Peter Greene, in his incisive and typically humorous style, explains here why performance incentives don’t work in the public sector.
He offers as one example the case of fire fighters. Imagine if they were paid based on how many fires they extinguished, and how much money was saved as a result of their doing so.
We have always paid public servants a flat fee, untethered to any sort of “performance measures.” That’s because we want public service to be completely disconnected from any private interests. (And if you just thought, “Damn, this is a long post,” you can get the basic point here and decide if you want to travel down the whole web of alleys with me.)
Fighting Fire with Money
Imagine if, for instance, we paid fire fighters on sliding scale, based on how many of which type fires they put out at a certain speed. This would be disastrous for many reasons.
Fire fighters would refuse to work in cities where there were few fires to fight, because they couldn’t make a living. In cities where there were commonly multiple fires, fire fighters would look at each fire call through a lens of “What’s in it for me?”
For instance, in a system where fire fighters were paid based on the value of the flame-besieged property, fire fighters might view some small building fires as Not Worth the Trouble. Why bother traveling to the other side of the tracks? It’s only a hundred-dollar blaze, anyway. Let’s wait till something breaks out up in the million-dollar neighborhood.
In the worst-case scenario, one of our fire fighters depending on performance-based pay to feed his family may be tempted to grab some matches and go fire up some business.
He writes, later in the post:
It makes business-oriented reformy types crazy that the way I do my job doesn’t make any difference to my pay. I understand the terror for them there, but that Not Making A Difference is actually the point of how we pay public servants.
It doesn’t matter it’s a big fire or a small fire, a rich person’s house or a poor person’s house– the fire department still does their job. It doesn’t matter whether I have a classroom full of bright students or slow students, rich students or poor students, ambitious students or lazy students– I will still show up and do my job the best I know how. I should never, ever, ever have to look at a class roster or a set of test results or a practice quiz and think, “Dammit, these kids are going to keep me from making my house payment next month.”
Why I Won’t Suck
Reformsters are sure that human beings must be motivated by threats and rewards, and that the lack of threats and rewards means that I can too easily choose to do a crappy job, because it won’t make any difference. They are wrong. Here’s why.
1) I knew the gig when I started. I knew I would not get rich, not be powerful, not have a chance to rise to some position of prominence. There was no reason to enter teaching in the first except a desire to do right by the students.
2) Teaching is too hard to do half-assed. Do a consistently lousy job, and the students will eat you alive and dragging yourself out of bed every day will be too damn much. There isn’t enough money to keep people flailing badly in a classroom for a lifetime. Just ask all the TFA dropouts who said, “Damn! This is hella hard!” and left the classroom.
And Most Importantly
Threats and rewards do not make people better public servants (nor have I ever seen a lick of research that suggests otherwise, but feel free to review this oft-linked video re: motivation). Threats and rewards interfere with people’s ability to get their job done. Threats and rewards motivate people to game the system.
And any time you have a complex system being measured with simple instruments, you have a system that is ripe for gaming. In fact, if your measures are bad enough (looking at you, high stakes tests and VAM), your system can only be successfully operated by gaming it.
Greene explains his case so clearly that even a child can understand why performance pay creates perverse incentives. (As Krazy TA, a regular reader is sure to say, quoting Groucho Marx, “please send for a child.”)
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Actually, as a businessman, I’ve found that performance incentives only rarely work in the private sector – but executives (highly driven by performance incentives) seem to believe that it’s the way to motivate everyone.
Except most people want to do a good job and most people want complete success – not the narrow success defined by incentives. What does work is to have a bonus system – but not one tied desperately to metrics. People do the best work when they can trust they’ll be rewarded for doing the things that affect complete success.
Incentives are useful in managing salesmen and executives because a huge chunk of their self-worth is tied up in the amount of money they earn. They also backfire with salesmen and executives because far too often the incentive narrows their range of action so that they choose not to do very important things that would create long term health.
There’s been some very solid work about this recently pointing out that tying exec compensation only to investor stock market gains (a practice which started as far back as the 1970s) has really messed up business.
And this is what mystifies me about these “reformers” who claim they are applying good business practice in education.
This isn’t good across-the-board business practice. So why curse education with it? Are the theoriests just hoping there’s somewhere it’ll work? Or have too many people suffered badly from incentives in business and figure that everybody should suffer just as much?
“They also backfire with salesmen and executives because far too often the incentive narrows their range of action so that they choose not to do very important things that would create long term health.”
Yes, I used to work with a lawyer who worked for a client that did complicated financing for government contracting work. The salesmen he worked with got paid for every deal they closed, but my lawyer’s job was to make sure the deal was solid. He used to tear his hair out because the salesmen would rush to closing without half the documentation and legal provisions needed to ensure a safe transaction. Then when the deal would go south, the client would turn around and blame the lawyer, meanwhile going right ahead and continuing to pay their salesmen to close deals quickly.
Thanks for that post, Doug. You are so right. I worked in business for five years before becoming a teacher. I took a sizable pay cut. While I need enough money to fend off the creditors and lead an acceptable lifestyle, I’m not motivated exclusively by it.
My motivation is far more intrinsic and relates to the pride I take in doing my job well and caring about my students and people in general. While I like hearing that I’ve helped a student write better, there is no higher compliment than hearing that I’ve influenced a student in a positive way. And most of the time, it’s simply because I cared about them at a time when they needed someone to do that.
As I noted in a post below, like any job, teaching requires an assortment of skills. If my job was just about reading scores then would it would narrow my range of actions. To reading scores and that’s it.
I really liked what you wrote.
Performance pay also doesn’t always work in the private sector. For instance, AT&T and Comcast must pay bonuses for employees who sell more products, because there have been hundreds of complains of this happening.
All one has to do is start reading the complaints on Consumer Affairs. Earning a commission/bonus on sales causes some employees to cheat customers.
Here’s one comment in one forum on this issue: “Corporate sets the goals. You are required to sell 105 opps, 47 new lines, 11 wired, 9 tablets, 2 digital life, $70 in apo and 90% in wtr. And now if any customer comes in and wants to lower their plan and you happen to be the lucky one to help them, then they take pay away from your commission. No joke! Also, if a customer likes you but hates AT&T and actually says that on the survey, you will loose pay.”
This piece highlights the folly of performance pay in the private sector as well: http://www.voxeu.org/article/why-performance-related-pay-should-get-sack
I am gratified that the owner of this blog has given a tip of the hat to bedrock Marxist principles. Most especially when it comes to the difference between narrowly defined extrinsic motivation that most often works short-term and sporadically, and broadly defined intrinsic motivation that can lead to long-term sustainable results:
“A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.” [Groucho, the famous Marx]
😜
But don’t expect the self-styled “education reformers” to understand, and then follow, their own most sacred philosophical tenets. If we turn to the opening page of their Broad Academy guidebook* [*coloring book, five pages, large pictures & fonts] to the Potemkin Village Plan for $tudent $ucce$$, we would find the following explanation for why they can’t seem to grasp Peter Greene’s observations:
“Why a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make head nor tail out of it.” [again, the famous Marx—see above]
😏
And the whole shebang works both ways. When the self-proclaimed leaders of the “new civil right movement of our time” both incentivize narrowly defined worst behaviors and practices and disincentivize broadly defined best behaviors and practices, how can anyone—except for educrats like Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee—be shocked, amazed and astonished that there is widespread cheating on high-stakes standardized tests?
😱
No excuses for their ignorance. Zero. Nada. Nil. W. Edwards Deming wasn’t the only person to nail this. Here’s a famous quote from Charles Goodhart [an economist no less!]:
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
Dohhhhhhh… [a la Homer Simpson]
And I have a 98% “satisfactory” [thank you, Bill Gates!] chance of being right on this one.
😎
This post is spot on IMO with the HEART of the problem–the difference when you are talking about public goods vs. private goods. Michael Sandel’s book– What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets–deals with the topic of where market forces don’t belong and his arguments are powerful and eloquently. As a professor for one of the largest courses at Harvard, Sandel has a great following and platform. I hope he extends his thinking in this book to write an essay/op-ed on the impact of his ideas in education.
http://www.justiceharvard.org/about/about-what-money-cant-buy/
Here is something I wrote last year to leaders in FL: The Golden Rule of VAM
The Golden Rule of Accountabilty:
VAM unto others as you would have others VAM unto you
To: School, District and State Educational Administrators
From: Your Passionate, Professional and Committed Teachers
Re: VAM (Value Added Models, or Very Arbitrary Measures)
Dear Administrators and Pedagogical Theoreticians:
Since you believe teachers should be held accountable for results and have a proportion of their paycheck tied to test results, then you must also believe that you too should have part of your paycheck determined by test results. If you disagree with this then tell us why; give us a rationale for your hypocrisy.
Teachers complain that VAM statistics ignore some basic variables (ex. socioeconomic levels) and that they will be blamed for poor performance (aka: low test scores) for factors that are beyond the control and scope of their classrooms and influence. They will even point out all the variables that lie within the affective domain (desire, perseverance, work-ethic, love to learn, will to self-actualize [self-efficacy]) are primarily developed within the domain of the family (after all, family support-input is the primary predictor of success in school and post-secondary pursuits). Yet, under VAM teachers will get the blame for low performance, even though the equations are supposed to consider primary factors (but ignore socioeconomics and family). So even when we do our best some kids will not learn in spite of our efforts, though our paychecks will suffer.
So, then you too dear administrators must get blamed for events beyond your control, because if “it takes a village to raise a child”, then all in the village should suffer the negative reinforcement (lower paycheck) when the child fails.
We, teachers, may decide to blame you for your possibly deficient leadership or ineffective mentoring, or buying junky curriculum, or…? If, in the metaphor of the learning-village, part of our effectiveness as teachers is tied to your effectiveness as leaders and guides, then you too should be held accountable!
Are VAM (Value-Added Model, or Very Arbitrary Measure) truly unbiased and take into account as many covariates, or confounding variables (and factor these out), so that the “signal to noise ratio” is significant. One analysis by the American Statistical Association showed that only 1-14% of VAM data variability was affected by teacher input, the other 86% to non-teacher factors. So, the signal-to-noise ratio of most districts’ VAMs are 86% noise, and at best 14% signal (effects “created” by teacher input).
Yet, if this is true, then should not next year’s merit pay schedule only show, at most, a 14% salary gain for high VAM values? Why should salaries change more than 14% if teacher influence on test scores is less than or equal to that value?
By the way, I have asked UTD and MDCPS (my principal) when and where the 2 salary schedules (PSC, CC or Merit Pay?) for next year, when all of SB 736 is to be implemented, yet nobody knows where to find them. Is MDCPS working hard and fast to get these published, so that teachers can see their choices for next year? I though by August 2014 the full Merit Pay choice is supposed to be implemented, but I hear nothing from the district about this.
If VAMs don’t consider socio-economic levels, or past or current family life, then they are biased and will ignore the work of those who teach lower-level students, or may be handicapped against those who teach upper-level students. For example, is the value of helping out a low income, inner-city, child go from a 1 to a 2 in the FCAT, the same as that teaching in a rich suburb and having a score go from a 3 to a 4? Intuition would say no; that it might take more work (and therefore more value?) to help out the student who grew up in a less-fortunate environments.
Will VAM statistics factor this into account? If so, how, and if not then they are seriously flawed. Should VAMs be handicapped, so that gains made in the lower 1/3 of the student population are weighted more than the upper 1/3, because it takes more teacher-effort to raise the lower 1/3? If little or no gains are made by the upper 1/3 is it because they have poor teachers, or that it is more difficult to create gains with groups already in the 80-90 percentiles? I don’t believe VAM equations look at these variables, but then the real mystery is that most of the equations districts use are hidden and cryptic, only found in research journals that analyze and comment upon them, but not out in the open for all teachers to see.
Several times I’ve asked the UTD and my own principal to show me where at the MDCPS website is our VAM posted, but have never received an accurate answer. One would expect that at the Teacher Portal there would be a big bright banner stating “MDCPS VAM Equation” because I thought stakeholders are valued to the degree they are informed about decisions that affect them. Yet, when it comes to VAM I guess the district’s policy is the inverse of this logic; that teachers should be ignorant and left in the dark about the VAM, and this will make them feel “added value”? Are all Board members knowledgeable of the VAM, so that they can have meaningful discourses about it with their constituents?
If we “VAM unto others as we would have others VAM unto us”, then what kind of rubrics do we use with administration, district and state education leaders, and the legislators that make the mandates?
District administrators may feel this is unfair. Some might even admit to “uneasy feeling” of seeing their teachers get punished by the VAM (next year when all the finalities of SB 736 are implemented, teachers could see smaller pay for lower VAM), yet with no consequence to themselves. Though, if students do poorly because of poor teachers (though research says that that is only 14% true), then poor teachers reflect poor administration? Though administrators are never “vammed”?
Administrators, local and district, may complain that variables beyond your control should not be the reason for you lower paycheck under a Administrator-VAM statistic, but sorry no double standard. District leaders may grumble that FL DOE leaders, or FL legislators, made choices that negatively affect their performance at the district level. Well, so, should you not be held accountable anyway? Should there not be a VAM to unfairly punish you, as the one being used for teachers? FL DOE leaders may blame the federal government for poor funding, bad curriculum mandates, unsound/invalid pedagogic assessment models, and whine that getting smaller paychecks is unfair.
After all, should we not all just blame the President? No, of course not, individuals should and must be held accountable for producing excellent products; the “buck must stop somewhere”, agreed. Yet, why does it stop at the teachers? Why are we the only ones who will have a part of our paycheck tied to a VAM statistic? Why not leaders too? Why not parents too? Hey, why not penalize the future salaries of students who deliberately choose not to learn with a student-VAM?
But no, we, the teachers, will take all the blame for failing students (not even the parents get blamed) without any accountability (tied to salary) for our leaders? We are flattered that you leaders believe we have that kind of power in the classroom; that we can lead the horse to water and make it drink; that we can plan and cook the meal and make someone eat it too.
How we wish, as teachers, the assimilation of knowledge was so easy; that all our input equated to student output, but we all know this is false.
Does not Maslow’s hierarchy of needs teach us that no student will self-actualize and desire to learn for the delayed future reward of a good job, or the “love of learning”, whose underlying primary needs of love, support and home-life are not robustly provided. Students today, in general, come into the classroom with so much “baggage” (ex. uncertainty of family support after 2 divorces, abusive authorities, excessive premarital sex, an Internet that exposes them to less-than-desirable behaviors, having some of the adults they used to look up to disappoint them, being bombarded with inane, vain and useless internet entertainment, etc.).
So, teachers are expected to produce a superior product in spite of the defects in the raw materials that enter the classroom? As a chemistry teacher I believe I can help the student (ore) refine itself, and will do so with all my passion, but I cannot do alchemy; I cannot make efficacious teaching and learning happen when the ore is unwilling to be refined.
Do we even teach and test on the affective domain of hard work, perseverance, diligence, honesty, self-sacrifice, altruism, grace, mercy and self-control? Yet, are not there variables as important (if not more) to being successful in the real world, and are what most employers are looking for (not just cognitive potential)? Yet, our VAMs never consider these variables, and therefore are limited in their predictive power!
Did our test-metric-engineers forget about the maxim: not all that counts matters, not all that matters can be counted, not everything counted has value, and not everything of value may be counted?
After all, what do test scores prove, if not nothing more than having good test-taking skills (ex. cramming to fill short-term memory and organized mental-schema that help one store and access data). Research shows time and again that there is very little transfer of knowledge, or skills, across content areas in high school students because their underlying knowledge base and mental-schema are still in the developmental stages and have not had enough time and experience to make the deep and profound connections, that occur with more maturation and study.
We believe students should analyze and solve geometry proofs and logic-tests, hoping that it will transfer to their language arts classes, whereby they will be more able to deconstruct texts and analyze authors’ intent and purpose. Yet, research paints a picture that is more correlational than causational; students that can think, analyze and produce do so in most classes, regardless of the teaching strategy or assessments used. Which again, proves the goal of a good liberal-arts pedagogy of “teaching students how to think, not what to think”. “How to think curriculum” is more messy and sticky; it requires long-term studies and research, interdisciplinary explorations and teacher collaborations; it is not so neat and easy as teaching a “what to think” class with an EOC. Yet, how-to-think skills are used more in the real world, than the short-term (shallow measure) memory skills of EOC tests and the curriculums determined by them. After all, if a test goes into VAM, and VAM affects paycheck, then teacher will more likely “teach to the test”, and the overall quality of education will suffer…..duh!
In the end of it all, the Big-Picture, I always point out to my students the “Graph of School Predictions”, where the Predictors go on the X-axis (ex. GPA, AP classes taken, AP exams passed, FCAT scores, etc.) and Criterions go on the Y-axis (ex. future socio-economic class, contribution to the GDP, “being a prepared and responsible citizen”, “self-value/actualization/fulfillment”, etc.). Then, I point out that there is little, to none, long-term research and data to show that there is a positive correlation between predictors and criterion. We assume students with higher GPA will make a greater contribution to the nation’s GDP, but where is the convincing data. What about the outliers (if the real pattern is even known), like the Una-Bomber, who probably scored high in school, but was very-low in life?
In the Big-Picture, 90% of my chemistry students will forget 90% of the content on an EOC within 9 months, unless they restudy it because they take college chemistry. That can be said of most classes; unless the content is repeated and restudied (and then “permanently” assimilated), the learning was just temporary (and any short-term measure of it, ex. EOC: end-of-course exams) and has little to no effect and/or value in one’s adult life and career choice. So, why do we make such a big deal of EOC in high school, when they don’t even do this in college? If our tests have little power/significance in preparing, or predicting, success in the adult-life, then why are they such an important term in the VAM metric? Previous generations never suffered through all this testing, and teachers never scrutinized by VAMs, and yet the high school graduates of the 50s-80s were well prepared for college. So, what happened to the mantra: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?
So…..
Dear Superintendent, if we are going to get smaller paychecks because of an unjust VAM statistic, then why does it not work the other way? Why not divide up the money won for the Broad Award (or all other awards for education) and share the winnings with your teachers? Though, we might feel guilty because if we do get higher wages because of VAM incentives, then should we not share some of that with our students. For they, after all, were the ones performing on the tests. Just where does “the buck stop” or the reward end? Should some merit-pay go back to the families (their love, support, concern and accountability) that are the number one predictor of student success?
Mr. Governor, should not a proportion of your salary also be tied to student test scores? Is not the principle “a servant is not greater than their master” be applied to you? If we fail in the classroom, then your leadership must have something to do with it? Of course, the families never get any blame?
Mr. Scott if the FL GDP does not rise during your tenure, should not your salary be impacted? You may complain that federal policy has tied your hands. Well, do you now empathize with how teachers’ input is limited? Teachers strive for excellence, in spite of many of the socio-cultural variables that inhibit learning (ex. multiple divorces, inane and excessive entertainment medias, etc.). So, please treat us with knowledge and respect we deserve, and therefore drop VAM policies. If you disagree, then please have some statistician write a FL Governor VAM metric (and load it with variables you have no control over, ex. Senate bills passed) and then you might be more able to empathize with teachers.
Dear FL State Legislators, you approved VAM, so then apply it to yourselves. 50% of your pay should be based on the number of bills your author, and that PASS the legislature. We don’t care how hard you work, how many joules of energy you expend, or the product/profit you produce. No, we only care if your bills get passed (metaphor for test scores). Oh, but you will complain that the rate of bills passed is due to variables beyond your control. So, deal with it; suck it up and be treated in the same way you want to treat your teachers.
Florida public servants, ex. Firefighters and Police, should there be a VAM for you too. Should your evaluations, and part of your salary, be based on actual crimes caught, or those that were prevented? Is it the fires you put out, or your daily service to the community, that matters? If you do a good job and crime rates drop, and there are less crimes to catch, then should your VAM score get lower and paycheck too?
I think we all see the fallacy of “product-only” VAM measures, that take no account of the daily service and commitment of the worker (ignore all “process related” activities). If only test scores matter in my VAM, then why should I even care about collaborating with my peers, helping set up labs for the science department, leading local trainings and peer mentoring, writing curriculum and seeking best practices (if they have no influence on an EOC exam)? Why go the “extra mile” in my daily teaching, when all FL cares about is the “one-inch” of test data.
If one really considers the possible implications of a “dog eat dog” competitive environment of teaching to VAM tests, where teachers only care about their own students’ performances, and nothing else (since a significant part of their salary is at stake), education will become a bleak and barren wasteland of test-obsessed pedagogy, diminished in real and diverse learning and low in any true cognitive stimulation.
So, to all leaders who are unwilling to have a VAM equations applied to their own salary, STOP the hypocrisy and join us in a more just and equitable society. Be willing to walk in our shoes, before you arrogantly and pretentiously tell us how they should be worn.
Mr. Rick Lapworth
Science Teacher, Felix Varela High School
15255 SW 96 St, Miami, FL 33196
Ed.S., NBCT 1999-2019
rlapworth@dadeschools.net
Rick,
Great comment.
“One analysis by the American Statistical Association showed that only 1-14% of VAM data variability was affected by teacher input, the other 86% to non-teacher factors. “
It’s worth pointing out that ASA’s statement that “Most VAM studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores” refers to correlation, not necessarily causation (and it refers to a weak correlation at that)
Teachers may or may not “affect” (ie, be the cause of) said variability in test scores and such weak correlation would normally not even be taken seriously.
Certainly, no one who knows the first thing about statistics would honestly support actually firing a teacher on such a basis, especially given the large standard error attached to VAM scores.
A teacher’s VAM score can vary by a large amount (relative to the amount that is supposed to distinguish a “good” teacher from a “bad” one) from one year to the next (and even for different grades taught by the same teacher in the very same year) and from one VAM to another (ie, using different value added models). This is a sure sign that they are unreliable.
And to top it all off, student test scores (on which VAMs are based) may indicate little about future “success”.
It is nothing short of criminal that VAMs are being used to take away people’s livelihoods (and perhaps make it difficult for them to get another job). Those who are doing this to teachers are unfit to be making such decisions.
And those who support firing teachers based on VAMs should certainly not be doing statistics (period). They either haven’t a clue what the statistics mean (and don’t mean) or, if they actually know, they are simply dishonest.
I think we could thin out that 1 to 14% even further when we consider that the average child in the U.S. K to 12 has 30 to 50 teachers during that time period.
For instance, if a child has 40 teachers, each teacher would be responsible for 0.025% to 0.35% of any test’s score, because it is arguable that every teacher a child has between K to 12 contributes to the child’s test score.
And, other factors outside of the classroom are responsible for the other 86% to 99%. Imagine the impact a divorce has on a child’s ability to learn during the year of the divorce.
GREED = Source of EVIL.
Someone just recently told me that the FREE MARKET is good for salaries. More money for those who are qualified and do good work. I questioned this comment stating that MONEY is NOT EVERYTHING re: a job. What about working conditions, benefits, and culture of the work place? Does the company hire and fire nilly willy? Does the company respect the workers? These matter as much as one’s wage or salary, as well as how one is evaluated.
Yvonne Siu-Runyan: beware those that have “unfettered greed will answer every need” tattooed on their, er, various body parts, mostly in hidden areas. *Don’t ask; sometimes there’s such a thing as too many details.*
Turns out the rheephormistas can’t do the verbal walk of their own philosophical talk…
Just look at all the comments about now-former LAUSD Supt. John Deasy by his until-very-recently rabid defenders, supporters and enablers. Why, he has his faults—sure!—but he is so passionate and lost so much weight and looks haggard and been hurt and frustrated by all the criticism he’s had to endure. Have a heart!
😱
In other words, all the touchy-feely stuff they say can’t be measured and then controlled and that aren’t taken account of in forced ranking systems like VAM because they don’t count.
😧
Mark my words: the self-proclaimed “education reformers” deny the vey human qualities and dimensions of public education when they go after the vast majority of school staff and parents and students but, ya gotta hand it to them, they sure will cry themselves a river—
Over themselves.
😕
Ah, its a hard and thorny road that edupreneurs and edubullies and edufrauds and accountabully underlings have to traverse. For example, what a world-class shame that a leader of the self-labeled “new civil rights movement of our time” named John Deasy was an unfortunate victim of jealousy and envy, getting only that pittance of $70,000 severance pay while all those furslinger teachers, just to take one example of public school bad apples, are raking it in non-stop.
😲
And when are we to expect those in mad dog pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$ to straighten up and fly right? To engage in some serious soul-searching and self-reflection?
Don’t hold your breath. They believe their own hype. They are no longer simply wearing a public mask that hides their more private thoughts and desires; they have become that mask they have put on.
“A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.” [Demosthenes]
Old dead Greek guys—what would we do without them?
😎
In general high salaries are an attempt to make up for other, less appealing aspects of a job. More dangerous jobs and less pleasant working conditions tend to pay more because salary is the most flexible aspect of the job.
The “free market” is only as free, valuable and redemptive as the values of those that participate in it. Apparently the value of the job (ie, the importance of the good/service as to how it fulfills a real human need) does not correlate to the wage or salary (the worth the market decides) because if it did, then why do pro-athletes make such an ungodly amount of money? How is the importance of their “good/service” worth so much when all it does is entertain, which is not very high of the scale of human-needs and life-priorities. The NFL, MLB, etc. can go bankrupt and society will continue unfazed, but if our farmers go bankrupt and cannot put the next crop in the ground society will crumble. Yet, our farmers, for the most part, make much less than our athletes; LeBron makes more in one year than most, if not all, farmers will make in a lifetime. So tell me, how did the “free market” come up with that twisted equation? Sounds more like a “fallen market” driven by arbitrary values and human lusts and vanity. Maybe that is why it is said, “what people highly value, God abominates”.
Professional athletes make large salaries largely when large numbers of people wish to observe them. The world’s finest curler, for example, makes relatively little curling.
Generally prices are determined by the value of the last unit of consumption, not the value of consuming the good. This is an old issue in economics. Here is a discussion of the water diamond paradox: http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2013/08/thoughts-on-diamond-water-paradox.html
“The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.”
Rick Lapworth: thank you for the quote. I googled and found it on various websites as coming from Luke 16:15, various translations including:
1), “And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.” [King James Bible]
2), “And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” [English Standard Version]
FLERP!: thank you for the quote. Not surprising that it comes from Oscar Wilde:
“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.”
And I would re remiss if I didn’t add one of my one in appreciation, though I must confess it cannot match yours.
A civil rights lawyer [the real thing] said to me many years ago, in jest, about many of his peers that were in the legal field for their own personal gain and not to help others:
“Q. What do you call 1000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea in chains?”
A good start.”
Just substitute “accountabully underling” aka “bean counters” aka [in many cases] “econometricians” and you have an updated version.
¿😕?
As in, “RheeWorld calling Chetty/Hanushek/Rockoff/Friedman, Gates Foundation on the line.”
$tudent $ucce$$ for ‘objective’ research, anyone?
😎
Is this for real? Is someone actually saying that the budget\costs, the response time, the employee satisfaction, the adherence to safety standards, etc. have no place in fire fighting or other emergency services?
Then they are using this as justification to say that NO public servants should be held to any standard or performance evaluation? Wow, just wow.
And I hate to break it to you, but fire fighters have long been held to performance evaluations. No one wants to step into a burning building with a poorly trained, screw-up of an employee.
“Employee performance evaluations have been part of the business world for decades. Performance evaluations have been used in the fire service for a long time as well, where they’ve been reserved primarily for probationary firefighters or employees on probationary status (i.e., those newly promoted). Fire departments are beginning to view performance evaluations outside of probationary periods as a valuable tool to facilitate organizational growth and employees’ growth as individuals.”
http://www.fireengineering.com/articles/2008/08/360-degree-performance-evaluations.html
Try reading a little more carefully. The article is about performance pay, not performance evaluation.
What Dienne said and…
His point is that it can’t be truly done with metrics. There are other non-quantifiable things that go into evaluation.
If I’m ONLY measured by reading scores, I have no reason to do the decent societal things that matter. As Doug Garnett posted, it narrows the range of actions taken.
Therefore, I have no incentive to do the right thing for students who encounter human tragedies or difficulties. If a student comes to me after school because they had a rough day because their grandmother died a week ago and they’re struggling emotional, I have no incentive to have time to listen, provide support or be sympathetic. I mean, I don’t get measured by that so I would have a perverse incentive: tell the student I don’t have time for him / her (because I have to go through these exemplars regarding reading assignments).
And again: this was about performance pay, NOT performance evaluation. And I would hope that the fact that I view students as my kids every year would matter to my administrator.
Of course, it doesn’t make sense. Public sector is not the same as MLB, NFL, NBA, or NHL.
“We have always paid public servants a flat fee, untethered to any sort of “performance measures.” That’s because we want public service to be completely disconnected from any private interests.”
The idea that public service is, or could ever be, any more disconnected from private interests than work in the for-profit sector is so mind-bogglingly naive that it makes my head spin.
In fact, its equally naive (maybe even more naive) than believing that introducing test-score-based performance pay will help improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged children.
“The idea that public service is, or could ever be, any more disconnected from private interests than work in the for-profit sector is so mind-bogglingly naive that it makes my head spin.”
How so?
CTee,
As long as people have different interests than their employer, there will be private interests in any workplace, public or private. Like FLERP!, I think it would be interesting to hear more details about your argument.
The school workplace is supposed to be a collaborative environment, not dog-eat-dog. “Performance incentives” undermine morale.
Not that dog-eat-dog doesn’t happen in the school workplace; in fact, it is rampant even without the money. But financial incentives would make it far, far worse.
Susannunes,
Most work places require a high degree of cooperation among the folks working there.
Guess what? I happen to know both. You don’t get it at all, and on purpose. Principals are held to NO standards of accountability whatsoever, with ironclad job security, while they can literally destroy a teacher’s career with the stroke of a pen. You have NO concept of how the schoolplace environment works, and it is NOT similar at all to corporations. You have NO chain of command whatsoever when a principal harasses you–if you dare complain, it is YOU who gets the boot, NOT the principal. The “unions” are basically worthless in protecting teachers outside of a handful of urban school districts in the country.
Have you ever seen a teacher evaluation? They are entirely subjective, solely the province of one person’s opinion, that person being the principal. A principal can literally make stuff up against a teacher in the attempt to force that person out, and a school district’s legal department encourages this because the goal is to force a person into suing, settling, and signing a gag order so that a district can target others.
Until you have an idea of how the school workplace operates, which is why “merit pay” would NEVER, EVER work, don’t even spread your libertarian nonsense on this website.
Susannunes,
Not being a libertarian, I don’t advocate for that view, nonsense or not. I am also uncertain why my simple statement that cooperation is a characteristic of most organizations, not just schools, elicits a response about principals, unions, etc.
“We don’t fire fighters”
We don’t fire fighters
Because they failed to save
A building lit with lighters
Despite the toil they gave
So why do we fire teachers
Cuz students failed to vault
Some half-baked testing features
For which they’re not at fault?
So true. If a teacher is doing a lousy job, he/she won’t last long. I guess some are oblivious.
This piece is so accurate. Teachers become teachers to do what is best for kids. It’s the same for others who serve the community. It is amazing how attitudes have devolved over the last 40 years. Respect is hard to find. Too many people are looking for someone to blame … other than themselves.
I found it interesting to read that it has been found in Colorado Springs, to name on example, that 3 and 4 year olds aren’t as prepared to enter pre-school and then kindergarten as in previous years. I have to wonder if expectations have changed or if the problems start in the homes, with lack of time and skills to prepare kids for school.
I was subbing today, and someone remarked about the amount of things that kindergarteners can do that they weren’t doing in previous years.
My comment was that I do believe we are better attending the needs of the top students, but that we are leaving even more of the kids behind. Some just aren’t developmentally ready! If they have very poor fine motor control, they don’t keep up with the simplest of tasks. Special ed and Title I services have grown to huge parts of students’ days, increasing over the last 3 years in unheard of numbers. So, the regular classroom isn’t enough.
Just because a teacher gets fired doesn’t mean that teacher is doing a “lousy job.” Oftentimes a teacher doing a “lousy job” become a principal or some other administrator, as long as that person has connections.
A lot of people, even teachers, still don’t have a clue how the legal system works against teachers, mythical “tenure” notwithstanding.
It took us 10 years to get rid of a vindictive, nasty, condescending principal. This is a highly rated school in spite of her. She fits the classic definition of a bully. No one ever got on her good side unless they kissed up. As the stresses of the changes in the testing got more insane, she became totally crazed. The parents and the teachers finally got the supt to shove her out the door. She created an atmosphere of low morale and fear every second of every day. But it took 10 years. A teacher can be swept away in one or less. She created an atmosphere for nervous breakdowns…midyear. This entire process is not necessary. Of course, our district is moving towards everyone doing the same things on the same day. I am not quite sure how to get anyone caught up if he/she misses a day, since you just keep on going forward regardless of who “gets it” or who doesn’t. I am one who hates jargon. And we are tryongvto lockstep everyone into the same bs. It is ridiculous.
A teacher can literally be “swept away” by the stroke of a pen, with no real reason given, and that’s with post-probationary or “tenure” status. It happened to me, and the idiot who did it is still working at Washoe County School District. She is on her fourth job in six years; she keeps getting bounced from job to job to job when in fact she should have been fired for what she did to me. WCSD protects their administrators. It is extremely rare for one to be forced out of the organization altogether.
And this…http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/10/how-we-pay-public-servants-and-why.html?m=1