I think there is only one good argument against merit pay for teachers.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

In principle, I am absolutely fine with the idea of paying teachers more if they teach well than if they don't - teaching is a profession with a massive propensity to burn people out, and increasing the motivation of talented-but-burned-out teachers to keep doing their best would be a good thing.

The objection is very simple: it's very hard indeed to measure good teaching.

I don't know if it's impossible or not - I rather suspect there are good ways of doing it, but I can't think of any - but the obvious ones - "value added to pupil test scores", "pupil satisfaction" and "headteacher assessment" - certainly aren't any good.

I don't think any of the "it's wrong in principle" objections have much merit, though. If it can/could be done well, I would favour doing it; I just don't know of any way to do it well.

[mmonk]

1. Merit pay was invented by conservatives to keep teacher salaries

down. Imagine if you implemented the merit pay ideology on Wall Street. None of the politicians would go along with that.

[jefferson_dem]

4. Should other professionals also be exempt from performance evaluations?

Why are people so opposed to rewarding teachers who have demonstrated a record of excellence?

[mmonk]

6. I'm not for not rewarding good work. That's the framing of those

that use the merit pay system want people to have. This was an invention to keep teacher's salaries down. Most teachers work very hard and are dedicated because they have to be. Their salaries do not match private industry for the most part when it comes to the professional learning and credential requirements.

[QC]

11. Teachers are not exempt from evaluation, so you can put away that tired straw man.

Teachers do get evaluated, certainly more frequently and rigorously than, say, hedge fund managers.

[GOTV]

14. If they do well on that evaluation do they make more than teachers who don't? n/t

[QC]

19. Depends on the level and institution. My performance reviews got me tenure and promotion

to full professor, so yes, I have a (small) raise an a grander title as a result of them.

The fears many people have are that:

1. we will become far too dependent on such blunt instruments as test scores and student evaluations, and

2. administrators will turn merit pay into another opportunity for cronyism, which is, in practice, what often happens.

Additionally, I am skeptical of the notion that competition makes everything better. That's just more right wing free market fundamentalist bullshit, and we're getting lots of that in higher ed now, where the corporate model has become a very hot fad--ironically when the corporations are collapsing all around us and are about as respected and admired as the clap.

Having taught in departments where the faculty had actual collegial relationships with one another and in other departments where they were all free agents trying to outdo one another, I can say with come confidence that the former model of collegial relations is better for both students and teachers. It worked just fine for centuries before some Young Republican type decided that the way to improve everything on earth was to make people compete with one another.

[GOTV]

27. Oh, you're talking about college level? I think merit pay concerns K-12

Or did I misunderstand?

[QC]

35. Unfortunately, it's making its way into higher ed. The corporate fad

is infecting our entire educational system. Competition and customer service are all we hear now.

But yeah, the stuff everyone is talking about here is K-12. I think the same objections apply to both settings, though: cronyism, difficulty of measuring quality teaching, etc.

[ieoeja]

16. Yes. Performance evaluations are stupid.

The American who created the Japanese business model said annual reviews were the single biggest mistake made by American businesses. It lets managers ignore their principal job, managing employees, 11 months out of the year. It creates one month of stress for everyone involved and wastes a lot of management's time that month. It is highly arbitrary and typically useless.

In over 60 years my current employer has only once had an employee fail the annual review. That simple fact exposes the process for its uselessness. Actually since the employee in question, me, was credited for about 90% of the IT department's productivity that year, that particular review method was immediately dropped (though I still didn't get my raise; rules, you know). But that was over a decade ago, and nobody has failed the new evaluations either.

Performance evaluations are a complete waste of time.

[GOTV]

18. Can we user merit pay for the opposite effect? n/t

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

23. No, it wasn't

And if you want to compare what teachers have to Wall Street, why don't teachers have or want individualized contracts?

And by the way, they ever conservative Center for American Progress supports merit pay, too, as do most civil rights organizations. The only "progressive" institutions that don't are the unions, really.

[TimesSquareCowboy]

30. The government's not funding Wall Street.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

31. Uh...

Are you sure?

[TimesSquareCowboy]

33. It's been used to increase pay.

"In Minnesota, some experiments with new teacher pay systems got under way during the last decade at the initiative of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, whose leaders feared that their Democratic state legislators, on whom the union had long relied to obtain financing for teacher raises, were losing power to suburban Republicans.

“We realized we were going to have to embrace some things that would get money into teachers’ pockets in nontraditional ways,” said Louise Sundin, the federation’s president from 1984 until last year."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/education/18pay.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

[Demeter]

2. One Has To Question WHAT Purpose Is Achieved By the Concept

If a teacher could pick the students, then one could measure something. Skill at picking compatible students, maybe.

Things to base merit of a class upon, when running a heterogeneous class.

1. No death, violence, accidents, bullying

2. Students report less stress within class, and/or demonstrate it by behaviors.

3. Mastery of a task.

And the baseline is where the student started from, on Day One. Not some Ivy-league quality outcome for everyone. You can't pretend that everyone starts on third base. You can't assume anything.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. Motivating burned-out teachers.

Most teachers start their careers extremely enthusiastic and willing to go above and beyond the call of duty for their students. Some stay that way throughout their careers; some don't.

Making it in their interests to do so would benefit pupils, which is the primary reason for paying pupils.

[GreenPartyVoter]

13. What burned them out? Rude kids? Parents who are unsupportive of

their children? Over-filled classrooms? Teaching to tests all the time?

Merit pay will not fix those problems so I am not sure if the teachers will feel any less burned out.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

22. It won't make teachers feel less burned out

If anything, it may burn people out even faster, although not by much.

But hopefully it will encourage even burned-out teachers to teach well.

[jefferson_dem]

5. Sounds good. Obama's "merit pay" proposal has never reflected a "one size fits all" standard.

Progress, given a particular context...

Please see this thread - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8259186&mesg_id=8259186

[BlooInBloo]

7. (a) There's no requirement that it be perfect...

and (b) imperfect measures of merit are applied to other professions routinely. I see no reason why it shouldn't be the case with teaching.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

9. Imperfect incentives may well do more harm than good.

If you reward some parts of a job but not others, the parts which aren't rewarded may well get neglected.

The classic example of this is that if you reward teachers for their pupils' test scores then they tend to teach to the test, and things which the test doesn't cover will be neglected.

[BlooInBloo]

15. That same argument can be made for every single other profession...

where the measuring stick is likewise imperfect.

The fact that measuring sticks are imperfect is simply not an argument for not using measuring sticks.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

21. In many professions you can measure moderately well.

I'm not saying there aren't ways of evaluating teachers good enough to do more good than harm, but I don't know of any, and I don't think "pupils test scores" is one.

[GOTV]

17. Yes, every industry faces that problem but NOT paying the best teachers a lot ....

... should not be the answer.

[kwassa]

20. Imperfect measures will drive many more teachers out of the profession

As it is, fully 50% leave in the first five years of teaching.

I don't think anyone is asking for perfection, just some semblance of reality in the assessment of the teacher's performance. As so many parts of that performance are intangible, it is difficult to understand how they can be assessed. I've seen no proposal yet that has that semblance of reality.

[KittyWampus]

8. It isn't hard at all to set up a system of goals and rewards for reaching them. The issue is WHAT

What goals should be used to determine job-performance.

[Mass]

10. You cannot set merit pay without reasonnable goals that are measurable.

The only way we know how to do that these days is by standardized testing, which goes against teachers who spend time and efforts teaching to those kids who need good teachers the most.

Redefine the goals so that teachers who teach in the most difficult environments are rewarded if they succeed and we may be on something . Until then, no to merit pay.

[GreenPartyVoter]

12. That and teachers who planted the seeds but who no longer have those

students when they finally blossom, should they be punished because the success wasn't yet measurable when they had them?

Teaching is a long-term process. Yes, of course there is some measurable growth along the way. But how do you judge the three, four, or five teachers it took together over as many years to bring out the best in a child? Why only reward the one who happened to be there when it finally all came together?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

25. Statistically speaking, that should not be an issue.

It's the law of averages. If you're a good teacher, sure, you'll "pay forward" some rewards, but you'll also be there for plenty of times when it wasn't all you, either. I highly, highly doubt any teacher would find themselves significantly unbalanced because of this.

[GreenPartyVoter]

26. Maybe. Or maybe the teachers of the youngest grades could still find themselves on the short end.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

28. Something would have be worked out for the youngest grades, I admit that.

But that shouldn't stand in the way of the whole proposal.

[LisaM]

24. How do you determine what kind of students they get?

I think the idea is very Randian on its face, but you have to add in that teachers don't get to choose which students they teach. If they do get judged on students' performances, what's to stop them from kicking underperforming kids out of their classes? This is what's going on with charter schools even now - they get to reject kids, and of course, if those kids stay in school at all, it's back to public schools.

Problem kids stem from problem households, disengaged parents, from a variety of sources. Are those who support this merit-based crap prepared to allow teachers to cherry pick the students they feel will respond better to their teaching, so they can earn bonuses?

We can see that the bonus system has worked SO well in American industry. Why not send it into the schools?

I for one am ashamed that the Democratic party chooses to associate itself with this notion. We need to fight it.

[TimesSquareCowboy]

29. I support it and I do believe it's possible to measure by a bunch of things,

some data-based and some based on the teacher's interactions with students.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

32. That reason alone is enough to kill the idea, basically because it's not "very hard."

It's damn near impossible.

The only thing that COULD be reasonably measured is the teachers' knowledge. What about standardized periodic exams for THEM, instead of the students?

[sandnsea]

34. Well that's not what is being proposed

so you can stop worrying your beautiful mind about it.

[treestar]

36. It can't be measured given that it is a two way street and

the student's side of it can't be measured either. There are some students of greater merit than others, if you will. Some factors of which are in the student's control and some which are not.

A teacher lucky enough to get good students may not necessarily be a better teacher - they even don't have to be.

The only judges of their performance would have to be other teachers, who considered what students they had. But ultimately, each mind of each student is separate and can't just be assigned some sort of a number.

This culture has deep problems with anything that can't be easily measured.