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Education

False Promises of Teacher Performance Pay

As a practical libertarian (yes, editor of something called Somewhat Reasonable) and realist education reformer, I tend to take people by surprise when I come out strongly against “Performance Pay.” I know many of the most ardent supporters of education reform and free-market policy tend to push for performance pay as a winnable compromise in policy. I, on the other hand, think that (like so many things in politics) this idea is much better in name than practice– and so do the results.

Performance pay is as based on “performance” as the Patriot Act is based on “patriotism.” In theory, a performance-based system would measure the effectiveness of each teacher at advancing the average student in the year that they have them. It would then incentivize success and punish failure. The problem is — correction, the problems are — that it is nearly impossible to gain an objective measure of teacher performance in any way that could be applicable to an entire state. Standardized tests fail to account for courses like history, arts, music, PE, and often even science. Even those tests are flawed because they are administered by the same people responsible for educating.

And when you begin to pull apart the actual policy, things look even less promising. Many performance pay plans are voluntary and none have a system of punishment for failure.

Today I’ve been vindicated. On the heels of several major academic studies in the same vein, the Center for Education Reform has released its report card on performance pay and the results are bleak. As the report‘s author points out:

“There is no national model for teacher performance pay that is being utilized in any state, city, or school in America today—with the exception of public charter schools and private schools.

Teacher performance pay remains the final frontier of education reform, and the confusion surrounding the issue has the potential to lead to watered-down, ineffective programs that emphasize “buy-in” over student growth.”

The National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University undertook a similar, albeit more rigorously objective, research project. The authors conclude that:

“Performance pay is often thought to be the magic bullet. That doesn’t appear to be the case here. We need to develop more thoughtful and comprehensive ways of thinking about compensation. But at the same time, we’re not even sure whether incentive pay is an effective strategy for improving the system itself.”

Its not. The reason we don’t see heavily-bureaucratic and confusing opt-in performance pay systems in our normal 9-5 jobs is because it isn’t necessary. Our jobs rely on getting people to buy a product or service. If our bosses think we aren’t helping that goal we get reprimanded or likely fired. If we are helping a lot, we’ll get a raise. This is the power of the labor market in an open economy. “Well, schools aren’t an open economy,” they’ll say…. True, lets change that. I’ve certainly got some ideas.

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Marc Oestreich

— Marc Oestreich

Marc Oestreich is a former legislative specialist on education and telecommunications, and coordinator of digital media at The Heartland Institute. He is now a marketing manager at Golden Technologies in Valparaiso, Indiana. Prior to joining Heartland, Marc was a graduate student at Purdue University studying political psychology and education policy. He enjoys defending liberty, writing about education and technology, music, designing websites, and is a fan of the NFL team in Indianapolis. Go Colts!

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  • Robert Shelton

    Marc,

    Sorry, but I think what you wrote is a lot of fluff and that your line of paying that way is NOT necessary because there is no way to measure it smakes of lazy. The education system in this country is one of the worst on the planet, the schools seem to have a quota as to the minimum that should graduate and the various school unions are more interested in keeping any and all teachers employed, keeping liberals in office and carrying signs at political rallys. All of that makes for one lousy school system.

    I am better educated than you, not because I went to more expensive schools but because when in middle and high schools the quality of the teachers I had were markedly better than the ones you had and surely better that what is out there today.

    If you want to say that the means of grading teachers (by performance) is bad, doesn’t work, faulty, whatever, then come up with a plan that works and that will get us back to the top of the heap, education wise, instead of in the toilet.

    Robert Shelton
    Atlanta, GA

    • http://somewhatreasonable.com/author/moestreich/ Marc Oestreich

      Robert-

      You can call it lazy but I think empowering the government bureaucrats to decide on effectiveness of educators is scary, especially when we consider the amount of union money that flows their way.

      You talk about graduation rate floors as a bad thing and I agree. But look at the current performance pay systems, many of which use “proficieny” as the measure. If a teacher can bring up say 75% to “proficient, they are considered effective. At the next level (say 80% profiency) a teacher might get a bonus. Well not only does that not work (empirically proven), it also follows this same idea of minimum proficiency. It caters to the lowest common denominator.

      To your last paragraph/thought:

      I literally ended my post saying I have some ideas and linking to a new plan for reform. You seem to suggest I didn’t offer an alternative. Well check there first. Expect to see it introduced in 2011.

      MCO

  • Greg Kelver

    I would agree with your assessment of performance pay Marc and I think your analysis is spot on. It sounds great in theory but measurement of “performance” is nearly impossible because of the infinite number of human areas that could be evaluated.

    One key problem with our schools remains the fixation on trying to optimize “class size” to a standardized ideal. For true performance assessment, perhaps the same concept that drives the success of charter schools through competition for students could be extended down to the classroom level. Parents should be free to choose teachers within a school and teacher compensation should be directly tied to the number of students in their class. Schools and teachers could set the range for “class size” and the teachers could compete for students and be directly compensated for each student. Truly great teachers that can effectively integrate technology and presentation to teach larger classes could be better compensated for their real “performance.” That performance actually would be constantly evaluated (and rewarded) by the parents choosing that teacher based on customer satisfaction – which would likely include the standardized tests generally associated with traditional measurement of teacher performance.