There are many reasons to exam merit pay both for ...

2010-02-22T14:18:55.508-05:00

There are many reasons to exam merit pay both for its potential success and potential failure. I thought it would be helpful to point out a couple of the ideas that make merit-pay compelling that are less suspicious than teachers having some hidden greatness that needs to be incentivized.

1) Recruiting. The people with some of the best qualities of a great teacher (content knowledge, adaptability, great leadership skills, etc) will never view teaching as a good "match" for their skills. Whether we like it or not, when choosing a profession, the ability to maximize pay and benefits is an important driver of decision-making. The current wage paradigm in education provides little, if any, tangible wage incentives for someone to be a top-notch teacher. Therefore, if I know I'm likely to be a great teacher, I know that I could not extract greater benefit from the education system than someone who is mediocre at their jobs. Unfortunately for those of us interested in education, as someone with the potential to be a top-notch educator who would receive no reward, I recognize that my skills and talents would be recognized and rewarded in other industries and therefore view them as better matches for me. Perhaps even worse, someone without the skills to be a top-notch teacher (or top-notch employee in some other field with an overlap in required skills), I'm likely to find education very attractive and benefit maximizing. I'm not going to be able to derive additional benefits due to performance, so entering an industry which will reward me based on other factors is highly advantageous.

One way that policy makers have tried to address this issue is by establishing a more functional career ladder/pipeline so that exceptional teachers are rewarded through promotion. Whether this is successful or not is a matter of some debate.

2) Resource efficiency. Education is funded through public streams. It's not a business that can depend on ever-growing profits to keep increasing investment and building better infrastructure. If I'm not using performance to help determine pay, I'm far more likely to be supplying a higher wage to teachers than required to achieve the same output. In a world of limited funds, being able to recover money being spent in any inefficiency to put toward producing better outcomes is crucial. In education, where 70-80% of all money is going to the wages of school personnel, if even a small number of inefficiencies of wages can be eliminated, a significant pot of money can be recovered and directed more efficiently.

Teachers may not like it, but to be most effective and responsible with the limited funds taxpayers provide for education we need to have a better sense of what production we're getting for our dollars as well as gain a better understanding of how to most effectively use funds to drive student achievement.

And current teachers may be worried, but if they truly hope to be treated like professionals and to attract the best candidates for the profession, reward structures may go a long way in drawing out highly-qualified individuals from other fields.

Amen. I've visited a number of schools--most r...

2010-02-22T12:06:56.931-05:00

Amen. I've visited a number of schools--most recently Viers Mill Elementary in Silver Spring, MD--where any number of teachers and resource staff will share responsibility for a single student.

While it's true that the quality of instruction has a lot to do with a teacher's ability, so do the conditions in which they teach. Teaching conditions don't often come up in discussions of pay for performance.

I too would like to hear of some great journalism ...

2010-02-22T11:49:23.687-05:00

I too would like to hear of some great journalism on this topic.

I'd also like to point people to research by Jesse Rothstein on the topic. He looked at the fourth grade tests scores of fifth grade teachers' students in North Carolina to see if the teachers had any effect on their students' performance. They did. They shouldn't have, obviously. So that has huge implications as more and more places implement merit pay, especially based on value-added testing.

Unfortunately, Jesse is not available for the national seminar since he is working for the Council of Economic Advisers this year.

Comments on The Educated Reporter: Merit pay. (Again.)

There are many reasons to exam merit pay both for ...

Amen. I've visited a number of schools--most r...

I too would like to hear of some great journalism ...