'Performance pay’ drove Denver teachers to strike -- and it is failing in other districts, too. A North Carolina teacher explains why it doesn’t work.
Denver teachers are out on strike, protesting the system of performance pay -- also known as merit pay -- used by Denver Public Schools. Once widely supported in Denver, teachers now say the 14-year-old system is confusing and leaves them without knowing exactly how much money they will make each year.
Performance pay is one of those ideas that rises and fades in cycles of school reforms over decades. It may sound as if it makes sense — giving more money to teachers deemed the best — but research has repeatedly shown that it doesn’t work for a number of reasons.
In 2011, I ran this post by researcher Esther Quintero, who wrote:
The current teacher salary scale has come under increasing fire in the modern school reform area — and not without reason. Systems where people are treated more or less the same suffer from two basic problems. There will always be “free riders,” and relatedly, others may feel their contributions are not sufficiently recognized. So what are good alternatives? Based on decades worth of economic and psychological research, measures such as merit pay are not the answer.Although individual pay for performance (or merit pay) is a widespread practice among U.S. businesses, the research on its effectiveness shows it to be of limited utility (see here, here, here, and here), mostly because it is easy for its benefits to be swamped by unintended consequences.
Education historian and activist Diane Ravitch has written about it repeatedly too:
It is curious that teachers vigorously oppose merit pay, even though they are the ones who are supposed to reap the rewards. What do they know? They know that merit pay undermines collaboration and teamwork. They know that it corrupts the culture of the school.
In this post, veteran North Carolina teacher Justin Parmenter explains why it isn’t working in North Carolina. Parmenter teaches seventh-grade language arts at Waddell Language Academy in Charlotte. He is a fellow with Hope Street Group’s North Carolina Teacher Voice Network. He started his career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Albania and taught in Istanbul. He was a finalist for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teacher of the year in 2016. This appeared on his blog (and he gave me permission to publish it). You can find him on Twitter here.
By Justin Parmenter
“I find no evidence that teacher incentives increase student performance, attendance, or graduation, nor do I find any evidence that the incentives change student or teacher behavior. If anything, teacher incentives may decrease student achievement, especially in larger schools.” -- Harvard economist Roland Fryer
A few years ago, Harvard University economist Roland Fryer set out to learn whether the New York City Department of Education’s distribution of $75 million to teachers who met performance targets in 200 high-need schools actually led to better outcomes for students. His research determined that it didn’t. Not only CONTINUE READING: 'Performance pay’ drove Denver teachers to strike -- and it is failing in other districts, too. A North Carolina teacher explains why it doesn’t work. - The Washington Post