Per all this back and forth on the NYC pay reforms, NYC Educator on why he thinks he’ll never see a performance bonus. His point is a fair one, but many other industries have figured out ways to reward performance and deal with the problems of favoritism and cronyism. Not saying they’re perfect ways, there is no ideal here, just that a profession must have ways to address these concerns and just doing nothing can’t be one of them.
Also, in the NYT, Swarthmore professor Barry Schwartz criticizes the New York pay initiative writing:
The more society embraces the idea that nobody will do anything right unless it pays, the more true it will become that nobody does anything right unless it pays. And this is no way to run a ballclub, a school system, or a country.
But that’s not the point here. Using pay as one strategy to recognize excellence is not the same as assuming people will not try absent compensation. Pay for performance or whatever you want to call it is a way to recognize and reward excellence and consequently change the culture to celebrate excellence. I don’t hear too many people argue that pay for performance will inspire teachers to work harder, that’s not the point.
Also, on the missed point front, worth noting that Joe Torre quit because they were basically offering him less money, that’s not the case with the Klein – Weingarten reform. And, also worth noting that Joe Torre has been paid based on performance his entire career…we don’t pay all baseball managers, or players, in lockstep. In fact, we don’t pay college professors like that, either…
Just on the Joe Torre front- He was offered a contract that was well below his yearly salary and would have given him extra money for each level of the playoffs that the team moved through.
While he has always been paid for his team’s performance this has a specific incentive structure that laid out the goals of the team ie don’t just get to the post season, move through it and win the world series.
As a classroom teacher, I’m not sure the same things would motivate me. But what if we apply the Joe Torre example to classrooms. I can be expected to move my students through one year’s worth of material. Should I be more rewarded for moving my students more and docked for less? What if my base salary was set but I got bonuses for moving difficult students through the material? I think its important to set up a system that focuses teachers on the students who have been least successful in the past.
So to go back to Joe, maybe he should be rewarded for taking on a failing team and bringing them back to former glory. I think that’s what the Orioles are trying to do…
Just because baseball managers (and lots of other professionals) are not paid in lockstep does not mean their pay is based on performance. The second-highest paid baseball manager is Lou Piniella of the Cubs, who hasn’t won a World Series since 1990. Their pay is based on perceived value, not objective standards of performance. That’s known in economic circles as a “free market.”
It would be nice if principals could even base some pay on percieved value
Pay for performance is an excellent idea. Let’s begin with CEO’s, Presidents, FEMA Directors, Congress …
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Pay for performance is just a smoke screen to keep people arguing over the wrong things in education. Pay teachers like other professionals, treat them like other professionals, expect of them what is expected of other professionals, and the number of professionals in the field will grow.
But that’s not the point here. Using pay as one strategy to recognize excellence is not the same as assuming people will not try absent compensation. Pay for performance or whatever you want to call it is a way to recognize and reward excellence and consequently change the culture to celebrate excellence. I don’t hear too many people argue that pay for performance will inspire teachers to work harder, that’s not the point.
This seems either a little naive or a little disingenuous, I’m not sure which.
If the goal of merit pay is to reward and breed excellence, isn’t the covert goal to get people to try harder? If the pay gets linked to test scores, since that’s the sine qua non measure of excellence, it’s merit pay by definition.
It’s that nebulous meaning of excellence that’s the troubling piece. Do excellent teachers support their principal 100% of the time? No–no one credible would seriously try to link obedience and excellence–but that’s what the NY plan seems to do.
We don’t need pay for performance. What we need is an end to half-assed ideas masquerading as education reform promoted by guys who’ve never taught in an urban public school. You want teachers to perform – give them a decent principal, a safe school, a sense of mission, camraderie, a living salary and time to plan so that they can actually differentiate their curriculum for the broad range of learners in their classrooms. Without those basic elements that characterize a good school and true school community what is the benefit of pay for performance? Applying pay for performance to teachers is a true waste of time. apply it instead, to the self-satisfied, all-knowing, bureaucrats that populate district offices, state departments of education and the U.S. DOE. Since edubloggers are such fans of top-down education reform (unless they’re promoting charters), why don’t you apply your reform starting with the top of the foodchain down?