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Open Thread on Merit-Based Pay

Over at Nicole Brown’s blog, Post-Hip Chick, I was taking part in a discussion on Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposal to make teacher pay based on merit instead of seniority. Her comments system uses Haloscan, which has a character limit and doesn’t have a “Preview” button, and a couple of comments (including one of hers) got truncated.

I know how it feels to lose a piece of writing (even a comment), so I offered to host further discussion here at my blog.

Let me recount the discussion for easier reference. Nicole, who is an 8th-grade teacher, started it off with a very angry rant about the proposal, particularly on how there are so many other bigger problems with our educational system and that it is totally unfair to blame all of it on the teachers.

I commented, “That there are other problems of higher priority doesn’t mean that merit-based pay is a bad idea.”

loody responded:

sure it does…if the merit based pay is based on some preconceived standard of “performance” that it is impossible for most students (and therefore teachers) to meet because of the issues so beautifully articulated here

And then I said, “The rationale behind merit-based pay is to change incentives, and not to set unreachable targets. Incentives matter.”

cory then replied:

That’s great, but if the targets are already unreachable, than no amount of motivation through incentives will make a difference. It’s empty rhetoric, but rhetoric that gets the public all fired up and serves to distract them from the source of the many problems facing education. And most of these are problems that teachers can do NOTHING about.

I responded:

The obvious solution is to not have targets. Just have incentives. Reward better teaching with better pay, and vice versa. Ideally you also increase this pay enough to attract talent, but that’s probably not going to happen in a budget crunch.

No, of course, this doesn’t fix everything, but just because improving the environment doesn’t have anything to do with the War on Terror doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Judge each policy proposal on its own merits.

Nicole (the blogger) then said:

the problem, fling93, is that if you are not in education, you would have a hard time believing that they would mandate something like this by making everyone score the same on a test. you, a reasonable person, would think that teachers would be critiqued on something like growth. sadly, this is not necessarily the case, and anyone who has spent time working in the public schools (especially disadvantaged ones) knows that what is common sense is often the opposite of what is mandated. also, if it is based on something like a principal’s review of your teaching, that can also be skewed. you honestly cannot believe some of the people who make it into administration (i had a principal last year who was charged with hitting students- i am not joking- and the district couldn’t prove it and he is still there). if he was reviewing me, he could say i was doing a bad job because i wasn’t using some insane behavior plan like he does. then, if he is switched to another school, i have to

This was one of the comments that was apparently cut off.

Trev then entered the discussion with:

Is it me, or are those who make education policy just plain stupid?

Great idea - penalize teachers who are working in disadvantaged schools and tell them “you suck”, because, y’know, ithey don’t already have challenges to cope with and don’t have feelings of occasional inadequacy and frustration springing from the mountain of problems they are trying to solve. Maybe as a next step, after you’ve told them how bad they are and how they don’t deserve more money, put them on a probationary track if they don’t improve their students’ performance up to the one-size-fits-all standards you’ve set. After all, if they suck so badly, they deserve to be fired eventually. Heaven knows there’s a line around the block of people waiting to take such easy, low-stress, and high-paying jobs.

Maybe while we’re at it, we should consider taking money away from schools that suck, and giving that money to the good schools (easily recognized by the large and well-kept houses around them). Because, y’know, lots of money is what makes school crappy. Taking away some of this money will surely fix the problem.

I could get philosophical about how there is an element in society with a vested interest in ensuring that a certain percentile of the population remain undereducated and underpriviledged… how if everyone were given truly equal opportunities, society would come crashing down. Someone needs to aspire to be (or settle for being) a gas jockey, sanitation worker, video rental clerk, or telemarketer as their life-long career.

Or perhaps Arnold is interested in filling one of these rewarding, high-paying positions when he’s done his present gig?

My response was:

Saying that merit-based pay can be implemented badly is hardly the same as saying merit-based pay is a bad idea — let alone a worse idea than seniority-based pay.

There certainly is an element with a vested interest in maintaining inequality. And I also believe Bush is part of that element, as his whole life was defined by privilege and he obviously does not have the abilities required to excel without those advantages.

But again, there is also a significant portion of our society that believes in a level and fair playing field. And that includes a strong conservative contingent, as free market mechanisms thrive on increased competition. It’s my impression that Arnold is part of this, but of course, I could be wrong.

Kenneth then jumped in with:

I’ll grant that thinking changing the teachers’ compensation system will fix education system shortcomings is naive at best and insulting at worst. I don’t, however, think the motives behind the proposal are to encourage current teachers to do a better job.

I expect it’s aimed at busting some of the dis-incentives union hierarchies can create for would be teachers: “Even if I’m great, I won’t make decent money till I’m 32. I’ll go be a trial lawyer instead.” I exaggerate, but you get my drift: Systems should encourage folks to excel, not just refrain from quitting.

When I heard about the proposal, I thought it was an opportunity for great teachers to get rewarded, especially those working with disadvantaged kids.

How will performance be measured? The only fair way to do it, as I see it, is to measure the class performance before the teacher, and after. So if kids come in reading grade 4 (as measured end of previous year), and they leave on grade 5.5 (as measu

And apparently his comment got cut off as well (Kenneth or Nicole, if you happen to have a copy of what you originally wrote, send it to me, and I can edit the above to include it).

Anyway, that’s where the conversation is at this point. Commenters from Nicole’s blog and anybody else interested in the topic are welcome to voice their thoughts here.

Update 1/28/05

In the interest of completeness and for easy reference, here are a couple other comments from Post-Hip Chick.

From Polski3:

So, is it an administrator who gets to place the students where he/she wants them……like to their buddies? Merit pay will probably never come to be, You other teachers out there should not worry about it. IF you are a high school teacher, watch out, NCLB is steamrolling your way.

By the way, just what schools did Arnold and Maria’s kids attend?

From M.B.S.:

I’m with you, Sister! And I loved reading your thoughts—very well put, especially the go to Mexico just in case part.

Still, I wonder if there is a way (say, if standardized testing was removed from the equation or only given 10 percent consideration) if some teachers could be rewarded based on merit.

Of course, that would require peer evaluations (backstabbing, anyone?) and even more emphasis on administrative evaluations (a.k.a. playing favorites) and all sorts of other nonsense.

But if a teacher gets award after award and is obviously doing a shit-hot job, shouldn’t she get more than a handshake and a pat on the back?

Nevermind. I just talked myself out of it. You’d be that teacher, the one with the fat paycheck, and all the other teachers would despise you from envy. Or they’d wait until you had one bad day or made one wrong move and they’d gloat in sticking your nose in it for eternity.

You’re right. Merit-based pay sucks. The agony!

Can’t everyone just make more money overall? Then the really bad teachers would get elbowed out due to competiton.

Hey, Gov., you do capitalism, right?

And from me again:

How to assess merit is an issue for all fields. For example, software engineering. Should merit be assessed by your boss, your peers, number of lines of code, number of bugs fixed? All of these are imperfect at best.

But I think you still get a result that’s fairer than seniority. Of course, this is a field where bosses are also paid on merit, and plus, I can always quit a company that I think is unfair and join a different company. I dunno if that’s true for education.

And I do plan to eventually organize and expand my thoughts in a future post, as I was intentionally terse as to not exceed Haloscan’s comment limit.