Why Test Score Incentives Aren’t Motivating

By Michael Diedrich, Policy Associate, February 6, 2012 at 4:00 pm

A few days ago, I outlined three reasons why paying teachers for test scores is a bad idea. The first of those reasons was that incentivizing test scores misunderstands the science of motivation. As a primer, I'd like to recommend again this video featuring Daniel Pink on what we know about motivation.

One big critique of seniority as the basis for teacher retention is that senior teachers have no reason to keep trying. In other words, this is about motivation. If we were to replace seniority with test scores, the argument goes, teachers would always be motivated to be good at their jobs.

However, simplistic incentive schemes linked to outcomes don't actually improve performance. We have decades' worth of research showing that performance actually drops when such approaches are applied to cognitively complex tasks. If there's one thing we know about teaching, it's that it's a cognitively complex task.

So if teachers aren't just cold-blooded profit seekers, what does research say would motivate them? After securing an adequate base salary, three factors are critical: autonomy, purpose, and mastery. Teachers need to have the freedom to direct their own classes, a compelling mission for which to work, and ways to monitor and improve their skill at their craft. The first can be secured given reasonable school leadership, the second is woven into the fabric of the profession, and the third can be achieved through multi-faceted evaluations using observations, in-class data, and high-quality instructional coaches. It cannot be achieved with test scores.

Many of the people campaigning against seniority have their hearts in the right place – they want a fair system for retaining teachers that's good for kids. Given the uncertainty about what would replace seniority, however, as well as the test score fetish common to conservative proposals, there's a very real danger that we'd replace seniority with a system that is actually less motivating for teachers.

Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education  Teacher Assessment