Hardly a day goes by without another politician or businessman calling for merit pay, performance pay, incentivize those lazy teachers to produce higher scores!
The Obama administration put $1 billion into merit pay, without a shred of evidence that it would make a difference.
Merit pay schemes have recently failed in New York City, Chicago, and Nashville, but who cares?
The Florida legislature passed legislation mandating merit pay but didn’t appropriate any money to pay for it. That was left to cash-strapped districts.
So here is the secret trick.
There is no money to pay for merit pay!
In a time of fiscal austerity, the money appropriated for merit pay (when it is appropriated) is money that should have been spent on reducing class size, preserving libraries or school nurses, or maintaining arts programs or other school-based services.
Instead, districts will lay off some teachers so that other teachers get bonuses. That leads to larger classes for the remaining teachers.
That is ridiculous, but that is the way of thinking that is now prevalent among our nation’s policymakers.
A reader knows this:
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.
and so goes the same argument against for profit public education—the pool of money is finite and everyone says maxed out-so how can there be room for profits without reducing staff, curricuum,–the whole premise is false. Schools were not failing before NCLB–now they are because of it—thank the snake oil salesman-Gates
Does anyone who controls the purse strings have any idea what’s going on? The misappropriation of funds is appalling. In the best of times, teachers have used their own money to buy supplies that they deem necessary to enhance their program. Now it is made more difficult by the absurd reasoning of education policy makers.!
Anyone who has ever worked under a similar scheme, in teaching or anywhere else, knows that “merit pay” is just another name for favoritism, if not outright nepotism. The employees who are favored to succeed will always be given the resources they need to look better than others, with the least-favored employees being starved out of the pool.
Corporate reformers may have hit upon another “bonus” when it comes to merit pay. If your goal is to DIVIDE and CONQUER, merit pay most certainly will create large divisions amongst faculty members. The result is a staff that will be pitted against each other, making it more difficult to organize against failed policies.
Perhaps there is also an underlying “bonus” when it comes to virtual schools. Students will be less likely or completely unable to join in any protest against these failed policies. Parents will also not be able to organize as they rarely if ever have the opportunity to meet as a group and share concerns. Most of us remember that information about what was going on in our child’s school was shared from parent to parent in informal social settings, while waiting to pick up children and amongst students during school or with neighborhood friends. In contrast, virtual schools do a great job of DIVIDING AND CONQUERING by successfully keeping parents as far from the administrators as possible. This is the exact opposite to what is expected at a traditional school.
The reader quoted in your entry illustrated the true essence of the public school teacher. We don’t want the money; money doesn’t drive everyone’s lives. We want the money so our students can have a better education and chance for success. I have stated this here before, for public school teachers it isn’t about our success, it is about the succes of our students.
Yes, it’s a given that you should pay a teacher who does a good job a decent salary, but it’s beyond absurd to think that better money equals better teaching. If it was only about money, I wouldn’t have become a teacher to begin with!!!
It takes everybody’s input to make a successful team. A successful team will help create a positive environment for learning. Merit play has no place in the creation of such a school.
Merit pay will not work. I had an experience before merit pay that I think is the tip of the iceberg of what will happen.
On March 20, 2006, I was called to my principal’s office. The assistant superintendent was there. He said there was an accusation of a breech of testing security. At that point I thought he wanted to know what I knew about what some other teacher in the building might have done. He then said the accusation was that on the day before the writing test, I stood before my 4th grade students and taught the test writing prompt to them. Believe me, I was in shock, to say the least. I asked, “You don’t mean earlier in the week?” He slammed his fist on the table and raised his voice, “No. The day before the test!” Again, I asked, “You don’t mean a few days before the test?” Agitated, he said, “No! The day before the test!!” to which I replied, “Sorry. I wasn’t there.” He then continued his interrogation. “What do you mean you weren’t there?” I then proceeded to calmly explain to him that on the day in question, as well as the afternoon before, I was home, sick, in bed. Not only was I not standing in front of my class cheating on the test that day, I wasn’t even in the building, or in the city, or even in the county. I was 35 miles away, at my home. This was easy enough to prove. I had a sub in my class that day. I was docked a sick day that day. He was so sure the accusation was true that he then accused me of leaving the tests for my sub to teach to the class. Again, through further interrogation, this was proven to be false. At the conclusion of my meeting with him, I was assured that when the investigation was over, I would be able to face my accusers. Surprise, surprise! That never happened. (For the record, I didn’t teach the prompt earlier in the week either. I was just trying to make sure of the day in question.)
At the time, I was in my 27th year of teaching with MA + 30, so I was at the high end of the pay scale. I believe that when the accusation surfaced, all he could see was $$$, and getting rid of me would save the district money. My name had already been sent to the state department. That time, 2005-2008, districts were feeling pride if they could find a cheating teacher. Bill Maher gave a monologue about that time where he stated “We live in a gotcha society.” Boy, could I relate to that! When all was said and done, the final report to the state department said that I was “unequivocally not guilty”. Really? Why wasn’t that determined BEFORE my name was sent to the state department?
So where did this accusation come from? A principal in another building. Where did he get his information from? Two teachers, one from his building, one from a third building (who happened to be mother and daughter). Where did they get their information from? A neighbor, who was a special education teacher in my building. As it ends up, this teacher, another 4th grade teacher in my building, the school psychologist, the speech therapist, and a 3rd grade teacher had issues with the consistently high test scores of my students. They were also jealous of my national board certification. I have for the past six years, assessed them as being so far below basic, that they couldn’t even come up with a story that would have been even a little bit hard for me to prove to be false. These particular teachers, I believe, never emotionally left junior high. Interestingly, the reason I was never able to face my accusers was because the superintendent didn’t know who they were. Really? It wasn’t hard for me to find out who they were. Given time, people talk. They could have asked the accusing principal to identify his source and so on.
If I sound a tad bit bitter about this, I suppose I have good reason. I have documented it all, and intend to write a book about it some day. In any case, I expect the same kinds of cover-ups and lies to take place in huge numbers due to merit pay. My single case will truly be just the tip of the iceberg. Not even high test scores will be able to save many. Why were my test scores high? I taught my students to think. Unfortunately, for many teachers, that isn’t even an option anymore.
Now, as a retired teacher, I continue to work for those still in the field. There are so, so many outstanding teachers, and others yet to become great teachers. We must work to give them the opportunities we had, so they can continue to appropriately teach the children of America.
Nancy, I am so sorry for that horrible experience you had to go through. That is truly Kafkaesque and Orwellian to the nth degree. I hope the teacher’s union was of some assistance to you. All the best in your retirement.
“I hope the teacher’s union was of some assistance to you.”
Good luck on that one.
Of course merit pay is just another unfunded mandate. If it were funded it wouldn’t work nearly so well as the zero-sum game that it’s meant to be.
Merit pay, vouchers, and other zero-sum games — “I can’t win unless someone else loses” — are all intended to impose archaic forms of market-&-military dynamics into settings where they simply have no place.
I used to think that this was all due to the fact that market-&-martial minds simply can’t imagine that other people have different motives and values than they do. Yes, their imaginations are definitely limited in certain directions, but I’m beginning to realize that it has more to do with the fact that they actively hate and feel compelled to destroy people who have different motives and values than they do.
I don’t really know much about teacher compensation, but I thought that there were salary increases for additional training and promotion. Should I not think of that as a merit increase?