Teacher Performance Pay Doesn’t Work in Minnesota; Why go National?
October 1st, 2009 at 11:56 am By John FitzgeraldLet’s get this straight: There is no entirely accurate way to judge teacher performance. Therefore, plans to base teacher pay on any perceived “performance” is nothing more that a political sideshow that panders to those ignorant of the situation.
The issue comes to us today thanks to Minnesota 2nd District Congressman Rep. John Kline, who introduced a bill that would establish a Teacher Incentive Fund that, according to his statement, “would provide seed money for states and schools to reward teachers for improving student academic achievement.”
Who could argue with that? It’s all puppies and kittens until you try to implement such a plan.
First of all, does a high stakes standardized test given once a year like the MCA II truly judge a teacher’s performance? No, it does not. It judges student performance on that one day.
Does a series of tests judging student performance throughout the year tell us of teacher performance? It does to a slight extent, but it is still faulty. As one third grade teacher told me, “What happens if three students who have limited English ability move into the district and I get them in my class. If that happens, my class test scores will drop and I can kiss any performance pay goodbye.”
In an ideal world, working as a team, teachers, staff and administrators can make sure no child is left behind. But as we all know, there isn’t enough money in Minnesota’s schools to fund an adequate number of teachers, staff and administrators to properly do the job, so this ideal can’t happen until the state starts properly funding schools.
One way to reward teachers is to send experienced teachers into classrooms to review and advise peer teachers. This is a really good idea to help teachers improve, and if peers think a teacher is worthy of a bump in pay, all the better. Unfortunately, this idea is in the Governor’s Q-Comp program and connected with a number of unpalatable requirements that doomed the program from the start. By my count, about 12 percent of districts or charter schools have taken up Q-Comp six years after implementation. Hardly a record to cheer about.
And, think about it for a second. Starting teachers in Minnesota make about $33,000 a year. The average teacher makes about $45,000. Not bad money, but not lavish. However, they obviously didn’t become teachers to make a lot of money. The idea that teachers will do their jobs better — and conversely, that they’re not doing their jobs well now — based on their salary is perverse.
Teacher performance pay plays well in the halls of Congress, but in the schools, it’s a bunch of baloney. How about instead, we pay teachers like the professionals they are, tasked with the responsibility of educating our children.
LikeTags: John Kline, Q-Comp, teacher pay, Testing
Mr. Fitzgerald has hit the nail on the head when he describes what motivates teachers. The reason they teach does not fit neatly into the world of conservative economics. I have found it insulting from the get-go that techers are assumed freeloaders unless we utilize the carrot and stick approach of Q-Comp rewards and that competing for higher salaries will unquestioningly yield better performance. This approach invokes the insidious assertion that teachers are presently underperforming and simply collecting their pay. This character assasination is the side benefit (demonizing teachers and the teachers union) Pawlenty receives every time Q-comp is discussed or praised. In fact Q-Comp is an incredibly divisive, unmeasurable and therefor arbitrary measure of performance and arbiter of pay. Precisely because of this capricious nature, Q-Comp will unfairly in most cases reward some and ignore others. Decades ago business organizations, in an effort to upgrade quality through the popular and successful program of Total Quality Management (TQM) rejected this method of bonus pay as extremely damaging and ineffective to overall quality. It particularly discourages teamwork, as Mr. Fitzgerald points out, which is the key to raising the achievment of all students, especially the challenging ones.
I do disagree with Mr. Fitzgerald’s statement that the 45,000 dollar average pay of Minnesota teachers is not “bad money”. I’m not sure what “bad money” is but 5000 dollars over the poverty threshold for a yearly income of a family of 4 can’t really be described as “good money”. Certainly that salary is not what attracts teachers to their field. In fact we can be fairly certain teachers are not in it for the money and we should be grateful they aren’t for there wouldn’t be enough teachers and few of quality were that the case.
[...] is a quote from John Fitzgerald at Minnesota 2020: “Let’s get this straight: There is no entirely accurate way to judge teacher performance. [...]