merit pay

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>]

Marion Brady education column published in Knight-Ridder/Tribune.  11-19-05

> From the farmhouse where I once lived, it was pretty much a straight shot up
> Ohio Route 14 to Lincoln Electric on the east side of Cleveland. Fifty years
> ago it was about an hour's drive.
>
> Lincoln Electric manufactured electrical equipment, mostly electric welders.
> A neighbor, friend, and father of one of my students worked there. He rarely
> missed an opportunity to remind me that he made about three times more money
> assembling electric welders than I made teaching his daughter.
>
> I knew the way to Lincoln Electric not because I was interested in changing
> jobs, but because I was talking to someone there about a project I thought
> could improve Southeast High School.
>
> By just about any measure, Lincoln was progressive. In 1914 they created an
> Employee Advisory Board made up of elected representatives from every
> department. In the next few years, long before most other companies,
> everybody got free life insurance, paid vacations, stock ownership plans,
> bonuses for useful suggestions, automatic cost-of-living raises, and
> continuous employment guarantees. During the worst years of the Great
> Depression, average pay for employees more than doubled.
>
> What particularly interested me about Lincoln, however, was the company's
> "Incentive Bonus" program. Simply put, the better job you did, the more you
> got paid.
>
> Merit pay! I loved the idea! The agriculture teacher and I began an effort,
> blessed by the school board, to bring merit pay to Southeast High School.
>
> It was a real challenge. Every problem we solved seemed to create two or
> three new problems. Month after month we talked about "the devil in the
> details." Finally, notwithstanding how commonsensical the whole idea seemed,
> notwithstanding our initial enthusiasm, notwithstanding how "American" the
> project, we concluded that the gulf between manufacturing things and
> teaching kids was unbridgeable. The devil wasn't in the details; the devil
> was in the fundamentals.
>
> Here are some relevant facts - facts still true:
>
> - Every kid is different. In industry, quality controls discard
> unsatisfactory "raw material." Teachers have to work with whatever the local
> parent population produces - smart and slow, motivated and lazy, clever and
> clueless.
>
> - Every class is different. Two classes of the same size, studying the same
> subject, in the same room, at the same time of day and year, will have
> different "collective personalities" and have to be taught differently.
>
> - Every subject is different. A performance evaluation for a band director
> won't work for a teacher helping kids learn how to give impromptu speeches
> in an English class, or analyze propaganda in a social studies class, or
> study milk production on a local dairy farm in an agriculture class.
>
> - Every teacher is different. Some come on like Marine drill sergeants,
> others like Mary Poppins. Both approaches, and everything in between, can
> succeed for teachers who build on their strengths and minimize their
> weaknesses. How a particular style works will be different for every
> student, and the results may not be known for years.
>
> - Every work environment is different. Some administrators treat teachers as
> professionals, encouraging independence, growth and creativity. Others are
> authoritarian and controlling, or even see teachers as the enemy. Not
> surprisingly, teachers function differently in different environments.
>
> - Every resource base differs. There's no standardization of the kinds and
> amounts of instructional tools and materials available, of monies for
> supplies and enrichment activities, or for the ability and willingness of
> parents or volunteers to share their knowledge, experience and support.
>
> That's six major variables affecting teacher performance, only one of which
> is controlled by the teacher.
>
> I can think of no way to bulldoze all those variables into a level playing
> field for all teachers. And in the more than 50 years since we tried and
> failed, I've never seen anyone else do it. Twenty -two governors recently
> agreed that merit pay is a great idea, and the governor of Texas is putting
> a plan in place. It'll be interesting to watch what happens. A perception of
> unfairness is a sure-fire way to destroy a school system.
>
> But even if some genius figures out how to do what my friend Bruce and I
> couldn't do, it won't solve the problem.
>
> Merit pay is based on an assumption about basic human nature, that money is
> the ultimate motivator, and the behavior of hundreds of teachers I've known
> says that isn't true.
>
> Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, argues
> persuasively that creating quality is a deeper human drive than
> acquisitiveness. Sure, teachers want enough to live decently. But the
> teachers who readers should most want teaching their kids and grandkids are
> those for whom quality work is more important than money. If the opportunity
> to achieve that is missing, raising salaries enough to keep teachers in the
> profession will trigger a tax revolt.
>
> __._,_.___