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Merit-Based Pay

A teacher who is doing a remarkable job should be compensated more highly than a teacher who is simply showing up to work, putting in the required seat time, and bolting at the last bell, n'est-ce pas, right? (And the one who's dropping in the occasional French phrase should get the most, areweright?).

Most people who would say yes (or oui) agree that the idea of merit pay makes as much sense for teachers as it does for people in other professions. The best lawyers earn higher hourly rates, the best artists get honored in the Louvre instead of shoved into some basement, the best salespeople get rid of more encyclopedias—you get the point.

So it's not the idea of paying highly qualified and successful teachers well that rankles so many people. It's the way in which various individuals, communities, and government officials propose to define just what it is that makes a particular teacher a good one.

Testing, Testing, 1-2-$30,000 a Year

In recent years, several bills and initiatives (including SB 10-191 in Colorado, President Obama's Race to The Top program, and this policy paper from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) have suggested tying teacher pay—at least in part—to students' test scores. Sure, the Gates Foundation paper in particular points out that this would be just one measure of a teacher's performance (accounting for somewhere between 33% and 50% of the criteria), and makes the claim that classroom observations and student surveys should also be used to measure a teacher's effectiveness. Yet the idea of having teacher pay tied to student success on standardized tests at all is a deal-breaker for many.

Why? Critics of the movement to tie teacher pay to student test scores say that students' test scores are more likely to be good indicators of "the life circumstances of the students teachers have," rather than of that teacher's ability to teach effectively (source). Additionally, they point out that many standardized tests have been found to be flawed, favoring some students while inaccurately measuring the abilities of students from various cultural backgrounds, races, or ethnicities. Which just might mean some inaccurate measurement of the teachers, too, if you're down to make that leap.

And let's add to that list the fact that student populations can vary greatly from one year to the next. Meaning that educators may encounter a super high-performing group of students one year, and the next year get a class that's never filled in a bubble. At times like that, basing a teacher's salary on those students' test scores could unjustly inflate or decrease a teacher's rate of pay.

Of course, these criticisms are at least part of why many merit-pay plans suggest that test scores should be just one of many measures to evaluate teachers. In his speech at the 2009 NEA Convention, former Education Secretary Arne Duncan stated that "test scores alone should never drive evaluation, compensation, or tenure decisions" (source). Sure, he also said that omitting test scores from the teacher evaluation process altogether would be "illogical and indefensible source."

Well, can't win 'em all.

Beyond Test Scores

Still, the pendulum has begun to swing in recent years in favor of rewarding effective teachers with some form of merit pay.

Cue steps and lanes.

No, it's not a combination of ballroom dancing and bowling. (Though when that gets invented, sign us up).

"Steps" refer to the number of years an educator has been teaching. A teacher at Step 1 (or in some cases, Step 0) would be a beginning teacher, and thus would begin his career at the lowest base pay. That teacher's salary would increase by one step each year until he has reached the top of the ladder—so after, say, 20 years, that teacher will see no more pay increases regardless of how much longer he teachers. Yeah, and you thought teaching 50 years was a surefire way to become a millionaire.

Heh.

"Lanes" allow a teacher to move laterally across the salary chart depending upon their level of education, so they can increase their rate of pay with each advanced degree or certificate. When lanes are thrown into the equation, a first-year teacher with an advanced degree could start at Step 1 but in Lane 2 (or 3 or 4), earning greater pay for having more education under their belt.

Adding lanes to the equation, in its own way, is a form of merit pay. As stated by Gary Vines, a member of the Portland Education Association in Maine, "the best indicator of student learning is teacher learning" (source). And that's why Portland moved to a Professional Learning Based Salary System back in 2007. In addition to utilizing steps based on years of experience, according to the its proponents, the PLBSS "awards teachers credit toward salary increases based on various forms of professional development, from college courses to workshops to independent-study programs that educators then applied to their classrooms by researching and designing action plans" (source).

The result of this program, according to Portland educators, is not just higher salaries for participants, but also improved teaching. As they say, "rigorous professional development has become the norm in Portland, and educators are continually being challenged to learn, reflect on, and hone their instructional skills" (source).

This is the kind of merit pay organizations like the NEA can get behind. They pointed to Portland's pay model (as well as the Professional Compensation Alternative Plan in Helena, Montana) as good examples of alternative pay systems.

It may not be perfect, but at least it's a step up—er, lane over—from awarding pay based on student test scores alone. And it's unlikely that the NEA will be throwing its weight behind any test-score-focused plan anytime soon, as evidenced by the fourth bullet point on the Fact Sheet on NEA's views regarding mandated performance pay for educators.

Still, with student test scores as the primary sticking point, it's possible that more school systems will begin to move toward salary schedules that include a form of merit pay of their own design. Exactly how that merit will be determined aside from the test scores remains to be seen.

Let's just hope it involves a nap somewhere along the way.