Paying teachers on merit bad idea
Orlowski teaches at the college of education at the University of Saskatchewan. Spooner is a member of the University of Regina’s faculty of education. There have been murmurings in Saskatchewan recently about reviving the old idea of linking teacher pay to merit.
Such plans have been tried as long as a century ago, but few have lasted very long. Even in the past 25 years merit pay for teachers has been tried in parts of the United States, yet almost all of these experiments lasted only a few years.
Before any implementation of this idea is considered, let’s state upfront what is meant by merit pay for teachers. In a nutshell, it refers to linking what teachers get paid to their students’ academic performance. Here are some issues for the public to consider in case the Saskatchewan government gets serious about this notion.
Many important goals of schooling simply are not measurable, and therefore do not fit into a merit pay system. For example, helping students become wellrounded citizens, helping them deal with out-of-school problems, and participating in the many and varied extracurricular activities at which teachers so generously volunteer their time, all will not produce merit pay.
Goals that are linked to merit pay will likely get more attention from teachers than other important components of the job. After all, research in human psychology indicates that extrinsic rewards such as merit pay result in less attention given to intrinsic motivation.
Even though people who go into teaching are not necessarily motivated by money, a merit pay system will likely produce unintended side-effects.
How will teachers who do not have a classroom of students be included in any merit pay system? School counsellors, librarians, art teachers and special education teachers come to mind. Will fewer educators want to work in these important positions?
If standardized testing results are the measure for merit pay, will most teachers try to work in schools with predominantly uppermiddle class student populations? After all, the families of these students can afford to pay for tutors, and they often do, which will skew test results in their favour.
How will a teacher merit pay system affect where teachers want to work? As we have mentioned in past op-ed columns, research demonstrates that the results of standardized testing are almost always affected by factors such as poverty and cultural bias.
Will more and more teachers eschew proven successful pedagogy such as inquiry-based learning and critical thinking, and focus instead on the multiplechoice format of standardized testing? Will fewer teachers choose to work with academically challenged students if it means that their wage will likely be lower? Would you?
We do not know of any other professionals who get paid according to some measured outcome of successful performance. Think of engineers, architects, doctors, nurses, police officers, firefighters, and airline pilots. Not only that, merit pay is barely used anywhere in the workforce.
Sure, sometimes there is some connection to the volume of tasks completed — doctors and tradespeople come to mind — but measured outcomes are not part of the amount of pay they receive. And would we really want education to be reduced to a factory line performance indicator?
If we want to value good teaching, which is commendable, then let’s start by respecting teachers as the highly trained professionals they are, consulting them on educational issues prior to unilaterally implementing any proposed changes, providing them the direct classroom supports they require to be able to do their job well, and paying them at a yearly rate at least commensurate with Saskatchewan’s Consumer Price Index (pegged at 2.8 per cent for April 2013-14 according to Statistics Canada).
Indeed, merit pay for teachers is just one more idea with harmful consequences, put forth by those with little knowledge of how education works, and even less knowledge of the relevant literature.
It really does not seem like an idea suited for public education anywhere, least of all in a place like Saskatchewan, a province that has a long history of co-operation and looking after the common good.