Clapping Harder For the Merit Pay Fairy
UPDATE BELOW
Earlier this week, I wrote about the death of the Merit Pay Fairy in Newark, New Jersey.
Hey, Jazzman, you bum -- I ain't dead yet!
Back in 2012, Newark began an experiment in teacher merit pay, fueled by funds from Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Teachers were promised up to $20 million over three years in extra incentive pay -- but in the first year, only $1.4 million was disbursed, and most of that appears to have comes from other teachers, who had their pay docked because they were deemed "ineffective."
Merit pay, in other words, was little more than a broken promise to the teachers of Newark right from the start. A survey of Newark teachers in the first year found a large majority did not see the compensation system as "reasonable, fair, and appropriate." (p. 24) It's not a surprise, therefore, that this past month both the teachers union in Newark, the NTU, and the district's administration decided that the program was not worth continuing.
But some reformy folks believe in merit pay the same way some children believe in fairies: they don't want to acknowledge the evidence that shows, even in the most generous reading, that the benefits of merit pay are very small and likely are not indicative of true CONTINUE READING: Jersey Jazzman: Clapping Harder For the Merit Pay Fairy
