THEORETICAL question about "merit pay"

[MercutioATC]

Not just for teachers, but for anybody.

I have first hand experience of how bad a "merit pay" system can be. It sounds great, but the end result is that a few pencil-pushers who have no practical experience write up a bunch of criteria that have nothing to do with the actual job and your raise depends on whether you can get all of their little useless boxes checked.

That's been my experience with "merit pay", so I understand the resistance that some people have.


HOWEVER, if somebody actually came up with a way to find employees that excelled and rewarded them for their extra effort, would you still have a problem with the concept?


Forget the nuts and bolts. I'm just trying to establish if people disagree with the CONCEPT or if it's just a matter of how that concept is almost always poorly applied.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. It's a concept that's perfect for being gamed in every conceivable

way. Sort of like being offered a share of the profits of a business in return for your effort.

[Truthiness Inspector]

2. I'm happy teachers are getting a taste

Hell, everyone should. Do we want government idiots to dictate jobs?

It's a very bad idea. It will be know-nothings trying to save their own jobs while trying to sound useful to save their own jobs at the expense of others' jobs.

This country is not that screwed up. Believe it or not, this is the greatest country on earth. Nothing like a new manager to fuck up a good thing and run it and everyone else into the ground.

[Hannah Bell]

3. that concept, rewarding teachers for doing something extra, is already policy.

you get salary bumps for more education, you get paid for taking on special projects.

the controversy comes from the idea that teachers will get merit pay if their students score higher on tests, or for some administrator's judgement of which teacher is "best" & will be given higher pay.

i taught esl in university, community college, overseas, & in a private language school organized as a cooperative.

i sat in on many classes. i noticed no overall difference in the quality of the teaching.

but there was a *significant* difference in some areas. one was the collegiality of the faculties; the cooperative arrangement had little cliquishness, & more group spirit, e.g. willingness to share materials, etc.

the students also seemed to have a more cohesive group spirit, with more participation & few kids ostracized or sitting on the sidelines - though this could have been due to other causes as well.

university esl, in particular, was like the court of versailles in its backstage politics, cliques, gossip-mongering.

in the cooperative situation, faculty got along very well, & the main source of gripes was that the pay scale was lower than the university.


it wasn't the public schools, students were teens & young adults, but i've noticed the pattern: when you set up workers to compete with each other, they *will* go to the backbiting, backstage politics.

when you set them up to cooperate, they mostly won't. but they *will* bitch about the managers or owners.

i suspect this is why the 1st form of organization is most common, & i suspect this is one of the hidden agendas hiding behind "merit" pay.

[exboyfil]

5. Granted that testing is an imperfect tool

but how about a hypothetical merit pay system that rewards a particular school on improved or sustained performance. You have two different ways to slice the merit (year to year performance by a particular class and performance within grade level). You could combine this approach with some mechanism for peer review and administration removal if the peer review concurs with the administration's decision that the teacher is not performing effectively.

My particular example is my daughter's sixth grade teacher. Even though we expressed great concern that we wanted her in Pre-Algebra in 7th grade, the teacher did a poor job in preparing her class for the asssessment to make that decision (actually the entire school did a poor job). How do I know this? My daughter determined that at least at one of the other feeder schools, the students covered material which was on the test prior to the test that was not covered by my daughter's class. In addition the Junior High has three feeder schools all of approximately the same size. Another assessment is performed at mid-year in 7th grade to determine the ability of certain students to effectively skip Pre-Algebra (which is really not skipping much since the 7th grade course my daughter had covered 90% of what was taught in Pre-Algebra). My daughter was one of five who successfully "jumped". Four of the five were from my daughter's elementary and three of those were from her particular class. The three other students which were on the bubble and almost made it were also from my daughter's elementary (two from her class). I worry about the three high performing kids who are going to be condemned to repeating the same math material for an entire year. These are kids who are already getting an A in their 7th grade math.

In other areas I think my daughter's sixth grade teacher did a fine job, but I feel the students were not adequately served by her in this particular area (which I view as most the most critical in determining future opportunities and potential (ie 8th grade Algebra)). I really think that this particular teacher needs to be sent a message on how important preparing her students for Pre-Algebra in 7th grade is.

[Hannah Bell]

6. I can't speak to your worries about your daughter & how one school covered x & the other

didn't.

In my district, curriculum is prescribed. One school wouldn't be covering something another didn't. There are special arrangements for kids who are behind or ahead, but i'm not up on them.

i have no idea how your story relates to merit pay for schools, but NCLB incorporates that concept; schools who meet benchmarks get extra funds.

NCLB is the worst thing that ever happened to american education, imho.

[Angleae]

4. And the criteria changes daily.

All so that the pencil-pushers and their lackey's get the merit pay

[Smarmie Doofus]

7. This is the best OP on this topic I've seen.

I understand why the idea of "merit pay" would be attractive... on the surface. My conclusion is one has to have experience with the actual day-to-day functioning of a public school to understand why this is NOT a good idea.

There is a sort of public school "culture" that emerges more or less in the same form from school to school and .... from what you and others have described.... from place to place.

This, for instance is an example:

>>>>is that a few pencil-pushers who have no practical experience write up a bunch of criteria that have nothing to do with the actual job and your raise depends on whether you can get all of their little useless boxes checked.>>>>>>>>

"Rubrics", checklists, "assessment instruments" : producing these things ( which as you point out are less than useless)is actually a sort of cottage industry now. People ( school personnel) actually get paid extra money to produce these things ( I'm assuming after school; but you know, I'm not even sure about THAT).

Their exisetence satisfies the demand for "DATA". The fact that the data is *junk* data (you describe it accurately) seems to cause no one any concern and is actually the source of wry jokes among the staff... including among the very people who *produce* the data.

Point: Yes... this is how any "merit pay" scheme will likely be implemented: subjectively, unscientifically and dominated by what I call the inner circle: a group of teaching staff upon which the principal relies for support, emotionally and politically within the school.( These people are *rarely* effective educators and they do not enter the inner circle by virtue of accomomplished pedagogy.) In other words, favoritism will be the determination of any "merit pay" rewarded.

This is necessarily true because as many have explained... here and elsewhere... there is no *objective* way to determine which teacher is doing a "better" job than others. Or if there is... no one has yet identified same.

>>>HOWEVER, if somebody actually came up with a way to find employees that excelled and rewarded them for their extra effort, would you still have a problem with the concept?>>>

No. At the same time I don't understand the preoccupation with this question ( i.e. merit pay). In well funded schools that serve upper-middle class communities one ( in my experience) NEVER hears talk of merit pay. These systems are not few in number and are not hard to find. The kids do well on standardized tests, go to good colleges, etc. ... yet the kids are taught by unionized teachers who are tenured,have NO merit pay and whose salary is scaled to longevity.

In other words, merit pay seems to be the proverbial cure for which there is no disease. At least in wealthy suburbs.

So... let's look to the less well endowed public schools of the inner cities and ( I guess) rural, relatively economically deprived areas: these schools *alone* attract lazy slobs who would work harder if only financial incentives were dangled before them?

These kids don't score higher on standardized tests because the teachers don't work hard enough? Does anyone really believe this?

[MercutioATC]

8. Thanks for the responses, everybody.

What I'm taking away from this is that, besides the fact that all "merit programs" wind up getting run by idiots who screw them up, there are existing rewards for teachers who go the extra mile...making a "merit program" unnecessary.


Does that about sum it up?