My good friend just wrote about merit pay for teachers here, inspiring me to muse on the topic as well.
A new report from the nonpartisan Economics Policy Institute (EPI) argues strongly against tying teacher pay to test scores, highlighting two major fallacies championed by the pro-merit pay camp:
1. Merit pay is widespread in the private sector. Well, no, it's not. It's really only prevalent in the sorts of fields, like finance, real estate, and sales, that helped to generate the global economic crisis.
2. Merit pay has positive consequences for workers. Again, this argument is erroneous. Negative consequences are the result in many, many cases where workers are trying to meet quotas -- think about cops trying to meet monthly quotas, or the case in which bus drivers in Santiago, Chile were paid according to how many passengers they picked up. What happened? A spike in bus crashes, as bus drivers sped around the city trying to increase their passenger load.
Esther Wojcicki, a California English teacher and the mother of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, writes on The Huffington Post that teachers do need incentives, but that these incentives are far different from what our policymakers (like Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee) are focused on. Citing research by Daniel Pink, she writes that that teachers are far more motivated to work their hardest when they are "aligned with the purpose of the job," enjoy some "autonomy," and receive "support in gaining mastery" of their job."
The teachers I work with are incredibly purpose-driven. If anything, the types of strategies that get us down and drive us to apathy are exactly those our administrators employ in an effort to raise test scores -- stop teaching your content in a creative way and start teaching high-stakes testing strategies in a tedious, often scripted way. I already work pretty hard, but I would love more respect, more autonomy, and more support. I can imagine my classroom culture and students' capacity to learn would only improve. Maybe, in time, test scores would as well.
via GOOD
I agree completely. I recently left teaching after 10+ years. My decision had little to do with money, but more to do with the fact that I knew how to do a good job but couldn't. I knew the best way to get my students to learn was to differentiate, but was given no time to do so. I knew that working with small groups targeting specific student needs was a good way to help students learn, but I couldn't manage that alone with my 32 4th graders. The very best teaching I did was in the last semester I taught when I wasn't focused on raising test scores or producing something within the confines of the very specific curriculum we were directed to teach. It was a great way to go out, and maybe if I'd had more autonomy and support throughout I never would have left.
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