Merit Pay/Pay-for-Performance
The Truth About Performance Pay
In recent years, there has been an on-going effort to tie increased funding for education to merit or performance pay schemes. This isn’t new—the concept of Merit Pay has been around since the Eighteenth Century—and the plans have never stuck because they don’t work. Actually, there is a long, failed history of merit pay going back at least 60 years. Alfie Kohn’s article in the September 17, 2003 Education Week, “The Folly of Merit Pay,” succinctly summarizes the reasons for these failures and notes that there is little data to support its effectiveness. The article ends with a simple question and answer, “So how should we reward teachers? We shouldn’t. They’re not pets. Rather, teachers should be paid well, freed from misguided mandates, treated with respect, and provided with the support they need to help their students become increasingly proficient and enthusiastic learners.” To this day, enthusiasm for pay-for-performance runs far ahead of any data supporting its effectiveness.
SDEA support teacher accountability, effective evaluations and professional development tied to those evaluations. But first you have to convince people that teaching is a viable career choice and entice them into the profession.
Our legislative agenda support legislation that ensures there are salaries and incentives to attract and retain quality educators without linking salaries to performance pay schemes and or standardized test scores.
The Truth About Merit Performance Pay Systems
Pay for performance plans erode the spirit of cooperation between teaching professionals:
Merit pay systems force teachers to compete, rather than cooperate. They create a disincentive for teachers to share information and teaching techniques. This is especially true because there is always a limited pool of money for merit pay. Thus, the number one way teachers learn their craft – learning from their colleagues – is effectively shut down. If you think we have turnover problems in teaching now, wait until new teachers have no one to turn to.
Pay for performance plans are costly to taxpayers and difficult to administer:
In contrast, single salary schedules have known costs and are easy to administer. School boards can more easily budget costs and need less time and money to evaluate employees and respond to grievances and arbitrations resulting from the evaluation system.
Pay for performance plans have not been shown to make a difference in teacher performance and student achievement:
A 1994 Urban Institute study (Issues and Case Studies in Teacher Incentive Plans) reviewed studies of merit pay and found “little evidence from other research, including the evaluation literature that incentive programs (particularly pay-for-performance) had led to improved teacher performance and student achievements.”
The key question for any compensation system is whether it is designed to improve student learning or advance short-term political goals. SDEA supports many creative ideas to enhancing the single salary schedule such as:
· Giving teachers extra pay for extended contractual years, extended days and extra assignments
· Providing incentives to teach in hard-to-staff schools.
· Paying teachers for the knowledge and skills they gain directly related to the mission of the school and or their assignment
· Providing more professional development which allows educators to build their skills and knowledge to a higher standard.
· Rewarding teachers who have higher credentials directly related to their teaching assignment and/or mission of the school.
· Fully funding a compensation system that has at its core a fair, unbiased salary schedule that pays teachers strong, competitive professional salaries.
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Providing incentives for teachers to mentor newer colleagues.
The single salary schedule is the fairest, best understood and most widely used approach to teacher compensation – in large part because it rewards the things that make a difference in teacher quality: knowledge and experience.
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