Merit Pay: So What?

Readers have probably noticed that I'm favorably disposed to Barack Obama, but his modest embrace of merit pay schemes doesn't seem like a very good reason to be excited about his campaign even if you accept the premise (as I guess I do) that he's correct on the merits here. This simply isn't much of a federal issue. Presidential primary campaign talk about teachers is always going to be dominated by efforts to court union support precisely because education policy is such a tiny proportion of what a president actually does.

If Ruth Marcus genuinely wants to promote some kind of education reform initiatives -- rather than dreaming up reasons to carp about Democrats -- she should find some state-level politicians who actually make the bulk of the education policy and give them some backup in efforts to buck entrenched interests.

Photo by Flickr user Allison Harger used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

Presidential primary campaign talk about teachers is always going to be dominated by efforts to court union support precisely because education policy is such a tiny proportion of what a president actually does

Not sure why it follows from the limited federal role in US education that presidential primary campaign talk should be focused on unions rather than on criticising them. The limits would seem to make it a relatively low-cost form of being critical of entrenched interests.

Posted by otto | July 11, 2007 8:28 AM

The punditocracy couldn't care less about the merits of merit pay. But they just love to see Democrats distance themselves from Democratic interest groups, as a test of their independence. It's a theme that never gets old for them.

And I agree, of course, that there's not much actual distancing going on here, but that's probably the best of all possible worlds. You draw the accolades of the media without actually alienating any Democrats.

Posted by Steve | July 11, 2007 8:29 AM

Yeah, this is mostly pointless from a policy standpoint but is smart optics politically. You have to win elections to make any real policy changes, so if this bit of stagecraft convinces a few independents to vote for Obama assuming he becomes the nominee, it can't hurt.

Posted by Ron | July 11, 2007 8:42 AM

You have to win elections to make any real policy changes, so if this bit of stagecraft convinces a few independents to vote for Obama assuming he becomes the nominee, it can't hurt.

I find it hard to believe that independents - who overwhelmingly consist of low information voters who make up their minds within the last stages of the campaign - are really going to be swayed one way or another by the minutiae of education policy. What will convey Obama's (or Edwards's or Clinton's) "independence" will be how they deliver their speeches, the framing of their message, how they appear on camera, etc. Policy has a relatively limited role in affecting politics. So let's leave the talk of "optics" to an area where it actually matters and consider the policies on their merits.

Posted by Christmas | July 11, 2007 8:59 AM

matt santos won the nomination despite pissing off the teacher's unions with his merit pay proposals....

Posted by dude | July 11, 2007 9:15 AM

Obama couldn't leave the union busting to Hillary!

Posted by Rob | July 11, 2007 9:26 AM

matt santos won the nomination despite pissing off the teacher's unions with his merit pay proposals....

And President Thomas Whitmore helped fight off an alien invasion.

Posted by Laugher | July 11, 2007 9:27 AM

"Obama couldn't leave the union busting to Hillary!"

Heh.

Coke vs Pepsi...

-----

Seriously though, if we don't take advantage of 2008 to break the long cycle where Republicans nominate conservatives and Democrats nominate moderates, there's really something wrong with the Democratic Party.

The stars are never going to be better aligned for putting a progressive in the White House...

Posted by Petey | July 11, 2007 9:34 AM

Criticizing teachers is always a winner, isn't it? They make a great whipping boy.

Posted by Susan S | July 11, 2007 9:52 AM

Dear Matt,

Every now and then you have your head up your ass. Obama's triangulating again... maybe he'll support vouchers, too! What kind of asshole scores points at his family's expense? How about merit pay for soldiers and policemen? Maybe Obama can triangulate some more by admonishing America's impoverished underachieving kids to get off their lazy asses and start reading the Atlantic and quit listening to all that hip-hop!

The future belongs to progressives. Obama's regressive rhetoric (and your support of it) belongs to clueless republican losers. Hope you re-consider your thinking about merit pay for teachers soon.

Posted by kennyp | July 11, 2007 9:56 AM

Merit pay is a bad idea. Obama is way off on this one. There are many studies and educational thinkers, such as Alfie Kohn, that suggest that merit pay and other forms of monetary rewards are actually demotivators, and do not provide any evidence rewards motivate people to do a better job. Rewards such as merit pay will acually discourage free thought, innovative ideas and new approaches to learning out of fear that their "merit pay" may suffer.

Posted by Jeff | July 11, 2007 9:56 AM

Given the mess of NCLB, I don't see why this isn't a perfectly reasonable topic for presidential candidates to debate.

Asking for merit pay isn't necessarily criticizing teachers. My understanding is that in states that have adopted this, support from teachers has increased. That's not a bad thing.

Posted by ProfD | July 11, 2007 10:01 AM

A quick review of how the Bush II administration has used merit pay should make the idea go away, but it won't, because rich people need to believe that class isn't the issue in education. Merit pay is just right for that -- it's those lazy teachers' fault.

Posted by david | July 11, 2007 10:03 AM

I have to admit some skepticism. You've repeatedly highlighted studies showing that poor performance in school is essentially a direct result of inequality. The rich do better and the poor do worse -- no matter what.

Linking pay to test performance doesn't seem likely to reverse that trend, but it might well serve as yet another reason to "teach to the test" and is very likely to feel like pointless and cruel punishment to those who don't get any, often for the perfectly legitimate reason that there really isn't much they can do. These are not people who need punishment.

The underlying logic of merit pay seems perfectly intuitive, of course, I'm just not sure it would work out.

Posted by Mike Meginnis | July 11, 2007 10:06 AM

The problem with backing merit pay proposals of any kind is that it assumes that the education system would work better if only the teachers could be induced to try a little harder. The teachers are doing all they can. We need other solutions.

Posted by Anaxamander | July 11, 2007 10:30 AM

Firstly, having been there to listen to Obama's speech, it was a very small portion of a speech that was largly pleasing to the audience.

NEA's official policy on merit pay is linking pay to a teacher's evaluation or student performance is inappropriate. However, what people must understand is that local collective bargaining agreements are where the rubber meets the road. The NEA determines policy based on the vote of it's 8000+ delegates at the annual representative assembly but doesn't actually dictate collective bargaining. In that vein, many local associations have negotiated some form of pay for performance on their own, outside of NEA policy.

There are a lot of problems with merit pay. First, we know that nominal student performance is highly linked to socio-economic status. There is a movement, however, to measure a student's progress. In other words, tracking a student's performance throughout their career and measure growth against a cohort of similar students statewide. This idea has promise, but its reliability is questioned by some. For instance, is a "year's worth of academic progress" the same for low achieving kids as it is for high achieving kids? There is evidence that both groups assimilate knowledge at different rates.

Second, linking pay to student test scores is problematic even beyond the "teaching to the test" argument. Generally, No Child Left Behind mandates testing in Math and Reading from grades 4-8. If you give merit pay based on performance, where do the art and music teachers come in? Do they get "left behind" in a merit pay scheme? Such a scheme has the real potential to divide a school. I am a math teacher, but I have no doubt that the atmosphere in my classroom is dependant upon everybody doing their job, from the principal to the lunch lady.

Finally, what problem is merit pay trying to solve? Let's do a thought experiment - in a conservative dream world, we rid the school systems of tenure and institute a rigorous merit pay system. Would that close the achievement gap?
Given that at least half of the achievement gap is determined before a child steps into kindergarten I know my answer to that question.

Posted by Mark | July 11, 2007 10:43 AM

I agree with Marcus that this autocratic rule of America by public school teachers has got to stop.

Seriously, though, what about the implicit "merit pay," where rich school districts can outbid poor ones for teachers? Why just have it for inner city school districts? What you need is a system where it's worthwhile to teach in poor areas, not just in terms of the paycheck but also in terms of having the resources necessary. Respect teachers as rational ends, not a monolithic interest group.

Posted by David B. | July 11, 2007 10:51 AM

The underlying logic of merit pay seems perfectly intuitive, of course, I'm just not sure it would work out.

It does seem intuitive until you consider that the teacher's pay depends on the students' performance. And since teachers do not have the direct control over students that, say, department managers do, it is very, very difficult to hold them accountable for things they can't control. (e.g., A department head can fire unproductive employees; a teacher cannot simply kick unproductive students out of the class.)

[Extremely long explanation with detailed examples excised and moved to my own blog.]

Teachers and schools need to focus on one thing and one thing only: what is best for the students. If there is any kind of merit-pay system that puts on the focus on doing right by the students, I have yet to see it.

Posted by Dorothy | July 11, 2007 11:21 AM

Having read the Ruth Marcus article, I don't actually see where Obama is endorsing "merit pay," which would entail making wage raises contingent upon performance (presumably with students' performance on standardized tests as the primary metric.) In fact, he explicitly says he isn't going to do this.

Making it easier to fire incompetent teachers, toughening the credential process, and raising teacher pay across the board, strikes me as a fairly standard neoliberal education reform proposal. It will undoubtedly piss off the unions, but it isn't terribly onerous.

The proposal does involve rewarding meritorious teachers and punishing crappy teachers. But it isn't the sort of large-scale "merit pay" scheme that has occasionally been proposed in conservative quarters, in which teachers go through an annual review process like cubicle drones. I think it's important to make that clear.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | July 11, 2007 11:30 AM

Forget merit pay -- look at class size.

Your school has problems with test scores? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you've got 25 or more kids in each class.

The more stress you have on families and kids outside of the classroom, the smaller the number of kids inside the classroom ought to be.

Posted by leo | July 11, 2007 11:41 AM

Despite your apparent persistent belief that education wonk competence is a social disease, I think you're wrong on this again. Education policy is a major federal issue during this first major round of upcoming NCLB changes, and it will be an even more major federal issue down the line as the Act gets increasingly demanding and the federal government will likely consider a new, replacement omnibus spending-leveraging education policy bill. Since the modern trend, for good or bad, has the president initiating most of these superstatute ideas, or at least having a major hand in drafting them, it's a presidential issue.

While current federal intervention is mostly outcome-oriented, there's no reason to think this will or should be the status quo in the future, especially as we get the chance to contrast various states' responses to NCLB and their effectiveness.

Posted by aeroman | July 11, 2007 11:41 AM

The approach that some private schools take towards "merit pay" is that extra stipends/bonuses are provided to teachers who serve on curriculum committees and take on other administrative functions. The teachers that get these extra positions are the ones deemed to most meritorious. So everyone's on the same pay scale for "teaching," but teachers are awarded new opportunities based on "merit" which just happen to result in extra money.

It's hard for me to conceive of how any federal initiatives could create this sort of setup in public schools.

Posted by Tyro | July 11, 2007 11:53 AM

I'm a 20+ year teacher who teaches troubled kids. If merit pay (as measured by test scores) will affect my salary, I will use my seniority to demand an assignment heavy in AP classes.

My kids' scores will be great, I will look great, I will get more cash. Perfect, no?

The only problem is that what I am really good at is helping kids who are at-risk stay in school and possibly go to college. There is no metric where what I do looks good, because the kids are so troubled when I get them.

But at least my paycheck will be fatter!

Merit pay isn't really about the kids anyway, is it?

Posted by nj teacher | July 11, 2007 12:26 PM

My wife's a teacher and could give you a long list of how things ought to be different in the schools. Merit pay for teachers probably wound not make the list.

The merit pay idea comes from people who think the only, or primary, motivator to get people to work harder and better is money. That's probably true for people who work on Wall Street and some people in the business world. But for most people, it's not. People who choose teaching generally are not thinking dollars and cents when they prepare and give a lesson to kids. I don't think we'd want them to.

Teachers generally would appreciate it a lot more if everyone stopped blaming them for all the problems in the schools. Teachers for the most part are very dedicated and do a good job. Many of them spend a good deal out of pocket for classroom expenses because district funding has been cut so drastically over the years. It's crazy how our school dollars actually are spent. We have a lot of administrators making more money than U.S. senators and the kids at my wife's school have to bring their own toilet paper from home because the schools can't afford it.

If you want to give teachers more money, that's fine. But before you give them merit pay, you gotta wonder if that would really do anything. (The data so far says no.)

Why not just give them a fund they can spend on teaching in the classroom? You'll find every dollar will be spent, and spent on the kids.

Posted by JJF | July 11, 2007 12:32 PM

A simple proposal to fix education in this country.

After 5 years give every public school teacher a Hummer/Humm-vee truck, commercial decommissioned military, whatever.

If teachers drove nicer cars than drug dealers, children would listen to them.

That said, education needs to be reformed, and merit pay is Obama's beginning negotiating pt. with the union, it doesn't mean its his end position.

Posted by feckless | July 11, 2007 2:12 PM

"Merit pay is a bad idea. Obama is way off on this one. There are many studies and educational thinkers, such as Alfie Kohn, that suggest that merit pay and other forms of monetary rewards are actually demotivators, and do not provide any evidence rewards motivate people to do a better job. Rewards such as merit pay will acually discourage free thought, innovative ideas and new approaches to learning out of fear that their "merit pay" may suffer.

Posted by Jeff"

I agree with Jeff. I've experienced the 'merit' pay scam.

It doesn't take long to figure out the criterea for receiving merit pay and emphasizing those criterea to the neglect of quality performance.

Sort of like the No Child Left Behind scam.

Posted by cal1942 | July 11, 2007 5:14 PM

Merit pay is an unrealistic idea. I spent 15 years in sales on commission before becoming a teacher. If money was a motivator for me to work harder or teacher better I would not have become a teacher. I could make more in sales.

I do what I do because I care about kids and their future. Instead of playing around with merit pay why not pay teachers what they are worth based on their education and conituing professional development.

Posted by Mathman6293 | July 11, 2007 8:25 PM