Wacky Idea Of The Week: Pay Better Teachers More

Published on October 9th, 2007

Damn right, this is controversial! If this catches on, who knows where it will lead. Next thing you know, people in all walks of life will want to be paid based on (of all things) ability, the quality of the work they do and job performance. Insanity!

States venture into teacher performance pay

The controversial idea of paying teachers based not on how long they’ve been teaching but on how much their students learn got a boost when a key congressman recently proposed adding pay-for-performance money for teachers in high-poverty schools to the next version of the federal No Child Left Behind education law.

Proponents say merit pay would give teachers incentives to raise the quality of students’ work and could help the NCLB program, which requires schools to show yearly improvement on standardized tests or face penalties. Proposed last month by U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, the merit plan has support from Republicans and U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

But although some states already pay teachers for performance, the national teachers unions have unleashed a barrage of opposition to Miller’s plan. Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, called it a “deal breaker” that could cost Miller the unions’ support of that version of NCLB revisions. Unions and other teacher support organizations have contended that merit pay relies too much on tests that may not paint an accurate picture of how well someone teaches.

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# 1 RTaylor said, on October 9th, 2007 at 6:10 am

There is a problem with this. Teachers with more tenure get the best classes and students. It’s easier to show performance when you have several honors English classes than a dump all Freshman class that a new teacher gets. You need to measure what the students have gained from your teaching. To do this you must test students before and after the school year, not just rely on end of course testing. The best teachers often gets the students who needs the least help.

# 2 Cinaedh said, on October 9th, 2007 at 6:11 am

If they paid the President and other politicians based on performance, all the rest of us would be a lot richer than we are right now because they’d end up owing all of us money – a lot of money!

I wonder if the dickhead politicians thought about that when they were considering how to improve education?

# 3 Ben Franske said, on October 9th, 2007 at 6:12 am

Even good teachers are often against this. Why? Because they’re concerned about how you measure how good a teacher is. I think there would be more support for teacher merit pay if there was a good system for determining which teachers were doing the best job.

# 4 Smith said, on October 9th, 2007 at 6:16 am

Education is not a problem that can be solved from Washington. Everytime the idiots in Congress or the White House try, they only makes it worse.

# 5 Frank IBC said, on October 9th, 2007 at 6:33 am

What is it that is so unique about the profession of teaching that makes it so difficult to determine who is doing a good job, Ben Fraske? This seems like just another evasion by the teachers unions.

# 6 Stu Mulne said, on October 9th, 2007 at 6:38 am

+1 to #3….

There’s no way to measure this…. “Teaching to the test” shortchanges the better students and barely helps the rest.

The basic problem is that really bad teachers get tenure, and that students and their parents often interfere (in various ways) with the educational process to the point that education is often impossible.

It reminds me of a very bad story:

Little Johnnie had been tossed out of every school in the County for all kinds of reasons. Somehow he ended up in a Catholic school, and suddenly his grades went way up, and his behavior improved immeasurably.

Naturally, his parents asked. “Well, I saw that guy hanging up on the cross, and figured these people really meant business….”

Regards,

Stu.

# 7 rob said, on October 9th, 2007 at 6:48 am

#3 & #6 We are to lazy to figure out a good way to judge the work of a teacher, so we should just not do anything? what a joke…..

“Well Miss Johnson most of your class is failing, but that can in no way be a reflection on how you teach, so here is a raise. Just think now you make more than someone in the private sector with the same amount of education and experience and you get 4 month of vacation! Be careful though the union might go on strike if we teachers have to pay any more than $5 a month for our health insurance!”

# 8 Frank IBC said, on October 9th, 2007 at 6:52 am

Stu -

If there is “no way to measure this”, how do you instinctively know that those teachers are “bad”?

# 9 Lauren the Ghoti said, on October 9th, 2007 at 7:17 am

W-w-w-w-waitJISTAMINIT, Buster…

Are you suggesting some kinda evil, right-wing, oppressive, Fascist system here, where people succeed by virtue of their actual abilities and efforts – and not the proper, progressive, diverse, multicultural way of legislating equal outcomes and rewarding membership in selected ethnic / racial / gender groups??

Are you actually proposing a… [shudder] meritocracy???

The PC police’re gonna be on yer ass, you betcha. :O

# 10 Paul Kierstead said, on October 9th, 2007 at 7:22 am

Best gratuitous picture ever! I want to become a teach now.

It is very sad indeed that teaching has become a “poor” job. We continuously have to listen to “for the children” crap, but yet critically underfund education.

# 11 MikeN said, on October 9th, 2007 at 7:29 am

This whole equal pay for all teachers is a major problem for the education system. To get the highly qualified math and science teachers, you have to raise the pay for all your teachers, which only the really rich school districts can afford.

# 12 gtriamy said, on October 9th, 2007 at 8:38 am

There are other problems with the “pay for performance” design, specifically dealing with teaching. Take a look at the education system as it exists now. Look at a middle class area school, a poverty area school and a high wealth area school. Test scores and graduation statistics are very high in the high wealth areas, in the middle in the middle class areas, and low in the poverty areas. A large reason is that education is not as highly valued in each of the areas accordingly. Since the test scores are not as high in the poverty area as in the high wealth area, the poverty area doesn’t receive as much money from the government. We also know that since the poverty area is in poverty, land value won’t be as high. This mean the local school are out even more money. Teachers need to eat, so they try and get jobs in the middle class and high wealth areas leaving unskilled, unpaid teachers in the poverty area. This is how the system already works and we want to skew the system even more?!

The problem is not the teachers, its the amount of money that the school has to use. It’s been shown that the more money you pour into the education system, the better performance you get.

That’s not to say i don’t support a pay for performance” scale, I just think that there are larger problems with the system. Education really does relate to societal values and racism and teachers are a very small problem in comparison.

# 13 iGlobalWarmer said, on October 9th, 2007 at 8:48 am

“It’s been shown that the more money you pour into the education system, the better performance you get.” – WHAT?!? Blindly dumping buckets of money down the rathole automatically makes things better?

On the original topic: try introducing merit pay into any unionized profession. Union management is terrified of merit pay. If the membership can get ahead through skill and hard work, what do they need unions for?

# 14 Ben Waymark said, on October 9th, 2007 at 9:14 am

I am absolutely dumb founded that there are people on this site who actually think its bad a idea to pay people who are good at their job more money than people who are bad at their job. What planet do you live on?

What do you mean you can’t tell if a teacher is good or not? Maybe try: 1. As the department head, 2. ask the principal, 3. ask the students, 4. check the class results against the results against the same class last year 5. Ask the parents (if they are involved). Really, if the principal can’t figure out who the good teachers are and who the crap ones was are, then the principal should be sacked and replaced with someone who has leadership abilities.

# 15 Olo Baggins of Bywater said, on October 9th, 2007 at 9:20 am

Who said anything about blind? You’re saying schools are ratholes? Come on, you know better….

Funding is, and will always remain, a huge issue in underperforming schools. There are occasional exceptions and pockets of genius, of course, but as a rule the quality of a school and everything in it is easy to extrapolate from their budget.

And I agree with the others. If we need to create an objective measure of performance, fuggetaboutit. If we can tolerate a subjective system based on peer review, principal ratings, parent input and the like, then the idea has merit. But I betcha the NEA will never let the latter system off the ground.

# 16 V said, on October 9th, 2007 at 9:24 am

14 is right. It’s very cheap and easy to find out who the good teachers are. But, since we’re all about giant bureaucracies, we need to spend lot’s of money developing and publishing standardized tests, and waste classroom time taking them. Without spending all that money, I can already tell you what those tests will discover:

If students aren’t given compelling incentives to care about their test results, their scores will not accurately reflect their knowledge and abilities.

That’s what we call a million dollar finding.

# 17 DeLeMa said, on October 9th, 2007 at 9:37 am

Looks like most of the arguments, against merit pay, focus on the idea there are too many vague or gray areas of judgement involved with making the determination of who actually excels at their job. I tend to disagree. I believe there are similar factors in the high, middle and low end schools to enable a fair assesment of teacher skill. Some were already mentioned here. After saying this, I continue to believe that low income or poor economic area schools should be abolished and the funding for those schools used to pay for education in schools with better facilities and teachers. Gee, sounds like school bussing ?

# 18 Misanthropic Scott said, on October 9th, 2007 at 9:40 am

#2 – Cinaedh,

The right thing to do about the pols, and it won’t happen ’cause they make the rules, is to stop all lobbying. Then tie their salaries to some multiple of the median household income for their constituency. If they want a raise, all they have to do is improve the lives of their constituency in a meaningful way. Essentially, put them on commission.

# 19 Jennifer Emick said, on October 9th, 2007 at 9:42 am

I’m all for rewarding better teachers, but we have enough “test teaching” as it is. I am working around the clock to fix deficits in my children’s education, yet my children sc ore off the chart on standardized tests, which test memorization of trivia, not education. There needs to be a better benchmark. Parents aren’t necessarily the best judges of “good teaching,” either- in many cases, they’re motivated by politics, controversy, or idocy, as in the case of the teacher who was fired (!) because preteens saw a nude statue at an art exhibit.

We expect people to pay for college degrees to teach, yet we pay them less than McDonald’s managers. Then we cripple the good teachers by insisting they teach for tests, follow a mandated curriculum to the letter, and punish innovation. And yet we can’t figure out what’s wrong with education?

# 20 Jim O'Hagan said, on October 9th, 2007 at 9:46 am

As a technology coordinator in a school and recent classroom teacher, I am all for performance based pay, as long as the tenure system is torn asunder.

# 21 Awake said, on October 9th, 2007 at 10:07 am

Generally speaking, students don’t fail, it is the people that run the schools that fail. And when they fail, even the good students get dragged into the mud.
Standardized testing serves one great purpose: to measure the ability of the school to teach. Some people complain that teachers end up ‘teaching for the test’ to which I respond “So what? At least they are teaching something.”
Hold school administrations accountable for the performance of the students under their care, and hold teachers accountable for the performance of the students in STANDARDIZED tests.
We have this mentality of hearing that a person is a teacher, and automatically placing them on a pedestal, as if the choice of work automatically makes them a special / superior person, no questions asked.

# 22 Eric said, on October 9th, 2007 at 10:16 am

That photo makes me want to become a teacher!!!! Can i name my performance bonus?

# 23 Ben Waymark said, on October 9th, 2007 at 10:32 am

I think the problem comes from the whole ’standerize test’ bullocks. Really, it should be the principals who ultimately decided who is hired and who is fired, and who get paid what. Somewhere, the bureaucracy has to bite the bullet and actually give someone the power to act, be rewarded when things work well and be thrown out when things go to shit. ’cause things just work better when you do it that way.

# 24 OhForTheLoveOf said, on October 9th, 2007 at 10:35 am

From the article… Proponents say merit pay would give teachers incentives to raise the quality of students’ work

Okay… But I would say that only a student can raise the quality of their work.

#7 – Just think now you make more than someone in the private sector with the same amount of education and experience and you get 4 month of vacation!

Teachers do not get paid more than people in the private sector and they do not get four months of vacation. But whatever bullshit you need to fuel your knuckle dragging agenda is okay with me. I wasn’t really expecting facts.

# 25 Unspeakable said, on October 9th, 2007 at 10:42 am

The problem with “merit” based pay is that the only way to gauge it is through the standardized tests that are administered to students. This seems OK at a glance, but there are problems. First this will drive any competent teacher out of low performing districts. No one wants to do this job for a pittance, so good teachers will find schools that will earn them more money ie. high income areas. Second, anyone who has worked in education knows that every so often you get a “bad class.” This is a class that is just chock full of losers who’s parents don’t care about their education. Good teachers can and do end up with classes like this and NOTHING they do can make these kids learn. Third, this will encourage cheating on the part of teachers. Good teachers will want to keep their pay, and bad teachers will want to get paid more.
Further more, all you people who want to blame teachers for poor performance need to remember that teachers have them for at best 6 hours a day. The other 18 HOURS of the day they are in the care of their parents. Parents need to take some personal responsibility for the education of their children and not just claim it is all the teachers fault. If you weren’t going to care for your children, why the hell did you have them? It’s not a teachers job to instill a work ethic and strong desire to learn in a child. That job lands squarely on the shoulders of the parents who are ignoring it for one reason or another.
Try focusing on the social problems that cause low performance and stop blaming teachers for things they have only a limited influence on.

# 26 rob said, on October 9th, 2007 at 10:49 am

#24 oh they don’t hmmm well June July August no work and 2 wks x-mas 1 wk spring break and a host of other days through out the year. My father is a teacher believe me he makes more than the average college grad in the private sector, gets all that time off, a 90% pension, more job security than you or i could ever dream of, with no oversight of his performance to speak of.

Does anyone else see the disconnect here

# 27 OhForTheLoveOf said, on October 9th, 2007 at 10:53 am

#14 – I am absolutely dumb founded that there are people on this site who actually think its bad a idea to pay people who are good at their job more money than people who are bad at their job.

I’m pretty dumbfounded too. Not because we are talking about paying “good” teachers more… But because we are talking about paying “bad” teachers at all… Why are we even employing “bad” teachers? Is it because teaching is treated as a third rate profession and McDonald’s managers make more than teachers, meaning that schools are forced to take what they can get?

And this noble Ayn Rand idea of a meritocracy will last 12 minutes before it is corrupted by nepotism, favoritism, and any number of other -isms…

We simply need to pay these professionals like professionals. And we need to provide them with tools and facilities… and bla bla bla

But what we really need to do is shut up. Most critics of education don’t have a clue what they are talking about, as evidenced here every few days when it becomes open season on teachers…

Look… Rich schools get great grades and ship over 90% of their kids off to college. Schools in the middle do pretty well as well. Poor schools perform badly… and what do you expect?

In my ex-wife’s first year teaching the first grade, she had 37 kids. The oldest parent was 25, the average was 22. Of those kids, 8 had fathers at home, and 10 had fathers who were dead… and 3 of those kids had actually witnessed their father’s murder. There were 2 mothers who could never be reached to sign report cards or give updates to, so I took care of that. I drove a cab in those days so I took whatever material the mother needs to their jobs personally. I knew where to find them because I knew which streets they walked at night.

So my question is… what the fuck do you people want from these teachers? You aren’t saying it, but you are only talking about poor schools. We don’t actually have an education problem in this country. That’s a myth. We have a poverty problem. And unless you can solve it, your are going to have badly performing schools. Also until we stop scapegoating teachers, who did nothing other than dedicate their lives to the thankless job of teaching your kids, we aren’t going to be successful in finding solutions.

Now, faced with reality, and not what the public and politicians think they know about education, how to you award merit pay to teachers? I’d rather award combat pay, frankly…

# 28 OhForTheLoveOf said, on October 9th, 2007 at 10:57 am

#26 – I was married to a teacher, she and most of the other teachers in our circle worked year round…

But in regards to those months where school isn’t in session, they don’t get paid for that.

So until you know the job, don’t judge the job.

# 29 redwolf said, on October 9th, 2007 at 11:02 am

Can teachers be evaulated objectively to determine who gets the most pay? Yes.

Will teachers be evaluated objectively to determine who gets the most pay? Never in a million years.

Remember, the people who will develop and apply any system that is implemented are politicians & bureaucrats. Objectivity has the proverbial snowball’s chance.

# 30 rob said, on October 9th, 2007 at 11:08 am

#28 I know the job. they get paid a full years wages for 9 months of work. A starting teacher where i lives starts at $40K. That is a full years pay for 9 months worth of work. Really good pay considering that is no experience and the median home cost in my area is $60K

# 31 MikeN said, on October 9th, 2007 at 11:38 am

I think you guys are missing the point when you talk about rich districts versus poor districts. Any school district has more than one teacher. You can pay more within the same school district. Who cares about comparisons to rich districts, where the pay scales aren’t as important anyways. In a poor school, you should be able to pay extra for a math or science teacher vs a kindergarden teacher, etc.

# 32 MikeN said, on October 9th, 2007 at 11:40 am

As for more money means better schools. I think this has been studied very well, and little correlation has been found, at least once you get past a certain level which all states have. There is a much higher correlation between education level and latitude, meaning that to get better schools, states should just move north closer to Canada.

# 33 MikeN said, on October 9th, 2007 at 11:41 am

To fix education, you have to fix poverty? I think this goes against the examples in the past of poor schools doing well in some areas. Certain methods of teaching and school operation do better.

# 34 hhopper said, on October 9th, 2007 at 11:45 am

Let the students with good grades rate the teachers.

# 35 Jennifer Emick said, on October 9th, 2007 at 11:59 am

$40k isn’t all that much given the college investment- it’s actually on the low end, with little or no chance for promotion or advancement. This makes the pool of available candidates small and the talented folks find better paying jobs. (My husband and I are both college dropouts, and between us we manage better than a teacher with a Master’s- with my husband making double the average teacher salary!)

# 36 rob said, on October 9th, 2007 at 12:36 pm

#35 $40K right out of college with no experience along with a 9 month working year, the great low cost health ins. the job security, the pension, and the scheduled pay increases. I would say that they have it pretty good.

If you cant make it on 40K right out of school then take those summer months (when you don’t have to work) and get another job. I mean come on I have been in my field for 7 years I am not making a whole lot more that that and I have to work all 12 months of the year. No sympathy here

# 37 OhForTheLoveOf said, on October 9th, 2007 at 12:57 pm

#30 – #28 I know the job. they get paid a full years wages for 9 months of work. A starting teacher where i lives starts at $40K. That is a full years pay for 9 months worth of work. Really good pay considering that is no experience and the median home cost in my area is $60K

$40K isn’t a lot of money for a professional level job requiring the education that teaching does, never mind that our unruley raised by wolves kids ain’t no freakin’ picnic. They are paid for the 9 months, and the checks are optionally stretched to be distributed over the course of a year, as is the tradition in almost all districts. Based on your 60K median housing cost, I can understand why you think most teachers get summers off. Outside of rural America teachers tend to work year round and often do so under very adverse conditions.

# 38 OhForTheLoveOf said, on October 9th, 2007 at 1:01 pm

#36 – No sympathy here

No lack of jealousy either, it would appear.

# 39 NewTeacherD said, on October 9th, 2007 at 3:10 pm

A job that is payed based on job performance should rely solely on the person performing the job and their work. In the teaching profession, you can try every method possible and still have a group of students not understand the topic.

Compound this in the context of a subject like math, which I currently teach. Most of my geometry students passed Algebra with a D and scored even lower than that on their standardized tests. I have to teach kids basic algebra, multiplication tables AND what an alternate interior angle is. On top of that, add the English language learners, kids with learning disabilities, and plain old troublemakers. Not to mention that my class 4 over its limit.

There are way to many variables to link teacher pay to student performance on a test.

# 40 OhForTheLoveOf said, on October 9th, 2007 at 3:20 pm

#39 – I hate to say this after being such a staunch defender of teachers… But your grammar blows goats.

# 41 T-Rick said, on October 9th, 2007 at 5:20 pm

How is this ‘merit’ judged?

Everyone says there’s plenty of ways to do it, but I haven’t heard any.

Standardized tests don’t work. As many of you are going to unceremoniously discover in the future, use of these tests all but guarantee your child will not know the things they need to know. As standardized testing spreads to science and social studies, the level of trivia accumulation vs. real useful knowledge will get even worse.

Insofar as cheap health insurance is concerned…. I, as a teacher, don’t have any. Why? Because family health insurance in the schools of my state runs anywhere from 700-800 dollars per month.

The level of ignorance displayed here astounds me. It becomes evident that many of you have a great disdain for teachers, for whatever reason, and many of you downright hate them.

I teach 200 INDIVIDUAL students per day. These students have 200 individual sets of circumstances, 200 different levels of attention, and 200 different socioeconomic backgrounds.

The student who comes from a strong background has an easy time paying attention and doing well. The student who wonders how they are going to eat tonight; whether a parent will be home tonight; whether they will be safe tonight; whether their parents will be drunk, wasted, or both tonight; has little impetus to learn, and no amount of money will change that. Pardon me if I don’t want to be paid according to a wildly varying set of circumstances I have no control over.

You cannot quantify people accurately. You cannot quantify student performance accurately. So, why should my pay, which IS definitely quantified, be tied to these factors?

@#32 – WTF does that even mean? Latitude as a factor in learning? Surely you’re brighter than that. Correlations can’t always be taken at face value.

@#24 – I was off from June 5 through July 15. I only got 11 days off for Christmas – and my spring break was spent taking students on a field trip and finishing the yearbook.

@#12 – Right on.

@#7 – see my comment on health insurance. 5 dollars? $5.00 times 140 maybe….

@#5 – what’s so unique? Education is an industry. Our raw material is people – and we don’t get to throw out the raw materials that are fundamentally flawed or come from inferior sources.

We have to build sturdy ‘cabinets’ and ‘bookshelves’, even if the ‘wood’ is warped and knotty. We have to make great tasting ‘jam’ and ‘jelly’ even when the ‘grapes’ are rotten and festering.

That’s what makes us unique.

# 42 The Aussie said, on October 9th, 2007 at 5:21 pm

I am constantly confounded by the logic that says everything has to be based on corporate/big business metrics and standards.

Capitalism works great for business. It is disasterous to use that lens for the public sector. Americans insist on holding business methodologies as the right way to reward and develop non-business institutions.

Fact is education is not about production. Neither is medicine. The US thinks it is and imposes corporate viewpoints to measure their outputs. This reward thing is yet another corporate hijacking of social programs.

Fact is, most teacher don’t do it for the money, the way most doctors don’t do it for the money either. They are not there to produce worker or manager drones and keep them healthy. There are social as well as education metrics that defy this corporate bullshit becasue there are societal imperatives that override the profit motive.

It’s frankly infuriating to have these bogus ‘corporate management’ ideas thrown into discussions like education and medicine because they operate on fundamentally different ethical, economic and societal imperatives.

If everything was driven by the profit motive, our society would fall apart. As sad it seems to Americans, Governments place at all levels is to enahnce the greater good of the population — not corporate profits. And that means that at a social level, profit and production cannot be the sole arbiter of what defines ‘good’.

# 43 Teachinator said, on October 9th, 2007 at 5:46 pm

Sigh…
I teach at the High School level, and I can tell you merit pay won’t work.

For example, two years ago we had a teacher who was dismissed in my school. After much deliberation, my teaching schedule was changed so that I began teaching several classes of the fired teacher. Even worse, I had only eight weeks to prepare one of the classes for the standardized test.

To their credit, those kids nailed the test. Many of them scored at an advanced level. In fact, they did much better than my classes had done a year before. Did my “emergency” students just rise to the challenge under the pressure? Had I discovered the magic formula for teaching my students?

Nope.

The students who scored higher were honors students. The students who scored lower were not. I was a better teacher because I had honors students.

Now, as for the “summers off” business, my wife gets six weeks of vacation a year. This summer, while I was “off” she had to use a lot of her vacation because I took two grad courses over four weeks, and spent another week taking an intense computer science course.

I will not apologize for my summers “off”, nor my pay. I earn every cent, and then some. In fact, I’ve been taking a break for too long. I have a set of essays to grade. (That’s right, I’m the rare English/CS combo.)

# 44 T-Rick said, on October 9th, 2007 at 6:39 pm

@#42 – I hope you aren’t referring to me (re: production)

I was just making the point that we have to take the students how they come, no matter what.

# 45 Wightout said, on October 9th, 2007 at 9:25 pm

The problem with this is IMO also a problem with the current measures of “good” teaching…. Testing!

Tests are a great resource in understanding some things about the people being tested. However, when people know there is a testing coming people prepare for the test at hand with little regard to understanding of the material at hand.

If I told you, the hypothetical teacher, that there will be a test to asses your student’s knowledge of the information on a car, and I give to you a list of 20 of the 5 possible things that will be tested on to allow for you to adjust your curriculum what are odds that you will ignore some basic fundamentals on topic not on the list?

Student aren’t prepared for life anymore, they are prepared for tests…

# 46 KevinL said, on October 9th, 2007 at 11:29 pm

Hey I know, Reward good teachers by opening up the public school system to competition (like most of the rest of the world – at least the ones that routinely score higher in math and science). John Stossel of 20/20 did an excellent report on this recently. He did point out that many countries don’t require K-12 schooling so the test score averages are artifitially(sp) increased. The overwelming power of the teachers union will always prevent bad teachers from being removed and good ones from being paid more. It’s just bad for the business.

Merit pay almost never works because of the rating system. Don Rummy’s civil service system is the same way. Good workers don’t need merit pay to be good workers. Bad workers need merit pay to be better workers. Supervisors want good and better workers. Supervisors rate workers.

# 47 Ben Waymark said, on October 10th, 2007 at 2:20 am

OhForTheLoveOf And this noble Ayn Rand idea of a meritocracy will last 12 minutes before it is corrupted by nepotism, favoritism, and any number of other -isms

I think you’ll find that the concept of a meritocracy predates Ayn Rand… and while you are correct that nepotism etc can take away from meritocracy, it doesn’t kill it. Its just a matter of running the schools well. Running a school well means you have a principal that is empowered to make these decisions, and the school board or some other body has the power to question and discipline and ultimately fire the principal. So if the principal decides to hire his best mate at a hire rate of pay, and the teacher’s classes are consistently getting poor scores, and the board is getting complaints from parents about poor or unprofessional conduct, then the principal gets in trouble for hiring him.

As for honor students &ct, you can judge a teacher’s ability to teach by the level of achievement the class has against their previous performance. If a teacher is teaching all honors students, and the honor students being taught are consistently doing better than other honor student classes, then you can be pretty sure its the teacher’s teaching. Similarly, a teacher teaching a bunch of remedial students, who are doing consistently better than they were with previous teachers (or in other classes) will also prove themselves to be a good teacher.

There are also other methods of telling a good teacher, like how well disciplined the class is, how much the students like and respect the teacher, what the parent’s impression of the teacher is. Even if you ignore the grades etc, you can generally walk into a class room and tell how good a teacher is simply by how well they engage the students, compared with how other teachers are engaging the students in the same school.

Its worked pretty much the same in any company that I’ve worked. Some people are better at things that others. The people who are better, get paid more and often get the better jobs.

# 48 Ben Waymark said, on October 10th, 2007 at 2:24 am

#27 OhForTheLoveOf But what we really need to do is shut up. Most critics of education don’t have a clue what they are talking about, as evidenced here every few days when it becomes open season on teachers…

Big fat harry balls to that! As long our children, our nieces and nephews and the future generations of our nations are attending schools, we’ve got every right to discuss education, bitch about teachers and talk about how it should be. We can’t just sit back and say “well, I don’t much about education so I’ll just leave it to the experts”. Probably half the issue facing schools now is the fact that so many parents have so little to do with their children and their education.

# 49 Mr. Fusion said, on October 10th, 2007 at 4:46 am

#47 & 48, Ben,

I have to disagree.

While nearly everything is quantifiable, that does not make them statistically comparable. Just one variable does not make all equal.

Teachers do not pick the quality of the students or their parents. They don’t choose the quality of their teaching environment. They seldom get to pick which textbooks they use. They don’t get to pick the curriculum they teach. Too damn often they don’t get to see if their students even ate breakfast or even the night before. These are all variables that do make a difference.

A child’s diet certainly has a big difference upon how well they learn. Physical activity has also been shown to greatly enhance learning ability. Even something as basic as having a textbook to study from can help a student to learn. So does a safe environment in which to study. And these things are not consistent from school to school.

So Ben, how are you going to equally rate teachers?

# 50 OhForTheLoveOf said, on October 10th, 2007 at 8:01 am

#48 – we’ve got every right to discuss education

And I have a right to anally rape chickens in the privacy of my own home… but I shouldn’t do it. My point is that most people have no idea what the hell they are talking about in regards to teaching, and I’m pretty sure I’m not wrong about that.

So let the rabble talk all they want. Just don’t let them affect policy.

I really do wish we had a better school system and a society that reveled in education. Then we might have a better chance of overwriting the bad code embedded in kids by their well meaning but putty brained parents.

I appreciate that you think you can measure teacher performance, and you can… but not in a meaningful enough way to base pay on it. And as for your idea that a school board should be able to monitor a principle… well, you’ll rarely see a better example of incompetence than that on display by school boards. Why? Because they are elected officials.

And yes, meritocracy predates Rand… But since Rand is of the heart of many of these bullshit ideas, it seems appropriate to invoke that selfish bitch’s name.

You are from England, so I imagine you are better educated than most, but curiously, what do you know about the American education system that you didn’t read in Newsweek?

# 51 OhForTheLoveOf said, on October 10th, 2007 at 8:33 am

#50 – Okay… I just checked… Turns out I do not have the right to anally rape chickens. Just another example of the man keepin’ me down.

# 52 Ben Waymark said, on October 10th, 2007 at 11:45 am

50. You are from England, so I imagine you are better educated than most, but curiously, what do you know about the American education system that you didn’t read in Newsweek?

From England, though educated in the Canadian education system, which is fairly similar to the American. I am surrounded by teachers and educationalists (okay, I admit I made that word up). Have two in-laws that are teachers, a mother and a sister that teach ESL, a father who is an ex-school board trustee and has a masters in Education. I wanted to be a school teacher myself but decided there was more pay and less work being a code monkey so I did that instead. I’ve taken a keen interest in matters of education (I particularly like the Waldorf/Steiner schools, even though I was kicked out of one for selling firecrackers and smoking when I was a miscreant youth) my whole life, and the American system is often held up as what is worst (and sometimes what is best) about a education system.

The worst generally being that the school are funded on a such a local level, and the US as a whole is so ghettos between rich and poor neighborhoods, that poor areas get shit schools. The best is generally that the schools are funded on such level &ct and the rich areas can have some excellent schools. In the UK schools tend to be much more mixed between rich and poor, as are the neighborhoods, so you tend to get school that are pretty close to being equally shit across the board. I am afraid that glory of days of a good education in the UK have large fallen by the wayside (probably around the same time they decided that chips and mushy peas was a reasonable portion of vegetables for school dinners and that a spam based meatloaf reasonable protein portion).

I think the principals of the merit-based pay for teachers is pretty much the same in any western country. Certainly I’d like to see Canada and the the UK do the same idea (although I am sure the teacher’s union would be equally as discouraging).

Can’t say that I read Newsweek much, but Archie Andrews has also given me a good feel for how the American school system works .

On aside, I hope you notice the diligence with which I have been using American spelling. Its not easy to keep to dropping ‘u’ from words, moving ‘er’ around all the time and changing ’s’ to ‘z’.

# 53 OhForTheLoveOf said, on October 10th, 2007 at 1:42 pm

#52 – Well, okay then…

I wanted to be a school teacher myself but decided there was more pay and less work being a code monkey so I did that instead.

According to some, you messed up. Rob thinks teachers get paid with massive bags of gold coins and take more vacation time than an American President. How’s that code job working out in retrospect?

====

This was about 20 years ago, but…

We had a high school history teacher I’ll call Miss X

Miss X was 40, uber-nerdtastic, nebbish, and had an IQ that would cast a cool shadow on sunny day. She could talk about presidents as if she knew them herself. There never seemed to be a finer point of American history she didn’t know, and she was very detail oriented. She was a great teacher.

Trouble with Mrs X was that she flunked a lot of football and basketball players. She’d lecture on Monday, making notes on the board. Often a film on Tuesday. More lecture on Wednesday, with notes on the board. Quiz and review on Thursday. Test on Friday. The tests were hard, but every answer on the test will have been in the textbook chapter or on the board (and thus, in the notes). The tests were 25% true/false and 25% fill in the blank and 50% multiple choice. Usually about 50 questions. Here is the kicker… you were allowed to use your books and your notes.

Really… nothing about this should have been a challenge… but because she was a nerdly sort, the jocks didn’t like her, blew off the work, screwed around, failed the tests, and ended up on academic suspension.

Eventually, the rich parents of the jocks got tired of education getting in the way of football and they stormed the school board and got her fired.

You might want to believe there is more to the story, but there isn’t. Her commitment to academics over sports, and her unwillingness to pass failing students earned her a short trip to the unemployment line.

This seems to be how business is done in many walks of life. Quality and competence is tolerated as long as the comfy life of the alpha males isn’t messed with. This is how I think merit pay will end up.

# 54 Mr. Fusion said, on October 10th, 2007 at 3:25 pm

#53, OFTLO,

Good story, probably repeated many times during the past 25 years too.

It got me thinking though (which should be taken as a compliment) that there is a huge government organization that could serve as a model for merit pay. The military.

They all have the same basic training. They all use the same weapons. Live in the same barracks. Wear the same uniform. Use the same language. Shit in the same pot. Eat the same food. I even understand they even share the same hookers. So why don’t they use merit pay?

Then we could get rid of the bad soldiers and keep the good ones. There would be an incentive for the better soldiers to re-enlist. Damn, officers could be rated on how many don’t ask, don’t tell cases they have in their units. Quartermasters could be rated on how much ammunition they keep from being used. Medical units could be rated on how empty their hospitals are. Engineers could be rated on the number of civilian casualties their jobs cause.

# 55 OhForTheLoveOf said, on October 10th, 2007 at 3:47 pm

#54 – It got me thinking though (which should be taken as a compliment) that there is a huge government organization that could serve as a model for merit pay. The military.

Now THAT is what I call using the old noodley appendage!

I’m calling my Congressman now (who happens to be yours too).

# 56 Ascii King said, on October 11th, 2007 at 5:45 am

Just apply merit pay to your own job and see how well it works out. If your boss or your boss’ boss decided who was to be paid more based on merit, would the hard workers be the ones receiving more money? If the principal decides who gets more pay, then teachers would be rewarded for pleasing the principal rather than teaching the students.

The question isn’t whether merit pay is a good idea or not. The question is how do you objectively measure it? Can we come up with a merit pay system that improves the education our children receive and doesn’t just encourage teachers to work the system to their advantage?

If you want to improve education, just “pour buckets of money down the rat hole.” as #13 iGlobalWarmer said. However, instead of pouring it down a rathole, you idiot, let’s give it to the school administrators whose job it is to best determine how to use their budget.

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