In the post to which you replied, I was speaking about immediate struggles against _the imposition of merit pay upon workers_. Recall the strike of Detroit teachers last year, for instance.
***** _Rethinking Schools_ 14.3 (Spring 2000)
"Merit: To Pay or Not to Pay: Teachers Grapple with Yet Another Marketplace Reform"
By Bob Peterson
When each teacher at East Chapel Hill High School in North Carolina received a $1,500 "merit pay" check this year, the teachers did a rather odd thing. They gave some or all of their checks to schools they believed were more deserving of extra resources.
"We felt that there was some inconsistency to protesting the [state standardized] test and then pocketing the money," English teacher Martha Dill told The Chapel Hill News. "So we tried to think of what would be a meaningful response."
The response may be unusual. But if corporate and policy leaders in state capitals across the nation have their way, similar merit pay schemes will soon be widespread. Almost half the states have passed or are considering legislation based on merit pay, according to Education Week.
The concept of "merit pay," often referred to as "pay-for-performance," rests on the premise that existing pay structures for teachers are not sufficiently guided by market-oriented business principles. The argument is that teachers who are more "productive" - who do a better job teaching - should receive higher pay. Further, the belief is that financial bonuses can push teachers to work harder and, in the process, can raise student academic achievement.
Currently, teachers in most districts receive the same base pay, with increases generally based on seniority and on attaining additional college credits or their equivalents.
The pay-for-performance plans are not without their critics, especially among teachers. Some complain that the proposals inappropriately impose business productivity structures onto the field of education, as though educating a human being can be as easily measured as assembling a car. Others note that merit pay plans are divisive, pitting teacher against teacher, especially teachers in affluent districts or schools against teachers in low-income districts or schools. Others caution that most current plans are inherently flawed because they measure results based on standardized tests.
Mark Simon, president of the Montgomery County (MD) Education Association, is one of many teacher activists who is skeptical of pay-for-performance. "Merit pay is a solution in search of a problem," he told Rethinking Schools. "The problem in public education is not that teachers don't work hard enough or that teachers are not sufficiently motivated. Even a lot of teachers who aren't doing a great job are still working their tails off." The key question, according to Simon, is how can schools "attract, maintain, and develop high-quality teachers - especially given the complex nature of teaching."
Some progressive [sic] union officials are trying to forge a third path, one that moves beyond existing pay systems but doesn't rely on the business community's approach to "merit pay."
"We've been experimenting with 'differentiated pay' in Rochester for 15 years," Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester (NY) Teachers Association told Rethinking Schools. "Our choice right now is between two destructive proposals - the lock-step status quo and merit pay. I don't support either. We need something different."
Urbanski, who also heads up the Teacher Union Reform Network (TURN), a grouping of 21 progressive NEA and AFT locals, is encouraging his union colleagues to experiment with changes in compensation systems.
THE MOVEMENT UNFOLDS
Momentum for merit pay plans got a boost in November at the 1999 National Education Summit of governors and business leaders. The summit called on districts to implement "pay-for-performance incentive plans ... based on lessons learned from the private sector."
On the state level, political leaders have responded to the summit's call. Wisconsin's governor, Tommy Thompson, National Education Summit co-chair, announced a typical plan in his state-of-the-state address in January. Thompson proposed an "Award for Achievement" program in which teachers at schools that test 95% of their students and show year-to-year gains could receive "financial awards of up to $3,000."
The media have also promoted merit pay. When Denver teachers approved a new contract last fall that included provisions to experiment with three types of merit pay, the contract was top news on television stations and in newspapers across the country.
Although rarely noted in the media, merit pay proposals are not new. As educational historians Larry Cuban and David Tyack point out in the article on page 11, merit pay proposals in the United States have been around since World War I - and have invariably clashed with the efforts of teachers to ensure that "the fundamental intrinsic equality of all good teaching" is recognized.
Bob Chase, head of the National Education Association, and Sandra Feldman, head of the American Federation of Teachers, both emphasize that the key issue is ensuring that all teachers are paid commensurately with their training. In a speech this January, for instance, Chase noted that unionists are understandably wary of pay-for-performance. "We remember past experiments with merit pay - compensation schemes that pitted teacher against teacher," he said. "We know that every one of those merit pay schemes was a counter-productive disaster."
Chase, however, also noted that pay-for-performance, at its best, is about teachers cooperating, improving their skills, and increasing their compensation. "So my counsel regarding pay-for-performance is for all of us to keep an open mind, to listen, and to learn from local affiliates that are trying new things," he said.
Union leaders have been most critical of plans that focus on individual teachers and that are tied to student academic performance. "We remain opposed to individual pay tied to student results," Tom Mooney, the president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers and a vice president of the AFT, told Education Week. "I think that's unsound, unprofessional, unethical, and no one has shown me a system that's even halfway credible."
TYPES OF PROPOSALS
Historically, merit pay proposals focused on individual teachers, rather than on teachers in an entire school. They also rested on the subjective evaluations of supervisors - although as testing became more widespread, bonuses were based on student gains in test scores. Both evaluation approaches have such serious drawbacks, however, that Harvard University researchers Richard Murnane and David Cohen concluded in a 1986 study that neither "is an effective strategy for motivating teachers to achieve high performance levels." 1
Many proponents of current pay-for-performance proposals distance themselves from past practices. Allen Odden, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of Paying Teachers for What They Know and Do (Corwin Press, 1997), has called merit pay plans for individual teachers a "Model-T version."
Criticisms of individual merit pay plans have led to two increasingly popular variations. One is to give bonuses to entire school staffs based on the schools' gains in achievement, usually measured by standardized test scores. Several states, including Georgia, Kentucky, and North Carolina, have implemented such plans. In some cases, the financial incentive goes to the school in order to buy more resources; other times it goes directly to the teachers as salary bonuses.
The other variation - which is distinct enough from corporate plans that some do not even refer to them as merit pay proposals - is to differentiate pay on the basis of knowledge, skill, and responsibility. This variation attempts to deal with perhaps the most powerful criticism of most status quo teacher compensation plans: that the quickest way to move up in responsibility and pay is to leave teaching and become an administrator.
This variation, which has been adopted by several unions associated with TURN, goes by various names: "career ladders," "lead teachers," "professional development," or "skill development." It includes those programs providing additional money to teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teacher Standards.
Some programs mix together the various approaches. The recent Denver contract, for example, calls for a two-year pilot program that experiments with schoolwide performance pay based either on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, or on criteria-referenced or other teacher-created measures, or on teachers increasing their knowledge of and skill with teaching and learning....
...Bob Peterson (repmilw at aol.com) is an editor of Rethinking Schools and teaches fifth grade at La Escuela Fratney in Milwaukee....
[The full article is available at <http://www.rethinkingschools.org/Archives/14_03/mert143.htm>. *****
Yoshie