fix a fundamental problem in which all of us are complicit: the need to forge a standard curriculum of Best Instructional Practices. There is no consensus on just what constitutes Teacher Preparation, what teachers are taught about teaching can vary greatly from one professor to another; nonetheless, Teachers are increasingly accountable for student learning even while Schools of Education and State Departments have yet to identify the specific tools that you should know and master. (You may wish to see one effort to generate movement in this direction at: http://bestmethodsofinstruction.com/.)
In a manner of speaking there can be such a thing as Teacher Education until a core curriculum has been hammered out. Secondly, anyone who has ever taught knows that to do it right also makes it physically and emotionally draining. As currently understood schools are expected to do essentially three things every day: teach new concepts, content and self-directed learning; offer assessment and supervised practice in these; and operate custodial functions that reinforce and extend learning while keeping students in school for at least seven-nine hours a day for about 200 days a year for about 13 years, and now through at least 2 more years of college. Our labor market and economic system depends on schools meeting these criteria at the every least. Staffing, and daily organization therefore, need to reflect these three essential components.
This is more easily done than one might think, and with greater efficiency and effectiveness for students -- who after all cannot reasonably be attentive through 5-7 different subjects per day separated by a buzzer bell. Doing this better simply requires a re-organization that differentiates staffing and obligations into some variation on the following: Master Teachers, Guardian Teachers, and, Complementary Curricula Teachers. Importantly, Master Teachers would be required to be in front of a class employing high-impact, results-based teaching methods for no more than 2-3 periods per day, and never without the ready assistance of a Guardian &/or a Complementary Curricula Teacher. The Guardian Teachers would largely be responsible for on-going assessment and supervised practice of basic and higher-order skills. The Complementary Curriculum Teachers would assist in the design, organization and supervision of theme- & real world-based projects, extra-curricula activities & sports. They also would in consultation with Master and Guardian Teachers be expected to employ new age media based edutainment and simulation activities that would inherently engage usage beyond the school day, finally they would provide guidance on "Homework" assignments.
By the way, should you be wondering what those new fangled Educational Leaders might be doing in this new era it is clear that one of their obligations should be to study and lead us to some school friendly forms of Social Entrepreneurship. That is, ways and means for schools to develop alternate streams of income to support education, and ideally, even enterprises supportive of their communities. This is much more plausible than current functions would suggest.
Collectively these are just examples of Educational Reforms that are based on the daily obligations of real teachers in a real, but rapidly changing world where our graduates must compete with a global work force, emerging economies and better ideas. Many other lesser reforms would more easily follow as universities resume their roles as think tanks and knowledge makers more so than just knowledge disseminators, and social services agencies. Frankly, the failure of universities to assemble a powerful and scientifically supported Instructional Curriculum for Teachers feels like another example of universities losing their way, and in so doing, shying from their primary obligation which again is pioneering new and better ways to do everything that needs doing.
Anthony V. Manzo, Professor Emeritus,
University of Missouri-KC
avmanzo@aol.com