The assumption behind merit pay is that teachers are not trying hard enough.
The assumption is that a cash bonus will make them care and prod them to work harder and get those test scores up.
For 100 years, school boards at the state and local level have tried merit pay and it has always failed to produce higher test scores.
There are many reasons for this.
One is that merit pay is intrinsically insulting. It presumes that it takes a cash prize to incentivize lazy teachers.
But when there are two groups, one offered merit pay, the other not, they seem to get the same results.
That’s because the teachers in both groups are doing the best they can to get their students to learn.
As one teacher commented today:
| Yup, once i’m eligible for merit pay I’ll bring out my really good lesson plans, until then, they’re staying in my desk! |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I find the whole premise behind merit pay insulting. If the districts have extra money, let’s use it to improve teaching conditions such as providing class sets of reading books, pencil sharpeners, science materials, or any of the hundreds of items teachers end up paying for out of pocket.
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I thought the comment was priceless when I read it on the earlier blog.
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Diane,
The is a blog called Leadership Freak that presents the philosophies of successful business people. It discusses many topics, but one comes up over and over, “top down ” doesn’t work. It does however create havoc. I’ve attached an example (hope that’s OK). It briefly touches on the effect of Top Down. My bigger point is that this blog would be, I think, an excellent resource for refuting the education reformers by using the very words that successful business people use to describe successful practices.
“Stretched not Crushed by Dan Rockwell
Every time things start going wrong we look to the leader for solutions. Beware! The pressure to provide solutions crushes leaders. When solutions come from the top, organizations crumble from the bottom.
A C-level leader recently said, “When I wake up stressed out over problems in the night, I know I’ve forgotten it’s about the team. Things go better when I include others.”
Stretching others:
Leaders who can’t ask people to do hard things can’t get hard things done. Meaningful contributions require deep commitment and effort. Weak leaders assume others can’t or won’t step up. They rule out before they ask.
Ruling out:
That’s too hard for them. Making it easy prevents people from stepping up. Give people the opportunity to do hard things. I’m not suggesting you intentionally make things hard for others.
They already contribute so much. Translation, they can’t make meaningful contribution in new areas.
They wouldn’t be interested.
They’re too valuable where they are. If anyone says that to you, update your resume’.
The big ask:
The big ask is about values before programs. Programs, methods, and techniques are small things when compared with the power of shared values. Align shared values before making the big ask.
It’s the team:
Carrying the load alone crushes;
carrying the load together stretches.
Shared values are magnetic; they pull people together. Success is always about people before it’s about programs and initiatives. People committed to shared values make deep commitments to each other. Connections sustain and energize when things get hard. Blame separates and defeats.
How do you ask others to do hard things?
What should be in place before you ask for deep commitments?”
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The motivation for merit pay need not be that teachers are lazy. You might want to show that hard work of teaching is recognized and appreciated. You might want to make sure the hard working effective teachers stay in teaching.
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Merit pay is insulting and demoralizing. It has failed time after time after time.
It incentives teaching to the test and narrowing the curriculum.
Did you not read the report by the National Research Council’s “Incentives and Test-Based Accountability”?
You should.
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I am really confused about this.
I don’t think your report is relevant to what I’m saying because it’s title suggests that pay based on test-based accountability does not work. I was not talking about that. I was talking about pay based on merit, presumably measured reasonably well. I was also suggesting that the goal of merit pay was not to increase productivity, but to show good and great teachers that we appreciate their hard work and to keep them in the profession. Do you think increased pay fails to do that?
At the university level you might get increased pay for several reasons. You get an increase in salary when you are promoted in rank. Promotion typically comes from demonstrating merit, typically requiring reviews at multiple levels both inside the institution and outside it.. You often get a counteroffer when another institution tries to hire you away, unless, of course, your institution is not particularly upset to see you go. You also might get an increase in pay to simply keep you from thinking about looking for another job. Usually other job offers come because of your merit. These sorts of practices have produced the greatest system of higher education in the world, so you might think they have worked.
I see you are a full professor. Were your merit evaluations insulting and humiliating?
In a long and fruitefull discussion with William Berkson, he stated
“Well, my feeling, and there are those who know education a lot better than I, is that the way to get more great schools can only be done by long-term, continuous investment in developing great teachers, principals, and schools. That means attracting people higher on the academic achievement ladder to enter the profession through higher salaries, having great training before hand and effective mentoring and good working conditions once on the job.”
People whom he discribes as essential to creating great schools need to be paid enough to enter the profession and paid enough to stay in the profession. The best teachers and administrators will have outside offers from other employers and if a great, highly trained teacher leaves teaching, we lose an extremely valuable resource.
We seem to be doing the opposite in public schools. I was very discouraged to hear in the news last spring that the teacher of the year in her district, had been laid off from teaching. No doubt she will find another job, but will this great teacher ever teach again? I don’t understand why the public school system does this to their students. Perhaps a private school will hire her and their students will benefit from her teaching abilities for the next thirty years.
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Test scores do not measure merit. Test scores measure how well students can select the right answer on a multiple choice test. This is a skill that can be taught by teachers who are plodding and uninspiring. If the measure is meaningless, it cannot be said to measure “merit.” It measures a quality of no great importance, other than those who make it so.
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Where is it written that a merit pay system must be based on test scores? As I said above, that is not what I am talking about! Perhaps I should have capitalized that section of my comments.
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Every merit pay system is based on test scores.
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That is a mistake, we should have merit pay systems based on good evaluations of teachers. Do you agree that it works reasonably well in higher education?
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“. . . presumably measured reasonably well.”
And therein lies the problem, the attempt to measure something (teacher quality) that is immeasurable. Just can’t be done. Merit pay in education ends up being a system whereby the brown nosers will get rewarded, plain and simple.
“That means attracting people higher on the academic achievement ladder. . . ”
Well another jab at the professionals that teachers are. Oh, they’re just so dumb academically speaking, you know they couldn’t “excel” in the classroom so the become teachers. Horse manure!!
“Perhaps a private school will hire her. . . ” Yeah for half her public teacher salary, probably with fewer benefits.
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The public school is offering this outstanding teacher no salary, so I don’t think a private school can offer her any less!
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I don’t agree that there is no way to tell who the great teachers are. If you go into any building and ask the people there, they can tell you who is an outstanding teacher, who is really important to the functioning of the school.
Promotion and pay increases are based on merit in higher education. Why is, say, high school so very very different?
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Everyone “knows” who the best teachers are. But that won’t be the same as test scores or gains on tests.
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Again, I said nothing about gains on tests as the measure!
In every building, or better yet let’s use community, the members of the community know who are the effective and important members of the community and who are the ineffective and poor members. Let’s use that knowledge to ensure that the outstanding teachers feel respected and appreciated by increasing their salary. This will also help insure that these teachers remain in the profession.
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Besides the fact that merit pay is based on student achievement, the very idea behind it is lost. We are told that it is supposed to “reward the best teachers.” Unfortunately, school districts do not even have the money to support this type of pay system. What we are left with instead is a punishment for those who “don’t make the grade.” The main use of these standardized tests is to guide instruction…not to show how well/how poorly the teacher is doing. We started failing our students the moment we started this witch hunt of our nation’s teachers. To get and retain the best teachers we need to reward those who put in the most effort and produce results (within reason). We need to show our teachers that their countless hours of preparation, meetings, and after school activities are important. We need to acknowledge those that stand out as leaders in our schools and districts. Salaries need to be competitive with other industries that require at least a four year degree. It gets frustrating when I have friends in retail who make more in a year than I do. These are the things we should start with…not wasting our time on a failing merit pay system with no way to even finance it.
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Besides the ideas behind merit pay is extremely flawed, there is absolutely no funding given to the district to support this kind of system. Basically, it’s a punishment for those teachers who “don’t make the grade.” The purpose of these test scores should be to drive instruction…not soley to reward or punish teachers based on the outcomes. In addition, there are many things that need to change before education can retain the best and brightest teachers. We need to acknowledge teachers for the countless extra hours they put in (preparation, planning, professional development, after school events, etc). Simply being thanked for doing such things would go a long way instead of constantly putting us down and treating us like dogs. We also need to provide competitive wages to attract these young professionals. If we don’t, we will never attract and keep the teachers we want. When I continually am denied my yearly salary increase and see friends working in retail who make the same wage as I do (having zero college experience while I have a bachelor’s degree and soon a master’s degree) it’s discouraging. We also need to encourage leadership within our schools and districts and include these leaders in important decisions and discussions. “Reformers” in today’s sense of the word lost the battle when they stopped caring about what is truly best for our students and decided to wage a war on public school teachers instead. Disgusting.
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@Teaching Economist- you make some interesting points. In fact, in Florida, we used to have a system in place for such merit: It was pay for National Board Certification. Teachers went through a very rigorous process of evaluations, lesson planning, test-taking, etc. over a year and submitted their work to a national organization to be evaluated. It was a tough process, and not every teacher made it. Some teachers took several years of re-submitting their work before they were considered National Board Certified.
Once teachers earned initial certification, they were expected to become mentor teachers to newer teachers. The idea was to help develop and retain other strong teachers in the field.
Florida used to pay for the costly process of becoming certified. Once teachers were certified, they got an bonus of several thousand dollars- merit pay if you will- each year. They even had to re-certify every few years. Beyond that, NBCT teachers were paid bonus money for the number of hours they put in mentoring.
So what happened to this system of merit pay? It got cut. Completely done away with. The legislature used to fully fund it, but even before the economy tanked (because of course, that would be the argument for doing away with a program that actually improved the teaching profession and retained the best teachers) they cut all funding for the program. The very same legislators who pushed through our ill-conceived current merit pay plan- cut all funding for a merit-pay program that was actually working.
And how much funding is there now for our current merit-pay plan based strictly on test scores? Nada. Nothing. Zilch. How in the world does any businessman propose a merit pay plan with no actual merit?
It’s destined to fail in every capacity. Well, except one: increasing the bottom-line for test companies. As we divert (not come up with new funding, but divert from existing classroom funds) millions of dollars into hundreds of new poorly-written tests meant to “fit” this merit pay plan and determine who the “best” teachers are.
And as others have said, you are trying to quantify something that can’t be measured. Bonuses for coaching, sponsoring clubs, taking on leadership roles, extra tutoring, going through rigourous evaluation systems like National Board, I could buy it- those generally are your best teachers who truly are there for the kids.
But what we are doing with test scores is a complete joke. This WILL fail and I pray in a few years the pendulum starts to swing back towards common sense.
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I would certainly call this merit based pay.
While it was funded, how did it work? Did it hurt moral? Did it help moral? Did it create detrimental competition within the school? Was this way of paying the best teachers demoralizing?
I hesitate to ask this, but I guess I will. Did the program and the selection process make the applicants better teachers while it was being funded?
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Please correct me if I’m wrong, but a good chunk of me believes this has a lot to do with test scores, merit pay,etc..
This im sure is an oversimplified explination, but….If teaching’s purpose can be shifted to test scores, then there becomes reason and rationale to implement various companies’ systems and products that can be shown to improve these data-based metrics through primarily drill/kill methods. Politicians and policy makers have long had connections with companies, and in our day and age the money pouring in HAS to impact and sway decisions and policies made. So, the more teaching can be reduced to what computers and programs can do, the more opportunity for these companies have to profit. Politicians are incentivized to create policy that gives kickbacks to their funding groups, which is why it is no surprise to me we are in the midst of what we are right now in education.
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I used to teach science in the US, but the administrators (who must have degrees in administration for proper ideology), treat teachers as objects. They are after all only “human resources”. Now I make four times what I made as a teacher and have 1/3 the problems.
Any honest examination of merit pay, will discover it never has worked. It merely forces teachers to “teach to the test”, which is not education at all. However, the corporate masters and their ideologues support this “outcome”. They desire obedient technicians, not educated people capable of independent thinking. The current educational situation in the US will not change, as TPTB have the system were they want it.
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I am reading “Drive” by Daniel Pink and I love the book. It would suggest that merit pay actually harms education, it takes people (teachers) who are not driven by money and tries to carrot/stick them to some higher standard.
I did the reverse of kenzer – I worked in the private sector and then went to math and make about 1/4 the money. So obviously I am not driven by the money, merit pay forces short sightedness, to improve education we need a long continuous improvement attitude. Pay me like a professional (so I would not need 2nd jobs) and let me slowly make my school better — I have been at it 6 years, it works…..
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Now read Edward Deci on “Why We Do What We Do”
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