Merit pay is an idea with little merit

Teaching is hard. Most parents learned that quickly during COVID when forced to be substitute teachers around kitchen tables. Some parent substitutes still have bald spots from pulling their hair out trying to teach their kids mixed fractions. Now, imagine trying to teach 30 kids at one time.

Every few years politicians come up with recycled, bad ideas that make teaching even harder. Often, those ideas are long on rhetoric and short on common sense.

Historically, these recycled, stale ideas originate from an appointed task force, so politicians don’t have their fingerprints on the ideas when they backfire with the public.

It’s happening again.

In December, Governor Kim Reynolds rolled out her version of DOGE. Its stated goal is to improve government efficiency. The committee, composed mostly of businesspeople, made 45 recommendations. Three recommendations directly impacted public education, and it started warning sirens wailing.

DOGE recommended teacher pay be based on performance, meaning merit pay. Second, they recommend scrapping the Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System, (IPERS) and converting it into a 401k plan for new public employees. Third, they’re recommending health care for public employees come into line with the private sector.

All three ideas are not original and will not only super-charge the already critical educator shortage but cause veteran educators to search for a quick exit. These ideas surface every time business types decide education should run like business.

But they’re wrong.

Public education isn’t a business where profit is the motive. Lon Watters from Maderna Community College, said it best. “School is a building which has four walls with tomorrow inside.” Teachers are there to help students realize their tomorrow.

For this article, I’ll concentrate only on one of the bad ideas. Merit pay is misnamed. It should be called “Subjective pay.” Prior to the passage of public sector collective bargaining in 1974, in many schools the teacher with the “most merit” was the winning head football coach. Women were paid less than men, because they weren’t considered head of the household. Pay was subjective and arbitrary and if there was any consistency it was because the school board allowed “collective begging.”

Teachers learn more from one another than they do from the best staff development program. Merit pay will cause teachers to compete instead of cooperating. If the goal is to save money on salaries, there will be a limit on how many teachers can be awarded merit pay.

Unlike business, teachers and administrators don’t control the raw product. Public schools accept everyone knocking at the door. Schools are like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, “You never know what you’re gonna get.” That’s both the joy and heartbreak of teaching.

How do you define merit and how is it measured? Most merit pay schemes use standardized tests as the measure. If students score at a certain level or they improve from test to test, the teacher must be doing a good job. It’s quick and easy. It’s not.

At best, standardized tests measure how well a student takes tests on a given day. It’s a snapshot and it’s often blurry. Some subjects are never tested. A student’s environment is out of a teacher’s control. Did they have a good breakfast, get enough sleep, and have a calm trip to school? Do they take tests seriously, and how are they feeling?

Public schools are like small towns. Buildings are filled with different problems, and personalities. We don’t pay the local policeman or firefighter per successful arrest or how quickly they put out a fire. We know that’s absurd.

Let’s send the message, we don’t want “subjective pay” forced on our professional teachers. They have a hard enough job already.

Bruce Lear taught for 11 years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association Regional Director for 27 years until he retired. BruceLear2419@gmail.com