The Chaff

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007

God, Save Us from Merit Pay for Teachers!

Matt Yglesias has a post about presidential campaigns discussing merit pay for teachers. My response to a comment there got really, really long, so I’m pasting it over here:

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.)

All of the “teacher accountability” programs that I have seen completely overlook the issue of student accountability. When I was teaching college, every single semester there was at least one student on my class list who never once showed up for class. One semester, I only saw 4 out of 10 students. I double-checked with the registrar; I called the students (three separate times) to let them know they were registered in the class; I called again and sent them letters two weeks before the final drop date. Not one of them dropped the class, and I had to turn in 6 Fs out of a class of 10.

Under every merit pay plan I’ve seen, I would have been slammed that semester for “poor performance” and “being a bad teacher”. (I did get some of that, actually, but it was just talk, at least.) It doesn’t matter if I’m the greatest teacher in the world if the students never set foot in my classroom. I do not have the ability or the authority to drag them into the classroom and set them in a “Clockwork Orange” type restraint that forces their eyes open so they must see what I’m doing. I haven’t yet seen a “teacher merit pay” plan that addresses the issue of student accountability.

The other problem is that the institutional definition of “success” may not actually apply to all students. My state considered merit-based funding for colleges some years back: colleges would receive funding based on the percentage of courses completed (vs dropped) and the percentage of programs completed. Fortunately, the students were able to see that this would hurt them more than the teachers:

• “At risk” students would simply not be accepted into colleges, because their greater chance of dropping out would dilute the “program completion” stats
• Changing majors would be much more difficult, because changing a major or switching degree programs counted against the program completion rate
• Likewise, auditing classes or taking classes just for fun would not be allowed because of the effect on the program completion rate
• Colleges would make it harder to withdraw from classes mid-semester (since a failing grade still counted as a “completion”), so student grade point averages would suffer greatly (This was especially of great concern to highly competitive pre-med and pre-law students who would drop classes they were getting a low B in to keep their grade point average above 3.5.)

Community colleges were going to be hit worst of all: their primary demographic is at risk students with volatile schedules and tenuous finances (working students, single parents, etc). It is not uncommon for community college students to drop out mid semester and come back in the future–and community colleges would be “punished” for catering to these students. The proposed program got enough negative response from all parties that it was eventually dropped.

As a parent, I’ve seen the stress the elementary and middle schools (and the school district) put on the students because of the “No Child Left Behind” bullshit. My daughter’s gifted class was told that every single one of them “had to” to score in the highest category of the TAKS test so the district can keep its rating up, even in the years the students are not required to take the test. She got strep throat the week before the test and left the doctor’s office in tears at the possibility that that she wouldn’t be well enough to take the test and terrified of the consequences. And the test was not required for her that year at all: they only made her class take it to make the district numbers “look good”.

My neighbor was told she couldn’t take her son out of school to visit his grandfather’s deathbed (literally) because he was taking the practice TAKS test and they could not release him. That’s not a mistake: it was the practice test–not even the real thing. The school is so afraid the numbers will go down and they will lose their funding that they counted a practice test as more important than a student’s dying relative. (If my boss ever pulled that bullshit with me, I would walk out the door and never look back. Wouldn’t you?)  

This is the kind of crap that performance-based funding always brings up: the second the schools have to focus on anything other than what’s best for the students, it all goes to hell. You can’t use a business model to fund schools or determine teacher pay, because schools are not businesses and shouldn’t be. How many businesses will take a loss because it’s better for the customers–and continue to do so? Businesses can’t afford to sacrifice their bottom line to make their customers’ lives a little easier: schools have to.

I am quite honestly very, very tired of all the political bullshit that targets our schools, as if politicians who have never handled a classroom know better than veteran teachers what works and what doesn’t.  I’m sick of preachers and idealogues putting their beliefs and “comfort levels” above the needs of my child and her classmates.  I’m done with people who think that “standing up to a union” is more important than “what’s best for the students” or who think platitudes and slogans improve education in any way, shape or form.  I’m especially done with people who worry about how the schools look on paper or the scores on this or that report more than they worry about the kids’ emotional and intellectual well-being.

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.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at 10:14 am and is filed under In Dorothy's World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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4 Responses to “God, Save Us from Merit Pay for Teachers!”

1. Joyful Alternative Says:
   November 1st, 2007 at 11:05 am

   Another unacceptable aspect of “merit pay” is who judges “merit.” In most such plans, the principal judges teachers’ merit. And who’s the principal? Usually a gym teacher or coach who went to night school, who, at best, judges merit on how quiet and orderly the classroom it.

   I rest my case.

2. Daniel Says:
   November 13th, 2007 at 3:17 am

   I couldn’t understand some parts of this article God, Save Us from Merit Pay for Teachers!, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.

3. On Merit « Professor Zero Says:
   November 19th, 2007 at 10:07 pm

   This post is brilliant. I would go on about why except that I must now figure out how to teach some basic material to some college students who due to NCLB, teacher merit pay, and who knows what else are now totally focused on getting points, an activity which they consider to be utterly divorced from and even antithetical to learning material.

   [...] Jump to Comments Read God, Save Us from Merit Pay for Teachers! by The Chaff. Via Unsane and [...]

4. Hal Says:
   December 21st, 2007 at 10:26 am

   The funny thing is, I disagree with your main point and agree with everything else! I totally agree that NCLB and its ridiculous emphasis on standardized testing are a total mistake. But why can’t good teachers be rewarded? I work for a big engineering firm. Every year my boss has a pot of money that goes towards raises. He ranks his employees and decides who gets a bigger than median raise and who gets a smaller one. Totally subjective? Sure, but if there’s an employee in the office who busts her ass and works long hours and weekends and takes the tough assignments, the boss knows this and rewards her! If the principal is really as bad as “Joyful Alternative” says, fire the principal!

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