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Problems aside, doesn’t your call for a simple analysis of quality thinking sans research come to the exact opposite conclusion on merit pay than you do? I think one of the difficulties of arguing against individual merit pay is that it’s very hard to accept research that uses complex methodology to create the opposite conclusion that’s easily observed. Sometimes, this is precisely what we have to do (quantum mechanics, for instance), but sometimes all these results do is frustrate and add to a nagging feeling that the research isn’t quite up to snuff yet.

I don’t think any person when you pull them off the street would say that people should not be evaluated for the quality of their work and rewarded for doing a good job. I think they’d also agree that if they are perpetually poor performers, they should lose their job. I also imagine that they would all agree this is even more important when these employees are being paid with tax payer dollars.

Not to fall for argumentum ad populum, but it seems to me like research is needed for the details of how we can fairly go about assessing teachers’ performances, since there is so much concern in professionalizing school leaders to make these choices on their own (not sure where I stand on that). The issue here is what you point to– on the basis of the quality of thinking, it makes perfect sense that we should judge work performance in education just like in every other position someone might hold (and some fields do a better job than others). The research is demonstrating how hard it can be to objectively tie a number to a teacher, but that does not negate the quality of the thinking, nor does it suggest that the effort is not worthwhile.

By the way, I must apologize for not continuing our former conversation. I ran up against final papers and just didn’t have the time to address you as completely as your well-thought out posts deserved.

This is a common enough observation that I can’t remember who to credit, but we already have merit pay in pretty much all schools, with the proviso being that “merit” is defined in terms of characteristics that have nothing to do with student achievement (e.g., masters’ degrees).

Mr. Hoffman,

“Look hard” and “informed analysis” belaying the results of research to determine whether something is a good idea is still “simple” in my mind, though we’re defining “simple” differently. To me, “simple” analysis is analysis based as purely as possible on rational thought with as little background knowledge needed as necessary. This seems to be what you call for when you, correctly claim, that sometimes research is not needed to determine whether something is worth pursuing or a waste of time. If I’m mistaken… well then I’m mistaken.

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It is quite clear that money is not as strong a motivating factor for those who self-select teaching and that very modest bonuses are not going to change teachers’ actions. But there are several, very simple responses with varying important implications.

1) Many teachers in hard-to-staff schools with high enrollments of disadvantage students stink, by any and all possible measures. And teaching, as a profession, does not draw strongly from the top minds of our generation. Therefore, we don’t necessarily want to keep attracting the same teachers we have now into the profession. Part of the reason people go into other fields is not because they don’t value teaching, but in part because they don’t value the benefits of teaching high enough to counter act the very low salary and the lack of upward status mobility in the profession (through pay, promotion, etc). There is good reason why TFA is so successful. Two and out for most top students is viable, but a longer career in teaching at that pay with no upward motion seems terrible. I am hoping to teach in an ELT charter school next year in NYC, and even with the 10-15% increase in pay over traditional NYC public school teachers, I’ll be making less money, with a masters, than I would have if I worked directly after earning my bachelor’s in my field (chemistry). There’s a good reason there are shortages of teachers in some fields and to suggest that the people who end up in teaching are self-selected and not as interested in monetary benefit is not some deep analysis. However, it’s ridiculous to accept this status quo as the most efficient hiring system– many of the best teacher candidates won’t even put their name in the hat to potentially teach.

2) Considering the amount of money spent on other ill-advised policies, we could actually make bonuses VERY significant. I seem to remember some napkin-based calculations on the amount of money spent on Supplemental Education Services, a complete disaster of an NCLB policy, and figuring out that we could give 40-60k per teacher if we used SES allotments! That’s a mammoth incentive, the likes of which have not been tested. I’m not saying that we should spend this much, but what I am saying is that there is a cost-benefit analysis here were merit pay (or benefits) for actual teachers (or even hiring additional staff with that money to support teachers which is likely to be more effective both as an incentive and intervention but still is rewarding top teachers). Plus, it’s an example that the “small benefits for people not responsive” is not the paradigm we necessarily operate in.

3) The merit pay discussion is intrinsically linked to dismissal of low-performing teachers and performance evaluation in general. The real issue here is that those arguing against merit pay almost always do so in a fashion which suggests that teacher performance cannot and should not be evaluated. Take any fight against merit pay to its logical conclusion and you almost always end up with a mandate not to dare try and determine who is good at teaching and who is bad. Because the truth is, it is common sense to confer benefits to people you evaluate as doing better and detriments to those who are doing a poor job, potentially leading to termination. The argument against doing this almost always comes down to “don’t evaluate!” Sorry, that’s just not going to cut it. I don’t view merit pay as solely a carrot. It’s also a stick to remove the worst teachers (removing a teacher is currently a 6 figure investment on the part of a school district and with some districts giving tenure to 98% of those who are up for review, it’s not hard to see the toxic situation that develops).

It is ESSENTIAL to evaluate teachers, not just in a rewards/punishment paradigm but also to help teachers grow and improve. It’s the same thing we want for our students and its the same thing that people are subjected to in nearly every occupation in nearly every industry (and certainly the ones we point to as efficient and with good outcomes). However, just because we need evaluation to determine what kind of PD and supports are necessary and how a teacher can improve, it logically follows that we should use evaluations to inform decisions on how to treat different employees, and sometimes, when to fire one.

A) The reason they’re linked is they all require evaluation on the performance of teachers, the area that almost all critics of merit pay that I’ve read are most concerned with.
B) There are not “many options” from what I can tell. In many schools it’s teacher to department head or one of a few administrators and that’s it. Separate instructional leaders and mentors who receive additional pay is not necessarily the norm. In urban environments where moving from school to school does not mean you’re losing tenure and benefits, it’s easier to take these sort of roles, however, in many suburban and rural areas there are huge penalties associated with switching into a vacant position elsewhere that’s higher up, often for very modest pay increases. Some charters have demonstrated more differentiated roles for teachers and school leaders but this hasn’t trickled everywhere, from what I can tell. This kind of career ladder within a school or district that is awarded based on how well you do your job and how well you could do the next job is not universal.

Could you point me to teachers in traditional public schools under union contract who are making twice as much as teachers doing the exact same job as them for any other reason than length in the profession?
C) I didn’t mean to imply this was merit pay, rather, a clear example of how pay is a motivation for people who are NOT teaching but maybe SHOULD be teaching. With huge gaps in pay and without a clear career ladder that could later help make up for some of that gap, merit pay is and enticing method for some of these people. That’s what I’m hearing from friends who are recent graduates and grappled with this debate, some ending up in classrooms and some not.
D) You’re assuming that the merit pay goes to all kids and that everywhere has SES. Not everyone has SES, as I’m sure you know, and when SES kicks in, there is a percentage of Title I funds that have to be dedicated to it at that school (I think it’s 20%). If you take the 20% per kid it works out to something like 3.5k per student, I believe. If you assume that merit pay awards, say, the top 15% of teachers, that works out to about one teacher that each student sees, so about a class size worth of SES money can go to that teacher. Figuring an average class size of 25 (probably low) in schools failing to make AYP that have to institute SES, and you get over 10k for a teacher. There are ways to fudge it and make it more precise that I think raised the amount to 40k upon my first estimate, but now I’m working from memory to give you a sense of how the calculation could be done.
E) Once you’re evaluating teachers for dismissal, you’ll be identifying both the best and worst teachers. I imagine it’d be a political nightmare to ignore the information on who’s doing a good job while using the information on who is not doing a good job. I also think the opportunity loss here would be a nightmare.
F) I’ll use one of your constructions– merit pay is not the same as providing pay solely for increasing test scores, rather, it’s the notion that teachers who are evaluated as doing a good job should earn more money.

As for whether or not merit pay could be successful as an incentive, while there have been a few studies which demonstrate it does not alter behavior, I’d argue that there are very few systems that are actually using comprehensive evaluation and acting on that evaluation across the complete spectrum of decisions that can be informed from those evaluations. I think the best place to look right now would be at some of the charter’s with at-will employment and see how teachers respond there to higher starting salaries, the ability to negotiate raises independent of others in the building, and where data drives PD and decision making. I’m sure there are at least a few charters out there that are successfully using all of these methods to reach success and those fresh-slate, high-fidelity implementation scenarios are the ones I’d like to learn from.

All of these discussions go no where fast. Most people do not understand how complicated it is to teach. They have well-intentioned ideas that might work in some situations and not in others. The constant chatter about how successful TFA is also is ridiculous. In my experience, TFA candidates are not very successful in the classroom. I don’t know where the data comes from that assures us they do a great job, but being a mentor and a coach and having worked directly with TFA candidates in the classroom, I always felt bad for the kids. They were being taught by young, well-meaning young men and women who really didn’t know how to teach. If you look at NYC, where a large nuimberf of TFAers work, you can see that there has been no real improvement in test scores over the years. Mr. Hoffman is your typical bully. He wants to pick on teachers because we’re easy targets. He insists we have to be accountable. I don’t know any teacher who doesn’t take their job seriously or want to do the best they can for the kids in front of them. Teachers don’t work in a vacuum. Our work is contingent on lots of other factors, most importantly parents doing their job. No one ever talks about parents on this website. We’re probably afraid because most of our kids are of color and we don’t want to sound racist. I can tell you that parents make a huge difference in a child’s education. I can be the most prepared and well-trained teacher ever, but if parents are absent or don’t hold their children accountable, nothing I do is going to make a difference. Contrary to what Joel Klein thinks, a child’s home environment does make a difference . Wishing it not to make a difference, like wishing TFA to be a silver bullet, doesn’t make it so.

I incorrectly referred to the opinions of Jason Becker as being those of Mr. Hoffman in my reply earlier this morning. Apologies to Mr. Hoffman and any other readers.