But the doubters are still doubting
Editorials
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Sunday, December 3, 2006
MOST TIMES, it’s not difficult to figure out homo sapiens. We tend to need love and affection. We eat and drink stuff that tastes good. We need shelter. After the basics have been taken care of, we try to entertain ourselves.
And we like making money—because it helps us buy food, drink, shelter, and entertainment.
We weren’t surprised at all to see that more than 85 percent of teachers in several Rogers public schools supported merit pay (or pay-for-performance, or bonus pay, or whatever it’s called this week).
Who wouldn’t want to make an extra buck? Besides a few teachers’ union leaders?
Wait. We have to take that back. Of course, teachers’ union leaders want to make more money. But they want all teachers to make more money—including the bad teachers. After all, bad teachers pay union dues, too. The feds have almost $100 million to spend on innovative merit-pay programs this fiscal year. They’re holding out the money and asking Who Wants It? Apparently, lots of Arkansas teachers do. From a story by our own John Krupa in Thursday’s paper:
The principals at Rogers’ 20 schools began polling teachers by secret ballot on Monday, said Deputy Superintendent Mark Sparks. At least 85 percent of teachers must support the program for a school to participate. Two secondary and two elementary schools had replied by Wednesday, and all four exceeded the 85 percent threshold, Sparks said.
The 85 percent mark was established by the school district. The administration doesn’t want to force merit pay on anybody. Rogers’ school district wants to make sure almost everybody at a school is on board before introducing merit pay.
And by the time Friday’s paper hit the doorstep, five of the eight schools that responded wanted this merit pay program.
Overwhelmingly.
Why are we not surprised? If we had a chance to vote ourselves a raise, we’d certainly do it. In a half-a-heartbeat.
If merit pay is given the thumbs up by more teachers at other schools in Rogers, the school district might follow a payfor-performance model used in Houston. Little Rock has several schools that are trying out merit pay, so they could offer in-state advice. But we hope whatever plan the district comes up with includes Longitudinal Tracking. Which is Pointyheadese for tracking the progress a kid makes from year to year, and noting how much his grades and test scores improve under each teacher. All the better to figure out who deserves how much in bonuses.
Of course, several leaders in the teachers’ unions came out against this oh-sodangerous pay plan, which is used all over the private sector. One local rep at an education association said the opposing view was not given to the teachers before they voted. Okay. Here’s the downside of merit pay: —Bad teachers who don’t improve the test scores of their students may get jealous of the teachers who do, and leave the school system where they can do no more harm to kids. That’s a downside? Maybe for the bad teacher. But for everybody else it’s a winwin-win-win-win . . . .
—Some say that teachers would hold off on sharing good ideas with other teachers at their schools so they’ll have an advantage and get more bonus money. Which (1) insults teachers and (2) doesn’t sound like any teacher we’ve ever known. Besides, the best merit-pay programs recognize teachers for how much their kids learn in their classrooms over the course of a year, and it has nothing to do with what the teacher next door is doing.
It’s not a zero-sum game. If every teacher earns the bonus, then every teacher gets the bonus.
—Teachers at public schools don’t get to pick and choose students, so some teachers will have more difficult kids, depending on the year.
Agreed. But with Longitudinal Tracking, a kid is tested at the beginning of the year, and again at the end. The teacher is rewarded for improvement from test to test. A disadvantaged kid or a child that’s behind academically has more room to improve, and that can mean an even bigger bonus for the teacher. Once again, the best merit pay plans reward teachers for improving their kids, and don’t give bonuses by comparing one group of students to another.
—Of course, the end-all, be-all, Holy Grail and Oh, Yeah? of those opposed to merit pay has always been: The teachers will teach to the test!
One official-type with a statewide union asked, “Do we want to train children to become good test-takers, or become functional, intelligent human beings?”
We didn’t realize the two were mutually exclusive. Why can’t we teach the kids to be both? We’ve always been good with academic tests. But we didn’t realize that to do that we had to give up the dream of being functional human beings.
We know union leaders don’t think teachers are stupid. At least we think they don’t. After all, many of the union leaders are teachers or former teachers themselves. But, boy, it makes you wonder when a union president says the results in the polling in Rogers’ schools have been skewed . . . because teachers don’t understand merit pay.
Oh, we think the teachers in Rogers understand merit pay very well, thank you. In several schools, more than 85 percent of them do.
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