Will performance pay work?

In talking about education reform, we must be wary of pinning too many hopes on the idea of overhauling teacher pay.

The idea of implementing some kind of performance-based system will likely get a lot of attention at the governor's education summit this summer.

And leading up to that event, most of the chatter I've heard has centered on how education reformers might make the idea palatable to teachers and other stakeholders.

But the real question is whether we'll be able to design an incentive program that does what it's intended to do.

Proponents of merit pay systems say they improve teacher motivation and promote student achievement. But the real-life effectiveness of merit-based systems is described as mixed.

Studies of several schools - especially in India - do show a bump in student achievement scores after the implementation of teacher merit incentives. Closer to home, many researchers have found teacher incentives have little or no impact.

Recently, Harvard economics professor Roland Fryer, for example, found that teacher incentives in New York City public schools had no effect on teacher retention, teacher attendance or student achievement.

In fact, in his research published earlier this spring, he argues that incentives may more likely negatively impact student achievement, especially in larger schools.

He's not sure why New York's incentives don't work. It might be because they aren't large enough, or the incentive scheme is too complex, or group-based incentives aren't motivation enough.

Or maybe the problem isn't that teachers aren't motivated to drive their students to achievement so much as they don't exactly know how to do that, he argues.

Even Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass - nationally known for his work in developing and implementing merit pay plans for teachers - has admitted it's anyone's guess whether performance pay will significantly increase the quality of our schools.

He told a reporter back in April: “There isn't a great deal of empirical research to support that it's going to make a dramatic impact in student achievement results. We don't know what merit pay or strategic compensation will do in terms of ‘Does it lift student achievement?'”

What we do know is that the current compensation system doesn't reward teacher excellence, Glass said. But that's not reason enough to jump on the performance-based bandwagon.

Forget trying to sell it for a minute - first, I want to know whether or not the thing will work.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net