So why are so many agin it?
Editorials
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Thursday, January 21, 2007
MERIT PAY, or pay-for-performance, or whatever it’s called this week, has been all over the papers recently. Consider:
—We noted Governor Mike Beebe’s interest in a statewide pilot program in one of his speeches last week, and look forward to seeing the details. That’s where, you know, the devil is.
—Then there’s state Senator Jimmy Jeffress, D-Teacher Unions, who is out to water down any bonus-pay program local school districts come up with. His bill to restrict merit pay was drawn up with an assist by a teachers’ union. ’Nuff said.
—Rogers’ school district decided to take the feds up on their offer to pay for a merit pay program. Yee-haa!
—Then there was the best news story of ’em all: Merit pay works, a study shows. But the teachers’ unions are still against it. (Gosh, you have to wonder how private business gets away with it. Let alone universities that conduct bidding wars for the most accomplished of professors.)
When researchers at the University of Arkansas studied the merit pay programs being tried out in the Little Rock School District, what they found should interest anybody who really cares about improving public education in Arkansas. This report offers real hope for improving education by recognizing and rewarding the best teachers. Gosh, just like in the real world.
But first the Ledge is going to have to get around Jimmy Jeffress and the other obstructionists out there. They can be a formidable obstacle to any progress in education. But allow us to pay our compliments to the obstructionist-in-chief. You have to admire the name Senator Jeffress devised for his plan to thwart merit pay: the Arkansas Teacher Compensation Equity Act.
A moniker like that reminds us of the crippling laws envisioned by Ayn Rand in her romantic dystopia, Atlas Shrugged. There was, for bad example, a Preservation of Livelihood Law that didn’t preserve anybody’s livelihood. And the Public Stability Law, which, of course, led to instability.
Mr. Jeffress’ beautifully misnamed Arkansas Teacher Compensation Equity Act turns out to be, of course, a guarantee of inequity—which will surprise no one familiar with the doublespeak of politicians. It would have been better named the Arkansas Act to Preserve Mediocrity in the Public Schools. Naturally the legislator worked closely with the teachers’ union to come up with this attempt to hold down merit pay—lest quality be rewarded and so encouraged. Can’t have that. It might lead to better education rather than just more power for the unions.
The Arkansas Act to Preserve Mediocrity in the Public Schools would specify that no more than half of merit pay may be awarded on the basis of student-testing data, that is, the ability to actually raise student performance. That way, only 50 percent of any local pay-forperformance plan would actually pay for performance. We can well imagine the basis on which the other half would be divvied up: attendance records, peer review (that is, mutual back-scratching), or maybe just how many of the kids finished their peas at lunch. Anything but actual educational results.
The story about Senator Jeffress’ attempt to keep teacher pay—and teacher quality—down at the lowest-common denominator was in Monday’s paper. It was old news by Tuesday, when those researchers from the U of A made it, literally, yesterday’s news—by revealing that merit pay was working. No matter how it sets the deadwood in the system to quaking.
The proof is in the test scores:
Wakefield Elementary in Little Rock was in on the merit pay thing early. Early for Little Rock, that is. The school tests its students at the beginning of the year, and again at the end. It doesn’t matter if the student is rich or poor, black or white, ahead in his studies or way behind. It’s only the progress of individual students that’s measured, and then teachers are given bonuses based on that demonstrated progress.
It’s starting to pay off, literally.
Teachers at Wakefield Elementary now can earn bonuses of more than $11,000, depending on how much progress their students make. Eleven thousand dollars is real money, especially for a teacher. So you can bet teachers at Wakefield aren’t sitting around making dittos and giving kids busy work. The researchers found that the kids there scored higher on standardized math tests than the ones at other control schools in the district that don’t offer teachers bonuses.
These researchers at the U of A found something else instructive: Teachers at Wakefield—along with those at another school that’s had a merit pay plan a while, Meadowcliff Elementary—are (1) more satisfied with the money they make; (2) see themselves as more effective; and (3) don’t view their lower performing kids as a burden.
Ever hear that old line about teachers’ not wanting the lowest performing kids? That’s one of the arguments used by the teachers’ unions every time merit pay comes up. Well, that Boom! you heard was that phony argument being shot down.
The bonus plans at these two schools are different in some respects, but the results of both are impressive: Last year Meadowcliff students showed a 26 percent improvement in their test scores, and the kids at Wakefield showed nearly a 40 percent improvement in theirs. (Full disclosure: We should note that some of the money paid in teacher bonuses comes from the guy next door, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s publisher, Walter Hussman Jr., who heads the Hussman Foundation.)
You just can’t argue with results. With numbers. With facts. Unless, of course, you’re a teachers’ union.
THE MEDIOCRE we will always have with us. They’re in every field but particularly, it seems, in education. Case in point: Rich Nagel, executive director of the Arkansas Education Association. He is untiring in his opposition to the very idea of paying for excellence in education. Just listen:
“They just attributed (the gains) to the pay,” he said of the researchers. “There could have been a bunch of other factors that would explain those differences. I don’t know what the school environment was in the merit-pay schools beforehand. I don’t know what the morale was. It just seems superficial to me.”
Superficial? Tell that to Wal-Mart. Or Dillard’s. Or Tyson Foods. Or the U.S. armed forces. Or the local convenience store. Or the owner of your favorite restaurant. Or your barber. Or the local cropduster. Or any other person out in the real, non-educanto world as opposed to the one that the AEA lives in—and that it’s doing everything it can to keep as mediocre as it is. Heck, tell it to the great teachers at Meadowcliff and Wakefield who have just demonstrated their ability. They’re pleased with how the new system works—and have every reason to be.
You know what’s superficial? Basing teacher pay on, say, student attendance. If a kid gets sick and stays home, should a teacher be punished for it? Or if a parent decides to get the kid a flu shot in early October, thus sparing the student from having to miss class in the spring because of sickness, should a teacher be rewarded for that?
How about just basing education on what the kids need to learn? Or would that make entirely too much sense? How about basing policies on the results of respectable research?
The teachers’ union and the pols they support find that approach unacceptable. It makes too much sense. They know what they know. Which is that all teachers—good, bad, and middlin’—should be paid much the same. It’s not as if teachers were real people who needed money, and who value recognition and rewards. (They should receive that much and more when they do fine work.) No, to the unions teachers are just dues-paying members who should be treated pretty much alike—and follow their leaders with no questions asked. Forget that merit pay seems to work. Which is what this study out of the University of Arkansas now has demonstrated.
