Hmm. Can someone explain to me just why anyone should believe these arguments against merit pay for teachers? I'm serious. I just don't get it. I do understand that money doesn't solve every problem, that teachers are often motivated mainly by the love of teaching, and that the frustrations teachers go through will not be assuaged with extra take-home pay. But these specific criticisms just seem surreal to me:
1. Control. People with more power usually set the goals, establish the criteria, and generally set about trying to change the behavior of those down below. If merit pay feels manipulative and patronizing, that's probably because it is. That's funny. Like most people in the business world, I work at a job where my raises and bonuses are tied to performance. I don't see this as patronizing. Being expected to work hard when there's no chance of being paid more than the person in the next office who slacks off - now that's patronizing.
2. Strained relationships. In its most destructive form, merit pay is set up as a competition, where the point is to best one's colleagues...pay- for-performance programs don't have to be explicitly competitive in order to undermine collegial relationships. If I end up getting a bonus and you don't, our interactions are likely to be adversely affected... Are these bonuses made public? Are teachers going to go around demanding to know who got bonuses and who didn't? Are teachers expected to be so immature that they will demand to know who got bonuses, are incapable of understanding that a bonus is based on meeting a set of standards for the year, and will then sabotage the performance of other teachers to get that money? I don't see this sort of competition in my job, despite the fact that we're all hoping to get bonuses. Are teachers really expected to be that cutthroat?
3. Reasons and motives. The premise of merit pay, and indeed of all rewards, is that people could be doing a better job but for some reason have decided to wait until it's bribed out of them. This is as insulting as it is inaccurate. Funny, I don't know many people who hold back and work hard only when there are monetary incentives. I do know people who expect to make more money and receive more praise when they improve their work performance, because even though their drive comes from within, it's nice to have the external validation. Also, I would think that teachers, of all people, understand that kids sometimes need outside incentives to better their performance. Why isn't this type of extra motivation considered valid for teachers as well?
Again, I know that school districts don't necessarily have cash to spread around, and that money doesn't solve everything. As this article points out, money isn't even listed as the most common reason for leaving the teaching profession. But I find these efforts to damn merit pay as quite bizarre, and I've yet to see anything that could convince me that teachers wouldn't be happy with better pay for better work, just like everyone else in the working world. If you've got an argument for that, be sure to share it with me.
I also note that the article equates paying people "fairly" with paying everyone on some measure other than merit, which doesn't seem fair to me. The author is also one of those people who believes that any sort of high stakes or accountability measures are bad simply because some people are motivated to cheat when the stakes increase, as though this were a valid criticism of the stakes, rather than the people involved. These statements make me even less likely to give his anti-merit-pay arguments due consideration.
Posted by kswygert at September 17, 2003 10:22 AM