Thursday, October 7, 2010

Pay Me More (but I won’t perform better)

Would I like to be paid more for what I do?  Who wouldn’t?  Incentives and bonuses are a staple of the corporate world.  Sell a certain amount of product, receive a bonus.  It is pretty clear-cut.  In the world of education, it is not that simple.  We are not selling or producing products in the traditional sense, and measuring results is more challenging. 

The current trend is to award merit-pay based on results of standardized tests.  There are numerous reasons why this might not be an equitable or valid system and many predictions as to how it could negatively affect collaboration and other positive aspects of a school community. 

But, the best reason that I could find against a system of merit pay is that, well, it does not work.

In a study performed by the National Center on Performance Initiatives at Vanderbilt University, researchers found just that: merit pay does not improve teacher performance as measured by student learning.  The report states:

The experiment was intended to test the notion that rewarding teachers for improved scores would cause scores to rise. It was up to participating teachers to decide what, if anything, they needed to do to raise student performance: participate in more professional development, seek coaching, collaborate with other teachers, or simply reflect on their practices. Thus, POINT was focused on the notion that a significant problem in American education is the absence of appropriate incentives, and that correcting the incentive structure would, in and of itself, constitute an effective intervention that improved student outcomes.  By and large, results did not confirm this hypothesis.

This study simplified the question to some extent, but it is good evidence that this top-down style of reform is not effective.  As far as pay goes, bonuses emphasize results too much.  If pay is to have a greater impact, it needs to be in a front-loaded system.

Pay teachers across the profession a higher salary.  In return, teachers will need to achieve a higher level of training to enter the profession.  Higher salaries will also attract more potential teachers. Furthermore, support teachers throughout their careers, not with monetary bonuses, but with fully funded professional development.  These development opportunities will not only improve student learning, but will support beginning teachers in their critical early years.

Frontload pay increases and up the ante on what it means to be an education professional – that is systematic change that will increase student learning.  As for me, it may be too late to benefit from such training, but I won’t stop trying to improve and I won’t stop trying to reclaim public education!


No comments:

Post a Comment