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Oct
10
Stateline.org has a terrific round-up of how states continue to circle around the notion of merit pay to improve teacher performance and learning outcomes. In Ohio, Into My Own has a number of excellent posts on the topic, playing both sides. (The PD covered it back in April 2007 but only the teaser survives. Check out this New YorK Times teaser about similar issues in…1955! Somehow, I’m not surprised.)
The gist of the pro arguments:
…merit pay would give teachers incentives to raise the quality of students’ work and could help the NCLB program, which requires schools to show yearly improvement on standardized tests or face penalties.
The gist of the con arguments:
…merit pay relies too much on tests that may not paint an accurate picture of how well someone teaches.
And still:
Despite the opposition, eight states – Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, North Carolina and Texas – already have statewide performance-pay plans, and several school districts, notably Denver and Houston, have their own programs. The federal government also has been encouraging merit pay; last year the U.S. Department of Education distributed $99 million in grants to help a handful of districts and schools set up programs.[my emphasis]
According to Stateline, Minnesota’s program is considered to be a model of how it could and should work:
Randi Kirchner, the professional-pay-system coordinator for the union, Minnesota Education, prefers the term “professional pay” over “merit pay” when describing the program; the emphasis, she said, is not on standardized test scores – though they’re still one factor – but on professional development.
“What you call it is less important than what it looks like, and what it looks like in Minnesota is jointly designed, jointly negotiated, recognizing teachers as equal partners in the educational policy of the school, and aligning the whole system around improving teaching and learning,” Kirchner said.
Besides test scores, Minnesota’s system uses teacher evaluations, and other indicators of student performance, such as teacher-designed tests or portfolios – collections of students’ work. There is no cap on those who can earn incentives, and districts and local unions must agree on a plan to participate. This year, about 40 of more than 340 districts are participating, but more than 130 districts have indicated they plan to apply for the program by the next school year.
More…Personally, the main reason I refused to join the clerical and technical service workers union at Yale Univ. when I worked there (and this was just after a very, very bitter fight was won to institute a union there) was because of the complete disdain for merit pay (though, to be fair, you have to understand the context of how and why the C/T bargaining unit was really needed there – my mother worked in a lab there for 14 years and saw it all).
Here I felt like I’d been taught all my life that if you worked hard, the hard work paid off. But, as a 23 year old, I failed to see how only rewarding seniority fed that expectation that I believe is a good one: work hard, get rewarded for it – of course non-monetary rewards are good, but monetary is good too.
So – how do we balance the idea that everyone likes to be rewarded for working hard and that giving such rewards can improve performance, but then again, it might not?
Cross-posted from Wide Open.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 7:16 pm October 10th, 2007 in Education
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20 Responses to “Teacher merit pay: A plus idea, or F minus?”
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I could support a system that rewards teacher behaviors rather than student outcomes. A great example is the stipend Ohio teachers get for earning their National Board Certification. Or incentives to teach in districts high in poverty, districts that may not be able to afford to pay the high salaries that attract the best teachers. To me, though, that’s not merit pay, which is most often a term applied to systems by which salaries or bonuses are based on test scores.
But to answer the question in your title:
F minus.
(Thanks for the mention by the way. The term “merit pay” drew my interest, not the link!)
Dave: “behavior rather than outcomes”?
I find that to be a very strange statement for an educator to make. Why don’t we likewise grade kids based on effort rather than results?
The most frequent objection I hear to merit pay is that teachers don’t trust their administrators to be fair. I’ve said that very thing about a teacher or two of mine.
The governance and management of our education system has become disfunctional, and I think it all stems from the lack of competition. We have chosen to grant public school systems the exclusive right in a territory to levy taxes and use that money to operate schools. The only way a family can change their choice of schools is to move, or send their kids to private schools, a choices out of reach for most.
If we make schools compete for students (and yes, I believe such schools should be not-for-profit and accedited), then schools will also have to compete for teachers. The paycheck would be one factor in that competition, but so would quality of the facilities, the quality of the leadership and peers, class size, volunteer support, and many other factors.
Colleges compete for students and faculty in exactly this way. Why can’t this work for primary/secondary education as well?
Monopolies are generally a bad thing, whether in private industry or in public service. Let’s end the public school monopolies…
I think the most frequent objection you’ve heard from ME is that it isn’t fair to base pay on student performance because teachers can’t control student performance! You’ve read my take on it. You turn teaching into a lottery in which your salary depends on which students you are lucky or unlucky enough to get in class.
And how on earth is education a monopoly? Here in my district, parents of high schoolers have the following options:
local private schools (not free)
ECOT
Virtual school run by the ESC
neighboring districts that have open enrollment
Post secondary enrollment (free to the student)
local career center
Charter schools
What other options do you think taxpayers should be funding? And how can you call that a monopoly?
Dave:
… and the performance of the kids on their tests is likewise dependent on how good their teachers are.
- Private schools don’t count because they aren’t free. IE they don’t have authority to use tax dollars, which is my point
- ECOT: Good thing.
- ESC: thanks for pointing this out. I had never heard of this. We apparently have no ESC coverage in central Ohio though, so it isn’t an option here
- Neighboring districts: that doesn’t happen in central Ohio. In fact our district has a person assigned to the enrollment process whose job is to enforce the borders
- Post secondary enrollment: not sure what this is
- Local career center: just an extension of the local school district
- Charter schools: A good idea implemented badly in Ohio because the concept was neutered by those who have a vested interest in the status quo, and by those who wanted to make a quick buck.
I want an education system where there are no school district boundaries. Any kid can go to any accredited school, and take their funding with them.
My experience and focus is on the situation in central Ohio. I recognize that other areas of the state have different problems that merit different solutions.
Central Ohio has been shaped by a political climate which has long been dominated by the residential development powers. The consequence is a patchwork of school systems with vastly different demographics, resources, and performance. I would go so far as to say that central Ohio is nearly as segregated today as it was prior to the 1977 Federal Court order to implement busing in Columbus City Schools.
Maybe none of this applies where you are. Maybe we have a unique situation which requires unique solutions.
But I don’t think so. I think all the large cities in Ohio have the same problem, and it is directly caused by Ohio’s form of school organization – community districts. The function equivalent of what I suggest is a consolidated SMSA-wide school system in which any kid can attend any school, and have the transportation provided to make this freedom of choice meaningful.
But the system is broken, and money alone won’t fix it.
Dave and Paul – Thanks for carrying on this conversation.
Paul – so – what do you think about merit pay? I’m not sure I saw a specific response in the comments – but I may have missed it.
I’m suggesting that if we create an environment where schools (not school districts) have to compete for kids, the school leaders will have to figure out how to recruit and motivate their teachers. Just like in any other profession, some individuals will be motivated by money. Others will care less about money, and more about the facilities, coworkers and the kids. Compensation studies agree on one thing – the best comp system are flexible enough to match rewards to motivators.
Such systems require adminsitrators with imagination and backbone. It’s hard to individualize compensation, and even harder to have everyone think its fair.
But in my experience of leading some very large organizations, the ones who whine the most about fairness are the ones who need to be pruned from the organization.
I once knew an executive who worked for a Wall St firm. Their custom was to rank every worker in every department from 1 to ‘n’ based on performance and contribution to the firm. Each year, they would then prune out the bottom 10% and hire replacements. After years of this policy, you would think this firm would be dead meat, unable to hire anyone.
The truth was that they had an abundance of applicants from the best business schools in the country. Top performers want to be with other top performers. Like the slogan of the US Marines – “A Few Good Men”
We could use a little of that kind of thinking in our education system.
Well, part of what you describe appeals to people who are highly competitive, with themselves and others, who believe that being ranked etc. by someone else’s system has value. I happen to not be such a person but I of course have seen people who love competitions just to compete. I don’t really understand that. I work hard to do the best because…I want to produce the best that I can – whether that means I get an award or a top ranking or not…not so relevant.
So – I don’t know, Paul. I think there has to be something in between, yes?
Jill:
I didn’t mean to say teachers would need to compete, but rather schools. It would be up to the school leadership to figure out how to recruit, motivate and retain teachers who are motivated and effective.
I had the privilege of leading a team of world-class technology folks. For whatever reason, that means a lot of them were introverted non-competitive people. To some degree they didn’t care if the corporation was successful, except to extent that a successful corporation gave them a setting to do what they really loved. Interestingly, they also usually really loved it when they came up with an innovation that blew the socks off their opposite numbers in the other corporations we competed with.
I don’t want to try to define ‘better’ – I just want to give parents the chance to decide that for themselves, and in a way more open to everyone than moving to another school district.
We’re restricting the kids of the inner city, in particular, to the choice of a crappy school system, or dropping out and most likely taking up a criminal life (for the males) or pregnancy and welfare (for the women). Many will drop out and take up the destructive path anyway, but some will use the opportunity of a choice to escape the cycle of poverty.
The fix isn’t an amendment that takes more money from the rich suburbs and feeds it to the urban districts. Money isn’t the problem – it’s still the segregation. We’ve become ‘separate but equal’ again, but think we’re okay because there is no explicit racial segregation. It’s just Haves and Haves-not now.
And it’s gonna blow up in our face if we don’t deal with it soon.
Hmm, well – I do think for the most part we’re both saying that we want to keep people around who do like to compete to do better but that we don’t want it to have to be required in order to be recognized or rewarded.
The only other thing I really want to emphasize, because I think as between you and me it’s important, I have never advocated to just give more money – never. After all the education reporting I’ve done, I understand how money does make a difference, but I would never say that more money is the answer.
The overall issue of resources, however, is a different matter – and I do think of resources in terms of everything, from people to supplies to, yes, money.
I’m doing really badly at getting my point across, so please have patience for another go.
I’m saying that it’s possible to build a team which is competitive without requiring every member to be someone who relishes competition.
In other words, having schools compete for kids on the basis of the quality of their program is not the same as requiring head-to-head competition between teachers.
But if we let the kids have a free choice among schools(yes, I’ll stipulate that it has to be a not-for-profit, accredited school), the resources will automatically flow to the school that’s most doing what the parents and kids want. School leadership will compete for both kids and faculty, to the benefit of both. But to bring on a superstar teacher, it might be necessary to fire one who is not performing so well. The leadership will have to decide what constitutes good vs no-so-good performance, but it will probably be related to what the parents and kids think, because they ultimately vote with their vouchers.
Paul – I can pretty much guarantee that my inability to get exactly what you’re saying is not all your fault. I’m still really depleted from a lot going on and not enough sleep.
I agree with what you suggest. How it happens? Sometimes it just seems luck with a good dose of good decision-making. But in a system education however many millions of kids across so many different variables, just how much equity can we ever expect and achieve?
I think you know me well enough to know that I will still say that we have to try for the best. But all systems will have limitations.
Yes, all systems will have their limitations. Which is the reason I think the best configuration is a system where the parents and kids have a lot more choice than they do today with fixed attendance boundaries.
It’s a more organic, natural way of things. Let the thousands and thousands of little decisions by the parents direct the way the system evolves. Central planning isn’t working so well, mainly because it can be so easily corrupted and manipulated. I’ve just finished reading “Getting Around Brown” by Jacobs, which tells the story of developer defined desegregation of Columbus in the 1980s, and how the result twenty years later has been an enrichening of the developers, but more segregation than ever.
“Let the thousands and thousands of little decisions by the parents direct the way the system evolves.”
Do you really mean that, Paul? Seriously. That would be a very very scary thing, that’s my first reaction to reading that.
Absolutely.
Our economic system based on the notion that the ‘invisible hand,’ which is the summation of millions of individual decisions, is the best framework to allocate resources and inspire innovation.
Which is not to say that there aren’t ways to corrupt a free market system. We always need to be vigilant and quick to bring violators to justice.
By the way, what I’m advocating is free choice (of schools) for all – everyone. The rich get that choice by being able to pay whatever tuition is necessary to put their kids in private school (e.g. the kinds of schools Bush and Kerry both attended as kids).
The middle class have the mobility to be able to move to the school district they choose. Indeed, the school district is often the primary determinant of where they choose to live. Religious schools are also in the realm of affordability for much of the middle class.
But the poor have no choice. They have little mobility, and the schools where they live suck.
Well, I don’t know, Paul. What you describe about parental input is, even for me, I can’t believe I’m writing this, too idealistic. And I apologize for not going into greater detail for why I believe that (too close to Shabbat and dinner prep) but in part I see chaos and contentiousness unresolvable with parents alone. I have experience with parents and networking in our school district and it’s appalling how some will come right out and tell you that they will only do and pursue for their own child. I cannot see how a system – an entire system – would ever be able to develop, maintain and grow given the transiency of many parents in the lives of their kids.
As for choice – you and I have been through this before – you are saying there is a captive audience in people who have no mobility. But I don’t see why that doesn’t put the onus on the system to provide better, rather than make people move?
The invisible hand works because of selfish motives, not in spite of it.
That doesn’t mean there has to be one school for every family so that each family has its selfish desires exactly met. But parents will be able to seek the one that comes closest without also having to move.
Step 1: The state/fed creates standards for accreditation (curriculum, teacher qualifications, facilities, etc). Any school may apply, but only schools granted accreditation will receive public funding.
Step 2: Drop all attendance boundaries. Any kid can take their public funding to any accredited school and have it serve as 100% tuition.
Step 3: Allow any school building to seek emancipation from its present school district. There would be no need to be a member of a district, although sets of schools would be free to voluntarily organize. However, it must operate as a not-for-profit corporation subject to public scrutiny (ie Sunshine Laws still apply).
I’ve never said that I favor a wild-west, roll-your-own education environment. We need standards, audits, and disclosure.
But I want school administrators and teachers to feel accountable to get results. I won’t try to define what those results are, or how to measure them in this note. My point is that when a parent feels the school their kid is attending is not serving their kid, they can – with a minimum of restriction (e.g. only one xfer/yr, no xfers after a grading period has started, etc) – xfer their kid to another school.
The teachers and administrators who perform will attract kids to their schools. The ones who don’t will get starved out (perhaps to be replaced by another group who thinks they can do it better).
If you get a chance, read Jacobs:”Getting Around Brown”
From whom are the administrators chosen and who are the choosers? What recourse is there for when the administrators aren’t doing a job that people like (to whom do you complain, or are you suggesting that you would just move?)?
I can tell you now – I’m not likely to get to that book sooner than you are going to answer my questions.
So maybe you should stop answering me? 
EXCEPT…I read your blog and I know that you said that you answer questions.
The teachers would be selected and directed by the administrators, and the senior administrators would be hired/fired by a Board elected by the people whose kids attend the schools – no different than now. The Board might choose to offer administrators multi-year contracts, but it would not be a requirement.
Teachers would be free to unionize if they wish, but there would be no requirement that schools have a union teaching staff (a move which makes the teachers’ union accountable for performance and not just to bully raises).
Jacobs’ book doesn’t address this stuff – it’s about school resegregation, caused by the ‘invisible fence’ of suburban districts.
At what level does the board function – who is electing the board? Local, state, national? Since you want to encourage mobility, how broad a base will the board members represent?
See – this is part of why in practice I have a real block seeing it happen.
A small typo in my prior comment. It should have read: “…a Board elected by the people whose kids attend the school” rather than “…schools.”
I don’t know about your district, but in ours, there is way more public attendance at a PTO meeting for an elementary school of 500 kids than there is at the school board meetings, where the span of interest is 15,000 kids.
People want to get involved at the smallest political levels because they can actually be heard and make a difference. Some would say there is a ‘pride of ownership.’ A PTO is better in that regard than a district school board. A District school board is better than the State Board of Education, which is in turn better than the US Dept of Ed.
Jacobs rightly points out that there is a risk of voluntary resegregation with any open enrollment approach — that social pressure will tend to cause white schools and black schools and so on to develop anyway. I agree. But segregation by choice and segregation by policy are two different things. Those who are brave enough to step across the social line need to be affirmed and protected.
Like a friend of mine who was in the first class of males admitted to Vassar…