Last month, I mentioned a cause de jour floating around Washington like a unknown and unwanted item floating around loose in a street with no public sewers. The cause de jour was the concept of establishing Pay for Performance for Teachers and Principals in our school system. This is a great example where the principle of an idea or the ideal of the idea is well intentioned, however, it is also one that can not be successfully executed in the school systems of the United States today. It would be a quagmire to attempt to overlay the broken educational system of the United States with a Pay for Performance scheme.
Its akin to paying the US soldiers in Iraq for the successful keeping of the peace. If they can’t keep the civil war in check, then no pay check. If they can reduce car bombings month after month until there are none, then they get some percentage of their pay rate.
Its just a stupid idea not because the goals are not admirable, but because the accountability is placed on people that do not have the responsibility of fixing root cause problems.
Same goes for teachers. Many teachers, especially in title one school systems are in essence trying to keep up the educational standards in a system that has been decimated by the No Child Left Behind Act, which emphasizes test scores at the expense of real education.
When I heard about the Pay for Performance Plan for teachers, I said to myself, there is a place where this model should be used first, Capital Hill! Congress and the Executive Branch should be compensated based on Performance. I say give them a thousand to two thousand dollars for every point of approval they get in the polls and let that guide their salary. If they don’t perform or get low results, sorry about that less pay for you Mr President, less pay for you Mrs. Speaker of the House.
Matching teacher salaries (already far too low - but not as low as soldier pay) to performance when performance can not be measured with solid metrics is a non-starter. Successful education can not be measured like a radar gun measures the speed of a moving vehicle. There are too many factors that can also obfuscate the metrics that are out there. School districts around the country are essentially cooking the books now to insure that their school funding is not left behind by the Federal Government like so many people left behind in the Superdome or on roof tops or worse drowned in attics in New Orleans. Furthermore, teachers have no advocates to qualify the metrics that do come in. If a teacher helps their students memorize test answers and another teacher shows a child how to read, the first teacher is often rewarded and the second penalized.
The metrics are harming instruction like a police officer trying to make a speeding ticket quota. Its a strange abuse of power and results from a broken system. Teachers can’t even defend themselves when an over zealous system labels them as failed teachers, its not like they can go out and look for the teacher equivalent of radar detector reviews and protect themselves with something that shows they are doing the right thing by their students. I just moved my children out of one of the ‘best’ grade schools in the State of Georgia. The school taught to the test and didn’t teach much else. Important things like, how to write! Memorization and cheap test taking gimmicks were the rule of the day as opposed to teaching kids problem solving skills and other valuable commodities needed to compete in the world today. Children in this school, one of the best schools in the state are being left behind everyday, under the goals and mechanisms of the No Child Left Behind Act. The Bush Administration has leant its ineffectuality focus to education and their attempt to once and for all settle The Education Problem has resulted in a genocide of education.
Change the system and things could be different a Pay for Performance mechanism might work if the system were not broken and not run by an ineffectual Executive Branch. Apply that type of fix to a broken system and things will just get worse.
Positive Response from Congressman John Linder of Georgia
Now, I didn’t stop at just talking out loud on my blog. I wrote to my Congressman and voiced my displeasure at this suggested idea. I was happy to receive a response from him and happier to see that he too feels that the concept is a non-starter as no version of metrics could be applied to the current broken system.
To avoid misquoting him, I am including his response below. I encourage you to speak out regularly to your own Senators and Congress people and let them know what you stand for and why.
Dear Mr. Bumeter:
Thank you for contacting me to express your thoughts on House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller’s (D-CA) recent proposal regarding “pay for performance” standards for public school teachers and principals. I appreciate hearing from you.
On July 30, 2007, Chairman Miller held a press conference in Washington, D.C. at which he discussed a number of possible initiatives that he is planning to incorporate into his reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. According to Chairman Miller, “[n]o factor matters more to children’s educational success than the quality of their teachers and principals.” In order to insure this quality, therefore, Chairman Miller is developing a “pay for performance” program in public schools. At this time, however, there is no concrete plan describing how principles and teachers will be evaluated for pay incentives.
In general, while I agree that good teachers should be rewarded for their hard work, I do not believe that a Federally-regulated incentive system will be successful. Teacher effectiveness cannot necessarily be quantified accurately or consistently. There are many wonderful teachers who work in schools where students show little achievement from year to year because of lack of modern materials in the school or difficult family environments, to name a few. Conversely, there are below average teachers in affluent areas whose students have every advantage, and who will excel regardless of the teacher’s abilities, or lack thereof. Since the core of the incentive and punishment system already in place in the NCLB Act is based largely on student achievement, I can only assume that student achievement will have a large role in deciding teacher “pay for performance.”
Additionally, contrary to what Chairman Miller believes, I consider parents to be the key factors influencing a child’s education success. Naturally, teachers are integral to a student’s education, but they are not substitutes for highly motivated and involved parents. Instead of empowering the Federal government with greater control over our local schools and teachers, I would like to see this power given to parents and local school boards.
Ask any parent with school-age children who the best teachers in their child’s school are, and you are sure to hear a long list of names complete with a litany of evidence as to why that parent views certain teachers more favorably than others. Parents know the teachers who deserve pay incentives because they spend hours after school every week helping children with extra math problems or quizzing them on American history - all of which are entirely unquantifiable by the Federal government. Our best teachers, the ones who are most involved and who are willing to give of their time and energy may never reap the rewards of a “pay for performance” system, unless it is administered at the local level. As such, I would be inclined to oppose a Federally-regulated “pay for performance” program, but would be interested to see a similar program administered by local school boards.
Thank you again for contacting me. If I may be of any further assistance to you, please do not hesitate to call on me.
Sincerely,
John Linder
Member of Congress
