Speaking of testing follies, education savant Alfie Kohn has just published his essay on merit pay for teachers in the latest edition of Today's OEA.
It's a timely submission. Bill Sizemore, the former carpet salesman turned expert on what ails schools and every other government enterprise, has another of his endless initiatives, this one mandating teacher merit pay, ready to send to voters.
What's wrong with merit pay, or "pay for performance" as it's often labeled?
For one, it simply doesn't work:
"To this day, enthusiasm for pay for performance runs far ahead of any data supporting its effectiveness—even as measured by standardized-test scores, much less by meaningful indicators of learning."
Yet despite the paucity of data supporting its efficacy, many urban school districts, notably Cincinnatti, Denver, Minneapolis, and New York City, have opted for merit pay as a means of improving the quality of teaching in their schools. So what gives?
Kohn lists four major problems with pay for performance, which, ironically, also make it so attractive to school administrators and local educational leaders:
- Control -- the people in charge see merit pay as a means of controlling the behavior of those below them, namely teachers. It also "conveniently moves accountability away from politicians and administrators... ."
- Reasons and motives -- the "behaviorist" approach to enticing better work from teachers almost always backfires. As Kohn points out, "extrinsic" rewards --bonus pay for better test scores-- usually "reduce" intrinsic motivation. Teachers, Kohn says, "are typically not all that money-driven." ( As a former teacher I know that to be absolutely true.)
- Strained relationships -- merit pay is often "set up as a competition... ." That's obviously not good for teacher collaboration, the heart and soul of school reform.
- Measurement issues -- this hearkens back to the post I wrote yesterday. The only "measurement" of teacher and school success currently in vogue is test scores. Kohn takes if further:
"But the problems are multiplied when the criteria are dubious, such as raising student test scores. These tests, as I and others have argued elsewhere, tend to measure what matters least. They reflect children's backgrounds more than the quality of a given teacher or school."
Of course, test scores are relatively quick and easy, so it's little wonder then that so many, including some teachers, are eager to jump on the test-based accountability bandwagon, despite the evidence that standardized test scores are ill-suited to measure the success of a learning environment --meaning the local public school.
And they're even less suited to determine which teachers "merit" higher pay.
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Posted by: cA34Joan | January 13, 2010 at 05:02 PM