Merit pay is a bad idea for teachers

Teachers in the Ogden Utah school district are being moved to a new merit pay system. (Read KSL article about the new system.) I don’t think that this is a good idea for several reasons: “merit” is hard to measure, it is impossible to control for variability in students, and money is not the best motivator for people.

What makes a good teacher? What is good teaching? Most of us have a vague idea, but the answer is highly subjective. I remember loathing a particular English teacher. In my opinion, she should have been fired. A friend of mine thought she was an excellent teacher and said she had learned a lot from her. This friend and I would have ranked this teacher on opposite ends of the spectrum, and both felt we were being honest and fair. Similar examples abound. Student performance is one suggestion for determining merit, but is difficult to measure and does not measure the other factors also important in education such as a instilling a desire to learn, citizenship, or social skills. There are a few teachers that are obviously below standard, and a few that are amazing, but for most teachers, determining the exact degree of “merit” is almost impossible.

Students have a large degree of variability. Even within groups that are similar in appearance, there is a high degree of variability. One common suggestion of merit pay is to base teacher pay on student test scores. (I must interject to say that I have no idea the specifics of the merit based raises that will be implemented in Ogden.) Besides the fact that many people can’t agree if test scores are a valid measure of student achievement, test scores vary wildly based on the students taught. The standardized test scores of a high school calculus class tend to be very high, whereas the test scores of students in remedial algebra tend to be much lower. I have known good and bad teachers to teach both. This also raises a good question about teachers of English language learners or special education. English language learners tend to score low on tests, especially English tests, because they have more difficulty understanding the English on the test then their native English speaking peers. Even basing pay on the increase of students test scores from one year to another does not account for changes in home life, social factors, or the influence of other teachers of the same students.

Money is not the best motivator of people. This is especially true of teachers. The traditional capitalist view is that money motivates production. Even assuming “production” is applicable in education, most teachers are teachers because they want to be, not because it will make them more money. (My brother in law went to school for five years and is an engineer. I went to school for six and am a teacher.) Teachers are, as a rule, pretty altruistic, and most are trying hard to be good teachers. There are certainly some that are doing the bare minimum, but the same is true of any job. Teachers should certainly be paid for their work, and I am in favor of additional pay for additional work, such as coaching a sports team, but I don’t think that merit pay will motivate most teachers to be better then they are. The number of teachers who leave the field within a few years, coupled with a large amount of anecdotal evidence, indicates to me that teachers are teachers because they like the work, not because they think they will get rich (they won’t).

Should districts have more flexibility in hiring and firing? Probably. The ability to remove the very bad is important in any field, and teaching is no exception. As in any profession, there should be the expectation of quality. Perhaps period reviews should be implemented, to ensure standards are being met. But rather than trying to adjust each teachers salary based on “merit,” with a competition for the top paying spot, at most I would suggest a review before raises, to ensure that performance was acceptable. Maintain a salary schedule much like the current ones, but before advancing up the schedule, make sure that the teacher is doing well. This will remove the competitive nature of merit pay, and encourage teacher to work together and share good ideas, which is good for every teacher, and ultimately for students, which is why we want good teachers in the first place.