Pay for Performance

A friend has asked for a comment on an article about merit pay for teachers.  Here's the link for the article in question: http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/content/study-teacher-merit-pay-didnt-work-nyc

Part I

"A New York City program designed to improve student performance through school-based financial incentives for teachers did not improve student achievement, most likely because it did not change teacher behavior and the conditions needed to motivate staff were not achieved, according to a RAND Corporation study issued today."

The underlying assumption is that student test scores will be improved if teachers just work hard enough.  They will work hard enough if there is a monetary incentive.  The idea that teachers aren't working hard enough is patently false.  Of course there are some bad teachers; the percentage will be roughly the same as the percentage of bad doctors, lawyers, and Walmart sales associates.  We don't work 7.5 hours a day.  Most of us work 10 or more hours a day during the school year.  And a day is very intense.  I used to arrive at school around 6:30 to get my room ready for the day.  Once the kids were in the building, we were non-stop until they left.  We were in the classroom teaching all day.  Between classes we were required to be in the hallways keeping kids from congregating.  In theory we were supposed to have a planning period every day but that was iffy.  If an assembly, pep rally, test, or game was scheduled during our planning period we were required to chaperone.  Team meetings and professional development were scheduled during those periods.  If a teacher was absent and the substitute didn't show up, we were required to monitor the absent teacher's class during our planning period.  Lunch was supposedly 30 minutes but by the time we cleared the halls and got back to our monitoring position after lunch, we really only had 20 minutes.  Did you notice that breaks weren't mentioned.  We couldn't leave our classrooms while students were there to go to the restroom without risking our jobs and we couldn't go between classes because we were required to monitor the hall outside our doors.  We had to turn in detailed lesson plans and grade every exercise we asked students to do.  My student load ranged between 135 - 175 students and I always taught the writing assessment so few short answer tests for me.  I did leave the building at 2:30 most days because I was so exhausted I had to take a nap.  When I got up, it was lesson plans, grading, paperwork required by the district, photocopying hand-outs sometimes until 11:00 or 12:00 pm. It is hard for me to imagine how anyone could think that I should work harder.

The other part of the assumption contained in the above paragraph is that teachers will be motivated to work harder for money.  I suppose this will come as a big shock to some but money is not really the reason that most of us chose to become teachers.  Does anyone really believe that we all got degrees and teaching certificates before we found out what the teaching profession pays?  Most of us went into teaching because we love kids, or our subject, or we wanted to make a positive contribution to the world.  If we were money-grubbing scumbags, we'd all be hedge fund managers.  So money's not really a big motivator for us.

These myths come straight from the business community.  Because so many of them are motivated by money, they think everyone is.  Because they don't spend their days in a dead run, they don't think anyone else does either.  Because they have never taught a class they have no idea how complicated and time consuming it is to do it well.  Because they don't care about other people's children or the community, they can't imagine people who do.

Hot Biscuits

My mother was a member of a minority group not often encountered in the South.  She was a Norwegian-American.  Born in the United States of Norwegian immigrant parents, she spent her early childhood in a totally Norwegian community in Illinois called Freedom.  Because there were no English speakers in the community, he spoke only Norwegian until she was seven and started school.  Her language problems continued, however, because at school they only spoke that perverted form of English that we here in the South refer to as the “Yankee accent.”

When mother married dad, she had barely been south of Chicago much less the Mason-Dixon line.  She expected a little culture shock.  She realized that making the adjustment from being a single woman to a married woman would present a challenge.  The most insidious problem that she faced, though, was the language barrier.  She often felt that she had immigrated to a foreign country for all she understood about the conversations swirling around her.

One of the bright spots in this cacophony of adjustments and demands was one of my father’s aunts, name Mabel.  Aunt Mable was a country lady.  She understood both city and country life and delighted in all the “feminine arts” from gardening to baking to interior decorating and she was kind and good to “the Yankee” (my mother).  Mother took to her instantly and a real friendship developed.

Aunt Mabel seemed perfectly rational and sensible except for her constant bragging about her “hot biscuits.”  According to Aunt Mabel her hot biscuits were the most beautiful around and he couldn’t wait until they came in so mother could see them.  Since her immigration south mother had made the acquaintance of several varieties of biscuits but had never encountered a beautiful one and how a biscuit could “come in” was a total mystery.  She imagined that, perhaps, there was some exotic form of yeast or baking powder involved, which necessitated a protracted period of rising or curing or something.  In any case Aunt Mable was such a delightful person, her fetish with biscuits seemed a minor eccentricity.

One day, in the middle of the summer, mother got a call from Aunt Mabel.  The hot biscuits were coming in.  Mother got there as quickly as possible.  Imagine her surprise when Mabel led her through the house to the yard and proudly pointed to what my mother had always known as hibiscus.  They were truly beautiful and they were worth the wait, but it took mother about 20 years before she felt confident about her ability to understand the spoken Southern word.