Now and then I like to post about writers who have contributed to our knowledge about progressive education. It would be nice to talk about new ideas, but if we’re going to discuss old ideas, we should at least know what’s already been said so we can stop repeating ourselves and either move the discussion forward or change the subject.
EdSec Duncan, for example, has a big pile of money he wants to use to “incent” and reward excellence “based on student achievement” because he believes that a quality education for every student is a civil right. That’s a nice idea, but we need to agree on some key details before we can expect to see much progress there. Prof. Daniel Willingham posted a video on You Tube, offering six reasons why merit pay will not work. Three reasons are about why test scores won’t give us valid information about teacher effectiveness, and the other three are about social factors that make some classes more challenging than others.
James Herndon covered this topic in his own special way 25 years ago in Notes From a Schoolteacher:
The idea that if you’re paid more you’ll work harder may apply to selling encyclopedias. If you’re a lion-tamer, you’re not going to work any harder just because you’ll be paid more. The job of a teacher is more like a lion-tamer, I think.
-Al Shanker, President
AFT, AFL-CIOI’ve tried hard to find something to say, pro or con, about merit pay – something that has not already been said hundreds of times. Shanker’s remark, above, is one point of view. You must work hard, as a schoolteacher, simply in order to avoid being eaten alive. Subduing the lion’s natural appetite comes first – after that is assured, maybe you’ll be able to teach him a trick or two.
Merit pay has been around a long time in the corporate / industrial world, but even there no one seems satisfied with it. No research can be found which agrees that the salesman works harder or is more successful at his trade if he is given extra pay for “merit.”
It is, anyway, quite beside the point whether one works hard or not. Success is the point. But even there, sales managers report that no one is satisfied if the person who demonstrably sells the most of whatever product it is, is paid more. The other salesmen argue that they had bad territories, mix-ups in their deliveries, no cooperation from the front office, storms – otherwise they would have been right up there.
Teachers, like salesmen, all believe that they are among the very best at their job. You simply must believe that in order to continue teaching (and probably selling).
You begin to teach as a lion-tamer, to be sure and, if not eaten up, go on to ask other teachers what they do here and there, what “works” for them, and quite soon, by some curious amalgam, you develop a way to work in the classroom which suits you and which you think is best … best, considering the various and vast distances between what you must do, want to do, and can do.
You think it best, for you and the students, or for the students and you.
I certainly think that my “style” or “strategy” in the classroom is the best. That’s why I do it that way. I also know that my opinion is not shared by the other teachers at Spanish Main, each of whom, quite rightly, prefers his own.
The whole idea of merit pay, then, seems to founder at this point. If we all think that we are among the best, how are we to reward the best?
If we must decide who is the best, then who is to decide, and on what basis?
Herndon doesn’t say anything about test scores, presumably because nobody had the genius idea of using them to compare teachers. Instead, he tells us that the “plans suggest a committee” of roving teachers who would visit schools and rate them based on their observations. Herndon wonders about the inferences these people would draw if they paid him a surprise visit.
The visiting team, concluding that this teacher is not teaching at all, let alone well, is not dedicated, doesn’t give a damn, certainly deserves no merit pay (if he deserves to be paid at all!) – the team has just missed out on one of the best teachers in the world! They are unaware of it.
Too late, then, for my thoughtful discourse on what teaching is, how students learn, etc.!
Has something been left out in this discussion? I want to cover everything about this now; I never want to return to it.
Well, the basis is left out. The standard, criterion, measure, rule of thumb … anything, any way by which to tell the great teachers from the simply OK teachers. The standard, etc., by which to tell the wonderful teaching strategies from the mediocre ones.
Are the great teachers more entertaining? Have they better intellectual command of their subjects? Have they greater rapport with the students? Are they more efficient, provide more time on task? Are they more aware of their students’ ethnic backgrounds, social class, personal or family problems? All of the above? Well, some of the above?
No one knows.
Does anyone know whether students actually learn more from great teachers, if you could ever find out who were the great teachers?
No one knows that either. The sentence just above sounds insane (p. 85).
It would be so much more interesting to talk about that.
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And don’t think merit pay wouldn’t develop into a mess and a political football. Just look at the merit pay fiasco in the financial companies with people getting bonuses when the company is going down the tubes, or right before the company filed for bankruptcy or got a bailout. The first time teachers at a school got “merit pay” even though the school’s scores somehow weren’t good (because the teachers did whatever they had to do to qualify for merit pay)we’ll hear about it plenty. And don’t think teachers aren’t going to be pointing it out when some qualify for merit pay and others don’t under when scores don’t jive or the rules were different or whatever.
My own experience with this was when another school in the area, with a more “advantaged” student population, got merit pay – and ours didn’t, even though our test scores were up – there was some resentment. We already have merit pay here, but nobody knows how the formula works.
No teacher that I know takes credit for test scores because it’s obvious that the kids who do well come programmed to do well, and the kids with problems brought those with them also. We do our best regardless of any expectations for merit pay. Maybe it’s different somewhere else, but I doubt it.
Doug, the really scary part of this is when it lands in the lap of the public to discuss – a largely naive public, getting its info from simplistic media sound bytes.
This is happening in Seattle right now, where we are blundering through school closures and RIF’s – to solve a financial crisis.
Who’s to blame? Why, teacher unions who believe in seniority, of course. The answer? Get rid of the bad teachers and keep the good ones.
How do we decide who is good?
That question, unfortunately, is not even on the radar – never mind an answer to it.
If someone were to venture an answer, it would of course be test scores.
Merit pay? Now this would require some serious thinking. I do not see my community at all prepared to begin that discussion.
It has been a tough year. – Mark
You know, Mark, it’s going to get messier. Each community is different, and blogging about what’s going on helps us all to see the big picture. Most of the teachers I work with have no idea about what’s happening outside our area. I’m grateful for the news from Seattle that you’ve shared on your blog.
@ Doug
An interesting post as the merit pay issue comes up. I’m attracted to merit pay not buy the narrow focus on scores on standardized tests but from my view as an administrator on the ability i’d have to reward my teachers who do more. The noble souls who lead committees, throw themselves into co-curricular activities, and contribute. I haven’t heard Mr. Duncan mention any of these. But i’d rather pay them more than a teacher who manipulates scores and beats the kids to the parking lot every day.
I loved that book…..Herndon should be required reading.
Point taken, Charlie, and thanks for making it. I’ve many times thought that the more difficult classroom assignments (with behavior problems, large classes, learning disabilities, non-English speaking students, etc.) and taking on extra duties should bring additional compensation. I’m not opposed to differential pay schemes, per se. The problem is with the idea that pay should be linked to performance, when performance=test scores.
The first fallacy out there is how well “incentive” bonuses” have on performance in the private sector/business. At the risk of belaboring a point I’ve blogged about a lot lately, (here, here, and here) there is work in economics out there showing that disproportionately sized bonuses get you worse, not better performance. Then, we have only real life to look at in the last economic cycle to see the nasty end that these “performance” based system can lead to.
The study done by Ariely does show some benefit in performance for small bonuses. I think it might be that those are not perceived as “monetary” but more a “social” transaction, such as Charlie talks about? I imagine if they were perceived as being handed out randomly, or with favoritism, they could have a very pernicious effect on morale though.
I think it’s work at how we do compensation and seniority just to keep ourselves intellectually honest. I’m concerned about what is happening with largely seniority based layoffs in my district, that we’ll end up with a teaching staff that is all about 10 years from retirement if things keep up as they are. There is also not a lot of evidence for seniority making teachers better after the 5-10 point (although by what measure?), which is the basis for pay and job retention in most places. But if those are problems, abolishment of the system for a “market-based” is not to palatable either.
Alice, one of the links you left was broken, so I took the liberty of linking your comment to the three posts on performance incentives that you did recently. I believe that’s what you were referring to – they were quite good.
The main difficulty is, as Herndon noted, there should be a rational basis for deciding who gets the “bonus” money so that everyone understands why one person did, and someone else did not get it.
Speaking for myself, I won’t/don’t work harder for more money. I don’t do anything just for money. I went into teaching knowing that I wasn’t going to make a lot of money – which isn’t the same thing as saying I don’t care about money – but there are other job-related things that I also care about.
I believe a lottery system would work better than one that’s tied to test scores.
@doug, I hear you about the money not being what motivates, and that’s why I think they found some advantage in small scale bonuses. I think the participants saw them as more “social” than “monetary” in value. Ariely didn’t do the studies in work groups, so we don’t know what effects (good and bad) “choosing” who would get the bonuses would have on group morale and dynamics.
I hear you about test scores. I thought @charlie’s ideas about giving it to folks doing specific work was good, and that often happens with stipended positions/tasks within contracts.
Great links here to Willingham and Herndon. I’ve heard Herndon mentioned positively before but you have now pushed me to the point of buying one of his books, so thanks.
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[...] some very timely and thought provoking commentary as well as quotations in today’s post, “Retro reform idea – Merit Pay.” My favorite quotation is the one he starts with from Al Shanker: The idea that if you’re paid [...]
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