# Determinating "merit" in school teachers **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 8, 2005, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/determinating-merit-in-school-teachers/298352 "2005-04-08T05:38:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/determinating-merit-in-school-teachers/298352/41 "2005-04-09T08:45:21Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > First, I’m not saying there’s a ‘magical formula’ for this. It’s hard work, and it’s a regular subject for discussion in our company among others. But it IS done, in the vast majority of cases. Most people work in companies where they get raises and perks based on merit. There’s nothing unique to teachers or other unionized employees that prevents them from being judged on their merits. In my wife’s job there is no merit pay, but everyone knows who the good and bad nurses are. It’s not a mystery. I have a friend who’s a teacher, and it’s obvious to him as well. It is no problem to identify the top 10% and bottom 10%. Even Deming admitted that. The 80% in the middle is the tough part. He has not plan, and hasn’t even tried to suggest something practical. This is a go over the heads of the unions for to appeal to a public that sees it simplistically. > [@](#): > > What would be wrong with sending teacher evaluations home with parents, having peer evaluations between teachers, Principal reports on teachers, evaluations of student test scores, student comments, sick/attendance history, records of significant after-school volunteerism, etc, all piled into a big evaluation meeting for the teacher? Let the Principal do it, have the principal give an evaluation, then let the teacher comment on it. The evaluation, along with the teacher’s comments about the evaluation, are passed up to the school district so that the principal can be evaluated as well. Principals who have continual anomalies in their evaluations or a much hgher than average level of teacher complaints about their own evaluations could be reviewed, etc. That’s the way most big companies work. Is it perfect? No. But is the alternative, in which everyone throws up their hands and says, “Oh well, teachers can’t be evaluated. So let the good move along with the bad.”? The principals in our district get evaluated all the time, and have jobs more at risk - and it is a disaster. Many get reassigned based on political arguments with the district office. One in my kids high school had this happen to him, and was replaced by an unqualified person with buddies in the office. Test scores dropped, the parents revolted, but she was safe until the superintendant retired. A principal now being reassigned got test scores way up, but seems to have offended someone somewhere. I haven’t even heard rumors of why yet. As for parent evaluations - hah! I trust that in Canada parents are more involved, but around here it is hard to get them to go to conferences or anything. (Parents of honors students show up.) Ever do an evaluation process using, say, internal customers for feedback? I have, and it is a mess. You really want a teacher’s pay to depend on the small subset of parents who would care enough to send back the form? There are so many opportunities for bias, and gaming the system. In California school went from 8 periods a day to 6. There is no time for eveyone to have science and language all through junior high. They don’t have PE all through high school any more. There is incredible inequity of funding - the formula got set years ago, and changes to demographics mean nothing. Arnie is going against a proposition that set school funding as a percentage of the budget, and going back on his word. And he’s blaming low test scores on lack of merit pay for teachers? He’s pissed at the teachers union running ads against him, and this is his way of getting back. If he cared about quality of education, there are tons of things he could do first. This is bullshit politics, and shows the very reason why the unions are against it. The school superintendants (both Republican and Democrat) are pretty mad at him also, and I haven’t heard of any supporting this. Contract are negotiated district by district - if this was so great an idea, how come none of the districts are interested? We don’t need big government in Sacramento butting in. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/determinating-merit-in-school-teachers/298352/42 "2005-04-09T08:56:54Z")
> [@stochastic](#): > > 1. Standardized tests are being mentioned as a major component of determining merit. Big problem. These tests do not measure student achievement or teaching ability, they measure test-taking skills. Additionally, the students have absolutely no incentive to do well on these tests- the scores have no impact upon whether they graduate, their college admissions, or scholarship eligibility. Many students recognize the waste of time these tests are and just bubble-in random designs on the Scantron. Absolutely. My daughter is in honors classes, and the kids, knowing they will do well enough to pass, don’t care about them at all. They don’t care if the school gets more or less money based on their scores. > [@](#): > > 1. Things might be fair if it was set up such that if the entire school reached a set goal, then everyone in the school was rewarded. Oh wait, that’s what they tried a few years ago! Guess what? The state ran out of money and that system was halted. So, where’s the money for this merit pay system going to come from? I don’t recall about hearing about more money for this program. I suspect it is an excuse to hold down raises or even cut salaries. A few years ago they set up a scholarship program for top performing kids. That didn’t last long. These clowns hold down the budget so we have fallen relative to other states, and wonder why the scores aren’t great anymore. That scumbag Jarvis destroyed the education of a whole generation of California students. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/determinating-merit-in-school-teachers/298352/43 "2005-04-09T12:52:05Z")
I would recommend back merit-based pay for governors and legislatures. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/determinating-merit-in-school-teachers/298352/44 "2005-04-09T13:25:57Z")
> [@stochastic](#): > > It’s unworkable because: > > \ > > The principal gives me “exceeds professional expectations” marks on my evaluations. Just for reference… MY evaluations are the “outstanding performer”, “exceeds expectations”, “meets expectations”, “fails to meet expectations” type as well. My merit pay is largely based on these ratings. As a matter of fact, until this year, the exact dollar amount was based entirely on which rating I fell into, combined with the company’s overall performance. This year, the company is allowing managers more flexibility to adjust dollar amounts within each category, of course, the company and managers have a lot of experience to fall back on. You are apparently already getting evaluated, why is it “unworkable” to use those evaluations to offer merit pay? Hell, who says you need detailed, hyper customized evaluations anyway? Put $2,000 of salary “at risk”. Give the middle 80% their $2K back. Give the top 10%, the obviously excellent teachers who really make a difference, $3.5K. Give the bottom 10%, the ones who obviously are just doing the barest minimum to get by, $500. You might want to say this isn’t merit pay, but one of the largest corporations in the world basicially had this exact system in place last year. Everyone got rated between 1 and 4 (almost nobody got the 4, which is extra bad) Rough example ahead: 1’s got 10% of their base pay as merit pay. 2’s get 7%. 3’s get 3% 4’s get nothing. The first thing they tell you in your evaluation is 1, 2 or 3. You also get a mid year evaluation 1, 2 or 3. It’s not about giving someone an exact dollar amount for the exact effort they put in, it’s about giving someone incentive to put more effort into the job. Phone it in, and you’ll be a 3. Put in long extra hours to really excel, and you can be a 1. Go in every day, do a good solid job, and you are a 2. It’s not that hard. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/determinating-merit-in-school-teachers/298352/45 "2005-04-09T17:51:50Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > As someone already mentioned, teachers don’t typically choose their students. This is an important difference. Another important point is that the perception that every kid is a malleable lump of clay that can be molded by a good teacher is often false. Most people get similar grades throughout school. Despite the fact that they will have all types of teachers (good and bad), most don’t advance relative to their peers. I will find the magazine that has the study when I get the chance. If a teacher gets a crappy lot of kids, there isn’t too much he/she can do to make them honors students. It’s like building a house on a shaky foundation. > > I don’t necessarily think merit pay would be a terrible idea, it’s just that I don’t think it could be done in an productive, meaningful way. I don’t know about the US but I remember reading a report on the Australian education system which ran a whole bunch of statisical analysis on university entrance exams and showed that teachers correlate about 30% with exam performance, schools about 20% and individual effort about 40%. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/determinating-merit-in-school-teachers/298352/46 "2005-04-09T20:03:39Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > You are apparently already getting evaluated, why is it “unworkable” to use those evaluations to offer merit pay? Hell, who says you need detailed, hyper customized evaluations anyway? > > Put $2,000 of salary “at risk”. Give the middle 80% their $2K back. Give the top 10%, the obviously excellent teachers who really make a difference, $3.5K. Give the bottom 10%, the ones who obviously are just doing the barest minimum to get by, $500. > > You might want to say this isn’t merit pay, but one of the largest corporations in the world basicially had this exact system in place last year. Everyone got rated between 1 and 4 (almost nobody got the 4, which is extra bad) Rough example ahead: 1’s got 10% of their base pay as merit pay. 2’s get 7%. 3’s get 3% 4’s get nothing. The first thing they tell you in your evaluation is 1, 2 or 3. You also get a mid year evaluation 1, 2 or 3. > > It’s not about giving someone an exact dollar amount for the exact effort they put in, it’s about giving someone incentive to put more effort into the job. Phone it in, and you’ll be a 3. Put in long extra hours to really excel, and you can be a 1. Go in every day, do a good solid job, and you are a 2. > > It’s not that hard. I’m curious - have you ever done salary review, or have you just received them? One of the HR mantras (better in theory than in practice) is decoupling performance from salary. Performance review is feedback, should be given throughout the year, and should never be a surprise. The buckets that you mention are to avoid ladder ranking people, which is tough. How can you tell if that 3rd grade teacher is slightly better or worse than the sixth grade one? But salary can’t be bucketed in this way. Because of low raises, increases and decreases are usually buffered. Say you give a teacher a nice raise, because whe is a 1, and the next year she is a 3. (It happens.) But even with no raise her salary is now above the 3 level. Do you give her a cut (too drastic) or do you just schedule her for 0 raises for a few years? But next year she improves and is a 2. Salary changes require a ton of fiddling. I ran the spreadsheet a few years, I know. Salary adjustments inherently require rank ordering people. I’ve done performance reviews where everyone got a rating against their goals for the year, which they could rate on hardness. (Someone with a new baby could choose lower goals, and that was okay.) Giving ratings was great - doing salary review was just as hard as ever. It is simple - but only if you’ve never had to deal with the nuances. And then you can start to think about how to compare PE teachers with others… ---
**Author:** ![beagledave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@beagledave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beagledave)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/determinating-merit-in-school-teachers/298352/47 "2005-04-09T21:55:10Z")
I love the comparisons between industry and education. Let’s have [No Dentist Left Behind!](http://www.lcsd.k12.sc.us/lancnty/pages/stalkdentist.html), shall we? ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/determinating-merit-in-school-teachers/298352/48 "2005-04-09T23:38:12Z")
Salary is a definitely a different animal than performance pay. Performance pay, which I define as a once a year “bonus” always seemed easier to deal with than raises. Our raises, and yes, I’m a receiver rather than a giver, are done at a different time of the year, and are at best tangentially related to your performance review. Salary is interrelated to coworkers, do you have more or less responsibility, are you over or underpaid in comparison to them, is your pay commesurate with the responsibilites you have? Ugly. Performance reviews and performance pay are simpler because they only ask how well you did your job this year. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/determinating-merit-in-school-teachers/298352/49 "2005-04-09T23:43:43Z")
Look, I have some 13 years of my own experience in the public school system in the US, and both my children went through the same, so that’s the limit of my experience, but based on this, here’s what happens. A kid in high school is a pretty good ballplayer, so goes to college on an athletic scholarship. He has to take classes, but because he’s busy playing sports, he can’t take hard ones, so ends up with a lot of ones called things like kinesthesiology, but lets be realistic, he majors in jumping jacks. He’s not good enough to go pro after graduation, but needs a job, so takes one as a gym teacher. The last thing he is is an educator, and he actively resents the students in his charge, so the first chance he gets goes into administration. The members of the school board, impressed by the modicum of success he has had playing college ball, rapidly promote him to principal, where he spends the rest of his career dumbing down the curriculum, and blaming low test scores on the teachers. I think it’s a stupid idea to let this guy determine the size of a teacher’s merit raise. Every teacher won’t end up quitting, just the good ones. If you want better schools, start with better principals. You only need to hire one of those per school, and a good principal can turn a school before you can hire sufficient good teachers to make a difference. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/determinating-merit-in-school-teachers/298352/50 "2005-04-09T23:43:45Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > Well I don’t know if it _should_ be the model specifically for the reasons you mentioned (along with many others). Certain jobs (like firemen, teachers, police officers) cannot be merit based pay by nature. Too many problems would arise from trying to “rate” a teacher’s performance. It seems to me that the problem arising from rating a teacher’s performance are technical rather than problems with the principle of merit pay. I also have no objections to paying more effective police officers or firefighters more. As in any profession, some police officers catch more criminals, and some firefighters do more to put out fires (hard to say with the last one given how hard **all** firefighters work ;)). > [@](#): > > Also, most teachers don’t become teachers to make tons of money. Most good teachers are motivated by their students’ success. While true, it still wouldn’t hurt to pay them more. It would also encourage those entering the profession to emulate the example of the good teachers. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/determinating-merit-in-school-teachers/298352/51 "2005-04-10T07:09:01Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Salary is a definitely a different animal than performance pay. Performance pay, which I define as a once a year “bonus” always seemed easier to deal with than raises. Our raises, and yes, I’m a receiver rather than a giver, are done at a different time of the year, and are at best tangentially related to your performance review. Bonuses are often one dollar amount per job class - so you get them or you don’t. A bonus for good teachers, on top of current salary, would be fine - though there would have to be some good criteria. But any change would have to be done with trust. Even if there were no technical problems, “merit pay” as a reaction to the teachers union opposition to Arnie’s ripoff ain’t going to fly. In fact, I think Arnie is now qualified to star in a remake of “The Office” when he finally gets booted from Sacramento. This proposal is real PHB material. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/determinating-merit-in-school-teachers/298352.md?page=2)