Gary Rubinstein came across an article in which Tennessee State Commissioner Kevin Huffman boasted about the merit pay scheme he was proposing and derided the leader of the Memphis teachers’ union for expressing caution about the program. Gary decided to take a closer look at the merit pay program and concluded that the union leader’s concern was well placed. Teachers would receive $2,000 to sign up and would receive another $5,000 only if they got the required gains.
I am constantly amazed that policymakers pay no attention at all to the evidence on merit pay. It has failed again and again. The most spectacular failure was in Nashville, where teachers were offered a bonus of $15,000 to produce higher test scores. There was a control group and an experimental group. After three years, there was no significant difference in the test scores of the two groups. Merit pay also failed in New York City and in Chicago.
Merit pay is faith-based policy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Love your last sentence: Merit pay is faith-based policy. It is indeed.
Hey we vote and as far as I concerned: Voting these days is also faith-based policy. Look at the looney tune politicians out there. It’s about $$$$$ and total control…let no one forget this
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Many of the people who favor merit pay also favor intelligent design and other forms of faith based science.
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No such thing as “faith based science”.
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The only merit pay I saw in the private sector had less to do with performance and more to do with who was related to whom. I lost count of the incompetent croonies and boss’s nephews I had to bailout while they collected the bonuses.
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Yes, it is faith-based, free market fundamentalism come to the classroom, and a very harsh, arrogant and unscrupulous sect it is.
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Merit Pay..anyone remember one of the tries in Florida in the 1980’s? I remember well. I scheduled myself for the “observation”. Prepared myself for it and the lesson was rolling along quite well. Of course, as happens in a REAL classroom, one of my students with special needs decided to get his jacket zipper stuck. In the REAL world, one keeps teaching if can and undo zipper at same time. As it turns out, stopping to help a child with a zipper stuck is reason to stop the observation. Yup, the observer left as did my chance at merit pay that year. That “merit pay” for Florida I think lasted for those teachers who received for about 2 years.. and then the money well ran dry.Oh, that was the year, I also had a student who thought that the classroom goldfish could make it home in her pocket. It was a great year and both those children made great growth…but… The next time Merit pay came through…well, let’s just say the District I was in used Dibel’s results. Hmmmm…who got merit pay then? Again, the well ran dry on $$. AND through all of this, there was no data that showed that students did better. Just sharing on merit pay.
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Same with Fairfax County in Virginia in the late 1980s.
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It is all illusory. The super teachers they want will refuse to move because they are smart enough to know that their odds of being highly rated at a low scoring school are as good as the proverbial snowball in perdition. There is a reason these schools do not already have some of these super teachers….and it isn’t due to the teaching capability of the staff there. I live near Las Vegas, I wonder if I can get 5-1 on the strawman in this debate, he’s a lot more rational and factual.
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Derided is nice, Huffman did a nice personal attack to promote his merit pay scheme. He has also said not all TN teachers should get a raise, he wants to give state funds designated for raises to districts and “encourage” them to develop a “differentiated pay scale”.
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A merit pay based system led to this teacher suing her students and their families
http://studentslast.blogspot.com/2013/02/giving-new-meaning-to-class-action.html
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I don’t understand what that means. . faith-based policy. Merit pay.
? I would love for someone to explain it to me.
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I have researched the descriptor “faith-based” and realize it goes back a couple years. I think it is not an apt term for what is going on. I am a woman of faith (or I try to be) and my faith leads me to the conclusion that public schools are necessary and good. I find it offensive that the destructive ideas and policies of Arne Duncan and Jeb Bush be explained by faith. I have faith and I believe in evolution. I don’t like hearing the policies these reformer types profess explained away simply by calling it faith-based. That is too simplistic, too sweeping, too assuming and just a misuse of the word. I get the “blind faith” part because nothing they profess is based in science, but to explain away their actions as faith with any religious connotation is just not a fair use of the term. My faith is what leads me to believe we need public school. My support of public school is faith-based. I take issue with the use of that descriptor for VAM and merit-based pay for teachers.
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My district also tried merit pay back in the late 70s/80s. I work with some veteran teachers who were around for that, and they say it was just a joke. With some principals it was their buddies who got all the merit pay; in other buldings, everyone got merit pay because the principal didn’t believe that any one teacher was less deserving than another. The whole thing turned into a big debacle, pitting teachers against each other – with no increase in any measures of achievement – and they eventually abolished merit pay after a couple of years. Here’s hoping my district retains some of its institututional memory as we get more idiots in the WA State legislature who are following the ALEC play book to the letter.
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