Watch this great video.
It explains in graphic language why merit pay always fails.
If you won’t documentation, read Daniel Pink’s book, “Drive.”
Where cognitive tasks are required, the larger the reward, the poorer the performance.
What works to motivate people?
Autonomy.
Mastery.
Purpose.
Not profit.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Schools and teachers work on the concept of cooperation not competition. Schools succeed when teachers work together to meet students’ needs. Reformers don’t understand this.
Deming told our leaders the same things years ago, but they chose to ignore him. Too bad, his teachings on quality and management are universal and timeless.
https://www.deming.org/theman/theories
Ed Lettis: thank you for your comments. I am in the middle of a collection of the writings and speeches of W. Edward Deming (THE ESSENTIAL DEMING, 2013).
Consider the following from p. 173:
[start quote]
Annual individual performance ratings, as I’ve said time and again, represent a major obstacle. In most rating systems, somebody has to get a low rating. No account is taken of the fact that most of the differences between people come from the system itself. Getting a low rating can make you feel despondent, especially if you had a good rating the year before. If people understood that it’s all just a lottery, they would merely feel unlucky.
The idea of a merit rating is alluring. The sound of the word captivates the imagination: pay for what you get; get what you pay for; motivate people to do their best, for their own good. The effect is exactly the opposite of what the words promise. Everyone propels himself forward, and tries to, for his own good, on his own life preservers. In the end, the organization is the loser.
[end quote]
This from a very practical-minded, hard-nosed realist who used stats and numbers to pinpoint both individual and systemic responsibility for quality. Hence his informal moniker as the “father of quality.”
😎
I was a quality assurance analyst with a Fortune 100 company for about fifteen years and got to know Deming’s teachings fairly well. Unfortunately, that job went away due to a plant closing caused in part by some poor management decisions and practices. So, I went back to school to become a teacher, did all the work – no short cuts, and I’ve been in Elementary AIS Reading/ELA for about fifteen years now. Some days it seems like “same circus, different tent” because people are people where ever you go. As far as extrinsic rewards, I don’t offer them and my kids don’t ask for them. We work hard, learn about interesting things, and make our own fun as we go along. Good luck with your Deming study, he forgot more than we’ll ever know. 😉
This goes beyond merit pay…. because our reward system for students is based on the same premise. Why we aren’t organizing our schools so that students’ are self-directed, working toward mastery, and engaged in learning for a purpose? Standardized testing is one response… but our traditional views on “compensation” are another reason…
Great video–send it to Andrew Cuomo!!!
Of course, Mr. Pink is referring to private sector workers. Public sector workers are apparently a different, lower form of beast. Hence the endless experimentation with merit pay despite many decades of research.
Miron Boland: the evidence goes back to the nineteenth century.
From Jim Horn and Denise Wilburn, THE MISMEASURE OF EDUCATION (2013, p. 60):
(start quote)
One of the longest merit pay systems involved extra pay for better test scores in England … and it lasted from 1862 to the mid-1890s:
(a passage from a scholarly article follows)
As historical accounts show, English teachers and administrators became obsessed with the system’s financial rewards and punishments. It was dubbed the “cult of the [cash] register.” Schools curricula were narrowed to include just the easily measured basics. Drawing, science, singing, and even school gardening simply disappeared. Teaching became increasingly mechanical, as teachers found that drill and rote repetition produced the “best” results. One schools inspector wrote an account of children reading flawlessly for him while holding their books upside down.
(end quote)
(parentheses mine)
When it comes to the charterites/privatizers, what’s old and been proven to be a failure, somehow becomes “new” and this time it will work!
Or not: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” [Albert Einstein]
😎
Pink goes into great detail as to how INTRINSIC motivation works most for the kinds of creative and critical thinking we want from students and teachers and how extrinsic motivation , perhaps, works for only the most menial of jobs…so when Gov Cuomo and others offer “merit” pay or extrinsic motivation…what are they saying about what they think of the teaching profession?
[…] My grandfather, a businessman, never understood why two of his daughters, both musicians, married college professors. They’d never make any money, he said, and that would surely lead to unhappiness. A bit more than a decade ago, I began to make the transition from businessman to college professor. Though I loved my store and cafe, I am much happier now. Part of the reason for that, I am sure, is explained by this Daniel Pink RSA talk (h/t Diane Ravitch): […]
Amazing video, well worth watching.
Glad to see this! I posted the same video on this blog under “About” a couple of months ago. I have been able to use Pink’s book several times to illustrate how the current practices in NC and nationally are not a good business model. Here was my post-
October 4, 2013
Diane,
I like to fight fire with fire. Since the country is all about moving our public schools to a privatized business model, I suggest we use good business practices. This enjoyable and informative 10 minute whiteboard overview of the book “Drive” by business author Daniel Pink is a great look in the right direction.
http://www.danpink.com/2010/06/whiteboard-magic
According to his book we would not be using standardization, testing, merit pay, external rewards, narrow curriculum or any of the education “reform” practices to create a generation of innovative and productive workers. Since maintaining our economic superiority is the supposed reason our schools need reform, I find using their own research as a good tool for communicating with people who think all people against privatization must be socialist. I just want good business practices to improve our schools 🙂 I hope your readers will enjoy this video. It is worth the 10 minutes.
This is what Chris Christi doesn’t get… he doesn’t understand this about any line of work… in his mind, all jobs are about “merit.” I love how this video distinguishes between when “merit pay” does and doesn’t work… for the physical versus mental tasks. Personally, I believe that the reason it doesn’t work for more creative objectives has to do with frontal lobe activation in the brain. There are studies that show how stress effects the brain, and more stress makes it much more difficult to activate the frontal lobe which is where good decision making occurs. When there’s more at stake (oh wow, if I don’t get this, I won’t get that months worth of salary that could help me pay bills…), stress goes up, thinking goes down. I don’t know if there’s an actual study that relates the two (Pink’s work, and studies of frontal lobe activation), but that would be interesting to research.
It should be noted that even in the corporate sector the idea of bonuses is falling out of favor. Recent articles in the McKinsey quarterly, along with a number of other business journals (Harvard Business, etc.) are recommending that the private sector look at the attributes named by Pink and incorporate those qualities into their organizational structures. But leave it to education and our leadership at the top to one step behind what the private sector has already discarded. To date, the list is growing long of private sector policies/practices that administrators at the top have gotten wrong or have been discarded –TQM is amongst the largest misinterpretations and misapplications in organizational history–as its late founder, W. E. Deming, would have noted.
Great video.. my must share today
I’ve been pushing this video for some time–along with all the merit pay research. My district is just ignoring the facts and forging ahead.
http://oneteachersperspective.blogspot.com/2013/11/meritless-pursuit-of-pay-for-performance.html
Teachers in Lee, MA defiant in the face of merit pay are inspiring the rest of us battling for the soul of our profession.
https://dianeravitch.net/2014/01/10/teachers-in-lee-ma-return-merit-pay/
Criminals think that other people are motivated by CRIME, just as they are. WRONG….people are motivated by more than BIG MONEY and power. Don’t look at the politicians for leadership and moral compass; they have none. Pink is right.
This has been one of my favorite youtube videos for a while now. i would love to see RSA Animate do a video for one of Diane’s speeches. Maybe we could all make that request. Diane, is there a particular speech you’d want the RSA treatment on if you had a choice?
On another note, this vid of Daniel Pink being interviewed by Oprah is also of interest. It’s long (there are 2 parts, each a half hour in length), but if he’s correct in his assertions, then we are really doing students a disservice when we eradicate arts and music programs. There’s also a part near the beginning of part 2 where he describes the importance of story and narrative in business (apparently David Coleman is a step behind the times). Here’s part 1 for anyone who’s interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpq5fC9vHqE
There’s also a part where Pink says that everything big that happens starts in a conversation. That small conversations about a topic add up and become a capital C conversation out of which big things arise. I see this blog as a major part of the Conversation on education and that when sanity prevails again in public education, it will be in no small part due to the conversations we’ve had here.
Dr. Pruden ( a superintendent near my area) gave a good example of why merit pay is nonsense. He said if he dangled money in front of a teacher so she or he would work harder the teacher would think he was crazy. What teacher is only working part-way to be successful will all of a sudden work harder and better because of a a little extra money? The whole concept is demeaning. We have several school boards now rejecting NC’s newly implemented merit pay program. (teachers have to give up tenure to get it)
http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2014/01/07/pitt-county-becomes-sixth-local-school-board-to-join-school-voucher-lawsuit-passes-resolution-against-teacher-contracts/#comments
There is another way to view differential pay: it can be used to keep valued teachers from leaving the profession, from having to choose between the job they live and the chance to better support their families,
And how do you determine the “valued” teachers?
Difficult to replace would be one way to think about it.
But they don’t want to keep teachers around. They want to keep the salaries low and pensions low or out of reach (in FL, you have to work 8 years to qualify, and we know half are out the door within 5).
Eliminate merit pay altogether. It is insulting and creates animosity. But that’s what they want too: bad workplaces means more teachers will quit.
Nothing will turn around until America starts to respect teachers again. Sadly, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
I really have no idea who “they” are.
I am curious if you think it might be a duping of respect if teachers are compensated as individuals, not merely as a step in lane.
@teachingeconomist
Dr. Deming would disagree with you.
No doubt many would disagree. The university that I teach in could not exist if faculty pay was only a function of longevity.
I agree with this. As a school teacher there were times I was resentful of getting paid the same for longevity when others did a lot less work. I am fine with people getting paid more for more work. But anyone doing the job should get paid a living wage. At the university I have been on the right and wrong end of salary compression where the new people get increases but those with longevity do not get raises at a rate to keep them ahead of the new faculty.
At my previous position the compression got so bad they hired my own doctoral student for the same salary I was making after my 15th year. I was fortunate that my bosses knew I was getting very underpaid ( not just because of longevity- I helps to rewrite thuge portions of the teacher ed program!) and they put in a request for a salary adjustment. I had always been told that I needed a counter offer to get a raise outside of a rank promotion but was pleased to find out that was not always true. If they want to keep you badly enough the administration will find a way.
A few years later a new dean did not know all the work I did and when the economy was bad told me I would not be able to find another job. As I was walking out the door with several offers he wanted to counter but I just smiled and wished them luck.
But the pay is not a living wage for a family for new or old teachers and their have been no raises in years.Aall the merit pay talk is silly since it is only an incentive to stay if your pay is good with the merit pay.
Merit pay fails? Why not ask the principals of the 82 public schools in Chicago who earned $5,000 to $20,000 bonuses for improving test scores and graduation rates.
http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/2012/10/29/20563/record-principal-bonus-disparities
From the linked article: “Principals at schools with the most low-income students, and those at the most segregated high schools, were less likely to earn bonuses. Principals at schools with more white students were more likely to earn bonuses.”
Why doesn’t CPS use that bonus money to reduce class sizes, hire arts teachers, add librarians and make sure that CPS schools have good schools, not just cash prizes for scores?