Introduction

Issue & Questions

What is good teaching?  This question is highly debatable.  In the end, most would agree, good teaching centers around functional and healthy relationships between learner and educator, high expectations, effective monitoring of the learner’s progression, well thought out plan for the learner or at least a design to keep the learner actively progressing through the intended outcomes, etc.  This list could go on and on.  The problem with the ongoing list of good teaching comes from the evaluator’s perception of healthy relationships, high expectations, and effective monitoring.  One evaluator may require daily assessments; whereas, another may see an over abundance of assessments as time consuming.  For example, in many elementary classrooms in Seattle Public Schools, teachers are asked to give students an exit ticket following a math lesson.  These exit tickets give the educator an idea of students’ understanding of the given concept or process.  One evaluator sees this process as closely monitoring the child’s understanding and thus his or her progression.  The other evaluator may see this as time consuming and lacking in classic imprinting, where the child simply needs more time to allow for the material to “sink-in”.  Either way, defining criteria for good teaching is incredibly complex.  Evaluating educators’ effectiveness is even more complex. 

So, how does a massive entity like educating children in the United States get measured?   One popular notion today is through merit pay.  Wikipedia defines it as, “Merit pay is a term describing performance-related pay, most frequently in the context of educational reform. It provides bonuses for workers who perform their jobs effectively, according to measurable criteria.”  So, what’s the problem?  If you do a good job, you get paid more, right?  The debate stems from the final two words of the definition, “measurable criteria”.  In the case of educating students, what can we use as measurable criteria?  One answer may be standardized tests.  In the state of Washington, this is the MSP or the HSPE.  The MSP measures students’ core academic subjects from third grade to eighth, while the HSPE measures high school students.  The core academic areas on the MSP are math, science, reading and writing.  The HSPE covers the same academic core areas as the MSP.  Another measurable criteria often discussed in the circle of merit pay are Value Added.  Value Added, as defined by the Los Angeles Times is:

Value-added is a statistical approach that estimates a teacher's effectiveness at raising student performance on standardized tests. In essence, it projects a child's future performance by using past scores -- in this case, on math and English tests. That projection is then compared to the student's actual results. The difference is the "value" that the teacher added or subtracted. Comparing each student to him or herself in the past largely controls for differences in students' backgrounds (Los Angeles Times, 2011).

The teacher is then evaluated based on his or her students’ test scores from previous years in comparison to that student’s score within the current academic year.  For example, a fifth grade teacher’s value added score would be compared to how the student did in his or her past two years.  This graph illustrates the students progression or lack of progression from grades 3^rd though 5^th.

Value-added and state standardized tests are two popular approaches to evaluated educators.  For the sake of length, I will focus on the debate over the effectiveness of, only, these two criteria. 

There are many difficult questions stemming from merit pay.  This blog will help answer and address these questions:

• Does merit-based pay improve education?
• Does it improve the quality of teaching by incentivizing hard work?
• Does it help attract and retain quality teachers and weed out bad teachers?
• Does merit pay take the fun and passion out of teaching and over-focus it on measures?
• Does it create undesirable competition between teachers and undercut cooperation?
• Does it discourage teachers from going to needy schools?
• Can teacher merit be successfully measured?
• Does varying student performance get in the way?
• Is merit pay fairer to teachers?
• Does it fall prey to principal cronyism?
• Does it encourage teachers to cheat?
• Does the market demonstrate the importance of pay for performance?
• If teachers should be paid more in general, is merit pay the best way to do it?
• What do past examples of merit pay around the world demonstrate?
• Overall, is merit pay for teachers good education policy?

Why is the topic of merit pay compelling?

            What is good teaching?  How do we “reward” our strong teachers?  It is difficult to say what good teaching is.  One evaluator can walk into a classroom and call the teaching practices innovative, another may call it basic; for this reason, attempting to link teacher pay to “good teaching” is compelling.  Designing a structural system to support our good teachers and terminate our poor teachers is being demanded.  Unions are scrutinized for supporting and saving poor teachers.  Currently, district budgets are stretched thin and financial support is tight.  Teacher salaries and benefits constitute 54 percent of district budgets (U.S. Department of Education, 2009).  Senior teachers’ pay is obviously higher than teachers with less experience.  Proponents of getting-rid-of-seniority in teacher unions feel money could be saved by bringing in young teachers.  “Districts across the country are now re-thinking layoff strategies… seniority-based system certainly has advantages, it is hard to argue that it is a system in the best interest of student achievement” (Goldhaber & Theobald, 2010).  What does this have to do with merit pay?  Ranking teachers by seniority is often replaced with effectiveness of teacher; the effectiveness of the teacher is, often, determined by the teacher’s calculated value-added or students’ test scores. 

            The debate of ranking and evaluating teachers is not new.  It has gone on for several decades, which in itself is compelling.  So, how do we rank our teachers?  Test scores are one way, as mentioned earlier, and value-added.  These two merit pay based markers have their limitations.  However, they do show student growth, at least to certain extent. 

Nature of the Controversy

Pros

·         Americans value hard work and results, and our capitalist system hinges upon rewarding such results. Most professions offer bonuses and salary increases to exemplary employees. Why should teaching be the exception? The fact that a sloppy teacher and a dedicated teacher earn the same salary just doesn’t sit right with most people.

·         Incentivized teachers will work harder and produce better results. What motivation do teachers currently have to go above and beyond the job's basic requirements? The simple possibility of extra cash would most likely translate into smarter teaching and better results for our children.

·         Merit Pay programs will help recruit and retain the nation’s brightest minds. It’s the odd teacher who hasn’t considered leaving the classroom and entering the corporate workplace for the twin benefits of less hassle and more money potential. Particularly intelligent and effective teachers might reconsider leaving the profession if they felt that their extraordinary efforts were being recognized in their paychecks.

·         Teachers are already underpaid. Merit Pay would help address this injustice. Teaching is due for a renaissance of respect in this country. How better to reflect the esteemed way we feel about educators than through paying them more? And the highest performing teachers should be first in line for this financial recognition.

·         We are in the middle of a teaching shortage. Merit pay would inspire potential teachers to give the profession more consideration as a viable career choice, rather than a personal sacrifice for the higher good. By tying teaching salaries to performance, the profession would look more modern and credible, thus attracting young college graduates to the classroom.

·         With American schools in crisis, shouldn’t we be open to trying almost anything new in the hopes of making a change? If the old ways of running schools and motivating teachers aren’t working, perhaps it’s time to think outside of the box and try Merit Pay. In a time of crisis, no valid ideas should be quickly denied as possible solution.

Cons

·         Virtually everyone agrees that designing and monitoring a Merit Pay program would be a bureaucratic nightmare of almost epic proportions. Many major questions would have to be adequately answered before educators could even consider implementing Merit Pay for teachers. Such deliberations would inevitably take away from our real goal, which is to focus on the students and give them the best education possible.

·         Good will and cooperation between teachers will be compromised. In places that have previously tried variations of Merit Pay, the results have often been unpleasant and counter-productive competition between teachers. Where teachers once worked as a team and shared solutions cooperatively, Merit Pay can make teachers adopt a more “I’m out for myself only” attitude. This would be disastrous for our students, no doubt.

·         Success is difficult, if not impossible, to define and measure. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has already proven how the various unleveled playing fields in the American education system inherently set up a wide variety of standards and expectations. Consider the diverse needs of English Language Learners, Special Education Students, and low income neighborhoods, and you’ll see why it would be opening a messy can of worms to define standards of success for American schools when the stakes are cash in the pockets of real teachers.

·         Opponents to Merit Pay argue that a better solution to the current educational crisis is to pay all teachers more. Rather than design and regulate a messy Merit Pay program, why not simply pay teachers what they are already worth?

·         High-stakes Merit Pay systems would inevitably encourage dishonesty and corruption. Educators would be financially motivated to lie about testing and results. Teachers might have legitimate suspicions of principal favoritism. Complaints and lawsuits would abound. Again, all of these messy morality issues serve only to distract from the needs of our students who simply need our energies and attentions to learn to read and success in the world.