Andy Goldstein, a superstar teacher in Palm Beach County, Florida, recently addressed the school board and urged them not to impose a merit pay plan mandated by the legislature. The Florida legislature is dedicated to the belief that schools should be run like a business and should focus on competition, incentives, and punishments. It never passes up a chance to pass laws that foster bad practices and that promote privatization.
In the most careful study of merit pay, researchers at Vanderbilt University recorded the results of a three-year experiment in which one group of fifth-grade teachers was offered a bonus of $15,000 to raise test scores while the other group was offered nothing. The bonus had no effect. (See here and here.)
Here is Andy Goldstein’s statement to the PBC board:
From Palm Beach County, FL:
The Failure of Merit Pay – why it will fail our students most in need – a school board talk by Andy Goldstein. April 20, 2016.
Transcript:
Good evening. My name is Andy Goldstein. I’m a teacher at Omni Middle School and the proud parent of an 8-year-old daughter who attends second grade at one of our public elementary schools.
I wish to talk about the proposed salary agreement for teachers.
This proposed salary agreement, if approved by our teachers, will be the first year that so-called merit pay will be put into effect in Palm Beach County as mandated by Senate Bill 736.
It divides those teachers who will earn a raise into categories of “effective” and “highly effective.” The highly effective category pays teachers 25 percent more.
I’m looking at this merit pay plan through the lense of our District’s 5-Year Strategic Plan, which our School Board approved.
Our District’s Mission Statement states that:
The School District of Palm Beach County is committed to providing a world-class education with excellence and equity to empower each student to reach his or her highest potential with the most effective staff to foster the knowledge, skills, and ethics required for responsible citizenship and productive careers.
Beautiful!
This proposed pay plan actively works against this mission, and vital elements of our Strategic Plan in the following ways.
• Instead of promoting a high performance culture in which teachers are respected and allowed to collaborate to help our students, it promotes divisiveness, bitterness and competition between teachers. Merit pay historically has not been supported by teachers because the pay has been based on subjective and arbitrary systems of evaluation, and teachers know there is no fair way for it to be done.
• If merit pay is a good idea, then why is it a highly kept secret in each school which teachers are found to be highly effective? Don’t we want to share best practices?
• It promotes those teachers who have a certain set of students that respond to a certain growth pattern needed for a narrow set of test scores – called VAM—the Value Added Model of teacher evaluation.
• In our District’s 90-Day Entry Plan findings, you ask the big questions: Is it good for children? Is it research based?
• Merit pay is not good for children. It punishes those teachers working with the most challenging populations, the very populations you state you most want to lift up.
• Merit pay based on test scores is not research based. In fact, research shows the opposite. It shows no affect in student outcomes because basically, the teachers studied were doing the best they knew how, no matter what population of students they were teaching. The American Statistical Association cautions that VAM scores, while they may be useful in noting large trends in big systems, are not effective when they are used in high-stakes decision making related to individuals.
• Our District’s strategic plan cites the need for a high performance culture. Yet merit pay goes against this. It’s an extrinsic form of reward, making use of carrots and sticks, as if our teachers were pet monkeys. W. Edwards Deming, the management consultant who turned Japanese auto makers into world class manufacturers, said that the intrinsic motivation –the love of the work itself—is what motivates people to do a good job. He said it’s important to pay people well, develop their capacities for excellence and let them do their job.
• Merit pay works against this. It will make the District actively work against having all teachers be highly effective, since our School District is not going to want to pay the top salary for all its employees. We already see this at work in Florida’s Lake County School District.
As education historian Diane Ravitch states: Merit pay has over 100 years of research and has never been found to be effective.
As teachers, we have been branded with a Scarlet Letter, called VAM, a projection of the collective sins of our society for our grotesque inequity.
I will not, as a teacher, vote to approve merit pay, which will widen this inequity for our most underserved students most in need, and I ask the District to fix this botched idea and work at having it reversed by our state legislature.
Thank you.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
8-9 years ago my district here in Texas experimented with “merit” pay, based on student test scores. I made thousands of dollars. I didn’t do one thing differently.
But it did divide our faculty. I remember voting to share our money with teachers on different grade levels, who didn’t have standardized test results. Others didn’t.
I put in countless hours off the clock working on my lessons. I do it because I want to improve my teaching. Not because of a bigger paycheck.
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You express the sentiments of thousands of teachers who find merit pay an abuse and a sham.
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I wonder why we in education circles even bother to make the educational-outcomes argument. Merit pay in a taxpayer-supported system doesn’t make budget sense at even a casual glance. In a for-profit business, ‘merit’ means bringing in more money: mgt shares increased profits with those who helped make it happen. How does raising test scores (or any other measure chosen to indicate improved ed-outcome) bring in more money with which to reward the ‘highly-effective’? It doesn’t.
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Since Mr. Goldstein referenced W. Edwards Deming, let’s look at a bit of what he said 25 years ago:
[start]
Annual individual performance ratings, as I’ve said time and time 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 words 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, or tries to, for his own good, on his own life preservers. In the end, the organization is the loser. …
[end]
From THE ESSENTIAL DEMING: LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES FROM THE FATHER OF QUALITY (2013, Joyce N. Orsini, ed.), p. 173, end of a 1991 interview with Deming.
😎
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Merit pay represents the false equivalences of the business world imposed on academia. Contrary to business, merit pay will not improve anyone’s performance in education. At its core, it is not only divisive, but insulting and paternalistic. It assumes that lazy teachers have been holding back on their best efforts. When the carrot is dangled in front of them, they will shift into overdrive. Anyone that has taught knows the challenges and demands of the job. Public teachers take all comers; we cannot “cherry pick” our classes. Some years students are better prepared or faster learners than others, but the vast majority of teachers are generally working hard to get students to do their best. Some teachers specialize in working with students that are different from the norm. They are some of the most dedicated in education, but their efforts and successes will not be reflected in high test scores. Merit pay is inappropriate for education, and it represents a misunderstanding of the teaching-learning dynamic and a misapplication of test scores.
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Peter Greene at Curmudgucation has this reflection:
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/04/getting-better.html
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Thanks for the article. Greene like most teachers understands why merit pay makes no sense for educators. Teachers are not just service providers like waiters. Teaching is more of a collaborative act between the teacher and students. In addition to a teacher’s skills, it depends on what the students bring to the table in terms of background, motivation, innate abilities and emotional wellness. Teaching is complex, and it is so much more than a test score!
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retired teacher: spot on!
In support of one of your main points, I provide in full something I have posted here before in excerpts: Jamie Vollmer’s “The Blue Story: The teacher gives the businessman a lesson.”
[start]
“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!”
I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of inservice. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.
I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that had become famous in the middle1980s when People magazine chose our blueberry as the “Best Ice Cream in America.”
I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging “knowledge society.” Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure, and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement!
In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced — equal parts ignorance and arrogance.
As soon as I finished, a woman’s hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant. She was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.
She began quietly, “We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream.”
I smugly replied, “Best ice cream in America, Ma’am.”
“How nice,” she said. “Is it rich and smooth?”
“Sixteen percent butterfat,” I crowed.
“Premium ingredients?” she inquired.
“Super-premium! Nothing but triple A.” I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.
“Mr. Vollmer,” she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, “when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?”
In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap…. I was dead meat, but I wasn’t going to lie.
“I send them back.”
She jumped to her feet. “That’s right!” she barked, “and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it’s not a business. It’s school!”
In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians, and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, “Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!”
And so began my long transformation.
Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.
None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when, and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a post-industrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission, and active support of the surrounding community. For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.
[end]
Link: http://www.jamievollmer.com/blueberries.html
😎
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Merit pay doesn’t really exist in the business world either. Pay is often determined by too many other factors than an employee’s performance. Professionals are often difficult to rate by metrics. Do we judge a doctor by patient cholesterol levels? Police by the precinct crime rate? Programmers by lines of code? Criminal lawyers by recidivism rates? Plus objectives in business change before a review cycle completes. Managers are not always the experts and I would often find myself writing my own performance reviews. Even commissioned jobs in corporations require a moderation of the pure quota system – territories overlap or are different in makeup. But pure quotas can also be destructive as well and using quotas for teachers (VAM) will destroy learning as the system is gamed.
The little secret is business is less of a meritocracy than “free marketers” would have people believe. Those that preach free markets rarely experience them in all their effect. Nepotism and cronyism are more typical. And most people under similar titles are paid about the same regardless of merit, which is why companies strictly guard employee compensation information (women are usually paid less). A promotion might gain a pay increase, but not always.
So if merit pay doesn’t work or even exist in business, why do Reformers think it will work in education? Could it be they are clueless? In business, it isn’t always the cream that rises to the top, but just as often the pond scum.
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Someone correct me if I’m wrong….didn’t this flop in Newark, NJ? And everywhere else?
Elsewhere, didn’t teachers get merit bonuses that amounted to $500/600?
If there is no money to fund public schools, where does this money for top performer bonuses come from (when the philanthropy funds, if any, are long gone)? Isn’t this just a finger on the hand of test/punish to make it look attractive to the lambs going to the slaughter? What will the reformers think of next? It seems clear to me that we all know who is pulling the strings behind the curtain, and we’ve become fluent in recognizing the empty/tricky rhetoric when we hear it.
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Yes, it has flopped everywhere, and for over a century. Still keeps resurfacing though, like a previously digested meal full of garlic & peppers.
In my experience, only the non-team-player teachers, those who think they are superior than others and think they work harder than anyone else, want merit pay. I’ve worked with some first year arrogant newbies (2 were TFA) who were certain that we experienced teachers were to blame for all the ills of public education, and who thought merit pay was the way to go. I’ve also known a couple of experienced prima donnas who felt they – and no one else – deserved merit pay. But most don’t want it and recognize what it would so, and research backs that up. Business mentality forced onto teachers. Depending on the year, it doesn’t matter how much money was thrown at me as an “enticement to work harder” – I couldn’t work any harder unless I completely cut out sleep.
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I can answer your question Donna. In some places where budgets are tight they plan on reducing the pay of the “non performers” and transferring it to the “performers.” Their contracts are for a base line salary and tenure goes away. Any savings of money when no one gets merit pay goes into the district pockets. Nevada is looking into this type of plan.
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Old Teacher: Your second sentence—
TAGO!
In other words, it’s frequently a win-lose situation that simply shifts money around, doesn’t amount to a whole lot to begin with, is toxic to mutual collaboration and respect among coworkers, and in a time of austerity and budget cuts—often manufactured and imposed despite knowing the problems they will bring—are unsustainable. To follow up a bit on the last point: even when the pot is increased slightly with monies from rheephorm villanthropies, that money runs out after a few years and then everybody feels the pain.
One last point: merit pay and the merit ratings they are based on are perverse incentives. It’s called Campbell’s Law. The “thought” leaders of rheephorm like Dr. Raj Chetty (see his Vergara trial testimony) assert without the slightest proof or reason that it should be called “Campbell’s Conjecture.” Interested readers of this blog can refer to postings here, for example—
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2012/05/25/what-is-campbells-law/
However, Donald Campbell wasn’t the only one to enunciate the idea that bears his name. Charles Goodhart:
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
For just a few examples take the Atlanta and Washington, DC standardized testing scandals, or backyard iron & steel production in Maoist China, or Los Angeles PD “ghost cars.”
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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Translating from Rheeformish:
Merit pay – scheme to pay a few more so the vast majority can be paid less, while sowing seeds of division among all.
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Channeling Bierce, eh! Didn’t know that you were a follower of Bro. Ambrose although I did suspect you of being a Biercian!!
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I had no idea…
I am traveling to Mexico, soon, though, and hope not to meet the same fate!
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Enjoy Mexico a little for me! Many are surprised at the beauty to be found in Mexico, the brilliance of it’s various regional cuisines and the friendliness of ‘la gente’.
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My oldest has been working at the US Embassy in Mexico City, so I’ve had ample opportunity to dive in deeply. Looking forward to it again!
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This video is 10min47 sec, furthers supports why merit pay for teachers is not a good idea – RSA animate: http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc
These videos were made by a veteran teacher 6 years ago. The debate and exasperation continue…
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