Weighing in on Merit Pay -- Do YOU Want Bart Simpson Determining Your Salary?

Fine, I'll weigh in on merit pay.

I'm for it.

My colleagues are gasping.  My friends are confused.  How could I possibly approve of merit pay for teachers?

Basically, I love chaos.

However.  (You knew it was coming.)  And that's a big however.

Our school district, state, and federal government are all promoting merit pay for teachers.  In fact, our school district is proposing a "value-added" component that bases your "merit" on the performance of your students on one standardized test they take in May.

Are you cringing now?  I am.

Recently our local newspaper published an article preparing us for the worst.  They hired a researcher from a local think-tank to review data from our school district and are going to publish a list of 6,000 elementary school teachers and their "ratings."  These ratings are based on the improvement of individual students on the state testing (again--that one standardized test they take in May).  The evaluation of teachers--what they are calling the value-added approach--is calculated as a percentile.  Those at the top of the ranking are being labeled by the paper as "highly effective" teachers, and those at the bottom are "least effective."

 Some cynics (and realists) think that this sensationalistic journalism was a move to increase readership in a floundering newspaper whose circulation has plummeted by 40% in the past 10 years.  But I won't go there right now.  I'll save my rant about the slow and painful demise of our beloved paper for another day.

Ironically, the school district this year is reporting that our test scores have gone up.  So, when you are evaluating people on a percentile basis that is moving upward, someone still has to be at the bottom, right?  Someone has to occupy the basement even if they are doing something "effective" in the classroom.

Now let's look at how colleges evaluate applicants.  Do they look at only the SATs?  No.  Now that would be silly--it's just one test.  Instead, the colleges look at a variety of indicators:  SATs, grade point average, Achievement Tests, AP tests, essays, letters of recommendation, extra-curricular activities, and occasionally interviews.  They look at a variety of measures and treat the incoming student as a whole person.  If the colleges are looking at the "whole" student, why isn't the school district?

Here are the reasons I am against the district's proposal to use this particular value-added measure to evaluate and pay for a teacher's performance:

1. The state test is a flawed tool.  It is under dispute and should not be used for something as serious as determination of performance and salary.  I have previously written about this and could write volumes more--which I will do in later posts.

2. Kids who have great increases in performance on this test one year are more likely to fall back the following year.  That means, as a teacher, if you get a class full of kids who "slid back" the previous year, you're in luck.  If you get kids who made big gains, you'll have a tough time improving this year.

3. Believe me when I say this:  for the most part, kids don't take this test seriously.  It doesn't determine whether they move onto the next grade or not.  It doesn't determine the grades on their report card.  They don't even get the scores until months after they take the test, and even then, they don't know what they did right or wrong.  The impact and import of the test is lost on them, so they don't care about it the way we teachers do, and the way we teachers would like them to care.

4. We teach to the whole child.  What does that mean?  Well, yes, we teach the standards.  We teach them to write, and read, and do math.  And we teach them how to take tests.  But we also teach them how to think critically.  We teach them how to solve problems.  We teach them how to love reading.  We work on their self-esteem, personal hygiene, social skills--we teach them how to play nice.  How to be a good audience.  How to be gracious.  How to walk away from a fight.  How are you going to assess that?

Regarding my own scores, last year I inherited a bunch of kids who had "slid back" the previous year.  I lucked out, because there was a lot of room for improvement.  Now that I've reviewed their test scores from May, only one of my kids slid back in language arts scores--and she went from "advanced" to "proficient."  Twenty of my kids improved by one or two levels--and I feel sorry for the teacher that gets them next, because it will be hard to make gains after that.

I am amused that our newspaper reported that it found that teachers who worked at poorly performing schools fared better in the evaluations than those at highly performing schools.  You know why?  Because kids at "poorly performing" schools have nowhere to go but up.  It's much easier to have a positive impact when such a high number of kids are scoring below the proficient level.

But let's get back to merit pay and value-added measures.  The union's response to printing the database of teacher scores has been to boycott the newspaper.  I laughed--I started boycotting this paper several years ago after The Tribune bought it in 2000 and began its destruction of our Pulitzer-winning paper.  But aside from boycotting the paper and writing letters to the editor, the union doesn't give any concrete advice on how to deal with the situation in a meaningful way.  They are relying on appealing to the public via a medium that has been attacking them for the past I-don't-know-how-many years.  The newspaper has consistently portrayed us teachers as whiners and slackers.  No amount of letters to the editor or boycott is going to change the minds of the public.  The public already has their opinion.

The district's response?  They love it--using this measure might help win the "Race to the Top" competition created by the Obama administration.  Arne Duncan's support of (and love for) value-added measures and merit pay does not bode well for the teaching profession.

So, regarding the value-added measures to determine merit pay:  I'm eager to see the fallout--I really do love a good trainwreck.  What's going to happen?

• Teachers will flee to teach the lower grades (K-2) where there won't be this value-added measure.
• Teachers will run away from teaching gifted kids, because their test scores typically fluctuate between proficient and advanced--and let's hope that you don't get a kid when they're on the downslide.
• Teachers will be reluctant to teach the lowest special education kids who have much more difficulty moving up.
• Teachers will drill and kill.  Haven't heard of that?  It's another term for rote learning.  To get the kids to perform on this test given once a year, we will have to drill them specifically on these kinds of test questions, thus killing the test-taking skill (that is, mastering it) and thereby killing the spirit of education.  Goodbye 21st century learning, hello vapid memorization.
• Teachers are going to leave the profession.  We are public servants, and we publicly serve in a hostile environment.  If you're going to publish our percentile "scores" based on the performance of nine-year-olds and pay us accordingly, then please pay us more.  Don't forget--Bart Simpson is a nine-year-old too.

The country's move toward a corporate model for education is laughable.  But that's for another post.  In the meantime, since I love a good horror movie, to the issue of merit pay I say:  Bring it on.