“What’s Wrong With Merit Pay”
Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier write an insightful blog for Education Week called Bridging Differences. They write their posts in the form of letters back and forth to each other, arguing like educated, rational humans about topics in education.
Recently up was a letter from Diane Ravitch to Deborah Meier about merit pay for teachers: What’s Wrong With Merit Pay. Ravitch had some excellent points about the teacher compensation reform issue, most of which are along the same lines as my own view on the subject, but she adds a whole extra layer of nougat-y goodness to the argument against merit pay:
There are several reasons why it is a bad idea to pay teachers extra for raising student test scores:
*First, it will create an incentive for teachers to teach only what is on the tests of reading and math. This will narrow the curriculum to only the subjects tested.
*Second, it will encourage not only teaching to the test, but gaming the system (by such mechanisms as excluding low-performing students) and outright cheating.
*Third, it ignores a wealth of studies that show that student test scores are subject to statistical errors, measurement errors, and random errors, and that the “noise” in these scores is multiplied when used to make high-stakes personnel decisions.
*Fourth, it ignores the fact that most teachers in a school are not eligible for “merit” bonuses, only those who teach reading and math and only those for whom scores can be obtained in a previous year.
*It ignores the fact that many factors play a role in student test scores, including student ability, student motivation, family support (or lack thereof), the weather, distractions on testing day, etc.
*It ignores the fact that tests must be given at the beginning and the end of the year, not mid-year as is now the practice in many states. Otherwise, which teacher gets “credit,” and a bonus for score gains, the one who taught the student in the spring of the previous year or the one who taught her in the fall?
Posted by Alexa Harrington
image credit: max klingensmith
Quite apart from the educational and teaching aspects of merit pay, the management difficulty with merit pay fundamentally resides in the matter of defining what is the merit and how is it to be measured? Both aspects are evident in the quotation as well as indication of absence of recognition of same. In between the two is the rather equally difficult problem of establishing the cause of the effect since that is what needs to be recognized.
We are thus presented with three difficulties with making merit pay meaningful and beneficial. (1) What is the merit – benefit – that we wish to reward? (2) What is the cause of this effect? (3) How do we quantifiably measure this cause so as to reward it in a linear comprehensable manner?
I should also offer the iobservation that what is bemoaned in the quote is the substitution of training for education, at least to my amateur observation.
These are all fair indictments, but these are merely problems with merit pay based entirely on test results. It seems entirely possible to design a merit pay system based on an evaluation of several measurable factors, such as extracurricular involvement, parent communication, and student feedback.
My own school, for instance, uses a bonus structure based on four separate criteria, only one of which is testing.
The idea of using test scores to determine merit pay is ludicrous. (And I say this even though my students have done very well overall on their OATs.)But should this really be the basis of determining excellent teachers? We’ve all seen excellent teachers. Did any of you go back to see how their students did on their state tests to make that determination? Great teachers are ones who make learning exciting and motivate their children. They are on-going learners themselves, always willing to try out new teaching strategies in their classrooms. They effectively evaluate student performance and intervene as needed. They are professional and prompt in communications with their parents and collaborate and cooperate with their fellow teachers. They work to align the curriculum with their state standards and benchmarks. Their primary goal is to push their students to achieve all the time, not just on state tests.
I think we should worry about teachers teaching directly to the tests if that is what will determine merit pay. There is so much more to teaching children than this. I also am concerned that we will overlook all of the factors over which teachers have no control that so drastically affect student performance on these tests. I hate the whole idea behind merit pay because of the difficulty in fairly and adequately evaluating teachers, but I cringe at the possibility of linking merit pay to test results. They reflect student performance not teacher performance. It’s just a bad idea.