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Raise the Pay Grade
Perhaps we can look at higher education, where there are three criteria for assessing faculty: teaching effectiveness, professional contributions and service to the school or community.
Ohanian Comment: The author's desire to base merit pay on something besides test scores is commendable, but his assertion that university "merit pay" is fair and just and worthy is bogus. Just ask a few professors.
The author's assertion that "the concept of differentiated pay, based on performance and specialty, is common in most professions, but not in education — and that needs to change" suggests that the average CEO's pay of $10 million is based on merit. This is bogus beyond belief.
Think of Albert J. "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap, the champion corporate downsizer (meaning he got rid of zillions of employees. At Scott Paper he axed 35% of the worksforce). Predictably, Dunlap's greatest fans were on Wall Street. Then people found out he was cooking the books. That's too mild a metaphor: He had the books in a pressure cooker. A 1998 article in Business Week has this line: Sunbeam's auditors, Arthur Andersen & Co., later insisted it met accounting standards. Rather like the standards Houston employs for counting dropouts.
I worry about the way classrooms will echo the gutted venerable companies when the Chainsaw Al mentality rushes in--under the name of merit pay. Here is a passage from Robert Weissman review of CHAINSAW: The Notorious Career of Al Dunlap in the Era of Profit at Any Price in the November 1999 Washington Monthly:
What is most disturbing about the tale, perhaps, is how many accomplices Dunlap had as he wreaked havoc on a venerable company and the lives of thousands of employees. Executive after executive echoes the one who told Byrne, "I was a greedy son of a bitch along with everyone else" and willing to do whatever Dunlap demanded in exchange for the promise of a big payoff in stock options.
Wallstreet loved Chainsaw Al as the champion of efficiency and ruthlessness; they loved him for following no higher principle than the value of his company's stock. Writing for Slate in 1997, before Al's downfall at Sunbeam, David Plotz wrote:
Dunlap's companies, too, rely heavily on short-term marketing campaigns and advertising. What he does not do is spend time developing new products, nurturing talent, and cultivating customers. Why? Because he never sticks around a company long enough for that to matter.
We must avoid and shun this Chainsaw mentality; we must avoid and shun "test scores at any price." We must also avoid and shun the Anderson accounting method of looking the other way. There is plenty that's wrong about public schools, but we must protect and nurture what is right.
By Alfred S. Posamentier
THE United States Department of Education recently awarded $10.5 million to cover merit pay for teachers at 10 New York City public charter schools. At the same time, teachers unions in Minnesota, longstanding opponents of such action, are cooperating with Gov. Tim Pawlenty to develop similar financial incentives for teachers.
The concept of differentiated pay, based on performance and specialty, is common in most professions, but not in education — and that needs to change. Indeed, rather than giving cash rewards to students for scoring well on tests, as the city has started doing this year, we should be compensating our teachers.
Teachers in high-need areas like special education, bilingual education, mathematics and science should be paid more, as should teachers who agree to teach in under-achieving schools. But more important, outstanding teachers of all subjects should be rewarded with merit pay. Of course, that raises the question: What is it that makes a teacher outstanding?
Teachers unions typically do not want supervisors making that call. Why? Because the risk is that assessments will be based on personality and personal relationships rather than effectiveness. To avoid this pitfall, assessments can be made for groups of teachers who teach the same grade or subject rather than individuals. If assessments are done on individual teachers, then a team of independent evaluators should be used.
There’s also the problem of determining the basis on which teacher assessments should be made. If students’ standardized test results are used as the sole criterion, which is tempting because they provide clear quantifiable comparisons, then a number of factors need to be addressed. For example, should assessments be based on the percentage increase in student scores? If so, wouldn’t a teacher of a low-performing class that has lots of room for improvement have an advantage compared with a teacher of a high-performing class, which doesn’t? And with a standardized test as the metric for evaluation, we run the risk of having teachers teach to the test, neglecting material their students should learn.
Perhaps we can look at higher education, where there are three criteria for assessing faculty: teaching effectiveness, professional contributions and service to the school or community. Embracing this combination through a carefully defined set of criteria assessed by independent evaluators could avoid the problems associated with relying only on test scores.
We reward teachers who increase their skills by taking additional university courses, but we do not reward them for other kinds of work that could improve their teaching, like experimenting with alternative forms of instruction and sharing their research findings with others. One might also give teachers credit for work done above and beyond the job requirements, like tutoring students and coordinating extracurricular activities.
Indeed, New York City’s decision this year to provide cash rewards to students in certain schools for taking tests and for scoring well could run in conflict with attempts to provide bonuses to teachers when it is based on standard test results, since the teachers of such classes would potentially have an advantage over those whose students receive no extra rewards for good work. Motivating students in some schools by paying them — which, by the way, research shows is far less effective than appealing to their genuine interests — not only “unlevels the playing field” for teachers, but it also provides students with an unnatural and unsustainable motivation, which is poor educational practice.
Compensating teachers for their performance and area of specialty is long overdue. Done properly, it can bring genuine professionalism to one of the most important responsibilities in our society: the education of our young people.
Alfred S. Posamentier, the dean of the school of education at the City College of New York, is the co-author of “The Fabulous Fibonacci Numbers.”
— Alfred S. Posamentier
New York Times
2007-09-09
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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