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Andrea Neal recently wrote a column in the Indianapolis Star titled More Money for Best Teachers. This opinion article attempts to convince us of why merit pay is really a good thing for education. Although well-intended as most wrong-headed theories are, this one is especially egregious in conclusions without evidence.
So, let’s take a look at the argument she makes against each objection:
Objection: Teacher performance is impossible to measure.
Ms. Neal argues that it is possible to measure teacher performance. She cites ISTEP scores for math and english, and pre-assessment and post-assessments for other subjects.
These things seem plausible to measure, but the measures we need are not individual teacher measures . . . they are system measures. The difference is that performance of a student is 95% attributable to the system and 5% the individual. Education does not have a teacher problem, they have a system problem. The system is comprised of all those in the education system (parents, teachers, administrators, students) and other elements like structure, technology, work design, system conditions, management thinking, etc.
The argument that individual performance can be separated from the system is a flaw.
Objection: It’s not right to hold teachers responsible for problems children bring to school.
Ms. Neal argues that no one expects poverty-stricken children to post test scores equal to affluent areas. She says we should be moving the poverty stricken children from the 20th to the 40th percentile.
She skirts the issue of the poverty stricken children that a teacher can overcome the system conditions (poverty) on their own. Really? Children can’t learn if their primary concern is eating – remember Maslow’s hierarchy.
Ms. Neal is way to simplistic in her argument that a teacher can overcome a child’s issues they bring to school. It depends on what they are and they have great variety.
Objection: Merit pay will pit people against each other.
Ms. Neal completely bails on this one, saying Eli Lilly scientists would collaborate. She is saying what works in business is good for education.
She completely misses the fact that the US has been in decline in business since 1968 as marked by W. Edwards Deming. The Indiana Governor is in Asia begging for jobs for Indiana, we are not at the top in many areas of business.
Further, I have received dozens of calls from laid off Lilly employees looking for work. Former Mayor Bart Peterson completely sold out his principles (Democrat) to support the move to lay off thousands as a good thing for Eli Lilly. I would not be using Lilly as an example of “good method.”
Merit pays problem is that it becomes the defacto purpose of teachers once put into place. The purpose shouldn’t be test scores, trying to get the “smart” kids in their respective classrooms, shmoozing with administrators, etc., it should be to find better methods to teach to the different ways children learn. This has to happen in the classroom with experimentation with new methods of teaching.
Objection: Administrators will use merit pay to reward their friends.
Ms. Neal remarks that this is a risk in every profession and objective measures should be used.
The result is predictable. Indiana will spend millions to make sure the performance system is objective and target teachers who do evil things like teach to the test. We will invent a whole new HR bureaucracy in government to put an objective system in place, monitor it, and inspect teachers to make sure they aren’t cheating. A few years ago, EDS spent millions trying to do this and scrapped it, as performance assessment is subjective.
Objection: All teachers are underpaid, so it would be smarter to pay all teachers more.
Ms. Neal argues that pay is a little better in the US as other developed countries.
OK, so if education is on equal footing with pay, then why is performance in education worse? Because the two do not tie together, so merit pay won’t help. The opportunity to improve education is to improve the methods of teaching and the system itself.
Objection: There is no connection between merit pay and student achievement.
Ms. Neal notes that there are good arguments on both sides. The RAND/Vanderbilt University study cites no notable increase in test scores through performance bonuses. She instead cites some obscure study by an economist.
Her point is that increased pay through a merit system is not to boost student achievement, but to attract better teachers through changing the professional environment.
The truth is that if we want to change the professional environment we can start by getting rid of the Indiana Department of Education and the US Department of Education who spend our tax dollars on many failed ways to make education better. We would have more money to pay teachers and attract the best and more money for teachers to experiment with new methods to educate students. That is what would make the education attractive is knowing that the classroom is where value is created, not some bureaucracy with expensive programs.
Ms. Neal will be providing us with future stories on how to copy other countries education systems. This is the same tact provided in the 1970s by manufacturing and we still haven’t caught up. Copying and best practices has led to nothing but mediocrity and uncompetitiveness in the US.
Our hope is to realize that education is in the classroom with better teaching methods and a better education system starts in the classroom. Let’s put our money and hope there and not in new schemes to add to Indiana’s debt.
Leave me a comment. . . share your opinion! Click on comments below.
Make the new decade a profitable and rewarding one, start a new path here. Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about how to get started at [email protected]. Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.
Tripp Babbitt is a columnist (Quality Digest, PSNews and IQPC), speaker, and consultant to private and public service industry.
Hello Tripp,
as I am preparing to deliver a lecture about “Systems Thinking in School Organisations” for a group of school administrators at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) next Tuesday, your blog comes as a present.
Thanks a lot,
Mathieu
Great article; helps me get my mind around some of the controversies by putting them in ST context.
Both you and Neal, as well as all other participants in this discussion, keep making the same mistake of omission – you do not define the subject of the discussion. How can there be anything but acrimony when there is no agreement (and no attempt to reach agreement) about what is being discussed – in this case, “education.”
So, I ask, “What is the purpose of K-12 public education?”
Douglas-
Thank you for your comment, it is very appropriate.
My response was more aimed at Ms. Neal. There is a focus in the current administration to make the purpose scoring well on standardized tests. Which brings us full circle back to your comment. If our aim is not this. What is it?
The place to start is to get knowledge by understanding the what and why of current performance. The first question in the Vanguard Method is “what is the purpose?” This has to come from the customers point of view, outside-in as a system.
http://www.thesystemsthinkingreview.co.uk/index.php?pg=18&backto=1&utwkstoryid=257 This is a video on the case against deliverology, but outlines the steps to getting knowledge and therefore purpose.
Tripp
Here is my response I already sent to our local newspaper. I agree with everything you said in your blog as well:
In response to Andrea Neal’s recent column “Give best teachers more money,” I find it rather disingenuous that Ms. Neal, a private school teacher, would be advocating a position on merit pay that has the great potential to negatively impact public school teachers much more than it will those in private schools. Teachers at private schools are not subjected to all the rules and regulations of a capricious state legislature looking to get behind the cause of the moment. While most private schools in the state do follow state regulations regarding ISTEP and ECA testing, teachers and administrators at those schools don’t have to worry that the state will take over local control of their building, nullify teacher contracts, and restructure the school because the school fails to meet performance goals that are based largely on standardized test scores alone.
At Ms. Neal’s school, St. Richard’s Episcopal School in Indianapolis, students pay anywhere from $13,000 to $14,000 a year in tuition, according to the school’s website. The average class size is 16 students, and all students from kindergarten through eighth grade are required to take a foreign language. The majority of the eighth grade graduates go on to prestigious private high schools in the Indianapolis area, including Brebeuf Jesuit, Park Tudor and Cathedral.
Obviously, the students at this school come from highly-motivated, highly-educated families and are prepared to be good students from the moment they walk in the door. I could not find any information on special education or ELL (English language learners) services on St. Richard’s website, so I assume that, like many private schools, it simply does not admit students with these needs. While I am sure that the teachers at St. Richard’s work incredibly hard every day (as do almost all the teachers I know), their reality is nothing like the reality public school teachers face on a day-to-day basis.
Unlike the business model that so many politicians want to hold up as an example for public education, I have no control over the quality of student who walks through my classroom door, and that variance in quality greatly affects the final outcomes used to measure my success or failure. A student comes to me four grade levels behind in reading? I’m supposed to find a way to have her up to tenth grade level before the state’s end-of-course assessment. A student’s parents allow him to stay up all night playing video games? I’m supposed to find a way to make sure he stays alert in my class at 8 a.m. A student hasn’t eaten breakfast and has no lunch money in her account because her parents haven’t given her any? I open my wallet and hand her some cash, and I worry about what’s going on in her home and how it’s affecting her education.
Most teachers have no problem with being evaluated based on a system that would encompass classroom observations, student portfolios showing examples of increasing quality of work over the course of a year, and the teacher’s effort at gaining more professional knowledge. However, using standardized test scores as the primary measure of a teacher’s worth will never give the true picture of that teacher’s impact. Scores will vary from year-to-year based on the students in that teacher’s classes. For example, if the teacher has a high number of special education students in a given year, that teacher’s scores are going to reflect that reality, especially when in most cases, the special education students are mandated to take the same tests as all the other children and, on the state’s tests, are not allowed all the same accommodations that teacher is legally required to give them in the classroom.
The pressure to achieve ever-higher scores on standardized tests is also contributing to a complete lack of critical thinking skills, problem-solving skills, and creativity in our students – all skills that colleges and businesses say they want from Indiana high school graduates. I have seen this becoming a growing problem over the past decade in my classes; my students can easily churn out a basic, five-paragraph essay that will allow them to pass the tenth grade ECA. However, when I ask them to challenge themselves to analyze literature and write with any depth of thought, they struggle. I can only conclude it is because we have created a culture in schools of teaching to the test.
Interestingly, a study published in the December 2008 issue of the journal Science Education compared two sets of high school science students, with one group racing through the curriculum in order to cover all the material tested on a standardized assessment but the other group being taught by educators who delved deeper into the material and challenged students’ critical thinking skills. The second group moved more slowly and did not cover all the standards. Not surprisingly, the first group actually scored higher on the standardized assessment. However, the second group, which took a more in-depth approach, earned higher grades when they moved on to a university. This illustrates the challenge for today’s teachers – teach to the test in order to show good results in the state’s eyes, or take the time to challenge the students to think deeply and critically and risk missing covering something that might end up on the standardized test?
It is also interesting that Ms. Neal criticizes teachers unions in her column while holding up Finland as an exemplary model of public education. Teachers in Finland are 100 percent unionized. Additionally, Finland provides free, mandated preschool education for all its children and provides parents access to much better day care services. Pre-service teachers in Finland are also provided a rigorous teacher education program that helps ensure their later success in the classroom.
Politicians in the United States must stop putting improvements in public education on the backs of teachers in the name of giving the public a scapegoat and realize that it will take a group effort to make large gains in student achievement. State and local governments must mandate quality early childhood education for all children and provide adequate funding for schools. Parents must work harder at making sure their children are ready for school by insisting they are well-rested and well-fed and that they do their homework and study for tests. Teachers must continue to gain professional knowledge in their subject areas and work harder to really meet the needs of each student in their classrooms. Administrators have to work to support teachers and parents in their efforts. Only when we begin to look at problems in education as societal problems, rather than teacher problems, will we begin to see better results.
Finally, Ms. Neal notes that merit pay will help restore teaching as a prestigious profession. I think it already is a prestigious profession. I am proud to say I am a teacher. I am proud of the work that I am doing with young adults in my classroom every day, and I know that I am a good role model and mentor for them. I don’t need merit pay to build my self esteem nor restore prestige to my professional role.
I have enjoyed the discussion connected to my column. I always am baffled by those who find it relevant that I teach at a prestigious private school and could not begin to fathom the challenges of public education. If anything, that makes my case more credible. I am advocating merit pay for public school teachers no for myself. In any event, I doubt that I would qualify for merit pay. Teaching is HARD and I really doubt I would qualify once all the performance measures are taken into account. Because I realize how hard it is, I am doubly committed to rewarding the best in the field.