I recently wrote a diary titled "The hypocrisy of "Teachers Against Merit Pay". I must admit that title is inflammatory, but that is what I set out to demonstrate using some simple comparisons between teacher evaluation , student's test driven academic careers along side the wider world of performance incentives in the private sector. Teachers have strong feelings about the matter, but that did not excuse the unrelenting personal attacks from teachers and their supporters.
I debate issues because I have a point of view and a seek to learn more about it from those who support and oppose those views. In between the accusations of bias due to bad school experiences and the pretentious dismissal of my opinions as a result of my minimal time in front of a classroom, there was some actual debate.
I am not certain of the specific method by which merit pay should be implemented, but I do think standardized testing ought be apart of it. Those who assume I must know the exact bonus formula for a given school system or have the statistical expertise to formulate normalization to compensate for underprivileged areas and those with disabilities have little more creditability than the obstructionist conservatives in the healthcare debate who jumped at every conceivable challenge to stifle reform.
The specific formula need not be fair to every teacher. Life is not a fair contest, at times different people have advantages over others. Be it the free market, love, work just to name a few examples. One business might start out with far more capital due to special relationships, another may begin in a superior location. You can affect these variables but they are not entirely within your control. Teachers cannot expect the system to make every teacher's burden identical in seeking a performance bonus. That is simply impossible. Children are people and are taught by people. The variation between them is as abundant as the human faces on earth.
Test with all their flaws are apart of life, and we use them to evaluate some of our most important professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and civil servants. Test cannot be labeled "ineffective" without degrading validity of the entire education system along with that of many other nations. I don't think we need to prove test can evaluate knowledge of a given subject even if test are not all created equal and cannot evaluate all subjects with identical efficacy.
So that said, I will read, write, copy, paste my way through the rest of this diary. I will try to present good arguments to counter my own, so those against merit pay will have more to fight with other than "I've been a teacher since the CIVIL WAR!".
President Obama's support for Merit Pay is well known. This WSJ article is evidence of that.
"Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though we know it can make a difference in the classroom," -Barak Obama in front of U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
To counter my argument that schools need to set the goal of teaching all students regardless of parental involvement you have this quote.
"Government…cannot turn off the TV or put away the video games. Teachers, no matter how dedicated or effective, cannot make sure your child leaves for school on time and does their homework when they get back at night. These are things only a parent can do," -Barack Obama
Oddly enough I feel this reinforces my desire to see schools pick up the slack, because if the government can't make parents do it then there is no reason to assume parents will. Others may see this as an acknowledgment that a lack of parental involvement is the real source of failure and teachers can't possibly compensate for it.
Obama supports Merit Pay so no Redtate or Troll comments necessary. Then again you already know that. You should refrain from calling people trolls simply because they don't agree with you, or insist on discussing an issue that is controversial. To be honest I like a good debate.
It is hard for me to find proof that merit pay works while excluding anything from the right. Liberals have long rejected Merit Pay, and teachers unions have been all too effective at stopping it until recently. The data is thus limited, but a few trials have taken place. Right wing think tanks are not all bad. I listen to conservatives all the time, sometimes they even make sense. I still prefer wealth redistribution, to plutocracy. I don't feel every right wing idea is illegitimate or the whole conservative mind set is born of Satan. I feel liberals and conservatives are in an eternal struggle to balance our society. Either extreme will lead to ruin. In the spirit of bipartisan collaboration I will let them lend me hand. It is a market style solution after all if they don't support it who would?
Failure of Merit Pay:
Texas Merit-Pay Pilot Failed to Boost Student Scores, Study Says
This link points to an article off an education blog.
Piloted between the 2005-06 and the 2008-09 school years, the now-defunct Governor's Educator Excellence Grants, or GEEG, program distributed more than $10 million a year in federal grants to 99 Texas schools that managed to turn in high scores on state tests despite enrolling large numbers of students from low-income families. The program differed from some other merit-pay schemes, though, because it required schools to involve teachers in designing the performance-incentive plans for their own schools.
As you can see it is a teacher designed plan. It rewarded whole schools and not individual teachers. This is an example of collective Merit Pay. Egalitarian payment is the traditional reimbursement for teachers and I don't think this stimulates a highly competitive atmosphere. I don't want teachers trying to inhibit the success of others but I do want them to have individual pride and monetary benefits for their accomplishments.
The teacher-designed plans also turned out to be highly egalitarian: 78 percent of the teachers in the bonus-eligible schools got an award. That percentage even included some teachers who had not worked at the same school the year before.
Even a modest $3,000 bonus was enough of an incentive to dramatically reduce teacher turnover at the schools involved, the researchers found. Still, there's no clear evidence on whether the program is having an impact on student achievement, according to the report, and that, of course, is the bottom line.
The reduction in turnover probably has as much to do with the team atmosphere the collective incentives fostered, more so than the small increase in pay. That is my opinion, I could support a hybrid structure but placing at least half the incentive in the hands of the individual.
Success of Merit Pay:
Heartland.org The Merit of Merit Pay ProgramsHeartland.org The Merit of Merit Pay Programs Right Wing Source
As with many education reforms, the devil is in the details. While academic research on the topic has been surprisingly sparse, some well-designed attempts, such as David Figlio and Lawrence Kenny's large-scale 2006 study, have found individual teacher incentives are positively associated with student gains.
Earlier this year, a pilot program in Arkansas's Little Rock School District provided researchers an opportunity to discover the effects of merit pay.
In the Little Rock program, teachers could earn a bonus worth up to $11,000, and participating schools received more than $200,000 in total performance bonuses for the 2005-06 school year. According to a research team led by Gary Ritter and Joshua Barnett at the University of Arkansas's Department of Education Reform, those bonuses led to significantly greater learning gains than had been achieved by the same students prior to the program, as well as by students at comparable schools.
Students in schools where the program operated in 2005-06 showed an improvement of 3.5 Normal Curve Equivalent points--a gain of nearly 7 percentile points for the average student.
One reoccuring theme in my reading is the cancelation of a lot of pilot programs due to teachers unions. I personally don't like the influence of teachers unions on reforms like this. To much of the rhetoric seems like thinly veiled lobbying for self interest, not to mention the huge obstruction they have been in education reform. My preception of the teachers unions is through New York City colored glasses, so I probally should not indite the whole lot of them. I am sure some places need a teachers union, others need to get them under control. I don't support the NEA's efforts against merit pay and charter schools. In my browsing I read NEA membership was down by 20,000. I would assume due to layoffs. I can't help but assume they are one of the reasons reform always gets shut down. What is wrong with trying new things? I have not been a student in public school for well over a decade and it's still as dysfunctional as ever. I am sure there are self serving special interest groups working non stop to protect their people from the evil DUNCAN reform machine. I am of the opinion, if it is broke FIX IT!
I will do some more reasearch for future diaries. The under performance of public schools has always been my concern since I was a student. I think most of my teachers were great, but quite a few could have been replaced by a series of power point presentations and video clips. The high point of my disatisfaction was when I asked my high school english teacher to assign us a reasearch paper. She refused because she did not feel like grading them. I thought it was odd that I had several reasearch papers in primary school and none assigned in 4 years of high school. I was not a great student, but I knew I was missing out on something important. Merit pay would not solve that problem, but this anecdote demonstrates the levels of apathy of some in the teaching community. By the way that english class had about 50-75% of students in attendence so class size was not the problem. We are talking about grading about 10 papers.
We also had a narcoleptic history teacher that should have been out on disability. He would hand out assignments and nod off. That kind of stuff causes teens to become discouraged and drop out. At graduation I could see the results of our schools lackadaisical approach. Beyond the mere 50% that graduated in 4 years the there were 3-4 times as many red graduation gowns as there were blue. The boys wore blue. It would seem like I overcame a great struggle, when in fact I was just one of the few boys who kept from falling into despair. I know so many others who had more than enough brains and talent to do well in an environment that encouraged achievement beyond mere lip service.
The older generations must understand the status quo is bad. These kids are the future and we should not just drop them off the assembly line as defective units. I was told once by a teacher that they decide on the number of prisons to build by third grade test results. This urban legend was fact checked by the Baltimore Sun. They found no evidence of it taking place. Even if not true, that would probably be pretty effective since it feeds into the drop out rate. When you can't read in the third grade your life is damn near ruined. Nobody will come to save you. Your parents have proven thus far ineffectual. These parents will not be replaced and schools will simply herd you through the system until they are no longer responsible.
This is why I am pushing for Merit Pay. This is what I'm upset about and certainly not because some mean teacher did not let me have my way . In fact my best teachers never let me have my way when it came to getting my work up to standard and I am a better person for it. Really I only had two such teachers out of dozens. I hope proponents and opponents of Merit Pay can have a civil discussion like the adult role models we suppose to be.
Some reference for the Poll:
Paying students for performance has been tried in a Harvard study. They spent $6.3 million dollars to pay 18,000 students for attendance, reading books and good grades. The attendance went up and books were read but the test scores did not because kids didn't know how to improve that.