The Guardian of London has an excellent article that explains why payment by results always fails. The article is based on a study that the article links to.
Two examples of payment by results in the current “education reform” strategy that is promoted by the Obama administration: basing teacher evaluation on test scores and merit pay.
The article calls payment by results in “dangerous idiocy” and explains why:
“Payment by results is a simple idea: people and organisations should only get paid for what they deliver. Who could argue with that? If your job is to get people back to work, then find them a job dammit.
“Plenty of people working in local government and public services are already starting to realise this is nonsense, and a pernicious, damaging nonsense at that. The evidence is very clear: if you pay (or otherwise manage performance) based on a set of pre-defined results, it creates poorer services for those most in need. It is the vulnerable, the marginalised, the disadvantaged who suffer most from payment by results.
“Here’s why: payment by results does not reward organisations for supporting people to achieve what they need; it rewards organisations for producing data about targets; it rewards organisations for the fictions their staff are able to invent about what they have achieved; it pays people for porkies.
“We know that common things happen when people use payment by results, and other outcomes-based performance management systems. There have been numerous studies that show that such systems distort organisational priorities and make organisations focus on doing the wrong things – and they make people lie.
“This lying takes all sorts of different forms. Some of them are subtle forms of deception: teachers who teach to the test or who only enter pupils for exams they know they are going to pass; employment support that helps only those likely to get a job and ignores those most in need; or hospitals that reclassify trolleys as beds, and keep people waiting in ambulances on the hospital doorstep until they know they can be seen within a target time. In the literature, this is known as gaming the system…..
“Sadly, the distortion of practice by payment by results doesn’t just stop with managers. The evidence shows that it also undermines the practice of frontline workers. It turns the relationship between support worker and client upside down. When payment-by-results practices are introduced, workers who used to ask their clients “How can I help you to achieve what you need?” instead think “How can you help me to produce the data I need?”
The article was written by Toby Lowe, a visiting fellow at Newcastle University business school and chief executive of Helix Arts, a charity that transforms lives through art. He is collecting stories from people who have been forced to lie by payment for results. you can reach him at Twitter: @tobyjlowe
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on History Chick in AZ and commented:
This is a great article from The Guardian explaining why payment for results in education is a bad idea and should be rejected. Thanks for posting this Diane!
“It is the vulnerable, the marginalised, the disadvantaged who suffer most from payment by results.”
Yes, and that’s a feature, not a bug. The vulnerable, marginalized and disadvantaged are just the parasitic “47% who don’t pay taxes” or otherwise contribute to society. Throw them away, they’re disposable. The only people who count are the elites and, to a lesser extent, those who can serve them.
Here’s an example of the “dangerous idiocy” institutionalized, still!…
http://preview.tinyurl.com/kyk24rz
If the financial sector was paid by results (GDP growth), hedge fund owners would be in debtors prison.
To add to your thoughts Dienne: And then we are shocked at the cost of crimes perpetrated by the street gangs, their disregard of others, and the fact they have no regard for anyone not in their gang. They are just reflecting in an inverse fashion the values we demonstrated for them. They are just more forthright in their activities. Some of the disposables refuse to go away or serve.
+1
Well said, Old Teacher.
It seems to me that a peer evaluation system, perhaps even making salary recommendations as is commonly used at universities, would be a reasonable middle ground between paying folks for formulaic results and paying folks irrespective of any results.
Please read from The Washington Post, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2011 or listen to Daniel Pink on TED talks, The Motivation Puzzle.
Oops, the article in WP is also by Daniel Pink, titled, “As teacher merit pay spreads, one noted voice cries, ‘it doesn’t work.’
Another by DP, also in WP, the date I originally said, On Leadership, Daniel Pink on motivation. (They don’t capitalize titles, sorry.)
TE that surely wouldn’t result in any form of collusion – between either the evaluators and management or between peers. Those at universities have TENURE so they CAN do things like that without pressure. What if a principal comes to you and goes “I know you’re evaluating such and such” and then makes demands that don’t outright command, but subtly pushes you to know that you need to mark this person down – and that is probably connected to the school’s budget.
Part of the problem with salary scales like that is it leads to those types of cronyism and pressure points without removing the ability to remove outside influences on an evaluator (and then you still have to worry a bit about quid pro quo – which in schools especially with VERY few teachers is an issue).
M,
How do you think faculty get tenure to begin with?
Tenure stream faculty receive tenure after six years with a positive recommendation from the tenured faculty in the department, a positive recommendation from a committee of tenured faculty in the school, a positive recommendation from a committee of faculty at the university level, and finally the provost. Any subsequent promotion goes through the same process, and salary increases independent of promotions typically follow recommendations made by a committee of the department’s faculty.
Note: It’s the Manchester Guardian.
Really good article. I shared it directly from the Guardian on FB.
Excellent article. And this same results is seen throughout business.
I’ve written about how survey based “satisfaction” metrics drive dysfunctional front-line staff actions in the retail world. http://dsgarnett.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/at-walgreens-an-amazing-abuse-of-the-customer-satisfaction-survey/
Most interesting to me were the comments I have received on that blog post I wrote – comments from people inside the system.
It’s funny that so many people across disciplines recognize the idiocy, and yet the practices continue. Please keep adding your insights from the business world.
Think of the situation this way:
If one puts a burning match near a thermostat, the temperature indicator will rise, giving a naïve and distant observer the idea that the room is warm and cozy. Reformers’ tests are the education thermostat, and naïve consumers of “education” believe that if test scores go up, it must mean kids’ minds are developing.
Thanks, this is very timely for me. Florida’s merit pay system goes into effect this coming school year.
I don’t have all the facts yet from my district but it was explained to us at the union leaders meetings that it boils down to this: you accept the new system which ties your pay to the test results of your students — if they produce at some unexplained level on a currently nonexistent test you get some kine of a not-yet-determined or funded bonus and if your students don’t perform well on the test you take a pay cut and receive a bad rating for that year. Two such ratings and pay cuts and you lose your teaching license forever and you are not eligible to work as a public school teacher in Florida ever again.
The alternative is that you can grandfather yourself into your current salary which will remain your salary until you retire and you will never be eligible for an extra penny in COLA, raises, bonuses, etc. and you are still subject tot the 2 VAM strikes and you are out career termination by tests.
That’s what ALEC calls giving us a ‘choice’ although I think of it more as coercion.
Sounds like the same “choice” the mugger gives you when he tells you to hand over your wallet or he’ll shoot you.
🙂
I certainly feel mugged by ALEC and the Florida Legislature, LOL, not to mention Jeb Bush whose evil underlies all of this mess.
I’m really curious to see what happens when pretty much every Title I teacher in the state is fired and loses their license in the coming year or two. There aren’t enough TFA or Education graduates to even begin to fill the void and the pay is so lousy for beginning teachers most would be crazy or desperate to even consider taking a teaching job here in Florida.
My best guess is that the need for certification will be eliminated like it has been in charter schools. Anyone who impresses the CEO of their local charter grifters will be eligible to teach using the online, teacher-proof curricula.
Chris,
I am so glad that I am in the backward, hillbilly Show Me State as we are some of the last to implement these educational malpractices and sometimes end up skating by these inanities/insanities. Although we’ve, in the last ten years, been trying to “get ahead of the game”, fortunately we’re so far behind that we end up in front in letting others implement such crap and we realize that it is just that-shit.
I’d probably shoot someone if I was subject to the crap you describe.
Duane
Chris,
In NJ, teachers can lose their certification after two years of partially effective. I don’t know if this is true, but I was under the impression that when a teacher’s certification is revoked in one state, he/she is not allowed to teach anywhere in the US. Does anybody know the legalities? Thanks in advance!
I’m not sure if they even considered the fact that teachers move state to state and how losing licensure in one state impacts applying for a license in another state. As an NBCT I was eligible to obtain certification in most states simply with the National Board Certification but that may have changed. I haven’t checked in a long time.
My certificate is up for renewal in 2015 so I will most likely take early retirement at the end of the 2016 school year. I am exploring Montessori certification so that I can continue doing what I love most: teaching primary students to read, write, add, subtract, and explore the world with wonder and excitement.
That should say “2017” not “2015”.
I strongly urge readers of this blog to get a copy of THE ESSENTIAL DEMING: LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES FROM THE FATHER OF QUALITY W. EDWARDS DEMING (2013, Joyce Orsini, ed.).
Decades and decades ago he eviscerated what he variously called “Management By Objectives” or “Management By The Numbers” or “Management By Results.”
From an article entitled “Present Practices and Better Practices” he explains under the subsection “Numerical goals” why this approach doesn’t work:
[start quote]
A numerical goal is a number drawn out of the sky. A numerical goal outside the control limit cannot be accomplished without changing the system. A numerical goal accomplishes nothing. What counts is by what method. Three words. If you can accomplish a goal without a method, then why weren’t you doing it last year? There’s only one possible answer: you were goofing off. May be numerical goal be achieved? Yes. We can make almost anything happen. But what about the cost? What about the loss? Anybody can achieve almost anything by distortion and faking, redefinition of terms, running up costs.
[end quote]
That last sentence is a succinct recap of the current approach to numbers and stats used by the leading charterites/privatizers and their enablers and enforcers.
Someone else understood this too. This was brought to my attention on this blog: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” [Charles Goodhart]
In education, from the Land of VAM, re “paying teachers ‘by performance rather than exclusively by training and experience” we have a frighteningly powerful example of a failed zombie idea still in favor among the self-styled 21st century cage busting achievement gap crushing “education reformers.” It was a merit pay system that “involved extra pay for better test scores” in England from 1862 to the mid-1890s:
[start quote]
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]
(Jim Horn and Denise Wilburn, THE MISMEASURE OF EDUCATION, 2013, p. 60)
And just how do we sum up the consequences of the above assertions re education?
“The more any quantitative social indicator(or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
This is also known as Campbell’s Law. *Pretty powerful stuff that goes far beyond education. Think of the Potemkin Villages of the now-vanished Soviet Union or the recent VA scandal or VAM.*
See also this blog—
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2012/05/25/what-is-campbells-law/
😎
I will have to get the Deming. Especially since Deming is casually thought to be one of the father’s of applying measurement in business. Sounds like, as is typical, the early leader had tremendous wisdom that gets lost as the less sophisticated popularize methods that are loosely connected to the original ideas.
Thanks for the reference…
Doug Garnett: you will not be disappointed…
And Deming does bring up education. For example, the very end of the piece I reference above, pp. 56-57:
[start quote]
The worst example of numerical goals came out of our own Department of Education. We did it. On the 18th of April, 1991: Numerical goals. No method. No method suggested. Just numerical goals drawn out of the sky. Such nonsense in high places. Think of the harm done by those numerical goals put out by our Department of Education. Unwitting, innocent people read them and do not understand what is wrong. The harm done cannot be measured. The high school graduation rate will increase to 90 percent. Why stop at 90? If you don’t have to have a method, why not 95? 98?
Every school free of drugs. We should hope so, but where’s the method?
And we decided that American schools were expect to produce extraordinary gains in student learning. Performance standards. Could anything be worse? Individual schools that make notable progress deserve to be rewarded. Do they? What would happen?
[end quote]
From the same book, a piece entitled “What Ought a School of Business Teach?” he includes this comment:
[start quote]
[p. 199] Let’s talk about education for a minute. There is a deep concern in the United States today about education. No notable improvement will come until our schools abolish grades (A, B, C, D) in schools from toddlers, on up through the university. Grades are often a forced ranking. Only 20 percent permitted to get As. Thirty percent may get Bs, 30 percent may get Cs, 20 percent may get Ds. Forced ranking. You mean there’s a shortage of good pupils? Well, I don’t think so. Why should there be a shortage? I don’t believe there is a shortage. Only 20 percent? That’s nonsense. Maybe there aren’t any; maybe everybody should get As. Forced ranking is wrong, I believe.
Abolish merit ratings for teachers. Who knows what a great teacher is? Not till years have gone by. Abolish comparison of schools on the basis of scores. The aim is to get a high score, not to learn, but to cram your head full of information. Abolish gold stars for athletics. Indeed, we’re worse off than we thought we were. […]
[p. 200] Our schools must preserve and nurture the yearning for learning that everyone is born with.
Joy in learning comes not so much from what is learned, but from learning. It’s fun to learn, if you learn knowledge. Not fun to learn information. The joy in the job comes not so much from the result, not from the product, but from contributing to optimization of the system in which everybody wins.
A grade is only somebody’s assessment of of a pupil’s achievement on some arbitrary scale. Does the scale make any sense? Will high achievement on this scale predict future performance of the pupil in business, government, education, or as a teacher? Some other scale might be a better predictor. Some other pupil, low on the prescribed scale today, might perform better than the one that made a high grade on it today.
A grade given to a student is nevertheless used as prediction that he will in the future do well, or do badly. A grade is a permanent label. It open doors, it closes doors. How may a teacher know how someone will do in the future? If a student seems to lag behind other members of the class, it may be the fault of the teaching. Or maybe the pupil is acquiring knowledge and not information. Does not show up so well compared with the others. Grading in school is an attempt to achieve quality by inspection. Very interesting. Quality by inspection is not the way to get quality.
[end quote]
(brackets mine)
Regardless of whether you find yourself in agreement or disagreement with particulars of the approach of W. Edwards Deming, I think you will find him a good read, thought-provoking in the best sense.
😎
Thanks, KTA. Definitely sounds like a must-read.
I’m glad to see this article, however, I’m dismayed that the American press hasn’t figured this out. The media in the U.S. seems to believe hook, line and sinker what the “reformers” tell them, and never look at the details. A lot of the arguments made in the Guardian article are pretty common sense. Why can’t our media see it, too?