The teachers in Lee, Massachusetts, received merit pay for higher scores, funded by the Gates Foundation.
In a letter to the Berkshire Eagle, they explained why they rejected the money.
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/ci_24675094/letter-no-merit-pay-lee-p-teachers
Letter: No merit pay for Lee A.P. teachers
To the editor of THE EAGLE:
While we appreciate the article “Investing in students’ futures” (Eagle, Dec. 3), we would like to make some clarifications.
The $8,700 that the Lee Middle and High School A.P. teachers gave to the school is not from “grant pay,” but rather “merit pay,” earned as a result of high student scores on last spring’s A.P. exams. Unfortunately, the acceptance of “merit pay” was a non-negotiable requirement imposed by MMSI as part of the grant. We accepted these terms only for the additional benefit that a strong and varied A.P. program would provide for our students — “merit pay” was not an incentive to us. By refusing to accept this money and instead returning it to the school, we found a way to make it more palatable.
As a union, we strongly oppose “merit pay” on both philosophical and ethical grounds. First, the notion of “merit pay” suggests that high achieving students are more worthy of a teacher’s time and effort than average achieving students or those who struggle. Refusing to accept the “merit pay” has allowed us to put the money back into our departments to enhance the learning of all our students. We will buy much-needed items, such as supplies, textbooks, and technology, and also fund field trips and SAT preparation classes for students lacking the means to pay for them themselves.
Second, “merit pay” for certain teachers of certain students in certain classes is inequitable to professional educators. In our view, it is a way to undermine union efforts to ensure fair and equal pay for equal work, education, and experience. Before students arrive in an A.P. class in 11th or 12th grade, they have already been in school for at least 10 years. It is faulty logic to assume that the efforts of one A.P. teacher were the only cause of high scores. Earlier teachers, parents, and community members all help contribute to the success of our students.
Merit pay is an insult to our professionalism and a divisive tool designed to incite dissension among us in hopes of weakening our union, which is not only a political organization, but also a professional one, intended to protect the interests of both educators and students.
The LEA was pleased to find a way to bring high-quality, college-level curriculum to our students while holding on to non-negotiables of our own.
JANE MCEVOY
Lee
Jane McEvoy is A.P. Language and Composition, English Department Chair and LEA Vice President.
The letter was also signed by Robert Hungate, A.P. Biology, Science Department Chair, Mary Verdi, A.P. Literature and Composition, Thomas McCormack, A.P. Statistics, and Pamela Briggs, A.P. Calculus.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As a education advocate and veteranhoughky effective educator , I did not take the extra money for RIIT initiative this year. It is unfair and is causing teachers to compete instead of collaborate . DOE is surprised and contacted me about taking the money . I refused. Until they offer such gifts to all my colleagues, I will not participate. We are in this game together…
Why are they surprised? Do they not listen to teachers at all? Teachers do not respond to bribes to “work harder” and they don’t work for the money. The money is what pays the bills so they can engage in their calling. When will they get this?
No. They don’t listen at all. That’s why we’re in the state we’re in. “They” will only get it when teachers are the “They”.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
Because they are corrupted. They project themselves and their failings onto others and expect us to be like them.
Role models for all teachers. True meritorious action.
So refreshing to read. Thank you, Lee, MA teachers, for demonstrating the value of the students and of the profession over the value of the (ironically forced) dollar.
Awesome move!
Teaching is a public service occupation. Offering merit pay is an insult to every public school teacher in America because it implies that we will only work our hardest if their is extra money in it. It implies that we are all holding back, just waiting for this monetary incentive to do our very best. Attention all Governor Cuomo and all other non-educators who believe in merit pay: this concept is not in our DNA! In fact, most teachers do the exact opposite. We routinely, year after year, spend hundreds if not thousands dollars out of our paychecks to make sure our classrooms provide the best opportunities possible for our students.
Imagine offering merit pay to the firefighters who put out their fires the fastest. Imagin offering merit pay to the EMTs who save the most lives. Imagine offering merit pay to the police offcers who solvle the most murdre cases or catch the most criminals. Imagine offerin merit pay to the teachers who get their students to learn the best. All equally absurd ideas. Ideas that are apparently counterintuitive to the corporate mind set.
Youcn take all the merit pay
“You can take all your merit pay
Put it in a big brown bag for me
Sail right around the seven oceans
Drop it straight into the deep blue”
. . .sea”
LOL
Doug Smith, please note what NYS teacher says. And what I’m sure many more will say.
Diane likes to talk of “heroes” of education. I balk at the term because I think it takes away from what I consider “real” heroes who literally risk their own life, and unfortunately for some have given it, to help others (not just their livelihood). In this case I believe that a new “award” should be a new part* of this blog: The Lionheart Award and the first winners of it are those teachers of Lee, MA who “gave back” the money so that it may be better used for the students.
¡Aplausos, Aplausos!
*Not meant to denigrate the true heroes, e.g., the Sandy Hook staff, so that there should still be a “Hero” award.
Well said.
I second the nomination for a lionheart award, or however one wants to recognize such integrity and character.
In the end, this act will reach the hearts and minds of the students even more than the money. Well done AP faculty, well done!
Duane Swacker: you could have easily stumbled in making a subtle but important point, yet you threaded the needle—
With consummate skill.
😎
Gracias, KTA.
Well, considering I was born with a silver needle in my mouth. . . . Really, my dad rebuilt and repaired industrial shoe and sewing machinery-he got the business from my mom’s dad. I remember darning socks when I was 5-6 years old. Sewing was a quite natural thing in our house-I still have a half dozen machines or so. I made and sold hockey goalie leg pads from design through final sewing while in high school. One year (when we were grown) my brother and I didn’t like any of the soccer jerseys we could find so we made the team’s jerseys. Threading needles ain’t nothing (bifocals help that process-ha ha!)
I like this idea: your reasoning is sound. The term “Lionheart” also makes the concept more reachable, advocating needed stalwart courage.
Reblogged this on Nathan Merz's PLN and commented:
Excellent points about merit pay!
Yeah for these teachers! They are so right!
Almost makes me want merit pay. Giving it back accompanied with a statement like that would feel SO good!
This is what integrity looks like. Kudos to these courageous, stand up educators. By your example, others will lead, too. Way to represent. To those who may call you fools, so be it. Right is might.
Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
Awesome!
These educators are a prime example of what we are all about–professionalism in educating our students. I’s love to know what, if anything, the Gates Foundation has to say to them about returning the money to their school.
This makes me so happy to say I am a teacher. (Recently retired teacher, but still a teacher through and through.) I have explained this over and over to other non teachers and they just don’t get it. The pay check is nice, but the look on my students faces when they had accomplished something is what I miss about the classroom. The daily communication with my students, the working together to accomplish a task, the time spent coming up with strategies to meet all my students needs… those are the things I worked for daily. What wonderful and ethical teachers this district has!
I am so impressed with the LEA’s stand against merit pay.
My own district is forging ahead with a revamping of our standard pay scale in favor of a stack ranking system with incentives. Jane’s letter is inspiring to those of us fighting against the same intrusion on our profession in our own communities.
http://oneteachersperspective.blogspot.com/2013/11/meritless-pursuit-of-pay-for-performance.html
Remember that time when corporate edu-reformists politely declined money as a matter of professional integrity? Me neither.
http://jonathanpelto.com/2014/01/08/vallas-demands-taxpayers-cover-1700-month-health-insurance-till-july/
ROTFLOL! I assume this acronym is well out of season now, as I am, but I couldn’t resist the temptation, Alan.
My hat is off to these teachers. Bravo!
Teachers are awesome people with intelligence, courage, creativity, initiative, high moral character and professionalism. Money can’t buy them like others are so readily. HOORAY! Applause. Applause. Tremendous APPLAUSE.
Wonderful. Affirms that teaching is an honorable profession not a just a job. I hope Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, and all of the others who are shoving merit pay at teachers are faced with a deluge of creative resistance that will turn the corner on the use of this alien corporate concept. The beauty of this collaboration is this: the merit pay went back to programs of benefit to the students while publicizing the need for those resources and the priorities of the teachers.
Third of all, merit pay implies that teachers are holding back their A-game and are doing substandard work intentionally. I appreciate that these teachers said NO to the merit pay dollars. It rejects the assumption that they worked extra hard for lucre. Any teacher willing to take on the duties of AP courses is not generally doing it for the money.
Brava and bravo, Lee teachers! That’s no small thing to give back money. I applaud your selflessness and courage.
Merit pay does not work.
Bravo for this show of character and integrity. I wish every teacher and admin who get merit pay would do this. Maybe someday the message will sink in that it takes a village.
Way to go, teachers!
Joining the choruses everywhere, across the nation…..
THANK YOU!!! Lee teachers, you are courageous and AWESOME!!! You are a TRUE INSPIRATION!!
If my university paid all their faculty the same salary based on seniority, we would have no medical school or be only a medical school. Likely no reasearch professors either.
And your point is…? Surely you are not trying to compare elementary and secondary models to university departments/schools? I’m sure you can come up with some superficial similarities.
There are fundamental similarities. The wage you need to pay anyone depends on their view of the job and the other possible jobs they might hold. My institution has to pay medical school faculty very well because the opportunity cost of being a professor is high. My institution does not have to pay mathematics professors nearly as well because, as a group, they see alternative employment that does not involve theoretical mathematics as much less attractive.
I think the same logic certainly holds for high school teachers. Last semester, one of my very good students was a music education major. She so values living the life of a musician that I am very sure she would be content with a relatively low as a teacher. Where else could she be paid to conduct a band or orchestra after all? An equally strong computing programming teacher faces a different situation. There are many alternative employers that will let her practice that art. If we want her in the school, teaching the next generation of programmers, we need to pay her enough to stay there (or perhaps more accurately, consider high school teaching as an option to begin with).
There is a difference between getting paid for the job you do and getting paid more than you agreed to be paid to “somehow do the job better” than you originally intended. Yes, getting paid a living, sustainable wage is an incentive to work. No one is arguing that. The argument is against the notion that some teachers are simply “not working hard enough” to “produce” students who somehow have a better academic record than other students.
Some of the points that were made in the above statement seem to have been lost in your view of education. Let’s look at this as a study in “cause and effect” relationships. There are two major variables that come into play when one decides “who is responsible” for student “success.”
1) The “student” variable: Paying teachers more will not motivate their students to invest in their own education. Students have a very large stake in their own success.
2) The “previous teachers” variable: The current teacher’s direct influence on students is not the only one. It seems the proponents of merit pay forget who may have taught students the skills and knowledge that have shaped who they were before they arrived in their current classrooms.
I should mention that a student’s personal life situation (which includes the outside influences of participation in community activities) is another large indicator of success in education, but again, those who are for merit pay seem to think that the current classroom teacher is somehow responsible for every aspect of a child’s learning.
Relentless comparisons of post-secondary education to K-12 do not apply here. The main reason for this stems from the fact that you cannot compare post-secondary populations with public school populations considering that college is NOT A REQUIREMENT of the general public. I’m all for intelligent debate, but it appears that there is a need to constantly make conditional arguments where you frame public education through the narrow lens of post-secondary education. That argument does not apply in this debate.
LG,
The concern that students must attend school until the age of 16 and after that it becomes optional would seem to have very little to do with how teachers salaries are structured. Should a teacher be paid differently because she teaches high school classes made of seniors?
A more interesting discussion would differentiate between bonuses based on exam scores and salaries that are based on the ability of schools to attract quality teachers to the school. The former seems a poor idea, the latter seems like a good idea. It might well work to the advantage of the job seeker to be allowed to accept less than a mandated amount of pay. In an earlier post about a friend with a Ph.D. in physics who is starting a second career as a high school science teacher, one poster commented that my friend would not be able to find a public school job because his salary would be too high for him to be hired. If that is the case, my friend would certainly be happy to take less than the mandated wage to teach if that was allowed.
“Should a teacher be paid differently because she teaches high school classes made of seniors?”
No. The crux of the difference is in the fact that high school seniors are offered public education. College students must pay.
“A more interesting discussion would differentiate between bonuses based on exam scores and salaries that are based on the ability of schools to attract quality teachers to the school.”
That would be quite relevant if all learning can be measured by examinations, but it just is not so. Unfortunately, this country’s reliance on exit and entrance exams as indicators of success is misplaced. The purpose of an examination is to narrowly measure a specific kind of learning providing that the skills necessary to actually to take the test do not interfere with what is being measured. The validity of the whole testing phenomena is always in question. Therefore, schools on any level need far more indicators of student learning and potential to learn than exams.
In regard to your friend with a Ph.D. in physics, I’m sure there are plenty of entry level positions for physics teachers where he can make very little in comparison to what he’s used to. I don’t think anyone here would argue that public school teachers are “allowed” to make too much money. 😉
The concern of other posters on here is that he might not be hired because his contract pay rate would be so much higher than someone without a doctorate. The school district may prefer the less expensive candidate.
I still do not see why the status of the student (in school by choice or by force of law) is useful in thinking about how teacher salary is determined. What is important there, from the prospective of the community, is how to get the most value for the resources expended. If a district has trouble hiring highly qualified math instructors, but little trouble hiring highly qualified physical education instructors, I think the district should be able to raise the salary of the math instructor position.
“The concern of other posters on here is that he might not be hired because his contract pay rate would be so much higher than someone without a doctorate. The school district may prefer the less expensive candidate.”
I missed that concern, but like any other second career teacher, he would start on the pay scale according to his academic qualifications. Wealthier school districts might go for a PhD with no teaching experience. Others might go for a teacher with more experience than degrees. It really depends on the needs of a district. In the current climate, districts are generally looking for ways to cut their budgets, so he might have a harder time. I believe it works the same way in the private sector.
In the private sector he might have the ability to agree to a lower wage. As the trailing spouse, I was fortunate to be able to accept a salary that my institution was willing to pay. I have been able to teach and live with my family because of this flexability.
Wow! Good for you. You are outstanding examples of good teachers and good union members. (Please come and work where I do–we need you!)
Bravo, teachers from Lee, MA! I will share your letter with the pre-service teachers with whom I work. Teaching is a profession. All children, not matter their test scores, are worthy of our efforts. We will not be bought.
Commendable…and consistent with what the teachers of Massachusetts, as well as teachers across the country, have been asserting for years.
Kudos to the Lee Teachers. It’s about damn time the outside critical world know we can not be bought!
@teachingeconomist: I work in higher education and truly dislike the “market” framework for rationalizing compensation in college teaching. According to that rationale, one gets paid more depending on the market value of one’s research or one’s profile. Those in medicine and the business school end up getting paid much more than those in humanities within this framework. You employ a different rationale though still within the market framework when you say “the wage you need to pay anyone depends on their view of the job and the other possible jobs they might hold.” But it seems to me that it’s highly inappropriate to employ a market framework when analyzing and imposing reforms for K-12 teaching.
What a wonderful thing they did! These teachers and those who stand behind them are true educators. They are the ones who will be remembered thirty years later by the students they enriched. Amazing. Thank you for such a wonderful article.
Congratulations to Lee, MA teachers, for so clearly and beautifully explaining why merit pay is unacceptable on all levels. I admire their commitment to all students and to the profession, and salute their clear vision, unselfishness, and integrity.
Kudos to the Lee teachers for your courageous and principled position and for the clarity of your explanation. Unfortunately, differential pay is one of the drivers behind the new evaluation systems associated with Race to the Top, including, it seems, the Massachusetts version. As a district, we are therefore resisting using the Exemplary category, as we think that its purpose is to justify merit pay.
I would vote for making the exemplary category impossible to attain. That would eliminate merit pay. Brilliant idea!
It reminds me of my friend’s school. They choose their Teacher of the Year randomly from out of a hat. This is because they all believe they are all teachers of the year. No competition, no animosity.
This is why education in the USA is, and will remain, a joke, until government, and unions who care more about their own power than actually educating students, are pushed out of the schools.
I was fortunate that, as an autodidact, I didn’t get hamstrung by the terrible public schools I went to… schools with too much funding and too much unionization.
Engineer,
You seem angry, too willing to generalize and empty of knowledge. You must be dissatisfied by something as we live in a wonderful but imperfect country. Call me when your engineering job gets shipped to someone willing to work for less and I’ll hire you to fix my lawn mower.
So private schools for all is your answer? Good luck finding enough teachers to work for their slave-wages.
Please explain why the most unionized, and best funded, states are also known to produce the best education.
You just skipped the letter didn’t you? Are you comforted that your hard won individualism gives you the capacity to thoughtlessly reject the wholesome solidarity of a group of committed educators?
Bravo, Lee teachers! You are truly a remarkable and inspring group of educational preofessionals!