Merit pay can't be the whole of school reform

Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass wants us to stop calling him “that merit pay guy.”

But from the opening bell to closing remarks during the governor's education summit this week, Glass was right there whenever the conversation turned to restructuring teacher pay.

It's all but decided that merit pay will be on the final list of recommendations to come out of the governor's push for school reform.

Even before the summit, Glass and Gov. Terry Branstad seemed more than ready to move beyond the question of whether or not to overhaul the teacher pay system - to go straight to the question of how.

But exactly what we gain if we “put the earn back in learn” (as Glass' former consulting colleague, Todd Hellman, calls it) will come from changes in how we select, train and support a corps of excellent teachers.

The single most important factor in student learning is a highly effective instructor. But merit pay was just a fraction of what experts at this week's summit said is needed to train a corps of high-performing teachers:

More selective admissions to colleges of education. Tougher standards and training for school administrators. A recognition that, as Stanford University education professor Linda Darling-Hammond said, we need to redesign our schools so they're good places for teachers, as well as students, to learn.

For most teachers, getting that teaching certificate is just the beginning. It's on the job, in the classroom, that they learn how to truly excel at their craft.

But professional development is cursory, planning time is crunched, feedback is minimal and support can be hard to find. All that's got to change if we are going to raise the bar for Iowa's teachers.

Properly designed, performance incentives could have a place in comprehensive education reform. I get what Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, said this week: “If you don't have a profession that honors the best individuals, you're going to be only honoring mediocrity.”

Still, most teachers I know already want to be excellent. It won't be enough to just make them want it a little more.

Teaching isn't like business or sales. We have to do more than reward the best, we have to build a corps of top performers.

And by placing too great a focus on rewarding, not creating, “excellent teachers,” we risk ignoring critical institutional changes that will light a fire under Iowa's stagnating schools.

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jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net