CURMUDGUCATION: Problems with Performance-Based Compensation

CURMUDGUCATION: Problems with Performance-Based Compensation:

Problems with Performance-Based Compensation

Bellwether Education Partners want to overcome the obstacles standing in the way of performance-based compensation (aka "merit pay" aka "fun ways to reduce total personnel costs for a school district"). But if you want writer Jen Bolson Meer's fancy definition, that's "Performance-based compensation is an approach where some or all monetary compensation is related to how employee performance is assessed relative to stated criteria."

Meer takes a moment to attack the traditional steps and lanes payment system. Advanced degrees and years of experience, she says, do not make teachers any better. And by "better" we mean "correlated to higher student scores on a narrow, invalid Big Standardized Test." That's pretty much the only way we could hope to make the absurd argument that neither additional education nor years of experience make teachers any better at our jobs. 

That argument poorly made, Meer is on to her main point. Why is there no model, no "playbook" for PBC in the teaching world. Meer says that's because in all versions, there are winners and losers. She has three possible versions of PBC

1) Stick with a traditional “step and lanes” system, but teachers only move up a step if they meet a minimum specified level of performance

Nobody gets a raise unless she makes her numbers; "ineffective" teachers would stay stalled on a single step for years, just like all of the teachers in places like North Carolina. Meer says that winners would be programs that benefitted from  the "freed up" money saved  by all the people not getting raises. 

There are two problems with that. One is that money would be "freed up" which h is an idea carried CURMUDGUCATION: Problems with Performance-Based Compensation: