How should we reward teachers? We shouldn't.
There鈥檚 no end to the possible uses for that nifty little Latin phrase Cui bono?, which means: Who benefits? Whose interests are served? It鈥檚 the right question to ask about a testing regimen guaranteed to make most public schools look as though they鈥檙e failing. Or about the assumption that people with less power than you have (students, if you鈥檙e a teacher; teachers, if you鈥檙e an administrator) are unable to participate in making decisions about what they鈥檙e going to do every day.
And here鈥檚 another application: Cui bono when we鈥檙e assured that money is the main reason it鈥檚 so hard to find good teachers? If only we paid them more, we鈥檇 have no trouble attracting and retaining the finest educators that鈥攚ell, that money can buy. Just accept that premise, and you鈥檒l never have to consider the way teachers are treated. In fact, you could continue disrespecting and de-skilling them, forcing them to use scripted curricula and turning them into glorified test-prep technicians. If they seem unhappy, it must be just because they want a bigger paycheck.
In 2000, Public Agenda questioned more than 900 new teachers and almost as many college graduates who 诲颈诲苍鈥檛 choose a career in education. The report concluded that, while 鈥渢eachers do believe that they are underpaid,鈥� higher salaries would probably be of limited effectiveness in alleviating teacher shortages because considerations other than money are 鈥渟ignificantly more important to most teachers and would-be teachers.鈥� Two years later, 44 percent of administrators reported, in another Public Agenda poll, that talented colleagues were being driven out of the field because of 鈥渦nreasonable standards and accountability.鈥�
Meanwhile, a small California survey, published last year in Phi Delta Kappan, found that the main reason newly credentialed teachers were leaving the profession was not low salaries or difficult children. Rather, those who threw in the towel were most likely to cite what was being done to their schools in the name of 鈥渁ccountability.鈥� And the same lesson seems to hold cross-culturally. Mike Baker, a correspondent for BBC News, discovered that an educational 鈥渞ecruitment crisis鈥� exists almost exclusively in those nations 鈥渨here accountability measures have undermined teachers鈥� autonomy.鈥�
That unhappy educators have a lot more on their minds than money shouldn鈥檛 be surprising in light of half a century of research conducted in other kinds of workplaces. When people are asked what鈥檚 most important to them, financial concerns show up well behind such factors as interesting work or good people to work with. For example, in a large survey conducted by the Families and Work Institute, 鈥渟alary/wage鈥� ranked 16th on a list of 20 reasons for taking a job. (Interestingly, managers asked what they believe matters most to their employees tend to mention money鈥攁nd then proceed to manage on the basis of that error.)
Educational policymakers might be forgiven their shortsightedness if they were just proposing to raise teachers鈥� salaries across the board鈥攐r, perhaps, to compensate them appropriately for more responsibilities or for additional training. Instead, though, many are turning to some version of 鈥減ay for performance.鈥� Here, myopia is complicated by amnesia: For more than a century, such plans have been implemented, then abandoned, then implemented in a different form, then abandoned again. The idea never seems to work, but proponents of merit pay never seem to learn.
Here are the educational historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban: 鈥淭he history of performance-based salary plans has been a merry-go-round. In the main, districts that initially embraced merit pay dropped it after a brief trial.鈥� But even 鈥渞epeated experiences鈥� of failure haven鈥檛 prevented officials 鈥渇rom proposing merit pay again and again.鈥�
鈥淪on of Merit Pay: The Sequel鈥� is now playing in Cincinnati, Denver, Minneapolis, New York City, and elsewhere. The leading advocates of this approach鈥攃onservatives, economists, and conservative economists鈥攊nsist that we need only adopt their current incentive schemes and, this time, teaching really will improve. Honest.
To this day, enthusiasm for pay-for-performance runs far ahead of any data supporting its effectiveness.
Wade Nelson, a professor at Winona State University, dug up a government commission鈥檚 evaluation of England鈥檚 mid-19th- century 鈥減ayment by results鈥� plan. His summary of that evaluation: Schools became 鈥渋mpoverished learning environments in which nearly total emphasis on performance on the examination left little opportunity for learning.鈥� The plan was abandoned.
In The Public Interest, a right-wing policy journal, two researchers concluded with apparent disappointment in 1985 that no evidence supported the idea that merit pay 鈥渉ad an appreciable or consistent positive effect on teachers鈥� classroom work.鈥� Moreover, they reported that few administrators expected such an effect 鈥渆ven though they had the strongest reason to make such claims.鈥�
To this day, enthusiasm for pay-for-performance runs far ahead of any data supporting its effectiveness鈥攅ven as measured by standardized-test scores, much less by meaningful indicators of learning. But then that, too, echoes the results in other workplaces. To the best of my knowledge, no controlled scientific study has ever found a long-term enhancement of the quality of work as a result of any incentive system. In fact, numerous studies have confirmed that performance on tasks, particularly complex tasks, is generally lower when people are promised a reward for doing them, or for doing them well. As a rule, the more prominent or enticing the reward, the more destructive its effects.
So why are pay-for-performance plans so reliably unsuccessful, if not counterproductive?
1. Control. People with more power usually set the goals, establish the criteria, and generally set about trying to change the behavior of those down below. If merit pay feels manipulative and patronizing, that鈥檚 probably because it is. Moreover, the fact that these programs usually operate at the level of school personnel means, as Maurice Holt has pointed out, that the whole enterprise 鈥渃onveniently moves accountability away from politicians and administrators, who invent and control the system, to those who actually do the work.鈥�
2. Strained relationships. In its most destructive form, merit pay is set up as a competition, where the point is to best one鈥檚 colleagues. No wonder just such a proposal, in Norristown, Pa., was unanimously opposed by teachers and ultimately abandoned. Even those teachers likely to receive a bonus realized that everyone loses鈥攅specially the students鈥攚hen educators are set against one another in a race for artificially scarce rewards.
But pay- for-performance programs 诲辞苍鈥檛 have to be explicitly competitive in order to undermine collegial relationships. If I end up getting a bonus and you 诲辞苍鈥檛, our interactions are likely to be adversely affected, particularly if you think of yourself as a pretty darned good teacher.
Some argue that monetary rewards are less harmful if they鈥檙e offered to, and made contingent on the performance of, an entire school. But if a school misses out on a bonus, what often ensues is an ugly search for individuals on whom to pin the blame. Also, you can count on seeing less useful collaboration among schools, especially if an incentive program is based on their relative standing. Why would one faculty share ideas with another when the goal is to make sure that students in other schools 诲辞苍鈥檛 do as well as yours? Merit pay based on rankings is about victory, not about excellence. In any case, bribing groups doesn鈥檛 make any more sense than bribing individuals.
3. Reasons and motives. The premise of merit pay, and indeed of all rewards, is that people could be doing a better job but for some reason have decided to wait until it鈥檚 bribed out of them. This is as insulting as it is inaccurate. Dangling a reward in front of teachers or principals鈥�"Here鈥檚 what you鈥檒l get if things somehow improve"鈥� does nothing to address the complex, systemic factors that are actually responsible for educational deficiencies. Pay-for-performance is an outgrowth of behaviorism, which is focused on individual organisms, not systems鈥攁nd, true to its name, looks only at behaviors, not at reasons and motives and the people who have them.
Even if they wouldn鈥檛 mind larger paychecks, teachers are typically not all that money-driven. They keep telling us in surveys that the magical moment when a student suddenly understands is more important to them than another few bucks. And, as noted above, they鈥檙e becoming disenchanted these days less because of salary issues than because they 诲辞苍鈥檛 enjoy being controlled by accountability systems. Equally controlling pay-for-performance plans are based more on neoclassical economic dogma than on an understanding of how things look from a teacher鈥檚 perspective.
Most of all, merit pay fails to recognize that there are different kinds of motivation. Doing something because you enjoy it for its own sake is utterly unlike doing something to get money or recognition. In fact, researchers have demonstrated repeatedly that the use of such extrinsic inducements often reduces intrinsic motivation. The more that people are rewarded, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward. If bonuses and the like can 鈥渕otivate鈥� some educators, it鈥檚 only in an extrinsic sense, and often at the cost of undermining their passion for teaching.
For example, a recent study of a merit-pay plan that covered all employees at a Northeastern college found that intrinsic motivation declined as a direct result of the plan鈥檚 adoption, particularly for some of the school鈥檚 鈥渕ost valued employees鈥攖hose who were highly motivated intrinsically before the program was implemented.鈥� The more the plan did what it was intended to do鈥攔aise people鈥檚 extrinsic motivation by getting them to see how their performance would affect their salaries鈥攖he less pleasure they came to take in their work. The plan was abandoned after one year.
That study 诲颈诲苍鈥檛 even take account of how resentful and demoralized people may become when they 诲辞苍鈥檛 get the bonus they鈥檙e expecting. For all these reasons, I tell Fortune 500 executives (or at least those foolish enough to ask me) that the best formula for compensation is this: Pay people well, pay them fairly, and then do everything possible to help them forget about money. All pay-for-performance plans, of course, violate that last precept.
Measurement issues. Despite what is widely assumed by economists and behaviorists, some things are more than the sum of their parts, and some things 肠补苍鈥檛 be reduced to numbers. It鈥檚 an illusion to think we can specify and quantify all the components of good teaching and learning, much less establish criteria for receiving a bonus that will eliminate the perception of arbitrariness. No less an authority than the statistician-cum-quality-guru W. Edwards Deming reminded us that 鈥渢he most important things we need to manage 肠补苍鈥檛 be measured.鈥�
It鈥檚 possible to evaluate the quality of teaching, but it鈥檚 not possible to reach consensus on a valid and reliable way to pin down the meaning of success, particularly when dollars hang in the balance. What鈥檚 more, evaluation may eclipse other goals. After merit-pay plans take effect, administrators often visit classrooms more to judge teachers than to offer them feedback for the purpose of improvement.
It's possible to evaluate the quality of teaching, but it's not possible to reach consensus on a valid and reliable way to pin down the meaning of success, particularly when dollars hang in the balance.
All these concerns apply even when technicians struggle to find good criteria for allocating merit pay. But the problems are multiplied when the criteria are dubious, such as raising student test scores. These tests, as I and others have argued elsewhere, tend to measure what matters least. They reflect children鈥檚 backgrounds more than the quality of a given teacher or school. Moreover, merit pay based on those scores is not only unfair but damaging, if it accelerates the exodus of teachers from troubled schools where they鈥檙e most needed.
Schoolwide merit pay, again, is no less destructive than the individual version. High stakes induce cheating, gaming, teaching to the test, and other ways of snagging the bonus (or dodging the penalty) without actually improving student learning. In fact, some teachers who might resist these temptations, preferring to do what鈥檚 best for kids rather than for their own wallets, feel compelled to do more test prep when their colleagues鈥� paychecks are affected by the school鈥檚 overall scores.
It may be vanity or, again, myopia that persuades technicians, even after the umpteenth failure, that merit pay need only be returned to the shop for another tuneup. Perhaps some of the issues mentioned here can be addressed, but most are inherent in the very idea of paying educators on the basis of how close they鈥檝e come to someone鈥檚 definition of successful performance. It鈥檚 time we acknowledged not only that such programs 诲辞苍鈥檛 work, but that they 肠补苍鈥檛 work.
Furthermore, efforts to solve one problem often trigger new ones. Late-model merit-pay plans often include such lengthy lists of criteria and complex statistical controls that no one except their designers understand how the damn things work.
So how should we reward teachers? We shouldn鈥檛. They鈥檙e not pets. Rather, teachers should be paid well, freed from misguided mandates, treated with respect, and provided with the support they need to help their students become increasingly proficient and enthusiastic learners.
